Page 71 of The Home Game

“No, listen, the team does this all the time. We have a skating program for kids who are—who maybe don’t have access to gear or lessons otherwise. I might have pulled a tiny little string to get Alexis and Eli into the program—if they want to and if you’re okay with that—and if they join, they’ll get full gear. All of the kids in the program do.”

Antoni blinked, frozen with a jar of mustard in his hand. “Oh, well—”

“Please, Uncle Antoni,” Alexis begged. “I wanna play hockey so bad.”

He looked into her earnest eyes and the last of his resistance crumpled. “We’ll have to figure out if we can make the times work,” he said slowly. “And you can’t let your schoolwork slide. But as long as we can figure out both of those things … yeah, you can do it.”

“Oh my God, thank you. Thank you, Matty. Oh my God, I still can’t believe it! I’m so freaking excited!”

Matty beamed. “Good!”

“What about you, Eli?” Antoni asked. “Do you want to learn to play hockey?”

“Umm, I dunno,” Eli said. “Can I? I mean, I’m not … do they allow kids like me?”

“They fu-reaking better,” Matty said. “Or I’m gonna make them.”

Eli smiled and Antoni did too. Because he definitely believed that. And while he might be a little uncomfortable with Matty throwing his weight around, that was one situation where he’d never argue about it.

Eli needed people to fight for them. For all of the kids like them.

“Well, why don’t we look into that?” Antoni offered as he carried his food to the table and took a seat next to Alexis. “And you can take some time to decide, Eli.”

“Skate! Me skate too!” River said.

Matty grinned and lifted her onto his knee. “You wanna skate too, huh?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, you’re too little for this program,” Matty said. “But don’t be sad! Because I can teach you to skate. And I bet my teammates and some of the SAPs would too.”

Antoni’s parents had been watching them curiously and his mom tilted her head. “The SAPs?”

“Yeah. WAGs was kinda outdated so that’s what we call the spouses and partners on the team now.”

She smiled. “Oh, cute.”

Matty turned back to River. “You can play hockey someday if you want to or if you wanna figure skate you can do that too. Honestly, it’s good to learn both. That’s what our captain does and he’s one of the best skaters in the league.”

“Yay! Skate, skate!”

Antoni smiled. “Well, someone’s excited.”

“It wouldn’t take much to be more excited than you were, son. We tried to teach you when you were a kid and you wanted nothing to do with it,” Enzo teased.

Antoni laughed. “Well, it was freezing cold and I kept falling on my butt. How is that supposed to be fun?”

“And there were no books,” his mom teased. “All you wanted was books!”

“I’m sorry,” Antoni said with a laugh, “but curling up by the fire with a book and hot chocolate just sounded way better to me.”

Matty chuckled. “Weirdo.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Antoni agreed.

They spent the rest of lunch playfully joking around and Antoni was in a great mood as he helped his mom clean the kitchen.

The kids were napping or doing something quiet in their rooms, and Matty and Antoni’s dad were in the basement talking about the synthetic ice.

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