"Enjoy the free seat, dear."
Patrice said it at 6:20 PM in the arena club, loud enough to carry to the bar.
Forty sponsors stood around high-top tables with drinks and name tags.
Behind the bar was a wall of logos.
BRUECKNER MECHANICAL was third from the left.
Wes had asked me to stop by before puck drop.
He was across the room with a banker and a plate he wasn't eating.
I'd shown the host my ticket at the door.
Patrice stood by the shrimp tower with two sponsors' wives.
Curt stood behind her with a beer.
"Ladies, this is the one."
"Wes Novak's nurse."
She smiled at me over her glass.
"A kept nurse, they used to call it."
One wife laughed.
The other looked at my sweater.
It was from Target.
"Enjoy the free seat, dear."
"Owners tire of nurses by spring."
Curt didn't smile.
He never did.
"Monday a judge says what you took."
Two men at the next table stopped talking.
A sponsor near the bar turned his whole chair around.
I took my ticket out of my coat pocket.
I held it up between two fingers.
SECTION 208 · ROW 9 · $68.00
"I bought my own seat."
"Section 208."
"Sixty-eight dollars."
"Mine."
The wife who'd laughed stopped.
Section 208 was the upper deck.
From up there the players look like game pieces.
Patrice's smile held.
"Well."
"Aren't you proud."
"I am."
Across the room, Wes looked up once.
He didn't come over.
I hadn't asked him to.
I finished my club soda and climbed to my seat.
The Breakers beat Omaha 3–1.
There were 17,400 people in the building.
The man beside me in Row 9 had a foam finger and a son who knew every penalty.
At 9:40 PM the final horn went.
The players slapped gloves and left the ice.
People started up the stairs with their coats.
Then the PA crackled.
"Stay one more minute."
It was Wes's voice.
The stairs stopped moving.
Two crew members came out of the Zamboni gate with a carpet runner.
They unrolled it all the way to center ice.
Wes walked out on it in his suit and dress shoes.
He had a microphone in one hand.
The other hand was closed.
The jumbotron found him.
He opened his hand for the camera.
A plain platinum band.
The building made a sound I felt in my seat.
"Leah Marchetti."
"Section 208."
"Row 9."
The camera swung and found me.
My face hung over center ice, forty feet wide, mouth open.
The kid beside me pointed at the screen, then at me.
"Dad, that's her!"
Wes looked up at the upper deck.
"I offered you my arm."
"You said no."
"I'm asking for the ceremony now."
The foam finger went up next to my ear.
"Say yes, Leah!"
Row 10 took it up.
Then Section 208.
Then sections I couldn't see.
"Say yes!"
An usher was already at the end of my row.
I didn't need her to carry anything.
I walked down every step of 208 myself.
Down the concourse.
Down the lower bowl.
The usher opened the Zamboni gate.
The cold came off the ice like an open freezer.
I stepped onto the carpet in my own boots.
It was a long walk to center ice.
Seventeen thousand people watched me make it.
I stopped in front of him.
I put my hand over his microphone.
"Is this pity?"
"It's want."
He didn't say anything else.
He didn't have to.
I took my hand off the mic.
He held out his arm, bent at the elbow.
It was the arm from the eleventh-floor hallway.
I didn't put my fingers on his sleeve this time.
I put my whole arm through his.
He held the microphone out to me.
"I'm with him."
It came back off the roof a half second late.
The building went loud.
He slid the band onto my finger.
It fit.
On the jumbotron, my hand was the size of a car.
There was no check on the screen.
No complaint.
No receipts.
Just my hand and his arm.
High on the far side of the bowl sat a row of suites.
Suite 12 was Brueckner Mechanical's.
Patrice stood at its glass.
She didn't clap.
Behind her, Curt sat with his beer and watched the screen.
At 10:05 PM Wes walked me back through the tunnel under the stands.
The concrete smelled like rubber mats and popcorn.
A man stood by the sponsor exit, zipping his coat.
It was Curt.
Patrice was already outside.
I could see her through the glass doors, on her phone.
Curt looked at the ring.
Then at me.
He didn't look at Wes.
"Enjoy it," he said.
"Monday."
Wes didn't say a word.
He kept his arm where I'd put it.
"Monday at nine, Curt."