Page 73 of Full Contact

Mark reached for my belt loops, hooking in his fingers. I put the bread knife down. He pulled me close. I kissed him, and he tugged my belt loops harder when I touched my tongue to his.

His hands slid up under the hem of my T-shirt and spread across my lower back. I pressed him into the edge of the counter.

Mark was hard against my thigh. So was I. He moved his hips once, slowly, to make sure I’d noticed.

“The bread,” I said when I took a breath. “Goes in the oven during the last part of the lasagna reheat.”

“Five more minutes before that.”

I kissed his neck under his ear, brushing his collar aside with my nose. His fingers tightened on my back.

A timer sounded.

We both looked at the oven. Peaches, on her chair, looked at us.

“Bread,” I said.

After sliding the bread onto a rack below the lasagna, I pulled the salad out of the fridge. Peaches came down from her chair to inspect the floor and found nothing worth reporting.

We ate at the table, Mark in the chair beside mine, his knee against mine under the table. The lasagna trailed long strings of cheese as he lifted squares with a spatula.

“Your question last night,” I said. “About Rook.”

Mark had a forkful of lasagna halfway to his mouth. He chewed.

“Yes. Explain.”

“Their winger was jumping our pass behind the net. He’d watched film on us. Every time I went back, he left early for the place where Rook was going. So Rook went there like always, then stopped and came back to the post. The winger kept going, leaving Rook open for the puck.”

Mark tore off a piece of bread and dragged it through the lasagna’s sauce. “That left the middle open.”

“And Cross was there.”

“Like always,” Mark said.

“Next time we play them, someone will have watched last night’s game, so we’ll have to try something else.”

Mark nodded. “The broadcast missed Varga after the lost face-off. They cut to the scoreboard. He skated past the linesman and said something, and the linesman had to turn around and face the glass. I saw it from the press box.”

“What did he say?”

“I don’t know. But the broadcast producer called Leah during the second intermission. He wanted to know if they could get Varga on a microphone for the next game.”

“What did she tell him?”

“She said she didn’t know what he meant.”

I laughed.

***

The next morning was gray, dark even for the first week in November. Mark sat at the counter with his coffee while I made toast for us. Peaches had finished her breakfast and her medication and was washing her face on the little wooden chair, close enough to the toaster to keep an eye on it.

“I keep forgetting to ask about this.” He turned his phone toward me. It was a photograph I’d sent him Wednesday afternoon before the game: a single black dress shoe sitting on top of the refrigerator in the players’ lounge, toe pointed at the camera.

“You had all of last night.”

“I was busy last night with someone.”