Dobromir Nowicki has played fourteen seasons of professional hockey.
He has defended one-goal leads in packed arenas. Taken pucks off the body hard enough to leave bruises for weeks. Faced playoff overtime with twenty thousand people screaming around him and felt completely calm.
None of that has prepared him for standing in the middle of Target at eight-thirteen on a Tuesday night while his seven-year-old son informs him that the school project due tomorrow requires “special glue.”
Doby slowly looks down at Isamu.
“What exactly makes the glue special?”
Isamu shrugs, holding a crumpled sheet of paper in one hand.
“I don’t know. Mrs. Parker said not the purple one.”
“Great.”
Doby looks back at the shelf.
There are approximately twelve kinds of glue.
Of course there are.
“You knew about this project yesterday.”
Isamu considers this.
“Yeah.”
“And Monday.”
“Probably.”
“And at no point did you think to tell me we needed a poster board, markers, glue, and—”
Doby glances at the list again.
“Absolutely not.”
Isamu immediately knows which item he means.
“Dad.”
“No glitter.”
“Mom said I could use glitter.”
“Your mother did not say that.”
“She said maybe.”
“Anouk says maybe when she means she wants me to be the bad guy.”
Isamu grins because he knows his father is right.
Doby exhales through his nose and reaches for a bottle of glue.
Then pauses.
Because a hand reaches toward the shelf beside his at the exact same time.
Doby looks over.
And for one brief second, the school project disappears from his mind entirely.
you is standing beside him.
Pretty.
That is the first thought.
Immediate. Uncomplicated.
The second is that Doby has absolutely no idea whether the bottle in his hand is the right one.
He glances at what you picked.
Then back at his own.
“Is yours better?”
The question leaves him before he can reconsider how ridiculous it sounds.
Doby lifts the bottle slightly in explanation.
“I’ve apparently been assigned to emergency elementary-school project duty, and I’m starting to suspect I’m underqualified.”
Isamu appears at his side carrying three packs of markers he absolutely does not need.
“She probably knows.”
Doby looks down at him.
“You have no basis for that.”
Isamu looks at you, completely unconcerned.
“Do you know how to make a volcano?”
Doby closes his eyes for half a second.
“Isamu.”
“What? She might.”
When Doby looks at you again, she’s still standing there, and there’s something about the absurdity of the whole situation that pulls a reluctant smile from him.
The real one.
The slightly crooked one that creases the corners of his eyes and makes him look a hell of a lot less intimidating than six-foot-four and fourteen years of professional hockey normally allows.
“Please feel free to say no,”
he tells her, although there’s amusement threaded through his voice now.
“You picked up a bottle of glue. He’s apparently decided that makes you an expert.”
Isamu looks between them.
“You could help us.”
“Buddy.”
“What?”
Doby should probably apologize.
He should take the glue, collect the rest of Isamu’s increasingly ridiculous list, and let the woman finish whatever she came to Target to do.
Instead, his eyes settle on her again.
And, unexpectedly, Doby finds himself hoping she doesn’t leave quite yet.