Chapter Text

Lardo stares at the painting from across the room and feels pride bloom in her chest. The pinkish sunrise glow is just starting to shine on it from across the room, and she realizes her cheeks hurt from smiling so hard.

Noelle’s gaze is exactly what she wanted to capture: pure prepubescent female confidence, that  self-assured look in her eye complimenting the bubbly joy of her smile. Blue lowlights, pink highlights hitting her face in a way that almost deifies her. Lardo could fucking cry, she loves this painting. She can’t believe there was ever a time she thought that her art had peaked as a junior. This is so much better than anything she ever did at Samwell.

Her stomach growls. Her eyes feel swollen when she blinks, actually, and….huh. She didn’t sleep last night. She gives her painting hand an experimental grip, and nearly cries out from the pain. 

Okay, so. Coffee. Probably should be sleep, but. Coffee.

Jack is focused on the fidget cube in his hands, thumb clicking back and forth across one of the switches as he thinks the question over.

“It was actually really good,” Jack says, and he can hear the surprise in his own voice. “Lardo had to help me get out of the house and stuff, but once I went I was, um. It was actually really fun.”

“What were you thinking as you were going?” Dr. Baranski--Jeff, as he’s told Jack several times-- says. “Were there things you were telling yourself would or wouldn’t happen?”

“Yeah,” Jack says. “I guess. Like, I knew the whole team was invited, but part of me kind of felt like no one would want me there.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know,” Jack says. He clicks faster. “I’m not always very good at making friends, so.”

“How did it feel to socialize with your team outside of your job?” Jeff asks.

“Really, uh. Really good, actually. I felt more welcomed and, like. Comfortable, I guess, than I thought I was going to.”

“You sound surprised.”

Jack stifles the urge to sigh.

“I guess I’ve never really...I feel like I don’t fit in a lot of places?” He looks to Jeff, who just blinks at him. Apparently he isn’t done sharing; Jeff seems to know when to stay quiet and make Jack push himself. It feels like being a kid, being coached by his dad, when his dad would raise his eyebrows when Jack came in from shinny, like, okay, if you think you’re done . “Like. I just feel kind of. Like there’s this thing that’s wrong with me, sometimes? And everyone either already knows it or they’re going to find out.”

“What kind of thing?” Jeff asks. “Your sexuality, or…?”

Jack does sigh this time.

“Um...not even really that, I guess. More, like, general things that are wrong with me? Or, not wrong, that came out….uh. Wrong. Like...that I’m kind of weird sometimes? Or that I’m, um, I’m selfish and a lot more focused on my self-image than I let on? Or that I’m, like.”

There’s a horrible lump in his throat all of a sudden. Jack swallows.

Jeff stares at him.

“I don’t know,” Jack says. His thumb clicks faster.

“Is there a time that you realized you didn’t feel welcomed?” Jeff asks. “When do you remember first being conscious of that?”

“Uh,” Jack says. He swipes a hand across his face. “I dunno. Birth?”

Jeff ignores his joke. “Can you think back to a situation in childhood where you remember feeling that way?”

“Um…” Of course he can. “I guess, like. In middle school, I played on, like, three different traveling teams at a time, and I was always, you know, missing one practice for another, and stuff, and the guys on those teams didn’t, um. Like me very much.” 

“Hmm,” Jeff says, and Jack, once again, feels himself cued to keep talking.

“And I was, you know, I was Bad Bob Zimmermann’s kid. Like, a lot of people thought that I got, like, special treatment and stuff because of that, so it was kind of hard to, um. Make friends.”

“When was the first time you did feel connected to other people? Like you did have friends you could count on?”

“Um,” Jack says. “Probably the first time I had really close friends was when I was on billet in Quebec when I was, like, sixteen. I had, um, a best friend, I guess. Parse?”

Jack had looked up the rules for therapeutic confidentiality after his first session, and Jeff would be completely fucked if he ever shared anything Jack told him. Still, it makes Jack’s heart beat faster to talk about Parse, or even things within the league that normal people don’t know very much about.

“Are you still close?”

“No,” Jack says. “We don’t really talk anymore.”

Mack is cute, Lardo tries on in her head, staring at the picture of him pulled up from Google Images on her laptop screen. He’s doing press with Hodgy and it’s a pretty candid photo from this September. This is it; she has to decide. He has nice eyes. They’re green and kind of pretty, and he’s squinting them up in this picture as he answers a reporter’s question. So he’s cute.

She presses the arrow key and there’s another picture. This time, he’s glaring into the camera, face red with what she thinks is exertion. She’s not sure. 

That Mack isn’t cute. 

She clicks right again. He’s laughing at something from the boards, mouthguard askew between his front teeth. 

She’s been at this for the better part of an hour and she still can’t figure out what the fuck she thinks about Robin “Mack” MacKray, number 93, defenseman on the Providence Falconers. 

What she’d definitely thought a few days ago was going to be a hookup, plain and simple, had taken a distinct left turn when she’d gotten tipsy with Jack on a bottle of wine and tried to invite herself over to Mack’s place last Friday, with a variation on one of her classy and artful lines from college, and he’d left her on read. She’d figured that was it, then, that he was just drunk at the party and that was why he’d given her a full-body up and down as he’d held the door for her. He’d probably woken up and come to his senses and decided to go bed a cocktail waitress like a normal 22-year-old NHL defenseman. 

(Not that there’s anything wrong with being a cocktail waitress. Solidarity, yo.)

Except then her phone had buzzed on Sunday at 3pm and she’d opened it to see that Mack had written:

Hey Lardo, I’d love to show you my bronze medal, but it’s actually at my mom’s house in Boston :-) I’d be open to getting together sometime this week if you’d like. 

He’d also turned his read receipts off, she’d noticed, eyes narrowing as she tried to decipher the message. 

Jack pads into the living room, too quiet in his stocking feet, and Lardo tries to close her computer too quickly. The snap of it echoes in the room.

He raises his eyebrows, just this side of judgmental, and looks meaningfully between Lardo and her laptop. 

“Fuck off,” Lardo says. “He’s so weird, I don’t even know if I like him.”

Jack’s judgmental Canadian face continues to form. It’s in, like, stage three.

“I mean,” Jack says. “I feel like you were….looking up pictures of him? On your computer in your spare time? Could be a little bit of a sign?”

“But I was doing it to see if I can even be attracted to him,” Lardo says. 

“Why?” Jack says. “Mack’s cute. Like, if it was Hodgy, I’d get it, but.”

“ You think Mack is cute?”

“Sure,” Jack says. “He’s, like. Got a good smile. He’s proportional.”

“Do you think of all your teammates as proportional ?” Lardo teases. 

“He’s a really nice guy, Lardo,” Jack says. “If you want to go for it, you should probably just go for it.”

It’s Tuesday. 

You should take me out this weekend, Lardo types and sends before she can doubt herself. 

Mack texts Lardo back half an hour later. No time this weekend. Be ready at 8 on Friday. I’ll pick you up.

What are we doing?

It’s a surprise.

Okay, then.  

“Hey!” Jack hears as he’s walking back to his car after going out with the team after an OT win against the Flyers Wednesday night. He turns to see Mack running toward him, one hand raised in greeting, Hodgy notably absent from his right side. 

“Uh,” Jack stops short, glancing at his car. He’d parked alone a few blocks from the bar, because his muscles liked the slow walk after a tough night of hits. Hodgy and Mack had carpooled there, and had gotten valet parking, so. Jack has no idea what Mack’s doing. “Hey, man.”

“Hodgy picked up,” Mack says, his face looks flushed from the cold night, but he also smells like a brewery, and Jack definitely saw him taking shots with Villy and Pekks, like, three minutes ago. Before he ran after Jack, apparently. “And he was my ride, so…”

“Cool,” Jack says. He searches Mack’s face. Mack stares right back. They just stand there, November wind whipping, until Mack rolls his eyes and says, “So can I get a ride home with you?”

“Oh,” Jack says. Suspicion is brewing, but. He’s not going to say no. “Sure, yeah.”

The thing that’s really dumb about this plan, on Mack’s end, is that he lives in the same building as Pekks, and maybe five blocks from Marty, and Jack lives on the other side of the river in Fox Point, literally the opposite direction, because he’d been thinking about what kind of neighborhood Bitty would like when he’d leased his condo. And he’s a top-line NHL defenseman, so. He has the money for a Lyft. It makes no sense for Jack to be the one to give him a ride home. So Jack knows that, probably, a question about Lardo is coming, and he’s actually enjoying making Mack sweat a little as he drives a good five miles out of his way to drop him off. 

“So you and Hodgy carpool everywhere,” Jack says, sparing Mack a sidelong glance. 

“Yeah,” Mack says. “Kinda got in the habit when I couldn’t drive after my last concussion, and it just. Stuck, I guess.”

“Cool,” says Jack. He spares a sidelong glance at Mack as he turns off the highway. Mack is drumming his fingers on his knees, face still red.

“Do you like living downtown?” Jack asks, when the silence becomes too loaded. 

“Sure,” Mack says. He doesn’t say anything else.

Jack brakes too quick for a red light he hadn’t noticed, and Mack lurches forward. He’s still quiet. The car feels so hot even though it’s really pretty cold for November. 

“Um--” Jack starts to say, just as Mack blurts, “Hey, so--”

“Go ahead,” Jack says.

“Listen,” Mack says. “I just want to...clear the air about me and your friend. Lardo.”

Jack nods.

“Okay,” he says.

“Is it okay that I, you know, asked her out?” Mack asks. “Because I don’t want to step on toes, or anything, if you’re trying to, uh. Make something happen with her. And even if you’re not, I totally respect if you think it’s too weird or you’re afraid it’s going to mess with team.”

“Yeah, man,” Jack says, a little surprised that Mack managed to come out with it so quickly. “We’re just friends, so. I don’t think it’s weird on my end.”

“Are you sure?” Mack asks. 

“Lardo’s not really my type,” Jack says, and doesn’t miss the way that Mack nods at that, like it’s confirming something. Sometimes Jack wonders what they all think about him, how he never picks up or even really has someone around. He trusts Marty not to have told anyone about him, but he’s been on enough hockey teams to know how they work. There’s normal behavior, and when you deviate from it people start to ask questions. “She’s too much like a sister for us to ever…” he trails off. He’s not sure that he’s done his due diligence convincing Mack he’s straight, but if he doubles down now it’ll just sound like he’s more in denial. “You should go for it.”

“Oh.” Mack says. “That’s cool, man. Thanks for being understanding. It hasn’t been, like. Easy meeting people, you know? This past year. People who aren’t fake or mean or...whatever.”

Mack isn’t, like, sloppy drunk or anything. He’s not slurring his words. But it seems like the two shots he did are hitting, and it’s making him...share. 

“Yeah,” Jack says, in very quiet horror as he pulls in front of Mack’s condo, because Mack never shares. He doesn’t talk about his personal life, never gets into the locker room talk that the other guys sometimes indulge in. Jack likes that about Mack. He likes to keep things with his teammates professional. 

“She’s really cool,” Mack continues. Jack pulls up to Mack’s house, staring straight ahead, wildly uncomfortable. “I liked how she talked about her, like, art and stuff? Her portraits. Lardo’s really cool.”

“Lardo is really cool,” Jack agrees, over-mild.

“And she thinks I’m cool,” Mack says, more whispering to himself than telling Jack. He has a little smile on his face, and it both makes Jack embarrassed for him and a little heartsick. Mack’s friends on the team are all older than him and Hodgy, and Hodgy definitely makes Mack seem mature by comparison. And Mack is just kind of a quiet guy, an older soul who’s already getting tapped for the responsibilities that he’ll have one day as an A. So Jack forgets, sometimes, that Mack is only twenty-one, because he’d been in the league for three years by the time Jack was a rookie. It’s kind of delightful to see him, a number three draft pick with a 10 million dollar salary, nurse a crush.

“I think she does,” Jack says.

“And…” Mack claps a hand on Jack’s shoulder. Jack tries his best not to freeze. “You’re cool, too, Zimmermann.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t help you fit in more,” Mack says. Jack  “Last year and, I guess, the start of this one. I was...it was a hard year, but that’s not an excuse. It was shitty of us. It wasn’t team.”

“That’s okay,” Jack says, because he gets it, but it does feel nice to hear. That someone else thinks he should have been welcomed more.

“We’re all glad you’re coming out more,” Mack says, turning to look at Jack. “We were talking about it. Me and Hodgy and Villy, we didn’t know what to make of you, at first, because you’re our age, kind of, but you didn’t seem like it.”

“Oh,” Jack says. He gives what he hopes looks like a smile. 

“You’re a good dude, though,” Mack says. “You’re our team, man.”

“You’re welcome,” Jack says, feeling the tips of his ears start to go scarlet. “Drink some water now. Get in safe, now, eh. ”

“Get in safe now , eh ,” Mack repeats in an exaggeration of Jack’s Canadian accent. He opens the passenger door, giggling to himself, and walks into his building. 

Jesus. 

Lardo is still putting on makeup when her phone buzzes with a text from Mack. I’m outside, he says.

“Shit,” Lardo says, rooting around for the eyebrow pencil she knows is somewhere in her makeup bag. “Jack, can you open the door for Mack?” she yells to the kitchen, where Jack is eating reheated chicken breast and watching tape on his phone. Living the NHL superstar life he was promised.

“Shouldn’t that be your job?” he calls back, grumpy, but she can hear him pad to the front door.

Sorry, down in a second, she types to Mack, and turns to her face. She swipes the pencil over the fine hair of her brows a few times, steps back to admire her handiwork. It’s...it’s fine, it’s her face. It’s fine. 

She takes a second to check how she looks in the mirror. She has on jeans, a wrap blouse. Mack hadn’t actually told her what they were doing, and it had felt silly to ask him what she should wear, and this seemed neutral enough. She tries to ignore the frisson of fear in her stomach, puts on a smile, and goes to the kitchen to greet him.

When she walks in, Mack and Jack aren’t talking at all. Jack has his earbuds in, actually, and she shoots him a glare. Then she notices Mack, who’s in...a suit.

Like an actual game-day suit. 

Lardo looks down at her jeans. 

“Uh, hi,” she says, looking up at him. He’s giving her a faint smile, but underneath it is what she thinks is confusion. Maybe dread. She can tell he’s trying not to look at her jeans. “I think, um. Sorry, I just need to, uh, change, I guess?”

“Oh,” Mack says. It seems like he wants to say “don’t worry about it,” but they’re probably actually going somewhere where the dress code is closer to cocktail dress than boyfriend jeans . “Uh, yeah.”

Lardo shoots another glare at Jack and he takes out his earbuds, reproachful. Then she scurries back into her bedroom, frantically scanning her, okay, somewhat messy bedroom for something that resembles cocktail attire. God. This is what she gets, going on a date with a fucking NHL defenseman.

Her eye catches on the black dress she used to wear for band concerts in high school, shoved in a ball at the back of her closet. It’s probably a little tight, these days, but it at least can masquerade as cocktail. God, she hopes this event is cocktail. 

With a little shimmy, she pulls it over her body, reaching behind her head to zip the zipper. She looks in the mirror.

It is a little tight, and cocktail might be a generous term when it barely hits mid-thigh. Still, it’s her best bet. 

When she comes back through to the kitchen, Mack is sitting at the island with Jack, one earbud in each as Jack talks him through a play. They play the Islanders on Monday, and she knows Jack is nervous about it.

Lardo clears her throat.

Mack takes the earbud out of his ear, says, “I see what you’re saying, man,” to Jack. Then he gives Lardo a visible once over and smiles at her. 

“You look nice.”

“Thanks,” Lardo says. She can only muster a grimace, feeling a little intimidated by the whole thing already. She pulls her coat from the hall closet and pulls on a pair of low black pumps. 

They walk out to his car without another word. It’s a slick sports car, a red Jaguar. Mack jogs in front of her, opens the door for her, and she tries for a little smile. Mostly, her stomach is just in her heart. She’s never been in a car this nice; Jack drives a Mercedes SUV but it’s not, like. Nice like this. 

“Where are we going?” she asks, as Mack turns on the car (it makes an unfamiliar hum, so different from her family’s Toyota Camry) and pulls onto the busy street Jack lives just off of. 

“It’s a surprise ,” Mack says. He seems a little deflated, probably since Lardo came down ready to go to, like, a casual eatery and he was apparently geared up for a gala. 

“Is it a restaurant?” Lardo asks. 

“Um. No,” Mack says. His voice sounds smaller, softer. Then, after a few seconds of awkward silence: “Why? Are you hungry?”

“Um. I might get hungry later but...I can wait,” Lardo says, turning to look out the window. Mack looks over at her, she can feel it, then turns back to the road. 

Mack pulls up in front of a very familiar building, and Lardo blinks a few times. 

“Are you taking me to the RISD Museum?” she asks. 

Mack glances over at her. “Uh...yeah. I was going to.”

“Oh,” Lardo says. “Cool.”

“What?” Mack asks, pulling up to the valet parking. “There’s this art show they’re doing. I figured, ‘cause you’re an artist, I...”

“The senior sculpture show?”

“Yeah,” Mack says. “Have you heard about it? I just, like, googled art shows…”

“Oh, sick,” Lardo says. “Yeah, it just doesn't seem like a formal occasion, that's why I was--”

“It’s the opening,” Mack says. 

“Ohhh,” Lardo says. “ That’s why the, like, monkey suit and stuff.”

Mack’s cheeks flush. He doesn’t say anything, but Lardo senses she’s made some sort of mistake, teasing him like that. 

“Sorry,” she says, feeling awkward, and he mumbles, “S’alright,” in a way that tells her it’s probably not.

I bullied your teammate, she imagines telling Jack when she gets home. You’d think a hockey player would need thicker skin. 

“I really like the, uh. The use of color and, like. Space,” Mack says as they stand in front of this wire-frame deer. He sounds like he’s rehearsed the line before. 

This might, safely, be the most awkward date Lardo’s ever gone on. Mack had been silent as they handed the valet the keys and walked up the steps to the gallery. Lardo had taken to asking him questions--about being a d-man, about growing up in Minnesota, about fucking Zambonis and had gotten one-word answers in reply. He’s asked her each question she asked him back and she’s given extra-long, elaborate answers in the hopes he’d give her, like, anything to go on. So far, nothing. Her latest question: what he thought of said wire-frame deer. Yikes.

“Do you mean the gray of the wire?” Lardo asks. There literally isn’t more color on the sculpture. 

Mack is quiet for a few seconds. “Yeah,” he mumbles. Doesn’t elaborate. Lardo feels like she might burst into flames with how awkward the whole thing is.

“Do you wanna look at that naked lady, or the sun next?” Lardo asks him. 

“Uhhh...sun, I guess.”

“Hell yeah. Great choice, dude.”

This piece is fucking gorgeous. Lardo’s eye has been coming back to it all night. It’s this mosaic sun, all of these shattered...almost plate-looking ceramic pieces glued onto a globe shape with these intricate little arms coming off everywhere. It’s suspended, impossibly, on this pedestal a little off the ground, nearly as big as Lardo. It’s the kind of art Lardo wishes she had the patience to make.

“It says here the tiles are out of their grandma’s china from the Ukraine,” Mack says, scanning the artist statement. 

“ Wow is that cool.”

“I think so, too,” Mack offers. “I could never do that.”

“Man, me neither,” Lardo says. She shoots him a sideways look and a smile, and he flushes and returns it.

She thinks for a minute that’s their in, that he’s going to warm up and say something, (anything!) but after a second he asks if she’s ready to look at the foil ball behind them.

“This I feel like I could do,” Mack says. They stare at it. It’s...okay, Lardo likes to defend artists and their right to minimalism and to making statements, but it does just look like a few sheets of metal welded kind of gappy. “Like, is that even art at a certain point?”

Lardo frowns. “I mean, there’s probably some deeper meaning we’re missing.”

“But if you can’t even get a deeper meaning from looking at it, like, how is that art, y’know?” Mack says. He doesn’t sound like he’s looking for an answer, and Lardo suddenly feels defensive. She thinks of the art from her thesis. It certainly wasn’t this underwhelming, but. Sometimes people make art no one pays attention to. And sometimes they do it on purpose.

“I think it’s art,” Lardo says. “Just because someone like you isn’t willing to look for the deeper meaning doesn’t mean it’s, like, shallow.”

“Whoa,” Mack says, voice rising slightly. “Someone like me ? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lardo sighs, exasperated. “I just mean, like, someone who hasn’t put in the time and effort to understand art.”

“Just because I didn’t go to college means I can’t see that someone just, like, welded a couple sheets of steel together?”

“That’s so reductive, though,” Lardo says, suddenly feeling, like, really indignant. “Like, okay, in the nineties this artist put up two clocks that were slightly out of sync to make a point that his lover with HIV would eventually die and leave him and it’s so moving to just, like, watch them get out of sync. Art can be anything, that’s what makes it so cool!”

“Okay but anyone could put up two clocks, like, I could make that with one trip to Ikea--”

“But you didn’t though . You could have but you didn’t.”

“Jeez, okay, calm down,” Mack says. Like he isn’t the one who riled her up in the first place. “Maybe we should just find a different piece that isn’t so--”

He isn’t paying enough attention, though, and he trips over his own foot and lurches into a student behind him. The plate of finger food she’s carrying overturns onto him, and, still off-balance, he reaches out and. He, like.

Knocks over the mosaic sun.

It topples to the ground with a clang, and the room goes suddenly quiet.

“Oh, geez,” Mack says. He looks down at his dress shirt, covered in bruschetta, and then around at all the people staring at them. His face is bright red, and he looks so big surrounded by all of these art student, all of whom are just gaping. “I’m so sorry. I’m, uh. I’m--”

He’s so red. He looks so shocked, at the sculpture on the floor, at his own shirt dripping in tomato. He looks like he might cry, and it’s that more than anything that makes Lardo spring to action.

“Hey,” she says. She ignores the dented sun on the ground, putting a hand on his arm and he looks at her, wide-eyed. She takes a deep breath in, and, subconsciously, he breathes in with her. She exhales. So does he. “Can we have a napkin, please?” she says, to the crowd around her, in general. She can hear a ripple of whispers spreading through the gallery, where there had been stunned silence a second ago.

Someone appears with napkins, and Lardo takes them from him, dabbing at Mack’s shirt. He’s still frozen, beet-red. 

“Sorry,” he keeps muttering. To the student artist who’s rushed over to assess the damage on their sun, kneeling over the one arm that snapped off: “I’m so sorry, I’ll write a check--” To the student’s parents glaring at him: “I’m really sorry, it was a complete accident.” To the girl with the finger foods: “I didn’t mean--”

“Let’s go to the bathroom,” Lardo says, and puts a bracing hand on his elbow to lead him out of the gallery. 

“This is stupid,” she tells him when they pass the coat check. “Let’s...why don’t we just get out of here?”

He nods, still shell-shocked, and she asks the attendant for their coats, pulling her ticket out of her purse. Mack, upon prompting, roots around until he finds his wallet and produces his own. He looks down at his stained shirt, then shrugs and pulls on his coat. They walk out into the night.

“Oh my god ,” Mack says as they’re waiting for the valet to bring his car around. Lardo looks over at him; his eyes are kind of bugging out of his head. “I cannot be lieve that just happened.”

Lardo can feel a smile bubbling up from her chest, and she tries to swallow it, to be sensitive.

“Everything in there was just so...so fuckin’ tiny,” Mack says. “I swear, I didn’t even see that poor person coming, she was just...there, oh my god . And that fucking sculpture .” 

Lardo can’t help but snicker. Mack looks over at her and for one moment he looks genuinely crestfallen, to have accidentally revealed that he isn’t actually a stone-cold robot, and then his face softens into a grin, and he lets out a...there’s really no word for it other than guffaw . 

A laugh comes from deep in Lardo’s belly, and then they’re just laughing together, and they’re still laughing when the valet pulls up. And then Mack manages to pull it together long enough to open her door for her. 

Mack won’t tell her where he’s going, again, but they head downtown and then he’s pulling into a parking lot, to a mom-and-pop restaurant.

“You like Polish food?” he asks her.

"Never had it."

"Oh my god," Mack says. "A pierogi virgin.  You eat meat, right?”

“Yesssss,” Lardo says, rubbing her hands together, maniacal. He grins over at her, and she smiles back, feeling warm all of a sudden. All the tension has drained between, and it only took knocking over one $900 thesis sculpture to do it. 

The teenage boy working behind the counter knows Mack by name, and Mack buys them ten pierogi, half meat and half potato. He also gets three sausage rolls and an order of potato pancakes, and asks for sour cream and two Cokes. He tips $15 on the $25 order.

“This is the best street meat you can buy in Providence,” Mack tells Lardo, waving to the cook as she hands him a steaming grocery bag with a smile. He hands the Cokes to Lardo. 

“Do you want to come back to mine?” he asks her. “We can also eat in the car, but. Thought I’d offer.”

Lardo considers him. He’s just...she has no idea what he wants from her, whether this is going to continue being a date or if they’re just going to eat pierogi and part ways, both cringing at the memory of tonight. 

“Let’s go to your place,” Lardo says.

“This is actually one of the worst first dates I’ve ever had,” Lardo says, wiping at her mouth, patting her stomach. They’re sitting cross-legged around the coffee table. She’s eaten three pierogi and half a sausage roll and feels like she could explode. Mack is still eating. There will not be leftovers. “Good story for my collection.”

“One of?” Mack asks indignantly. “What's worse than the time I broke an artist’s  thesis piece and became a gold-tier donor to the RISD Museum?”

“Competitive, are we?” Lardo says, unable to help her smile.

Mack grins at her from across the coffee table. He’d changed into a pair of jeans and an extremely faded sweatshirt when they’d gotten to his condo, leaving his dress shirt to soak in his laundry room at Lardo’s direction. He’d offered her a pair of socks and a sweater, too, and she’ll say it, considerate and unpretentious Mack with newfound vulnerability and an ability to talk is, okay, very hot. 

“Best story,” Mack says. “Go.”

“Ummm,” Lardo racks her brain. “So my freshman year of college, right, I liked this girl in my art history class, so I asked her if she wanted to get coffee. And she said yes, so I was like, great, that’s that, but I guess she was nervous that it would be, like, too much of a date or something because she wound up bringing her friend with her? And it was like very obvious that she and her friend were, like, perfect for each other. Like they were finishing each other’s sentences and I was just. Also there?”

Lardo chose this story mostly because it was one of the worst things that’s ever happened to her but also because dating girls and she carefully looks over at Mack to gauge his reaction. 

He’s grinning at her around a mouthful of food, like go on, and Lardo feels a wave of relief. It would suck if Newly Hot Mack was homophobic.

“So we all get coffee together and then the date is over and I went in for a kiss for, like, some reason with the friend watching us? And she was like no thank you and walked away with her friend and it must have shaken something loose in them both because literally that same day her friend confessed feelings for her and they started dating and they’re still together.”

“Hmm,” Mack says. “That’s cute. Not, like, destroying hundreds of hours of an artist’s hard work, but. Cute.”

“Fine, okay,” Lardo says. “What’s your best story.”

Mack takes a huge bite of the roll. He shakes his head side to side as he does it, like he’s contemplating something. Finally, he swallows. “This is the, uh, the second first date I’ve ever been on.”

Lardo stares at him.

“Like, ever?” 

“Yeah,” he says. He looks carefully away from her. His voice is purposefully light. “Um, my ex. Claire and I, we, uh. Just broke up last spring.”

“Oh,” Lardo says. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

Mack shrugs. “That’s why I was such a shitty date tonight. Sorry about that, by the way. I’ve been, um. Trying to get back out there, a little, but I’m not very good at dating. Not very smooth as you, uh. Saw.”

“What do you mean? I’ve never met anyone that smooth,” Lardo says, teasing again. “Like, too smooth, actually. It was super intimidating. Saying you liked the color on the wire deer? I was like, who is this guy, an art critic?”

Mack gives a rueful smile. 

“Hodgy made me look up, like, art things to say earlier. And then he made me rehearse them with him.”

“Stoooop,” Lardo moans, unable to stifle a grin at the image. “That’s just, like, too cute. Real bro shit.”

“Hodgy’s a real bro,” Mack says. 

"And then you insulted modern art," Lardo says. "Which, by the way, was the kind of art I did in college, so. Major points won there."

"Okay, but you said, like, I wasn't the kind of person who got art. Also rude, dude."

Mack grins at her, and they’re just….smiling at each other. She’s catching a major vibe here.

“I know I was kind of...rude,” he says after a few seconds too long of staring. He sounds very careful. “And standoffish and awkward earlier in the night. I’m just. Things ended really, really badly in my last relationship and it’s made me a little, uh. Careful.”

“How long were you together?” she asks, suddenly acutely aware that she’s wearing his sweater. But Mack isn’t looking at her; he’s focused carefully on his dirty plate.

“Nearly six years,” he says. “We met while I was playing for the NTDP in Michigan. She just, like, happened to grow up in Plymouth, her family wasn’t a hockey family or anything. And we met in math class and I was, like, yeah. This is it, you know?”

Lardo doesn’t say anything, just nods. Mack picks at the last potato pancake sitting on the plate, and as she looks away from him, he starts to talk again.

“And she just, like. Knew me better than anyone else in the world,” Mack says. “Like, she was my prom date, she was there on my draft day. When my grandpa died, she drove me home to Pittsburgh because she knew I wouldn’t want to fly.”

Lardo glances over at him again. He’s hunched over, elbows in front of his torso as if to protect himself.

“Why did it end?” she asks.

Mack lets out a breath.

“It just...kind of spiraled the last few months,” he says. “She got really, um, manipulative? Like, she never let me hang out with the team or really anyone who wasn’t her. And she would just say, like, really mean, honest things about my career, and--and my game, and just, like, me, I guess. And my contract was up for review last year and it wasn’t going well so I wasn’t really putting the effort in, I sort of, like, forgot to be a boyfriend, and then she started hanging out with this dude at her work and telling me it wasn’t anything even though, like, I knew it was. And we would just say all these shitty, shitty things to each other. Hodgy had to, like, hold an intervention before I would break up with her.”

“Oh,” Lardo says. “Wow.”

“Sorry,” he says, when she’s silent for a few seconds. “Um, sorry I made it--”

“--don’t apologize,” Lardo interrupts him. “I’m sorry that happened.”

She shifts so she’s leaning against his couch. He follows her move so that they’re side by side without seeming to really think about it. 

“It just kind of fucked with my head,” he whispers. “And it makes it...harder now. To date and, like. Be a person.”

“I get that,” Lardo says. 

“How about you?” he says after a few seconds of silence, turning to look at her. “Any awful, degrading relationships to rehash?”

“ God, ” Lardo says, choking on a laugh. 

“You ever been in love?”

“Chill out. I don’t know, dude.”

“All those first dates?” Mack chirps. “And you were never once in love?”

“Fuck you,” she replies, easy. “Maybe. I think. This last guy really...it felt like I came close, you know?”

“What happened?”

Lardo sighs. “I can just be so...so fucking passive sometimes. Like, he was ready to be a couple and I just...I couldn’t be brave enough to ask him to hit the brakes.”

“Huh,” Mack says. He gives her a small, soft smile. “You seem pretty brave to me.”

“I’m really working on it,” Lardo tells him. She smiles back. 

Mack doesn’t look away from her, just keeps smiling, and she has no idea what they’re doing, so she just. Smiles. 

His eyes dart down to her lips, still smiling, and then he’s leaning in, a little, and suddenly their smiling mouths are pressing together and Lardo can feel his heart hammering against the hand that she put on his chest and she leans in and scoots a leg across his lap.

“Is this okay?” she whispers into his mouth, because it doesn’t seem like he’s done this too much.

“Yeah,” he answers, kissing down her jaw to her neck and he hits a certain cord of muscle there. “But, uh. Hey. I don’t want to…” She sucks sloppy at her neck for a second, and he pulls back to look her in the eye. “I don’t want to do more than this,” he says. “Tonight, I mean.”

“That’s okay,” she says. “I can work with that.”

He grins up at her, red-cheeked and pleased, and she whines and shifts up onto his lap and he kisses softer than Shitty and. 

She doesn’t know that that’s a bad thing.