Chapter Text
It’s the end of August, when the sun is beating down hardest through the fir trees, and Mack is standing in his driveway. He’s crying, really crying, fat tears running off his chin and making his neck all gross and wet.
He keeps wiping his face with the sleeve of his hoodie, even though his mom told him not to wear a hoodie because it’s been, like, thirty degrees all week and also because you’re going to give yourself heatstroke, Macklin, which is one of her favourite things to say even though unless you count four summers ago when he refused to take his signed Kesler jersey off and passed out in the back of his dad’s golf cart, Mack has never once given himself heatstroke.
Anyway.
He’s crying because Connor is going to leave.
Not forever, obviously. Mack knows that. He’s not stupid. Regina is not outer space. It’s just Saskatchewan. Connor will come back for Christmas, and summer, and he’ll text Mack, and he’ll send him stupid videos, and maybe he’ll say he misses him, but probably he’ll say something like, this place is dusty as hell, because he’s Connor and saying I miss you without seven layers of whatever would kill him.
The house already got too quiet when Aiden left for Shattuck last week. Not quiet like peaceful, either. Quiet like boring, like nobody to play ministicks with, nobody to blame the dishes that haven’t been put away on. Now Connor is leaving too, like apparently that’s just what people do: go somewhere else for the big cool next thing involving airports and their dads being so proud of them, while Mack is still here. Still in North Van. Still playing for the North Shore U16 team. Still having to ask for rides. Sometimes, he still has to sit in the back seat because Dada says it’s safer even though he’s not a baby, but even when he gets to sit up front, he still can’t drive, and he still can’t get drafted to anything except the chore chart on the fridge.
The worst part is that Mack knows he’s really good at hockey.
He knows he’s really good at hockey because sometimes adults talk over his head like he’s not there and they say stuff like he’s an exceptional player. High ceiling. Processes the game differently. Generational talent. Which to Mack, is all just fancy ways of saying they expect him to do whatever they tell him is best for his career. But Mack is fourteen, and he isn’t really thinking about his career. He’s thinking about how being good at hockey won’t make Connor stay in BC.
Being good at hockey didn’t make it so Mack could tag along with Aiden when he left for Shattuck, like he had tagged along for basically everything else his brother did.
Being good at hockey does not mean Mack can legally operate a motor vehicle or go to Regina or have his own life. It just means people keep telling him he needs to be patient and that being patient will pay off.
He kicks at a rock in the driveway and it goes absolutely nowhere because he’s wearing slides.
Sick. He’s an elite athlete. That’s elite athlete stuff.
Mack’s mom is inside pretending not to watch him through the kitchen window, which is nice of her but not very subtle. She keeps moving around like she’s very busy with dishes even though there aren’t really dishes because she took Mack and Connor to Chipotle for lunch before Connor had to go home and finish packing. She said it because Mack was too-obviously sad, and “sometimes you need a treat,” but Mack wonders if it’s becoming more of a rule than an exception because they’d also stopped at White Spot before dropping Aiden off for his flight.
So it’s a rule then: on the day that people leave, you get really sad and your mom says “let’s go out” and then you go out and everyone eats super fast, and then the person leaving goes “okay, well” in a voice that means they’re about to ruin your life or at least your year.
The whirring in Mack’s head settles when he hears a car rounding the corner. He pulls off his tear-damp hoodie, wipes a gross glob of snot on the collar, and lets it fall into a sad little pile on the grass.
Mrs. Bedard’s Honda is coming around Mack’s cul-de-sac at like, twelve kilometres an hour, which is insane because Connor is driving. Connor. Driving. With both hands on the wheel like there’s precious cargo in the back, even though everyone knows that it looks way cooler to drive with one hand. His mom is in the passenger seat, sitting extremely upright, looking like she might grab the wheel at any second. Connor has his learner’s now, because of course he does. Of course he gets to play in the major juniors and drive and probably drink more than one beer with his teammates.
He pulls up in front of the house and does the worst parking job Mack has ever seen and Mack laughs but it comes out like a snort because he’s also trying hard to stop crying, and then he looks at Connor through the glass and gulps back another quiet little sob.
Connor puts the car in park. His mom says something to him, probably about the brake, and then he gets out. It looks like he’s starting to grin, but then he sees Mack’s face and doesn’t.
“Jesus,” he calls. “You good?”
“Yeah,” Mack tells him, shakily, because obviously he’s not going to say no.
Connor shuts the door and comes around the front of the car. He’s wearing Pats stuff already, and a little sigh of relief escapes Mack’s throat. Seeing his friend in a backwards Pats baseball cap, thinking about all the TSN highlights he’ll be in next to guys like Dylan Cozens, makes him proud. Makes him proud but makes him see this Connor as a different kid from the Connor who lives 4 blocks away and has to be home before the sun goes down.
“You parked like shit,” Mack says.
“Shut up.” Connor looks back at the car, at the red L magnet beside the license plate. “I’m literally a learner.”
“When do you learn not to park in the middle of the road?”
“I’m saying goodbye to you and you’re chirping my parking?”
“It’s bad parking.”
And then they just stand there, not saying anything at all.
Which is stupid, because they’ve talked every day for basically Mack’s whole life, and they’ve played sewer until their feet went numb, and Mack has schooled him in Chel so many times it should count as community service, and he’s watched Connor eat seven hotdogs and then jump on a trampoline and then throw up on Tyler Gibbons’ Nike Dunks. So there should be, like, a script. There should be a thing that feels normal to say to someone you care about when they’re leaving and you’re not.
But there isn’t.
There’s just Connor, looking taller than he did three hours ago even though Mack knows it can’t be true, and Mack standing in his driveway with his eyes all red and his nose all snuffly.
“We’re gonna be fine,” Connor tells him, shuffling his feet. “You’re gonna be playing somewhere way better than Regina next year.”
He makes it sound like Regina is a bad place to go, and Mack is sure it’s not, but a little bit hopes it is so that Connor gets there and realizes he wants to come home. And anyway, what Connor said might be true, but next year isn’t now, so Mack just nods and eventually says “I bet there isn’t even wifi in Regina.”
Connor laughs then, hard and sudden, and Mack laughs too, and for one second it feels normal. Like Connor isn’t leaving. Like tomorrow Connor is going to text sewer? and Mack is going to say duh, and then they’ll meet at the park, and Mack will accidentally let the ball hit grass, and Connor will say it didn’t count because he wasn’t ready to start anyway.
But then Connor’s mom rolls down the window and says, “Con, we should go.”
Connor looks back at the Honda, then at Mack’s driveway and the basketball net he’d bricked himself against two days ago, then down at the road between his shoes. For a second he looks like he forgot what he came over to do, which is stupid, because what he came over to do is leave.
“Okay, well.”
There it is.
The thing people say right before they go.
Mack hates it. Hates how it makes him think about Connor not getting guac on his burrito earlier because Mack’s mom was paying, even though Mack knows he wanted it. Makes him think about Aiden’s suitcase thudding around in the trunk as they pulled into the airport drop-off line.
“You better text me,” Connor tells him, stepping closer.
They fumble into a hug. Connor’s bony elbow hits Mack’s bony hip, and his chin bumps against Mack’s cheek. All at once, Mack smells Connor’s laundry detergent and the car freshener and the end of summer, and he thinks, really suddenly, that hockey might actually suck.
Not really, obviously. Just for how it’s turned the boys into one boy in Regina, one boy at Shattuck, and one boy still standing in the driveway with snot on his hoodie.
“And you better not get better than me at Chel.”
Mack balks at that. His throat hurts. He doesn’t really wanna say anything, just wants to hug Connor tighter, but whatever it is inside him that needs to win and be known as the Winner is real persuasive.
“You’d have to get better than me first, stupid,” he says, quiet, no meanness behind it at all.
“I’m gonna be too busy getting famous.” Connor’s grin comes a second late, then he drops his arms and turns to get back in the car.
Mack closes his eyes and stands there until they turn the corner, then opens them and stands there a little longer. He doesn’t know what to do.
Because he’s fourteen.
Because he can’t drive.
Because he can’t get drafted into the WHL.
Because Connor is leaving, and Aiden is gone, and everyone else is probably going somewhere, and Mack is still here with stinging eyes and nobody to hang out with.
No one who can sweet talk the guy who works at 7-Eleven into giving them free Slurpees because they’re for sure gonna be NHL stars one day and will remember him when they make it.
No one to laugh at Coach Maldon’s ever-growing bald spot with.
No one to mess around with during advanced math class because they already figured out plenty of ways that you can solve for x.
No one.
And then, from behind the screen door, his mom calls, “Macklin? Come in before the mosquitoes eat you alive.”
Mack wipes his face again.
“Coming,” he yells, and his voice cracks a little bit.
But he doesn’t move yet because maybe if he stands there long enough, someone will come back.
* * * *
By September, Mack has tried playing sewer with RJ four times, which is three times too many.
It’s not RJ’s fault though. It’s just that Mack forgets that RJ is little, and then he gets annoyed when RJ bumps the ball away with his fist, and then annoyed again when he thinks maybe he did the same stuff when he was eight. This last time they played, RJ cried because the ball hit the curb and he really believed the curb was somehow different from the ground. After twenty minutes, Mack gave up and announced that he had homework to do, even though he didn’t.
He felt bad that homework to do was a lie, because even though it’d been a few weeks since school started back up, he doesn’t really have homework. When you’re the type of good at math that Mack is, math class becomes a good time to do English homework, and English becomes a good time to do science homework. By gym, he is fully out of homework and fully out of patience, which sucks because gym is when everyone keeps asking about Connor like Mack is his official press guy.
Is he homesick? Is it weird? Is Regina actually as flat as people say? Is training camp hard? Does he know any of the older guys yet?
Mack doesn’t know the answer to those things. Connor sent a video of himself eating a dill pickle donut and said it was a Regina specialty and also gross. Connor said his billet family is chill, but they’re kind of weird church people who say grace before dinner. if i didnt have practice, id prolly have to go to sunday school, he texts. Connor has not said he misses Mack, but he sends him stupid Instagram reels every night and that’s basically the same thing. Mack doesn’t wanna share any of that with his classmates though, so he just says “yeah” and “I dunno” and shrugs.
* * * *
By the time it starts getting dark before dinner, Mack has gotten used to being lonely, which is definitely not the same thing as not being lonely.
It’s not like he has no friends. He’s not, like, tragic. He gets in shit for talking during class. He plays ministicks after school. He goes to Timmies for an Iced Capp with the guys after practice, and the guys are fine but they aren’t Connor or Aiden, which is obviously a problem. But they’re fine. They just don’t know that he needs someone to tell him when he’s being annoying before he gets so annoying that everyone else notices, or that sometimes the only thing that makes him stop talking is someone throwing something (soft) at his head.
He tries to get used to it.
He gets used to checking his phone during dinner and then getting in trouble for it. He gets used to seeing highlight reels — Connor’s first goal, Connor’s first scrum, Connor getting named first star. He feels something drop in his stomach when Aiden posts a dump of him and the guys from Shattuck sneaking out to mess around with fireworks on his birthday, and then he gets used to Aiden being too busy to FaceTime. Used to it, but still annoyed, because Aiden was busy when he lived at home too, but that was different. That was normal busy. This is away busy.
At the rink, everything happens too fast for Mack to get stuck in his own head, which is nice because his own head has been brutal lately. He scores a lot, sure, but mostly he’s everywhere, and it’s way more satisfying than scoring from the low slot. He’s in the corner, beyond the blue line, at the boards, or behind some guy who definitely thought he had more time than he did, and scoring from those places becomes a new challenge. Half the time Mack doesn’t even know what he’s doing until he’s already done it, which makes it both funny and kind of nice when Coach Maldon talks about his instincts and about how focused he is, how he’s really dialed in this season. He says it like focus is this calm, mature thing and not Mack being annoyed all the time and the rink being the only place nobody tells him to watch his attitude.
His parents don’t say talk about him in the same way Coach does.
Dada says, “You looked good tonight,” and then watches him a second too long for it not to have some secret meaning that Mack doesn’t understand.
Mama asks if he’s sleeping okay.
Mack says, “yeah,” because he is sleeping. Eventually.
There are guys at the glass sometimes who are not anybody’s dad.
Mack knows they’re scouts because he is not blind or stupid, and because when you’re fourteen playing elite U16 hockey and adults keep calling you one to watch, eventually people start watching. So yeah, he notices when they talk to his coach after games, glancing between him and their clipboard, and then when his coach talks to his parents, and the next day when his dad is in a weirdly good mood that isn’t even ruined when Mack drops from the chin-up bar and threatens to give up entirely.
Mack doesn’t know what to make of it all. He keeps scoring. He keeps pushing himself. He keeps getting used to being lonely. And somewhere in the middle of that, he starts to hope next year means something other than U16 at North Shore.
* * * *
By the middle of December, the house is noisy and full of energy again, and decorated for Christmas with only moderate effort.
Aiden comes home first and leaves his bag in the hallway like he is personally trying to kill Mama. Connor is only back for a few days before he has to leave again, and he spends most of them with Mack. The day before Christmas Eve, he brings over a gift that his mom obviously wrapped. When Mack gets it open, he sees a Pats beanie with #98 embroidered on it and feels his entire face get hot because everyone knows you don’t give that kinda thing to your buddy. That’s what you do when you like a girl. You give her something with your number on it. He whips it back at Connor’s chest and says, “Are you trying to make me your girlfriend?” Connor tries to chirp him back, but his mouth is full of gingerbread.
The three of them play Chel until two in the morning, and Mack takes the Penguins all the way because Connor and Aiden don’t know how to defend a wraparound. The next day, they rally all the guys on the block for shinny at Rice Lake and play until their noses are cold and red and tingling.
Mack starts to forget what it was like to be lonely, but then Connor says, “one of the boys in Regina-” and Aiden says, “this kid, Smitty, over at Shattuck-” and Mack feels like all the air got sucked out of his lungs. Maybe it’s because Connor has boys who aren’t him. Maybe it’s because Aiden has a Smitty. Or maybe it’s because both of them are at home now but they still seem a little bit gone.
Mack has to breathe through his nose for a second. Then he knocks his knee into Connor’s and says, “Shut up, nobody cares about Regina,” and Connor shoves him back, and Aiden says something about Mack being jealous, which is obviously insane because Mack is not jealous of Saskatchewan, which Connor personally described as the third-worst province in Canada.
* * * *
Mack is in a pissy mood All The Time now.
His friends say it, and using different words, Mama says it too. She comes into his room before bed with a plate of cookies and goes “you’ve been grumpy lately. Everything okay at the rink?”
RJ doesn’t have to say it, but Mack knows because last week he snapped at him for spilling juice on his hockey card binder and RJ cried so hard he had to breathe through his mouth. Mack hates all of it. Hates that RJ cried, hates that he was the reason, hates that saying sorry didn’t work because he still felt like a dick afterwards.
It doesn’t help that it’s February, and in February, Vancouver is cold and wet in a way that gets under your clothes and into your bones. It’s not even really raining most of the time, it’s just this stupid mist that makes doing anything that isn’t lying in bed seem like the worst thing ever. But then if all you ever do is lie in bed, and you open Instagram but there’s nothing new to look at, you start thinking really hard. Too hard, and about things that you hope don’t matter anymore.
Mack thinks about when he was younger, when hockey was still mostly just something that looked cool, and he was still trying to figure out how to actually move with skates on and ice underneath him. Then he turned six and started playing in Timbits, which is where little kids get in full kits and bump into each other on the ice. He remembers being scared before his first game because what if he sucked, and what if he didn’t score, and what if everyone could tell he was bad before he even had a chance to get good.
He remembers saying he wouldn’t play, even though he really wanted to, and then Dada tied his skates and said, “You have to do it, but you can do it scared.”
Mack remembers not thinking that made any sense. Obviously he would rather do it not scared. That seemed like the better option by a lot. But Dada made him go anyway, so Mack did it scared, and then he did it again, and eventually being scared turned into having skills, and having skills made things fun.
Mack thinks really hard about when hockey became less fun.
One day, he sees a poster on the bulletin board outside the school counsellor’s office. It has a cartoon kid on it with a backpack and a face like someone stole his lunch money, and bold letters asking, Do you feel angry, tired, or alone? Have the good things in your life started to feel less good?
It’s a stupid poster, he decides. It says your feelings matter. It says it’s okay to ask for help. It says to talk to a trusted adult, which is how Mack knows it was made by someone who has never been fourteen in their life.
Still.
Mack thinks about it until lunch, then thinks about it more while Ms. Hart talks about spatial reasoning.
Angry is easy. He’s obviously angry. There are good reasons for it. The sky has been grey for basically a hundred years. His Sedin twins rookie cards are all crumpled up and sticky with OJ. Aiden texts Sorry bud, busy on a Wednesday night when he shouldn’t be busy, and all Mack wants to do is FaceTime his older brother. Anyone would be angry about that stuff.
He’s also obviously tired. That’s not even worth thinking about. He wakes up when it’s dark out, goes to school, plays hockey for three hours, and then lies awake long enough that the shadows in the corner of his room start looking like stuff.
Alone is trickier, because Mack has friends. He has Cutter and Doley. He has guys to skate around Rice Lake with even though the ice is starting to get slushy. He has Connor sending him ideas for stupid TikToks they should make during spring break. He has Aiden, technically, when Aiden remembers his phone exists. So no. Not alone. Not really.
The second question is what really messes Mack up.
There are lots of things that make him feel good, obviously. Scoring, winning, putting up fifteen points over a weekend tourney in Abbotsford, all feel good. Solving a math problem when his classmates can’t feels pretty good. Mama’s lasagna is still his favourite. Mack still laughs. He still has fun.
But right now, those things matter less when Mack is lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. The nights Connor doesn’t text him back make Mack wonder if they’ll never talk again. The games he loses make him worry he’ll never win again. All of it makes him think the heavy, gross feeling behind his ribs might just be part of him now.
On a day when it’s finally sunny, Connor messages him saying the Pats are playing the Vancouver Giants on Friday and he got Mack club seats right behind the away team’s bench.
Dada drives him to Burnaby for the game, and he’s quiet the whole time, but Mack complains about something or other the entire way anyway because someone has to. It’s dark by the time they get there, raining again, and the parking lot is wet and shiny under the lights. Before they get out of the car, Mack announces, “I don’t even care about the WHL that much,” which is true until they go inside.
Then he sees Connor. He’s wearing his jersey and stretching his quads and it seems like the whole rink revolves around him. When he looks up and sees Mack, he waves and smiles so big that everyone can see his gums.
Mack is having fun. He watches the whole game without getting up to take a leak or buy fries. He watches Connor get pushed over the boards like his coach trusts him to handle anything. He watches Connor score and get dogpiled by his teammates, who are chanting Bedsy, Bedsy, Bedsy like he just saved the world, and Mack wishes he were down there too, getting crushed by a bunch of idiots in Pats jerseys.
It is the best, and it sucks, because suddenly Mack knows exactly what the poster meant.
Since Christmas, he’s been doing all the stuff he usually does, but doing it sad.
* * * *
As soon as the weather stops being completely disgusting, everyone around Mack starts talking about next year like this year is already over.
Not at school, obviously. At school, next year means grade ten and course selection and some lady from the counselling office holding an assembly to say things like keep your options open and don’t underestimate yourself, which Mack thinks is pretty rich coming from someone wearing Crocs. Then he remembers that picture of Crosby wearing neon yellow Crocs in the locker room and decides that does not count for reasons he does not have to explain.
At the rink, next year means something else.
Cutter says his dad is talking to a guy from the Okanagan Hockey Academy and they’re going to tour it once school’s out. Doley is two years olders than both of them and keeps yapping about Michigan State because one of the scouts mailed him a hoodie. When they were getting Booster Juice after practice, he was legit like, “I’ve gotta finish the year strong,” as if he hadn’t spelled definitely with an a three days earlier. Mack knows he’s being pissy, and he knows he’s got options too, but fuck, at least Cutter gets a free trip and Doley gets a hoodie. All Mack gets is adults lowering their voices when he comes close enough to hear, and then a bunch of stuff he is clearly not supposed to notice.
He sees Dada and Coach Maldon talking to some guy in an Oil Kings quarter-zip after he gets a hat trick in the semis against Maple Ridge. He sees Mama looking at something online about early graduation and NCAA eligibility. Later on, she and Dada are discussing something about Boston in voices hushed enough that he can’t tell whether they’re talking about him or Aiden. Maybe it’s about both of them, which would be lowkey annoying because the nastiest part of Mack knows he’s a better player than his older brother. Immediately after thinking it, he’s hit with the kind of guilt he can taste in the back of his throat.
Nobody actually says anything about any of it to Mack’s face.
Then, after practice that Thursday, Mama and Dada are sitting at the kitchen table and Mama says, “Can you sit down for a minute?”
Mack’s legs feel floppy from the laps he had to skate after mouthing off to the new assistant coach, or assistant couch, technically, from the way he spends practice parked on the bench. His hair’s still wet from the shower, and he’s eating cut-up carrot sticks that were already on the counter when he got home. He looks at the table, then at Dada, then at Mama, and immediately knows this is going to suck.
“Why?”
“Just sit,” Dada says, and he’s using that serious voice, which a little bit scares the shit out of Mack, so he sits.
Mama gives Dada the kind of look that usually comes before she says “shut up, Rick.” She has her hands wrapped around a mug, and Dada has his hands folded in front of him. They look like they were already talking before he got here, and Mack doesn’t feel very good about that. It gets worse when Dada speaks again because now, his voice is soft in a way that it never is. Not ever since Mack was in Timbits, probably.
“I want you to know we see how hard you’ve worked this year,” he says. “Your habits are healthier. Your recovery is better. You’re faster on the puck, and you’re reading the game at a level most kids your age aren’t even close to.”
Mack already knows all of this, so he says “okay.”
“But,” Dada says, and then Mama leans forward a little, she looks kind of sad, and then she cuts him off. “Mack, we don’t know if you leaving next year is the right choice.”
Mack looks at her.
For a second, he is not even mad. He is just waiting for the rest of the sentence, because that cannot be the whole thing. That is not a real sentence someone can say and then expect him to respond to.
“What?” he asks.
“You’re so young,” Mama says.
Mack suddenly feels his face screw up like he might cry or laugh and has to look down at the table until it fixes itself, but it doesn’t fix itself, so he slams his fists into the meat of his thighs until it hurts so bad he definitely won’t laugh, at least. “No, I’m not,” he manages, and he’s using all his energy to stop from crumpling in on himself.
“Macklin,” Dada says.
“No, I know how old I am,” Mack shoots back, which is maybe not his strongest argument but whatever. “I’m not like, eight.”
“Nobody thinks you’re eight,” Dada says, no nonsense allowed.
Except that is exactly what they think. They can say whatever adult stuff they want, but Mack hears it perfectly. They think he’s a baby, and maybe that’s actually his fault. Maybe all winter he walked around the house acting like a freak, snapping at RJ and sleeping at weird hours and getting quiet when he normally can’t shut up.
Maybe they saw all of that and wrote it down somewhere in a list of reasons Mack isn’t ready to leave.
But Connor can leave. Aiden can leave. Cutter can talk about OHA. Doley can wear his stupid hoodie until it smells bad. Other guys can pack their bags and come back with team merch and stories about their billet family and bus rides and one of the boys.
All Mack gets is to sit here.
Mama tries to reach for his hands, pry them away from where they’re surely bruising his thighs, but he pushes her away and rearranges his hands into the same kind of folded that Dada’s are, thinking that maybe he can make some kind of deal.
“We know you’re hockey-ready, Mack,” she says, all nice sounding, like she isn’t giving him the worst news ever. “But that’s not the only kind of ready that matters.”
Mack stares down at the table. There is a scratch in the wood by his thumb, pale and thin. He presses his tongue between his lips, trying to make the words line up in a way that makes any sense.
Aiden used to say he looked like a confused lizard when he did that, but this is not a confused lizard situation. This is a life-ruining situation.
Mack pulls his tongue back into his mouth and clears his throat before asking, “What happened with the Oil Kings?” If it comes out like a whine, fine. He’s apparently still a baby anyway.
His parents trade another stupid look, and it doesn’t matter what it means, because a second later Dada is telling him “the Oil Kings will still be there next year, if you play strong and improve your weak points."
"When you're hockey-ready and everything-else-ready," Mama adds, eyes narrowed at Dada.
“Oh my god,” he says, and his ears are burning, and there are tears welling up in his eyes, and his throat is closing up, and maybe he is about to die.
“Macklin.”
“No, that’s crazy. They were literally here. I saw the guy. He talked to Coach Maldon and Dada after I scored a hat trick. Why would he do that if I’m not good enough?”
“Macklin,” Mama says. “Take a breath.”
Mack tries to take a breath. He really does, but the second he starts to pull air in, his throat does something scary, like it might let out a sob when he breathes it out. So he stops breathing and starts talking.
“Then what am I supposed to do? Just stay here? Just do the same thing again while everyone else leaves? And then what, I don’t get drafted? I don’t play in the NHL? I just stay here forever? NO. I’m not doing that. I’m not playing for North Shore for another season. I will-"
Mack is a little surprised nobody has cut him off, so he stops on his own before he says something he can’t take back, chews on his lip until the skin starts to peel back. Both of his parents are staring at him like he’s made a mess they’re going to have to clean up, so he starts talking again because maybe he’ll say it and mean it and fuck what they want anyway.
“I will- I’ll stop playing hockey. Is that what you guys want?”
In Mack’s head, that sounded confident. He is sitting at the table with his hands folded and staring straight ahead and not even crying, so basically he is negotiating like a businessman. Really though, he’s so mad that he’s spitting. And he doesn’t care. Nobody gets to have opinions on where he plays if he doesn’t play at all. There. Problem solved.
“You will not stop playing hockey, Macklin,” Dada says, voice even like Mack didn’t just threaten to ruin his own life. As if they didn’t start it. Then Mama sighs and adds, “We know you don’t want that, Mack,” and he’s so annoyed, because obviously he doesn’t want that.
That is the whole stupid point. He wants to leave too, like Connor and Aiden did. He wants to chase the big cool next thing that’ll help him get better at hockey and be noticed for how good he is.
He wants the other stuff too, like to have boys from somewhere else, and sit on a bus for eight hours, and live with a billet family that might have weird rules about when he can shower and might never make chocolate chip cookies. And fine, maybe he would hate it. Maybe he would call home after three days and ask Mama what to do. But he wanted to find that out himself.
“The Express have a spot for you,” Dada says, interrupting his thoughts. “I know what you’re thinking, Mack, but it’s serious hockey. It’s-”
“I know what the BCHL is,” Mack snaps.
Dada exhales. Not annoyed, because he's never annoyed, never yells, but he also feels far away from the dad who helped Mack believe he could do it scared.
Mama says, “We’re not saying this because we don’t believe in you.”
“I know.”
“We’re saying it because we do. We want you somewhere you can be challenged, develop your skills, and still have us close.”
For a second, everyone at the table is quiet. The fridge hums. Somewhere upstairs, Charlie drops something and shouts, “I’m okay!” Mack looks at the scratch in the table until his vision is blurry.
The worst part about this is that the BCHL is good.
That’s the part he can’t get around. If they were forcing him to do the Peak Performance program in West Van, he could be mad properly. If they were saying he could probably play U18 instead, or maybe check out Burnaby Winter Club, he could flip the table, probably not literally because Mama would kill him, but in his mind. He could be insane about it.
“Newhook got drafted right out of the BCHL,” Dada says. “Turris too, back in the day. Went from the Express to being picked third overall. This isn’t some dead-end thing, Macklin. Lots of guys take this path and end up exactly where they wanted to be.”
“Yeah, but Turris kinda busted.” Mack feels only some of the muscles in his body loosen up, and what might be considered just barely a smile tugs at the corners of his lips. “And he got picked by Phoenix. That’s not exactly where I want to be.”
“Well, your accuracy’s better than Turris' anyway,” Dada says, also maybe smiling a little bit too. “Bud, I know this isn’t what you wanted, but it gives you time to get stronger. Play older guys. Take initiative and touch the puck more. Be the guy that coaches can imagine building their teams around instead of the kid they take a chance on.”
Mack hates that his dad is good at this. He's seen him negotiate dozens of things in his favour, and now he's doing it to Mack's brain.
Obviously, he wants to be that guy. He wants older players chasing him around the ice, impressed by how fast he is. He wants coaches to talk about him like he is the reason their whole team works. But that doesn’t mean he wants to stay home.
Mama says his name really softly, then reaches for his hand again. Mack reaches out too, because apparently his body is taking suggestions from everyone today, but the second Mama squeezes, a hot and itchy feeling crawls up his neck.
He gets annoyed and fidgety all over again, and he doesn't know why, but maybe it's because Connor had said Mack would play somewhere better than Regina next year. He said it like it was obvious and Mack believed him. And now he’s sitting here holding his mom’s hand and being told that no, he isn't ready to do that.
“What am I supposed to tell Bedsy?”
It comes out before he can make it sound normal. Before he can make it sound like a joke, or mild complaint, or something that does not matter.
Mama and Dada don’t say anything. They just look at each other again, both of them frowning now, and Mack realizes he’s said way too much.
* * * *
For the next month after The Conversation, Mack becomes the most mature person in the world.
Not really, obviously. But he does try.
He stops leaving his wet towel on the floor after showers. He only has to be reminded once to empty the dishwasher and makes a show of cracking his Biology textbook open at the kitchen table. He even keeps his room clean enough that when Mama opens the door one night while he’s playing duos in Fort with Connor, she goes “Oh. Good stuff, Mack” and disappears without another word.
As they’re about to jump off the bus, Connor asks if Mack heard that one of the guys from NSWC got drafted by the Hitmen. Mack doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t wanna talk about it and then pings Lazy Lake before Connor can say more.
After the North Shore season ends with Mack’s team winning the championship, Dada becomes Rick Celebrini and reminds him that in their house, hockey does not end when hockey ends. Mack does hill sprints until his legs give out. He shoots pucks at the rink until his wrists ache. He eats chicken and rice and broccoli and more chicken and more rice and then stands in front of the fridge at ten-thirty at night wanting cookies and milk like any normal person would in this situation.
Mack wants to be more annoyed about it, but it gives him something to focus on, so he does it all and hopes maybe his parents will start seeing someone different than whoever they saw in February.
One Sunday morning, Dada takes him to practice with the Express, and Mack silently hems and haws in the car about whether or not he’ll hate it.
He wants to hate the rink and the smelly-ass dressing room and the older guys and the coach who ends up shaking his hand like Mack is already part of the team. He tries to convince himself of it on principle, because liking it would be embarrassing and also basically letting his parents win.
Once he gets on the ice, though, it’s pretty hard to hate. The guys are bigger, and they push one another around harder, but it makes being a little bit smaller than everyone else kind of fun. Not because they go easy on him, but because they don’t. Because when they organize themselves into groups for 3-on-3, one guy catches him along the boards hard enough that Mack’s shoulder buzzes all the way down to his elbow, and Mack still gets the puck out anyway.
Before he leaves, Coach Wagner gives him a really strong handshake and says “We’ll see you at dev camp.” Then, one of the goalies who has a really strong Southern accent asks for his number and adds him to a groupchat called coq n balls 🐓. On the ride home, guys start calling him Little Coq and send voice memos of them making train noises, and Mack has to breathe through his nose so he doesn’t bust out laughing.
At the dinner table that night, Dada goes, “You looked like you were having fun out there” and all Mack can do is shrug because he was, but that's also not the kind of thing Dada usually says about hockey. Hockey is work, hockey is skill development, but yeah, Mack guesses, it was also pretty fun
By the end of May, school is still technically happening, but mostly exists as a place Mack has to go before he’s allowed to do other stuff. He does okay in most of his classes — better in Algebra 2, worse in English. He goes to the driving range with some of the local guys from his new team. He does the schedule Dada made for him. He checks the groupchat because most of his teammates are back home now and are sending pictures of their dogs wearing Express merch. He wrangles Cali into branded socks and sends one of his own.
He keeps waiting for summer to start feeling like summer, but he knows it won’t until Connor and Aiden are home.
* * * *
The Pats make it all the way to the WHL finals before Kelowna knocks them out in game six, which is obviously brutal for Connor but less so for Mack, because he’ll be home soon. That thought is an inside one, he knows.
When the two of them are finally back together, Mack is loud and annoying and never more than two feet away from Connor, who is for some reason okay with it. It is actually humiliating how fast it happens. Like his body has been walking around all winter with its shoulders up around its ears, and then Connor is back and Mack can breathe properly again. He sleeps better, sometimes even without his white noise machine. He laughs so much his stomach hurts, which is wild because Connor is not even that funny.
Aiden comes home a few weeks early, in time for Mack’s birthday, and Mama gets a bunch of guys he knows tickets to a Whitecaps game. He turns fifteen in the middle of a row of boys yelling at a referee who definitely cannot hear them, eating fries with absolutely no vinegar (important), and feeling so good it makes his chest hurt in a way that is almost worse than feeling bad.
On the SeaBus home, Aiden steals Mack’s Whitecaps hat and Mack tries to put him in a headlock to get it back, and then Cutter trips him, and then everyone is laughing and shoving and almost falling into some guy’s bike until a transit worker tells them to cut it out unless they want to swim the rest of the way. Mack sits down after that, red-faced and sweaty and trying not to take the bait even though Doley is noncommittally kicking at his shins from across the aisle.
Once everyone else is finally quiet and staring at their phones, Connor reaches over and ruffles Mack’s hair, presses their shoulders together, and whispers, “Happy birthday, Macky,” in a voice quiet enough that nobody else hears. At that, Mack feels like he’s been lost for months and only just noticed because he’s back now.
* * * *
Connor’s aunt has a cabin on Alta Lake, near Whistler. She’s like, super loaded from working in the film industry or something, and Mack swears her place is nicer than his family’s place on Salt Spring for reasons he hasn’t thought very hard about. Something about how you can walk barefoot into the water without cutting your feet on the rocks and how you can do cannonball after cannonball off the dock without getting salt in your eyes. Something about how nobody asks Mack about his offseason training, and everyone is fine with how squirrely he gets, and they all stay up super late sitting around the campfire. Every year for the last few, it's been a welcome break from everyone and everything, except Connor, who is always right next to him. (And Aiden, when he isn’t getting sucked into his phone.)
This year, Connor convinces his aunt to let the three of them — himself, Mack, and Aiden — go up alone over Canada Day long weekend. Somehow, after promising they would drive safe, not make any pit stops and eat at least one vegetable a day, he also convinces Mack and Aiden’s parents that this would be a not-insane idea. Somehow, the three of them pile into Aiden’s car and pull out of the same driveway Mack stood sobbing in around this time last year. Connor is in the backseat, Aiden is already being annoying about who gets aux, and Mack is grabbing his brother's phone out of the console to switch the sad-as-fuck Zach Bryan song to the new Morgan Wallen track and turn it all the way up.
“What the hell?” Aiden complains, hand that should be on the wheel reaching for his phone.
“Mack’s trustworthy with the aux,” Connor shouts from the backseat. “Your playlist sounds like it’s for a funeral.”
Mack grins, twisting away from Aiden’s grabby hand, and jams the phone between his thigh and the door.
They get to the cabin around noon after making a very important pit stop at Chipper and having gone at least thirty over the speed limit on the Sea to Sky.
The first few days are like a stupid movie montage of fishing off the dock, pushing each other into the lake, and finding the keys they weren’t supposed to find so they can take the Sea-Doos they weren’t supposed to touch out on the water. At night, they sit around the fire and pass around a plastic bottle of Smirnoff, taking pulls that make Mack’s throat burn while everyone pretends it doesn’t taste like rubbing alcohol. By the time the bottle is mostly empty, Aiden fills it back up with water and puts it exactly where they found it, like Connor’s aunt is going to come back, pour herself a drink, and think, wow, this bottom shelf vodka has really opened up. They head to the village to mess around and end up playing nine holes at the course after Aiden promises that they’re very responsible unaccompanied minors, which is obviously bullshit. Mack, the only one who can’t drive, is allowed to man the golf cart and almost tips it into a sand pit.
By the time the sun starts to set on their last night, Mack and Connor are sprawled across these huge pillows on the living room floor, leaning against opposite walls with their feet tangled together. The cabin has huge windows that let the light sit around forever, warming up the cushions and making everything look yellow and cozy. They’re both pink from the sun and red-eyed from a few nights of campfire smoke and overall exhausted when Connor looks away from the blue light of his phone and says, “Bro, I’m still so pissed about Kelowna.”
Mack doesn’t say anything, just adjusts himself so he can see his friend’s face.
“We were right there,” he mutters. “Like, actually right there. And then we just-” He stops, swallows hard. “I don’t know. Got bounced.”
Mack wants to say something useful. He wants to say Kelowna is full of plugs, or the refs sucked, or that Connor still looked insane out there with his two goals and an assist. He could say that maybe Connor wasn’t ready to leave either, which would be really fucked up, and therefore not something he would ever actually do. He just hopes Aiden is far enough away, cooking something possibly edible for dinner, that he can’t read Mack’s mind.
Instead, Mack says, “You’ll get ‘em next year, when they swap your A for the C,” and then Connor throws a pillow at his head. Mack throws it back and adds, really quick, like maybe if he turns it into one word Connor won’t hear it right, “mplayinfortheExpressnextseason.”
“Coquitlam?” Connor obviously asks, and before Mack can decide if his face is doing something humiliating, he hooks an ankle around Mack’s and yanks.
Mack goes down sideways into the cushions with a noise he will deny making until he dies. For half a second, he doesn’t even understand what happened. His body goes loose with surprise, then hot all at once, like Connor has pulled the embarrassing part of him out where they can both see it.
“No, the Polar Express,” he spits, already kicking at Connor’s chest before his friend can cover him completely.
Connor laughs and gets one knee into the pillow beside Mack’s hip, then presses against Mack's shoulder until carpet burn starts to bloom the skin there, trying to pin him with absolutely no technique.
“Why are you embarrassed? Coquitlam’s prolly the best in the el-em-el right now.” His voice sounds not very mean, but he’s pronouncing the acronym for lower mainland like it’s a word, like he’s doing some kind of joke. Mack doesn’t really feel like joking right now.
“Shut up,” Mack grunts, getting an elbow under him and driving upward hard enough that Connor has to catch himself on the wall. “You got waxed by Kelowna.”
“Low blow,” Connor says, immediately trying to smother him with an expensive feeling blanket.
Mack gets a hand in Connor’s face and pushes, blind, catching mostly cheek and mouth. Connor makes an offended noise into his palm. Somewhere by the kitchen, Aiden yells, “Do not get blood on anything,” which is unhelpful because a fucked-up voice in Mack’s head is telling him to grab Connor’s bare thigh and dig his nails into the meat.
Instead of getting meaner, though, Connor disengages completely and falls against the heap of pillows they’ve created, then pulls Mack by the shoulders so he’s lying across his lap.
Mack looks up at Connor, who isn’t looking back at him, confused, breathless, and too ashamed to say anything. His shirt collar has been stretched so bad it’s falling down his shoulder.
After enough silence that both of them are breathing normally again, Connor says, “You’re so dumb for this.”
Mack nods, then rolls away so Connor can’t see the weird shape his mouth goes into. Neither of them say anything after that. They just lie there and watch the lake push little waves up onto the beach.
* * * *
By August, Mack starts feeling weird again.
Not bad weird, exactly. Not February weird. It’s not like he saw a poster at school or an Insta story that said #mentalhealthmatters and went, oh, same. It’s just that every day makes him feel like a knot that's being pulled tighter and tighter, and the stupid part is that nothing is even happening yet. Connor is still here. Aiden is still here. Summer is still doing summer stuff, all grass stains and almost dying on their homemade Slip-n-Slide and retreating to the basement for Chel when it’s too hot to exist outside.
But Connor has Team Canada dev camp soon, and Aiden has to go back to Shattuck, and Mack knows this because he has a calendar and a brain and unfortunately can count.
Connor tries to make it better by saying, “You’ll be there with me next year.”
They are in Mack’s basement when he says it, sprawled on the carpet with a bag of Doritos open between them. Both of them are super gross and sweaty from trying to dunk in the driveway and so they came downstairs to half-watch the US Open and half-scroll on Instagram in the comfort of air conditioning.
Mack looks over at him. “Where?”
Connor gives him this look like Mack is being stupid on purpose, which, okay, sometimes. “Camp.”
“Oh my god,” Mack says, instantly annoyed because his cheeks have gone warm with the knowledge that Connor knew exactly what he was thinking. “Shut up.”
“What?”
“I don’t wanna talk about this, Bedsy,” he whines, rolling back and forth on the carpet like a cat trying to find a position that’ll get the itch out of it’s back.
Connor grins. “I’m saying, next year.”
“Yeah, well, next year isn’t this year.”
“Yeah, duh, I’ll miss you this year.”
Mack grunts in agreement and immediately, they realize they’ve both admitted something that’s not supposed to be said out loud. Connor drops his phone and rolls over.
Mack knows he’s in trouble before Connor even moves, but knowing doesn’t help because Connor is already on him, grabbing at his ribs and trying to shove him sideways into the couch. Mack kicks him in the thigh and Connor makes a noise like he’s been shot, then hooks an arm around Mack’s middle and rolls them into the open space between the coffee table and the TV.
It turns into one of those fights that is not a fight except it kind of is. Elbows and knees and jabbing fingers, Mack trying to get his socked foot against Connor’s hip so he can shove him off, both of them breathing like they’ve got some kind of respiratory condition. Mack gets one hand around Connor’s wrist and tries to twist it away from his shoulder, but Connor drops his weight at the same time Mack jerks upward, and Connor’s elbow catches him hard in the mouth.
For a second, everything stops.
Mack tastes blood before he feels it. Coppery and hot, right on his tongue.
“Shit,” Connor says. “Mack.”
Mack sits up, the heel of his palm pressed to his mouth. His lip feels huge immediately, split on the inside and starting to pulse. Connor is staring at him with his eyes all wide, like Mack is glass or something, and that makes Mack want to be more mad than he is.
“I’m fine,” Mack says, even though it comes out muffled against his hand. He winces, pushing himself up and falling onto the couch.
“Let me see.”
“No.”
“Mack.”
“I’m good.”
Connor doesn’t look convinced. He climbs onto the couch too and reaches, getting his fingers under Mack’s wrist and pulling his hand down enough to look. His thumb catches the corner of Mack’s mouth for half a second, gentle in a way neither of them ever are unless the other one is bleeding. Mack grimaces, not because it hurts but he feels queasy and maybe it's because of how Connor is touching him.
“You’re good,” Connor agrees, quieter now. He dabs against the cut with a wadded up Kleenex. “It’s not that bad.”
Mack jerks his head back. “I know.”
Connor’s mouth twitches, like he is trying very hard not to smile. “Honestly, it’s practice. When you’re playing for Coquitlam, all those big boys are gonna be bumping you around.”
“Yeah, and I’m gonna let them elbow me in the face?”
“Probably. You’re slow.”
Mack tackles him again because obviously he has to, split lip or not.
The next day, when Connor is getting ready to leave, Mack does not cry.
Not because he doesn’t want to, because he does, kind of. He just refuses to. His throat hurts and his lip stings and Connor is digging around in his dresser to find a pair of swim trunks he definitely left in there.
He hugs Connor hard enough that Connor grunts and says, “Text me,” into his shoulder.
“Yeah,” Mack says.
“I mean it.”
“I will.”
Connor pulls back and looks at him for one second too long, like he is waiting for Mack to do something. To cry or something. Mack does nothing. He stands there like a normal person with a split lip and a whole career ahead of him and no reason to be embarrassing about Connor going to Team Canada dev camp for a little while.
So Connor gets in the car.
Mack watches him leave, and this time, when the Bedards’ Honda turns out of his cul-de-sac, he goes inside.
He decides he is going to text Connor less this year.
Not in a weird way. Just normal. Busy. Mature. He has rookie camp and school and the Express and a groupchat full of guys who call him Little Coq in a way that feels like the opposite of being left out. So no, Mack is not going to sit around checking his phone like a loser. He is not going to wait for Connor to send him some stupid video so his whole day can get better. He is going to be normal about it.
For almost a week, he has to think really hard about not texting.
Then Will shows up.
Will is Aiden’s Smitty from Shattuck. He is tall and loose-limbed and tan in a way that makes Mack think guess that he also plays golf and sewer and would probably wanna go for a hike around Lynn Canyon. He has a hockey bag over one shoulder and a backpack hanging off the other, and when Mama pulls into the driveway just after he and Aiden do, he smiles at her like he wants to be called a very polite young man real badly.
“Thanks again for having me, Mrs. Celebrini,” he says.
Mack almost rolls his eyes right there in the entryway because obviously he is going to be like that. Like, nice.
Will carries his own bags upstairs and then comes back down five minutes later to help Mama bring groceries in, and somehow does all of it without seeming like he is sucking up. It is suspicious.
Dada eventually leaves his office and Will shakes his hand. He says, “Good to finally meet you, Mr. Celebrini,” and then asks him something about how the NBA guys he’s worked with deal with travel recovery and they yap about it for like, twenty minutes.
By dinner, Mama likes him. Dada likes him. Charlie likes him because Will lets her explain an entire Roblox situation without interrupting. RJ likes him because Will says he can beatbox, which turns out to be not true but is still apparently exciting.
Mack does not like him.
The first problem is that Will looks at Mack while they’re loading the dishwasher and says, “You must be the little one,” which is insane because Mack is literally playing his first game in the BCHL in a few weeks.
Aiden laughs so hard he chokes on his water.
“I’m fifteen.”
“Sure, kid,” Will says back, chuckling, as if he hasn’t spent all afternoon becoming best friends with his little siblings.
Seriously, the guy is a dickhead. And it makes no sense that Mack is so tilted about Aiden and the dickhead doing stuff without him. They're just doing stuff that Mack likes to do, is all. They drive around, pick up food, steal Mack's Switch to play Mario Kart. They even go to the course and rip nine holes on Sunday afternoon, which used to be Aiden and Mack’s thing. He even asks if he can borrow his clubs, to which Mack says sure when what he wants to say is get out of my house.
Mack tells himself he doesn’t even care because he has his own stuff now. He has boys who aren’t Connor or Aiden. He has a team. He has rookie camp. He has literally no reason to care what Aiden and his Shattuck friend are doing at eleven at night.
He cares so much it makes him feel sick.
Then, a few days after Will gets there, Mama and Dada ask Mack to sit down at the kitchen table.
Mack’s whole body goes cold.
He looks at the table. He looks at Mama’s tea mug. He looks at Dada’s folded hands. It is basically March all over again except worse because now he knows what kitchen table talks can do.
“What?” he says, already annoyed because being nervous would be embarrassing.
Mama’s face softens, which does not help. “We wanted to talk to you about Will.”
“What about him?”
Dada says, “He’s playing for the Giants this year, and his billet situation fell through.”
Mack blinks. “Okay.”
“And with Aiden leaving for Shattuck soon,” Mama says carefully, “we talked about whether it might make sense for Will to stay here for the season.”
For a second, Mack does not understand the sentence. Not because it is complicated, but because it is stupid. Will is Aiden’s friend. Will is visiting. Will is temporary. Will puts his shoes on the rack by the door and is suspiciously nice to Mack’s parents.
Mack looks at Dada. “In Aiden’s room?”
Dada’s mouth does something like he is trying not to smile, which is brave of him considering the circumstances. “That was the thought.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
Mack hates that he asked because now it sounds like he cares more than he wanted to seem like he does. But also, seriously. Why are they asking? If no is not an acceptable answer, then what is he supposed to do with the question?
“We care how you feel about it,” Mama says, mostly lying.
“Sure,” Mack grumbles, eyes rolling into the back of his head so far he can maybe see the grooves in his brain.
“Macklin.”
“No, I mean-" Mack rubs both hands over his face. “You already decided.”
Mama and Dada look at each other, and Mack almost laughs because they always do this. Always communicating silently like Mack is not sitting right there with his eyes open.
“It’s not finalized,” Mama tries to assure him. “If you think it’ll be disruptive to your season, we can figure something else out.”
“But you want him to stay.”
“We have a stable place for him to land,” Dada says, because at least he has the decency not to lie about it. “It just makes sense.”
He should say lie and say yeah, it would be disruptive.
He wants to, because Will called him the little one and because the house is supposed to be quiet in a specific way after Aiden leaves and because Mack thought he was gonna be pretty good at being lonely this year.
But then he thinks about how Will might secretly be cool. He says stuff to Dada that makes Dada actually answer instead of lecture. He went down on one knee in the hallway like he was taking a defensive-zone draw in Game 7 when RJ asked him to play ministicks. He asks Mack questions too, normal ones, like if Hughes was really the saviour Canucks fans were hoping for, and if Mack would kill him for being a Devils fan.
Mack had laughed at that before he could stop himself and said, “A fan of what? How they won, wow, three consecutive games this season?"
Will rolled his eyes, then put on a show of sizing him up. "How are you gonna get away with being that small playing in the BCHL?" When Mack pointed at his scabbed-over lip, Will laughed and went, "Oh, you're a beast, my bad."
Mack slumps into the chair, but wishes he could disappear into the floor.
“Whatever,” he says.
Mama looks at him for a long second. “Only if you’re sure, Mack.”
“I’m whatever.”
Dada nods like he understands, which he definitely does not.
So Will stays, and Aiden leaves a week later. He gives Will express permission to use his car and warns him that Mack will play the most obnoxious shit possible if he gets aux.
Mack lets Aiden ruffle his hair even though it’s humiliating, because Mack is choosing to be the bigger person for once in his life. Then Aiden looks over his head at Will and says, “Don’t let him bully you too bad.”
Mack immediately stops being the bigger person.
“I am not a bully,” he grumbles, ducking out from under Aiden’s hand. “Everyone thinks I’m a really nice guy.”
“Your mom thinks I’m a really nice guy,” Will says.
“No, Smitty, she thinks you’re a very polite boy,” Mack shoots back. “That's different."
Will and Aiden both laugh, which is honestly so immature, and Mack shrugs them both off, making like he could not care less that Will laughed at his joke.
For the first few days, he and Will mostly exist in the same house without interacting. Will showers in Aiden’s bathroom and does his own laundry and steals the seat at the kitchen island that doesn’t wobble. He goes for runs in the morning before Mack is awake. He helps Mama unload the dishwasher without being asked. He and Dada talk about meal plans and protein intake, and Mack pretends he isn’t paying attention even though he’s actually never listened to Dada talk about macros more intently than he is now.
The night before his first exhibition game with the Express, Mack comes downstairs because he cannot sleep. Not because he is being weird. Just because his room is too hot and his brain won’t turn off and Connor hasn't texted back, which is fine because Mack is texting him less anyway.
The kitchen is dark except for the light over the stove. Will is in sweats and a Giants hoodie, rummaging through the cupboards and obviously coming up with nothing good.
“What are you doing down here?” Mack asks, standing up a little straighter so that when Will turns around, they might see eye-to-eye. He doesn’t think too hard about why.
Will jumps a little, like he didn’t hear Mack walk in. “Do you guys not have anything to eat?”
Mack shrugs. Connor had once said their house was an ingredient house, where you have to microwave a single serving of frozen lasagna if you want a snack. The Bedards’ house is the opposite, where they keep the pantry stocked with boxes of Ritz crackers and Fruit Gushers.
Mack opens the fridge and gestures to the deli drawer.
“There’s ham in here.”
“No thanks,” Will groans, turning away because sure, what kind of psychopath thinks I want a midnight snack and then accepts the inevitability of eating sliced lunch meat. "You hungry?"
Mack closes the fridge. “Maybe.”
“I’m going to 7-Eleven.” Will grins, pulling Aiden’s keys out from his pocket and jingling them right in Mack’s face. “You coming?”
For a second, Mack thinks about saying no. Just to prove he can. Just to be normal about it. Just to show that he is not the kind of person who needs every older boy who walks through his house to invite him somewhere.
Then Will opens the front door, and Mack follows him out to the driveway.