I’m too old for this.

I am too goddamned old to be smuggling a mannequin wearing a hot pink thong-kini in through the back door to the locker room, while my friend Justin motions for me to move faster and Wallace and Saunders giggle like third graders somewhere behind me.

I have bigger things to worry about than whether or not Nowicki’s rookie initiation prank is the “dopest shit ever,” or if we’ll get caught by Coach Swindle, who is even older than I am and has even less patience for the constant, adolescent pranking that has become so deeply engrained in the culture of professional hockey that I doubt I’ll ever make it through a season without having mayonnaise smeared on my shoes or a plastic snake hidden in my locker.

My only comfort is that this should be over pretty quickly and then I’ll be able to move on to the next unpleasant task on my agenda.

At least that one involves a beautiful woman who isn’t made of fiberglass.

But the thought offers no comfort. Yes, Laura is a beautiful woman, and yes, simply being in the same room with her is enough to make my blood rush and my skin prickle with awareness, but we’re just friends now. Just friends, even though every time I lay eyes on her, all I can think about is how much I want to kiss her and keep kissing her until she’s hot and eager and begging me to take her on her desk.

Or up against the wall in her office. Or—

“He’s coming. Maybe a minute behind me,” Petrov whispers, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder as he ducks into the locker room from the tunnel.

“Quick, get her in there!” Justin hisses, helping me shove the mannequin into Nowicki’s open locker. Jus arranges the arms, while I stuff the legs in among Nowicki’s copious collection of moldy-smelling tennis shoes. Justin shuts the door softly and with a final fist-pump of victory, relaxes onto the bench in front of his own locker, an utterly bored expression on his face.

“You’re too good at that,” I mutter.

“I’m going to take up acting after I retire.” His lips quirk before settling back into an indifferent line. “Now scram. Your prank face sucks. Go pack your bag or something.”

“My bag’s already packed,” I grumble as I wander over to the couches on the other side of the room, pretending to watch Sports Center while I replay the script I wrote for myself last night when I realized I had no choice but to ask Laura for help.

I think it’s good. Respectful, with some quid pro quo offered to make it clear I’m trying not to be a selfish bastard.

But asking her for a favor like this is still going to be awkward and uncomfortable, whether she says “yes” or “hell no.”

Fuck. If she says no, I don’t know what I’m going to do…

She has to say yes. I have to convince her, even if I have to grovel on my hands and knees to do it.

I’m dimly aware of the too-loud conversation on the other side of the locker room as Saunders and Wallace do a shitty job of playing it cool, and the rush of the showers someone turned on so it wouldn’t be too quiet in here when Nowicki walks in, but somehow I miss the rookie’s entrance. When he suddenly screams like someone grabbed his arm and plunged it into the center of a fire pit, I flinch hard enough to make my teeth knock together and my heart jerk roughly in my chest.

I spin to see Nowicki scrambling away from his locker as the mannequin falls stiffly to the ground, revealing the pink scrap of fabric threaded up the center of her crack-less ass.

“What the fuck?” Nowicki thumps a fist into his chest, his shoulders heaving as he continues to retreat across the room, which is now filled with rich laughter, Petrov’s bass rumble, and Saunders weirdly high-pitched giggles. “What the unholy fuck, you fucks? Who put that in there?”

“Happy Rookie Prank Day.” Justin claps his hands as he rises from the bench with a shit-eating grin. “God, you should see your face! You’re even whiter than usual, Wickster.”

“That’s because I have a thing about mannequins, dude!” Nowicki scowls as he continues to thump his fist against his sternum, presumably to ensure his heart keeps beating. “It’s a phobia, you asswipes.”

His genuine rage sends a second wave of laughter through the rest of the team, all of whom suffered through their own rookie prank, most of which were messier and/or more disturbing than finding a mannequin stuffed in their locker. Suffice it to say, sympathy levels are low, though, when Nowicki’s usually smooth voice breaks as he adds—

“I’m serious. I feel like I’m having a fucking heart attack just standing here looking at that thing.”

—I almost feel bad about the part I played in the prank.

I’m the one who told Justin that Nowicki was terrified of mannequins, information gleaned from a heart-to-heart Nowicki and I had not long after he joined the team. Yes, it’s a ridiculous fear, but we all have our own peculiar shit that trips us up for no reason other than our brains decide to get their wrinkles in a twist.

I don’t have any phobias, but I’ve got my share of psychic baggage, enough that after Nowicki leaves the locker room in a huff, I refrain from following the rest of the team outside. If Nowicki is that upset about his locker, I don’t want to see how he responds when he sees that his convertible is filled with four more mannequins, all dressed in lingerie and holding signs that read “We want to eat your face, Nowicki!”

Five years ago, I would have found a rookie’s mannequin-phobia-induced meltdown as amusing as Jus and the rest of them, but I’m not that person anymore.

Now I’m thirty-two going on fifty, a single dad, and in over my head most of the time. Now I know what it feels like for my dreams to turn to dust in my mouth. I’ve lived with that taste since the day I got the call from the police about the accident, and nothing has been the same since.

Yes, I still laugh—usually at Chloe because my daughter, in addition to being my reason for living, is also hysterical—but I don’t feel joy the way I used to.

But I don’t hurt the way I did in the early days, either. I don’t get high, I don’t get low, I get by. Get through. Get to the end of one day and brace myself for the start of another. And it is…good.

Good enough. Better than I thought it ever could be the morning I realized I’d lost Maryanne.

Still, there are moments, when I’m drifting off to sleep and mental stills of that long weekend with Laura drift through my head, reminding me of how close I got to something more than good enough, that I wish I wasn’t such a rational son of a bitch. When I wish I believed that people could change and hearts could melt and reform into a different shape than they were before.

But wishes won’t get you far in the real world, and that, unfortunately, is where I live, right at the intersection of Tough Truth Street and Not Meant to Be Boulevard.

Resigned to reality and its shittiness, I head for Laura’s office to collect my daughter and beg for a favor I have no right to ask. But I’ll ask anyway, because I’ll do anything for Chloe, even cross lines I swore I would never step near again.