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The buzzer sounded, louder than it had any right to as the crowd roared loud enough to blow the roof off the building. Maddie could taste iron in her mouth.
“You okay?”
Dumo tapped her pads, her cheeks flushed red behind her cage as she repeated herself. “You okay? That was kind of intense. Sorry I couldn’t clear them.”
“He’s going to pull me.” There was bile in her mouth and when she lifted her mask and spat, there was a faint hint of red on the ice. The split in her lip should have healed up. She was supposed to be fine.
“You don’t know that-”
“It was a bad goal.”
She shouldn’t have snapped. Dumo was doing her best, despite her ankle only being half healed. She should be snapping at Kris and the stupid hooking call that had landed them on the penalty kill. But Kris was already sullenly skating back to the bench, hands gripping her now broken stick like a weapon.
Maddie made the mistake of looking at the far right of the bench. She hadn’t intended to. She hadn’t wanted to see the pity, the kindness that she knew was waiting. But like a moth drawn to the flame, Maddie looked at Flower.
One gesture from her was all it took for Maddie to grab her water bottle and skate over. Each step felt like she was slipping through sand, every muscle too slow and too sluggish. She was going to be pulled. And maybe that would be good, maybe she could rest, maybe she could recover-
The bile rose again, sharp and hot as she thumped against the boards and wordlessly offered her bottle out. Flower passed her a new one, heavy as it was plopped into her glove hand.
“Muzz.”
She didn’t want to look up. But she did, finally, even going so far as to pull off her helmet and let her sweaty scalp breathe a little, her braid heavy against the back of her neck. After a slow glance at the boards and the skaters to Flower’s left, she looked up and hoped she saw glee.
But Flower was Flower, her impish face filled with a sympathy that Maddie in no way deserved.
“It was one bad goal, Muzz.”
“We’re down two.”
“You couldn’t have done anything about the first one, yeah? I wouldn’t have been able to nab it.”
“I should have had them,” she said, voice trembling in a way that she hated, in a way that she wanted to break, in a way that she wanted to take out back and shoot right in the head. She dropped her eyes back down to the boards.
Flower’s hand was light as it gently chucked Maddie under the chin, nudging her into looking up. Flower’s dark eyes were sympathetic in a way that made Maddie want to make a break for it to the net. But she stayed put, stuck by the stupid weight of her crush and some kind of magnetism that only Flower seemed to have.
Flower reached over to place a hand on her shoulder pad, her fingers long and nail polish chipped. “Brush it off, Maddie,” Flower said before brushing once, twice, as though to push the goals out of her mind.
“Brush it off?”
“Brush it off.”
Maddie wondered what kissing her when she was like this would be like, when she was sober and understanding and warm. If Flower would smile during it, if she would crack jokes. If she’d taste like the clove Burt’s Bees chapstick that she’d stolen from Sid months ago and pretended that she’d owned all along. Or if she’d bite Maddie again.
Maddie slipped her helmet back on as she turned towards the net, moving before she could see Flower’s face, before she could remember the night when Flower had gotten drunk enough to finally be honest. Before Maddie could remember what she had taken.
She didn’t let any other goals past her. They won 3-2. Flower stayed on the bench.
-
“You don’t - You don’t even get it.”
“Yes, I do, do you think I haven’t lost a starter position? Because I-”
“It’s all I have, Maddie. This is the end of it for me, it’s my last year. And you’ve taken it from me, what do you expect me to do that I haven’t already done? Should I smile more? Should I pretend to be happier for you? What else will you take from me?”
-
“I knew I’d find you here. Jeez, it’s freezing.”
Maddie let out a sigh, not bothering to look away from the sky. She reached out with one arm, the frayed edge of her Sault Ste Marie Greyhounds hoodie catching her focus in the dim light from the nearby parking lot. Rusty’s arm was warm as she slung it across Maddie’s chest, one leg hiked over to tuck against a knee as she joined Maddie up on the picnic table.
“It’s not that bad,” Maddie finally said.
“Fucking Canadian, of course you’d say that. It’s the fault of all the warm weather recently, I’m not used to the cold anymore.”
“It snowed two weeks ago.”
“I’m sensitive.”
She laughed, a choking feel to it. “Yeah, I guess you are.”
Maddie’s first roommate had been a mess. She would be up all night long, never bothering to turn down her music or do anything to adapt to living with another person and after a month, an exhausted Maddie had mentioned it to Bri during practice. And as it turned out, her roommate had just dropped out, leaving the other room in her shared dorm space free.
Maddie filled up Rusty’s old Starbucks reusable cup with coffee every morning, plopping two ice cubes into it so Rusty could gulp it without burning herself. Rusty would gently usher her out of their room on weekends without a game and take her along to parties, fun ones where Maddie somehow never ended up feeling too out of place. When Maddie shut herself up in her room to play guitar, Rusty would give her space afterwards. It was comfortable to share space with her, easy in a way that it hadn’t been with anyone else. She’d look over sometimes and see Rusty’s freckled nose wrinkle as she worked on homework and would feel an upswell of affection.
A car drove by, the brakes squeaking just slightly. They ought to get those checked out. She could get up and tell them in passing as she went to her dorm and finally went to sleep. It wasn’t as though there were stars, light polluting the sky and turning it a strange yellow gray. And it was cold, nothing like the winter back home but cold nonetheless. It made her lip sting.
The ceiling in her dorm room was too small, not built for her height. It never quite seemed to fit on nights like this, nights when thoughts kept billowing from her mind.
“It’s not your fault, Maddie.”
"I know."
She did know, she wasn't lying. Maddie was good. She worked hard to be a starting goalie. She poured herself into it as they all had, missing out on life and fun and being a kid just for this. Just for the brief, shining few years of a college career and that stolen bit of glory. The Canadian national team only had spots for two goalies and she knew enough to know that she stood no chance of joining their ranks and the NWHL didn’t pay enough to live on. This was all she would get.
She earned this. She outplayed Flower. She should be happy.
Maddie clutched at her roommate’s hoodie, fingers gripping at the worn fabric as though that would keep her there. She loved her, loved her russet hair and stocky body and stutter that cropped up when she was nervous or when she was tired.
“How is Knuckles?” Maddie asked finally.
She knew that Rusty would be frowning if Maddie looked down, well aware of the change in conversation but amiably going along with it. “Good,” she said finally. “Still built like a brick shithouse, still hot as shit, still very German.”
“You do realize that she’s never going to make the first move, right? That’s going to have to be you.”
Rusty groaned, pressing her face against Maddie’s side and shaking it against her long torso enough to tickle. As Maddie writhed, Rusty unceremoniously dumped her off the table, looking smug as she ever did when she would finally get a shot past Maddie in practice.
“Listen, I am not about to take advice from the epitome of pining herself. So get up and let’s go to bed before I lose my fucking mind.”
Maddie sighed but stood, allowing Rusty to herd her back into the dorm like a heeler nipping at her hooves. Her cheeks flushed as the door closed behind them, blood finally returning in a pale imitation of Dumo. Her hands were still cold as she pressed them against the blood warmed skin, mind elsewhere as she followed down the hall.
"I'm not a good person."
Bri paused, the automatic lock on the door fading back to red as she stared back at Maddie. She tapped her keyboard against it again and opened the door, brows knit.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I'm not."
"Because of Flower? It isn’t your fault, you should stop beating yourself up about it-"
"I'm not," Maddie said bluntly. "That's the problem. I know I earned this."
"But?"
Maddie let out a deep breath as she set her keys down on the kitchen counter. She squared her shoulders to Rusty, trying her damnedest to be honest. "I've ruined someone's life and I don't feel bad about that."
Rusty's face was too sympathetic, warm even and Maddie fled to her room, letting the door click shut before the other girl could say a word.
-
“So what do you want me to do? Do you want me to go to Sully and tell her, what, that she should sit her hot goalie? The playoffs are in a month, Flower. Tell me what you fucking want from me.”
“You know what I want.”
“And you know damned well that I can’t give it to you.”
-
Maddie liked away game trips. There was a certain kind of peace to be found in the steady thrum of a rented bus as dark fields flew by. It was the perfect time to throw on headphones, listen to music and take time just to exist.
She’d been half asleep when she realized that her headphones had, in fact, been telling her to charge them and that it had not simply been a part of the music. And of course, the charging pack that she’d always kept on hand had been lent to Schultzy a few hours ago for her phone. Maddie slid back from the dreamy world she’d been lulled into with a long suffering sigh as she tossed her now dead headphones to the empty seat beside her.
“Oh no, not the headphones!”
Crud gathered at the corner of her eyes, making her wipe them out as she yawned. She sucked in a long breath, holding it in for as long as she could before she looked over and back a seat. Flower grinned at her, looking effortlessly cool as she ever did.
It was obnoxious, the way that Flower took outfits considering almost entirely of men’s athletic wear and made them look good. From the snapback on backwards to the baggy joggers and the zip up hoodie, she managed to look androgynous and unapologetically gay in a way that Maddie had no chance of imitating, no matter how much she might aspire to.
“You’re still up?”
“Can’t sleep,” Flower said with a simple shrug of her shoulders, easy and casual as anything. “Besides, with the way that they’re snoring?” She motioned towards the back of the bus where Bones, Kessel and Hags slept in a heap.
“They earned it.” They had scored four goals between the three of them, one each for Bones and Hags and two thanks to Phil’s nasty wrister, as many goals as Maddie let get past her. The team had managed to scrounge up two more but it had been a near thing. She swallowed back the lump in her throat as she picked her headphones up and started to fold them closed.
“You wanna charge those?”
“I gave my battery pack to Schultzy. Do you have one I can use?”
“Eh, kind of. You know, some of the charging ports work on the bus.”
Maddie blinked at the USB port next to her seat, as though the light behind the battered plug might have come on in between the last time she'd looked. “No they don’t.”
Flower swayed with the bus as she stood and leaned a hand over, her fingers long and slender and suddenly very distracting. She snapped them and laughed a little as Maddie looked up at her face to watch her eyebrows raise. “Give me your cord. Don’t tell anyone about this though, eh? It’s a secret.”
She passed them over wordlessly, too distracted by the flushing in her cheeks that she prayed that Flower wouldn’t see. Snores and the rumble of the bus played a soundtrack as she watched the other girl plug the headphones into the USB port. She give the casing above it a solid thump with her palm before the charging light flashed on. “Do they- do they all work like that?”
“Nope,” Flower said as she settled the headphones down on the seat. “Just this one. Goalie secret, eh? I haven’t told Zatkoff yet though, you know she can’t keep a secret.”
“And I can?”
The self pleased grin on Flower’s face dimmed. “Clearly,” she said finally before she grabbed her bag and started to rummage through it.
Maddie worried at her bottom lip for a moment, feeling the sting of the half healed cut on her lip. Vero had kissed Flower when she dropped her off for the trip and she’d smiled and said hello to Maddie before leaving. She wasn’t the only one able to keep a secret.
“Kris is in front of you, yeah?”
Maddie blinked before a yawn rippled through her. “Yeah,” she said as it passed, “With Dumo.”
“Perfect.” Flower slid into the seat next to her, so self possessed and bright despite the dim of the bus. She held up a liquid eyeliner pen that matched the crisp line on her own eyelid. Her eyes creased in a smile. “It’s been too long since I’ve fucked with her.”
“She won’t think I did it?”
“Not a chance. You couldn’t pull off a good prank if your life depended on it.”
“I’m not that boring-”
“It’s not boring,” Flower countered as she stood and craned over the seat to loom over where Kris slumped against Dumo’s shoulder. “You’re just, ah, what’s the word, I don’t know. Too serious. Stoic. You need to loosen up.”
Loosening up had never been an option. She had a college career that she was gunning for, something that required her to stay even keeled and thoughtful and careful as she tried to make the most of what little time she had to play high level hockey. Someone quicker, someone more athletic, they could maybe have time to fool around. But that had never been Maddie, her only physical trait that helped worth a damn being her height.
Flower quietly uncapped the liquid eyeliner, rubbing the tip along the top of her hand until ink finally came. “Witness me,” she whispered before she reached down and very carefully began to draw whiskers along their top defensemen’s cheeks. Maddie couldn’t help but to watch, her breath catching as Kris stirred in her seat. They both froze, watching as Kris let her head slip to rest on Dumo’s chest and made a contented little sound before falling back to sleep, looking absurdly like Naruto.
She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing as Flower managed to finish off her job. She slumped back into the seat next to Maddie, her grin wide as she muttered, “Saved by Dumo’s huge tits, who would have guessed?”
Maddie let herself laugh as she leaned over against the window. She reached up to undo her messy bun, her obnoxiously boring brown hair free for a moment before she pulled it up into something neater. “That wouldn’t have worked for us.”
“Would have just slipped right off,” she agreed. “We’re too bony.”
As if to demonstrate, Flower pulled a leg up to wrap an arm around a knee with all the ease that she seemed to possess. A pang flared in Maddie’s chest as an old ache lifted its ugly head, reminding her of growing four inches in sixth grade and looming above all of the other girls in her class and all but one of the boys. The girls all seemed to fill in, their angular bodies growing soft in a way that Maddie’s body seemed to refuse to do. Some softness had come with time, a little padding around her hips, a swell to her stomach, breasts that never seemed to be enough but were still something. It was as though there was too much of Maddie, too much for her body to become a woman fully, leaving her raw and sharp at the edges.
Flower wasn’t the first girl that she’d met that she’d recognized herself in but she was first who seemed to be comfortable with it. She moved like she knew herself, glove hand moving fast as a cat’s paw in practice and able to pull off the wildest saves, but still loose and happy outside of the goalie gear. She’d sprawl over Horny’s lap and relax as though she liked the body that she was in. As though it was good. As though it was just the way that she wanted it to be.
“Muzz?”
“Sorry, I’m just-”
“Tired?”
“Yeah.”
“Playoffs suck. They’re great, but they suck.”
Maddie chanced a look up to meet Flower’s dark eyes and swallowed again at the sincerity there. “I’m fucking this up.”
“You aren’t.” The corners of her lips lifted in a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “The team is built to score and to only defend by always having the puck. Other goalies get sheltered. We don’t.”
“I let four in-”
“I’ve let in more.”
“Yeah but-”
“You haven’t fallen apart. You’re calm. You don’t need to make crazy saves because it doesn’t come to that.”
‘Not like me’, Flower didn’t say. But they both knew how the playoffs had gone every year from the flash of glory of the whirlwind playoff run of Flower’s freshman year. They both knew how she wilted.
“You’re going to take them where they need to go, eh? For me.”
Maddie nodded, unsure of what to say.
“Go take my seat,” Flower motioned, “Go listen to your sad lesbian rock.”
“Lucy Dacus is not sad lesbian rock,” she muttered but she took the chance to exit the conversation. “Well, not entirely.”
Flower laughed at her, which made Maddie let out a soft snort in return through her nose as she took Flower’s seat, still warm from her body heat. “It’s better than the crappy house music you listen to.”
“It’s called having fun, Maddie.” The wink she gave made Maddie’s heart stutter. “Try it sometime.”
“The playoffs probably aren’t the right time for fun.”
Maddie wasn’t sure why she’d said that. She had drawn them both back into it, despite Flower’s effort to break the tension. With a lump in her throat, she slipped her headphones back on before she could hear a response.
-
Flower stared at her, eyes wide in the limited light of the closet and Maddie wondered for a moment if she would hit her. Maybe that would be good, maybe it would get it out of their system-
Her back hit the wall with a thump, her breath leaving her in one swift whoosh but there was no time to think before Flower got in close. Her heart slammed in her chest as she stared at the angular lines of Flower’s face, only just outlined by the light coming from under the door. She opened her mouth to say something though she hadn’t been sure what and- there were lips on hers.
It was a kiss but it wasn’t. There was nothing better to call it and anyone looking at the two of them would have described it as such but it didn’t feel like it. It felt like gloves being dropped, like a helmet set down on the ice as the goaltender on the other side of the arena did the same. Maddie surged back against her, bravery and anger brought on by too many whiskey and cokes and too long spent in tension since she took Flower’s spot.
A gasp hitched through her as Flower slid a leg in between Maddie’s, giving her something to rut against as the seam of her jeans rubbed against her clit. It hadn’t been long for her, not with the way that her gangly awkwardness had seemed to work for some of the more femme girls on campus, but this felt different. It wasn’t a lazy kiss in the corner of a party with a girl that Maddie had to lean down to kiss, who smelled wonderful and whose body was soft.
This was angled and angry and what she had been aching for since she had first met Flower. Her attention had been all that she’d wanted but then Flower had gone down and Maddie had come up. But this was never supposed to have been an option, not with Vero and not with Flower being the way that she was, sweet and good and loyal and so out of Maddie’s league as to not even be entertainable.
But now here she was with Flower’s hand up her shirt and under her flimsy sports bra and she was on fire. Her hands moved down to slide under Flower’s tshirt, feeling the hard lines of muscle of her back and the starkness of her hip bones. Now, there was a possibility. Now, there was the knowledge that Flower would let out a soft whimper when Maddie’s fingers found their way under her underwear. She knew the heat of her as Maddie slid her fingers down against coarse curls. Flower was so wet, just as much as Maddie was. Something in her caught fire.
It took her a moment to recognize what happened, the pain having been overwhelmed by everything else. The taste of blood hardly even registered, the iron taste only flooding her mouth when Flower suddenly moved back. She wouldn’t meet Maddie’s eyes, opting to instead open the door and flee.
In the dark, Maddie had felt cold as she ran her tongue over her lips and felt the sting of the bite on her lip.
-
They were up 3 -1 as the Sharks buzzed around Maddie’s net, their goalie long having been pulled and she should have been scared. But she wasn’t. Two goals could have happened at anytime, two quick snaps of a stick and bam, they’d have been heading for overtime.
But Maddie wasn’t going to let that happen. She’d managed to dig herself in as the tournament wound down, working from muscle memory and single minded focus that shut out the world outside of the puck on stick and her net. It was bliss, it was clear, it was everything that she wanted hockey to be as the clock wound down and down.
When the buzzer hit, she hadn’t quite believed it. She stayed there, frozen in position as she continued to watch the Sharks like a hawk. It hadn’t been until Rusty slammed to Dales with a loud whoop that it hit her. The adrenaline pushed her out of the net, sent her careening to the skaters as she descended into a screaming mass of joy and relief. She’d even gone down after Lovejoy tried to jump on her back from behind and she laughed harder than she ever had as the team screamed and celebrated around her.
“National champs!” Knuckles whooped as she finally brought Maddie back to her feet, the crush of skaters having finally eased up just a little. “National fucking champions!”
Maddie laughed in return as Knuckles brought their heads together, the girl’s accented voice wild as she said, “Three more fucking years of this, Maddie!”
“Three more years!” Rusty called out as she knocked into the two of them like a cannonball. “Three more fucking years, the NCAA is gonna get WRECKED.”
The two of them connected, Rusty’s face looking so overjoyed that something in Maddie’s chest skipped as she took a step back and slid her helmet off.
And there she was. There Flower was, looking crisp and clean from her time on the bench, her face carefully schooled when their eyes met. Maddie couldn’t have helped it if she’d wanted to, she skated over with her heart in her throat as she barreled into Flower.
Their gear was so bulky and so awkward that it had been a wonder that Flower didn’t go down. But, pro that she was, she managed to keep her feet as she clung to Maddie. It wasn’t until Flower pulled back that Maddie realized that she’d been crying.
“I did it,” she said, voice suddenly wild. “I did it- I- We won- We-”
The words choked in her throat, caught up and packed in as she stared at the face of someone who suddenly seemed to know something that Maddie didn’t. “What?” she said finally.
Flower pulled her in again, smelling like the men’s body wash that she liked and that covered some of the reek of her gear. Her breath stuttered against Maddie’s ear before she finally spoke. “Don’t let this go, Maddie. What you feel right now? Keep it. Keep it as long as you can. This is yours.”
Her eyes teared up again as she clutched Flower’s jersey in her fists. “Flower, I need to tell you-”
“No.”
“But-”
Flower’s hands moved as quick as they did in net as she tore Maddie’s hands from her jersey. “No, Maddie.”
It took her a moment to look up and to meet Flower’s eyes, dark and framed by the wing of eyeliner. “You get this,” Flower said in a voice firm and taut. “But you’re never going to get to have me.”
The breath left her as Flower gave her one last look before moving off to find Sid or Gena or Kris. It hitched in her throat, sunk in sideways as Maddie tried to think, to breathe, to do anything.
“Oh shit,” Cole blurted as she skated past. “Your uh, your lip. Damn, is that ever going to heal?”
She’d been chewing on it, the skin raw and torn as she forced herself to stop reopening the wound. “We won,” she said finally, stuffing everything that she was down and down until all that was left was the game. “So I'm fine.”