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Garret
Practice runs forty minutes long because Logan decides today's the day to be an absolute menace, cherry-picking every drill just to get under my skin, clipping my skates twice on purpose during line rushes and grinning at me like it's the funniest thing he's ever done in his life. Even after all these years, even with a Bruins logo on both our chests instead of a college one, some things never change.
"You're skating like my grandmother," he says, gliding past me backward, not even out of breath, the bastard.
"Your grandmother could probably still take you," I say, and he laughs so hard he nearly eats it on the blue line, which is honestly the only satisfying part of the entire session.
Coach runs us through the power play twice more than we need, because apparently our zone entries look like a peewee team's, and by the time he blows the final whistle my legs feel like somebody replaced the muscle with wet sand. Logan smacks me on the shoulder on the way to the locker room, unbothered, infuriatingly fresh.
"See you tomorrow, Grandma."
"Get a life, Rossi."
"I have a life. It's making yours worse."
I don't even have the energy for a real comeback, just flip him off over my shoulder and head for the showers, and the whole time I'm peeling off gear, rinsing off, getting dressed, there's this low hum under everything, the specific good kind of tired that comes from a hard practice, the kind where you know exactly what you're going home to and it makes the whole day worth it.
Hannah.
Eight months along now, round and glowing and constantly, hilariously annoyed at her own body, carrying two entire humans at once and somehow still the best part of walking through that door every single day. I've spent the last twenty minutes of practice mentally planning what I'm going to make for dinner, some pathetic attempt at the pasta thing she liked last week, and by the time I'm pulling into the driveway I'm actually smiling to myself like an idiot, windows down, some song on the radio I'm only half listening to.
I grab my bag from the back seat, sling it over one shoulder, and I'm still smiling walking up to the door, keys already out, already thinking about how her face is going to do that thing it does when I come in tired and gross and she still somehow looks happy to see me anyway.
Then I hear it.
Crying. Actual crying, the kind that's been going on a while, muffled through the door but unmistakable, and every single good, easy feeling I walked up here with just evaporates on the spot, replaced instantly by something cold and fast moving straight through my chest.
I don't remember unlocking the door. I don't remember dropping my bag. I just know one second I'm outside and the next I'm inside, moving toward the kitchen because that's where the sound's coming from, heart going so hard I can feel it in my ears, already running through every worst-case scenario a brain can generate in about four seconds flat. The babies. Something's wrong with the babies. She fell. Something's bleeding. I don't know what I'm about to walk into and some old, useless hockey instinct in me is already bracing for impact before I've even turned the corner.
She's on the kitchen floor.
Sitting, not fallen, thank God, back against the cabinets, knees up as much as they can go these days, both hands pressed over her face, shoulders shaking with the kind of crying that's got no brakes on it at all.
I'm on the floor next to her before I've made the conscious decision to get there, knees cracking against the tile, both hands already on her, one on her back, one on her arm, scanning her whole body top to bottom for blood, for anything, finding nothing except a very pregnant, very upset Hannah, and an unopened bag of groceries tipped over near the counter like it got abandoned mid-put-away.
"Hey. Hey, hey, hey." My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to, still catching up with my own heartbeat. "Wellsy. What's wrong. Talk to me. Is it the babies?"
She shakes her head, doesn't lower her hands yet, just keeps crying, and something in me eases off maybe five percent, enough to notice she's not clutching her stomach, not wincing in the specific way that means actual physical pain, just crying, hard, into her own palms like she's trying to hold her whole face together with them.
"Okay. Okay, not the babies. Good. That's good." I rub slow circles on her back, the way I do when she can't sleep, and wait, because I've learned by now that with Hannah, waiting usually gets you further than pushing. "You're okay. I'm right here."
It takes a solid minute before the crying eases down enough for her to actually get words out, and even then they come broken up, hiccupping between breaths.
"I wanted—" A hiccup. A fresh wave of tears. "I wanted an avocado."
I wait for the rest of it. There isn't a rest of it, not right away, just more crying, and I sit there on my own kitchen floor, hand still moving slow circles on her back, absolutely certain I've misheard her.
"You wanted a what?"
"An avocado." She finally lowers her hands enough that I can see her whole face, blotchy, swollen, genuinely devastated in a way that looks completely disproportionate to the actual sentence she just said, and something about the sheer sincerity of her misery is doing something dangerous to the muscles around my mouth that I have to actively fight down. "I wanted one so bad, Garret. All day. I've been thinking about it since like ten this morning."
"Okay," I say, careful, gentle, treating this with exactly the gravity it clearly requires to her right now, even though every cell in my body is screaming with the effort of not smiling. "Okay, and what happened."
"They weren't ripe." Her voice cracks on ripe, actually cracks, and fresh tears just start falling all over again, and she presses the heel of her hand against one eye like she's furious at her own face for doing this. "I checked all of them. All of them, Garret. I squeezed every single avocado in that store like a crazy person and they were all hard as rocks and I just — I really wanted one and I couldn't have one and I don't even know why I'm like this."
I bite the inside of my cheek. Hard. Hard enough that it actually hurts, because if I let even one corner of my mouth twitch right now I am genuinely worried about what she'll do to me, hormonal and eight months pregnant with twins and armed with whatever's within reach on this kitchen floor.
"That's really frustrating," I say, and somehow keep my voice completely level, proud of myself for it, actually proud, like I've just successfully defused a bomb. "I get that. Unripe avocados are the worst."
"They're the actual worst." She wipes at her face with the back of her hand, sniffling hard, and for one second I actually think we've landed it, think this is the part where she laughs a little at herself and we move on with our evening. Instead her face just crumples all over again, worse this time, and she buries it back into her hands. "And now I'm crying about it. I'm sitting on the kitchen floor crying about a fruit, Garret. It's not even that deep. I don't understand why I can't stop."
"Hey." I pull her in closer, get an arm properly around her shoulders now, and she comes willingly, turning into my chest, still crying, and I press my lips against the top of her head, partly for comfort, partly because it's the only way I can physically hide the fact that my mouth has fully betrayed me and is doing something between a smile and a grimace right now. "It's okay. You don't have to understand it. It's allowed to just be a thing that's happening."
"It's not even a good reason to cry." Her voice is muffled against my shirt now, and I can feel her still hiccupping every few seconds. "Like, nobody died. Nothing's actually wrong. I just wanted guacamole and now I'm having, like, an emotional breakdown on the floor."
"You're allowed to have an emotional breakdown about guacamole," I say, and it comes out steadier than I expect, actually managing something close to real comfort instead of the laugh currently building pressure somewhere behind my ribs. "You're growing two entire humans right now. Your body is doing something genuinely insane, times two. I think you get a pass on caring a normal amount about produce."
She laughs, wet and small and still half a sob, into my shirt, and something in my chest loosens at the sound of it, because a laugh, even a wrecked one, feels like actual progress.
"I hate this," she mumbles. "I hate crying over nothing. I cried yesterday because a commercial had a dog in it."
"I remember."
"I cried because the dog looked happy, Garret. Not even sad. Happy. I was crying because a dog was having a good day."
"I was there. I held you through the whole thing."
"It's humiliating."
"It's not humiliating." I pull back just enough to actually look at her, cup her face in one hand, thumb wiping under one eye where the mascara she probably didn't even need has gone slightly smudged. "It's just hormones doing what hormones do. You're not humiliating. You're just really, really pregnant, with two of them, and apparently produce is currently the final boss of your emotional stability."
That gets a real laugh out of her this time, short, surprised, like it caught her off guard as much as it caught me, and I feel the win of it settle warm in my chest.
"Can you please stop being funny," she says, half laughing, half still teary. "I'm trying to be sad."
"You can be sad and also acknowledge that I'm hilarious. Those aren't mutually exclusive."
"You're the least funny person I know."
"You just laughed."
"That was a fluke."
"Sure it was."
She sniffles again, wipes at her face properly now with both hands, and I watch her breathing start to actually even out, the crying finally winding down into something closer to normal, and I stay right there on the floor with her, knees starting to genuinely protest against the tile but not moving an inch, because there's nowhere else I'd rather be creaking apart right now.
"I really did want that avocado, though," she says, after a minute, quiet, almost like a confession.
"I know, baby."
"Like, really wanted it. I had the whole toast planned out in my head. Everything."
"I heard you the first four times."
"Don't be a smartass right now, I'm fragile."
"You're the least fragile person I've ever met in my life." I press a hand flat against her belly, feel a small shift underneath my palm, one of them clearly unbothered by any of this drama. "You're cooking two mini Garrets in there, Wellsy. You're basically a superhero right now."
She pulls back to stare at me, eyes still wet, but something offended already creeping in underneath the tears.
"Ew. Cooking?" Her nose wrinkles. "Also, why are they not mini Hannahs?"
"Mini Grahams is a better word," I say, completely serious, like I've actually put thought into this. "Covers both of us. Very diplomatic. I thought about it a lot, actually."
She stares at me a second longer, and then she laughs, really laughs, the sound cracking loose out of her chest so suddenly it startles a hiccup right out of the tail end of it, one hand flying up to cover her mouth like she can't believe she's laughing this hard about something so stupid, ten minutes removed from sobbing over produce.
"Mini Grahams," she repeats, shaking her head, still laughing. "You've been sitting on that one, haven't you."
"For weeks."
"That's so dumb."
"You're laughing."
"I hate that I'm laughing." But she's still going, wiping at fresh tears now, the entirely different kind, and I feel a second small kick land against my palm, like even in there they've got opinions about being called mini Grahams.
"See, they like it. Democratic vote, two to one, mini Grahams it is."
"You can't poll fetuses, Garret."
"I just did."
She swats weakly at my shoulder, still laughing, and I catch her hand, press a kiss to her knuckles, feeling something in my chest go warm and enormous the way it always does now, watching her come back to herself, watching the storm actually break instead of just pause.
"For the record," I say, once she's quieted down some, "I will absolutely go back out right now and buy you the ripest, best avocado this entire state has to offer."
She looks at me, eyes still wet, nose still red, but something soft and grateful moving across her face now underneath all of it.
"Really?"
"Really. I'll go to three different stores if I have to. I will personally interrogate produce managers."
"It's nine o'clock."
"Then I'll go to the one gas station that's open and buy whatever sad, bruised avocado they've got sitting next to the energy drinks, and I will tell you it's the best one I could find, and you're going to believe me, because I'm very convincing."
She laughs again, smaller this time, more tired, leaning her forehead against my shoulder. "You don't have to do that."
"I want to."
"You just had practice. You're exhausted."
"I'm always exhausted. I'm about to be exhausted times two once these two are actually here." I press my hand flat against her belly again, feel another small shift underneath my palm, and something in my chest does the thing it always does lately, some slow, enormous unfolding I still haven't gotten used to. "I can handle one more errand for a mini Graham avocado emergency."
"It's not an emergency."
"You were on the floor crying about it ten minutes ago. I'd call that an emergency."
"Okay, fair." She wipes at her face one more time, sniffles, and finally, finally, lets out a long, exhausted breath that sounds like the actual end of the storm instead of just a lull in it. "I'm sorry. This is so stupid."
"It's not stupid." I tip her chin up with one finger until she's looking at me properly. "You're allowed to fall apart over small stuff sometimes. Especially right now, growing two humans at once. I'd honestly be more worried if you weren't a complete disaster occasionally, given everything your body's doing."
"I love you," she says, quiet, sudden, like it surprised even her, and something about the shift from full-blown avocado-related sobbing to that sentence, delivered with the same raw sincerity, nearly sets me off laughing all over again, except this time I manage to hold it, mostly out of self-preservation.
"I love you too. Even when you're screaming at produce."
"I wasn't screaming."
"The lady at the store might disagree."
She swats at me again, laughing, and I help her up off the floor a few minutes later, knees both cracking in protest, and grab my keys off the counter before she's even fully settled onto the couch, because whatever the day just put her through, whatever hormone-fueled storm just tore through my kitchen, I meant every word of it. I'd drive to five different gas stations tonight if that's what it took.
It's just an avocado. It's never just an avocado, not with her, not right now, not with everything her body's carrying that she didn't ask permission for and can't fully control, and if the least I can do tonight is find her one decent piece of produce in a ten-mile radius for our two mini Grahams, then that's exactly what I'm going to do.