Hey, at least he’s not an Elvis impersonator. “I now pronounce you married,” our officiant, who’s about eighty years old, says.

I’m bulked out with enough muscle to fill the net but am still toned and flexible enough to move swiftly and protect the goal. Dex is taller and leaner than I am, so I can barely get his Stanley Cup ring on my fat finger. We try to exchange rings and then quickly realize we shouldn’t swap but wear our own. This might be fake, but my vows are very real.Īnd as much as this memory will crush me for years to come, adding layers and layers to the unrequited love suffocating my heart, I can’t walk out on him. Through successes and struggles …” I realize that I mean it all. We’re not even going to file the paperwork.īut as I say the words “I, Tripp Alexander Mitchell, take you, Dexter James Mitchale, to be my husband, through the good times and bad. He’s too precious, and even though this feels real to me, like I’ve been transported into an alternate dimension and Dex is somehow in love with me too, none of it is.

Vows.” The urge to run out of here is overwhelming, but I can’t do that to Dex. I swear some of them ask simply to make him look dumb. “Tripp?” Dex’s brown eyes hold the kind of insecurity they usually do when a reporter asks about goal percentages, and he stands there with his lips parted and an “uhhhh” sound coming out his mouth. There was no falling out of love with him, and I hated myself for it. I lost my game because I knew, without a doubt, I was already in too deep with Dex. We lost that game in a shutout where I let in seven goals before Coach pulled me off and replaced me with Reeves, our backup goalie, who was a rookie at the time and couldn’t stop a bullet to save his life. It wasn’t supposed to become a thing, but it did.Īnd it was in that moment, doing something we had done together thousands of times, that I realized I was in love with him. Juvenile maybe, but the crowd who’s there early enough for warm-ups love it. Fist bump, chest bump, hug, then a fake-out high five. It was our own pregame ritual, just between us. One day we were on the ice for our warm-up skate before a game, and after I did my usual stretching and talking to my crossbar asking for cooperation, Dex skated up to me and held out his fist for me to bump.

Somewhere along the way, my feelings just happened. He was the first to welcome me, the first to offer to hang out, and he’s been constantly by my side ever since. His outlook on life might be naive, but fuck, everyone could use some naivety-to see the world through the eyes of someone who only sees the good in people.įrom the moment I walked into the Vegas locker room, Dex was my best friend. He cares about people, even if he doesn’t know them.

Irresponsible puckboy