Two for Boarding bonus story

Three Times Diego Didn't Ask Mara Out (And One Time She Asked Him)

1.

Kayleigh (off-camera): So what can you tell us about the Sea Lions’ new sponsorship program?

Mooney: We’re working with a shelter for unhoused LGBTQIA+ youth right here in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.

Breezy: We keep them in athletic gear and school supplies and we play hockey once a week.

Kayleigh: And what inspired this venture?

Breezy: Um.

Mooney: We’re part of this city and it’s important to all of us to give back. Getting the chance to play hockey for a living is amazing, and our fans, this city’s fans, are the reason we get to do that.

Breezy: Yeah! Exactly! And it’s a great program!

Top comments:

jayyyyyyyDEN: bc what do homeless queer kids need? sports merch from the most homophobic league in the nation i guess

(From: San Francisco Sea Lions official Instagram account, posted on 12/10/2024)

Diego collected the second-to-last traffic cone from the cracked asphalt. Jayden had accidentally hit the it into the corner of the metal cage surrounding the courtyard behind the shelter during the later stages of the street hockey game they’d just played and Diego had put off picking it up until the very end, but now there was no avoiding crossing the entire area and grabbing it.

He groaned as he bent down to pick it up.

Why had he thought it was a good idea to play a game of street hockey with a bunch of teenagers on his day off? His ribs ached where some douchenozzle on the Anaheim Cheshire Cats bodied him into the boards a few nights ago and his brain swam with exhaustion. His one AHL year had not prepared him for the grueling pace of the NHL, both in terms of the schedule and in terms of the travel. Diego had never left the country before this year. Now he’d been to Canada twice, even if all he saw was the inside of the hotel rooms he shared with Luca and the hockey arenas of all the major Canadian teams.

One time, they went to a bar and grill in Edmonton, but Diego didn’t count that toward his experience with international travel. It was Edmonton. Anyway, the food sucked.

“Hey mister,” a voice called from the sidelines.

Diego peered over. The speaker appeared to be one of three girls aged somewhere around fifteen. They all wore their hair in box braids with varying brightly colored shades woven in. One girl had a rainbow, which Diego knew was a gay thing, the one on her left had tips in different pinks and oranges, and the third one’s braids ended in light blue, pink and white.

“What’s up?”

In Spanish, the middle girl with pink and orange tips asked, “Are you Mexican?”

“On my Mom’s side. You?”

“Colombian.”

“Nice.”

“What about your Dad’s side?”

“He’s Puerto Rican.” In point of fact, Diego’s dad had lived in California his whole life, but his grandparents moved there from Puerto Rico a year before he was born. But Diego usually skipped telling people that, unless they were white and obnoxious, in which case he also made a point of reminding them Puerto Rico was part of the US.

The girl with the blue, pink and white braids asked, “Are you Catholic?”

Diego squinted at her. “Will you tell my mom if I say no?”

Finally, she cracked a smile.

Sensing an in, he asked how they’d liked street hockey. Laura had a great time, Emily wanted to practice slap shots, and Riana was scared of the puck.

“Valid,” Diego told her. “You know, the ones we use at the rink are frozen, too? Makes ’em even worse.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Why?”

“You know how your skin can stick to ice? We don’t want pucks doing that so we gotta keep them cold.”

“Ugh. What’re pucks made of, anyway?”

“Vulcanized rubber,” Diego answered.

He felt really smart about it, too, until Emily asked, “What’s vulcanized mean?”

“Uh,” he said. He ought to know this. Playing with pucks was his whole job. “It makes them hard?”

Riana giggled, and then Laura started, and finally he lost all three of them.

Diego sighed theatrically. “I see how it is,” he complained. “No one’s gonna help me clean up, you’re just gonna make dumb jokes and mock me.”

They helped him pick up the rest of the pucks lying around, though the giggling didn’t stop at any point. Along the way, he learned Emily was Cuban but her family were “those asshole Cubans who don’t believe in Communism”, Laura was flunking biology and Riana was trans. He did his best not to react outwardly to any of those pieces of information. A wrong facial tic could be taken as a mortal offense by a sensitive teenager. Having been one himself not too long ago, Diego knew to take care.

“Ladies,” Mara’s voice sounded from the back door of the shelter. It took Diego a second to realize why it came across so jarring before he remembered she was speaking English. “Is your homework finished?”

“Ugh, I hate when she calls us that,” Emily muttered. “I’m not a fucking lady.”

“Language,” Diego admonished, though he’d fucked up and sworn in front of them at least twice already.

Emily rolled her eyes at him, but he still got a chorus of “Adiós, Diego,” before they trudged to the house and presumably their homework.

Mara closed the door behind them and came down the steps toward him. “Thanks for cleaning up.”

“No problem. Wouldn’t want to leave you stranded with our mess.” He wasn’t looking forward to lugging everything to Breezy’s truck, and then to the practice rink, but whatever. The shelter did not seem like a place with tons of excess storage space.

“What were you talking to them about?”

Diego shrugged. “I dunno, shooting the shit. Hey, you know Laura’s having a hard time in—”

“Biology, yeah.” Mara’s stance eased.

Diego only met her a few hours ago, and he thought she was cool because she was so chill but firm at the same time. Now he realized she hadn’t been relaxed for a single moment since they’d gotten here. “You that worried we were gonna fuck up?”

“These kids are my responsibility,” she said stiffly. “I had to be sure you weren’t going to be insensitive jerks, or worse, take advantage of anyone.”

A full body shudder ran through Diego. Jesus, of course she’d been worried, he was alone with three underage girls a minute ago, and hockey players did not have a good rep when it came to that sort of thing. “Yikes. Sorry. If you’d rather we only hang out when you're there—”

“I can’t be everywhere all of the time,” Mara said. She sounded as if she wanted to try.

“Okay, but like, if there’s stuff we should do or not do, let us know. Or give us a list. We might be dumb but we know how to read a rulebook.”

He’d been trying to make a joke about how hockey players were in general as sensitive as a brick wall, but judging by the way the corners of Mara’s mouth turned down, he failed.

“Sorry.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. When he was talking to the girls, he'd thought he was so cool and adult, but under Mara’s too-intelligent gaze he remembered he was only barely of legal drinking age and living on his own for the first time. “I just thought…”

“I know,” she said coolly. “You thought, oh, I have a sister or a cousin or a girlfriend and I wouldn’t want my teammates talking to her alone, never mind what she wants herself, never mind my teammates should treat people well because they’re people, not someone’s relative, and—”

“I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Diego became aware he said something monumentally stupid in the seconds after his answer landed in the air between them and lingered there like the smell of a wet hockey glove.

“I mean, uh,” he hastily attempted to fix it, “I don’t have a sister either? I have a fuckton of cousins but honestly they’d eat Breezy alive, I’d be more worried about him.”

The breath left Mara in a big huff. “I mean, who wouldn’t eat him up? I didn’t think they made puppies that size.”

He dumped his stack of traffic cones into a bag and slung it over his shoulder. The thought of her eating Breezy in any way made his insides squirm unpleasantly. “He sure is one of a kind. So, I guess you’re glad to see us go?”

Mara shook her head, a lock of pink-dyed hair falling into her face. “I’m being a penis, aren’t I?”

He laughed, startled, and she pulled a face. “Ugh, sorry, habit. I’m trying to train them to not use curse words so they’ll be vaguely employable someday.”

“I don’t think you get hired for saying penis.”

“Better than fuckface. Or cunt. Or—”

“I get the picture.”

Her nose wrinkled when she laughed. She had freckles, he noticed, spanning the bridge of her nose and sprinkled at the tops of her cheeks. “Yeah. Anyway. Didn’t mean to jump down your throat. I guess I’m a little protective.”

“Understandable. You run this place by yourself?”

“Fuck no. There’s another two social workers part-time who take half the nights and Saturdays, and we’ve got a lot of volunteers.”

“You’re a social worker?”

Her pierced eyebrow raised. “What, you thought they gave a random chick off the streets the key?”

“No, I just mean you’re really young to have a degree.”

“Oh. Well, I was in a hurry. Student loans.”

He wanted to ask why she chose this place, whether it was personal, what the colors in her hair meant, whether maybe—

But he didn’t want to piss her off again.

“So what all do you do here?” he asked as they walked toward the house.

“Fuck, everything,” she laughed. “I do intake, mediation with their families, I work with CPS, career advising, homework help…you name it, it’s in my fucking job description.”

“I’m beginning to see why they have issues with swearing.”

She pushed against his shoulder lightly. “Fuck off.”

“Nah, I had fun today. I’m thinking I’ll come around more often. Was nice to speak some Spanish.”

She held the door open for him. “I guess there’s not much of that in the NHL, huh?”

“Not so much,” he agreed. “Whitest sport on television.”

“Hey, don’t talk down on snooker. It’s the sport of my people.”

He laughed, surprised. “Good point. I could never get into watching. I hate how the commentators sound.”

“Oh my God, yeah, they always sound like they’re narrating a nature documentary or something.”

“And here we see Cleatus McFlatfoot, bending over to hit some balls with his big stick,” Diego said, affecting the low, husky tone snooker commentators preferred.

“You’re one to talk with your big sticks and your D-men.”

“You were listening when we explained the rules!”

“Hard not to.”

He paused, squinting. “Alright, alright, I’m thinking you’re all talk. You like us.”

She didn’t say anything but the corners of her mouth tugged upward.

“Come on.”

“I admit nothing.”

“I’ll make it worth your while.”

“How?”

“I’ll give you my phone number,” he offered. “And then I will text you the most bespoke snooker memes you’ve ever seen.”

She cracked up right there in the hallway, laughing so hard she had to bend over and brace on her thighs.

He didn’t care if she thought he was the biggest idiot in the world, he wanted to hear that laugh again.

2.

“The San Francisco Sea Lions ring in the New Year in style! Here we see the team captain, Tom Crowler, in an Armani number with a teal silk tie, unusually stylish. Beside him, Jax Grant wears purple in a bold choice. Rookies Luca Mazetti and Diego Lunes shine in pinstripes, Mazetti in a classic navy and white, Lunes in a snazzy emerald and silver. The less said about Chris Calabrese and Kilian Howard’s formal wear the better.”

Top comments:

clions2010: Tom has really upped his accessory game in the last few weeks!

Jefferson Howard: Who cares what they wear? They’re hockey players, not fashion models!

(From: Sea Lions NYE Looks, posted to hockeygossip.net on 01/01/2025)

Diego loosened his tie. He considered briefly, then pulled it off and stuffed it into the glove compartment.

He’d hung out with Mara often enough in the last couple weeks to know she’d mock him for it.

The pinstriped suit was bad enough. He’d never caught sight of Mara in anything but jeans and button-up shirts with funky patterns. Personally, Diego thought he looked fly as hell, but the thought of Mara’s potential mockery made him nervous.

He’d never talked so much to someone so clever. There’d been smart kids in his high school and he wasn’t one of those jocks who made fun of them for it or whatever, but he also didn’t hang out with them. He’d always been a hockey guy. In the same way, he’d known who the gay kids at his school were, but he’d never interacted with them.

Mara had a bisexual pride flag dyed into her hair. He knew because he googled it the night after meeting her. If the colors in her hair meant she was a lesbian, spending all evening on memegenerator.com inventing increasingly lame snooker memes to make her laugh would have been really stupid.

Diego knew how he got.

If he let himself get too caught up in his crush, it wouldn’t matter if she was a lesbian, he’d spend literal years pining after her anyway. It would be Luisa Perez from Biology all over again, no matter that Luisa’d had a boyfriend and wasn’t into him. He still been into her all through sophomore year and didn't manage to get over it until he started playing in Juniors and didn't have to see her every day.

By then he’d known he had a chance at being drafted, so he was careful not to kiss anyone he might catch feelings for. The Luisa Perez saga taught him he definitely wasn’t capable of being one of those dudes who had a girl back home and hooked up on the road. Moral issues of cheating aside, he was too monogamous whether his feelings were returned or not. He figured he was better off hooking up occasionally rather than getting his feelings involved.

The strategy served him well until early December, when he heard Mara laugh and his stomach clenched and fluttered and he realized he missed feeling that way when he saw a girl, even if he had a snowball’s chance in hell with her.

So here he was, fully sober at one a.m. on New Year’s Day, parked in front of the shelter and trying to work up the nerve to go inside and ask for a kiss.

No, wait, that was super lame. No one asked for a New Year’s kiss anymore. He drove here to man up and ask her out after three weeks of meme-based flirtation and he was totally going to do it. He inspected himself briefly in the rear view mirror. His hair had a nicely messy thing going on and the suit made him look good. Mara would say it was lame, but she said the same about his snooker jokes and laughed every time all the same. He was too thin, but he was a hockey player in late December. He couldn’t eat all the calories he burned if he tried. And he tried.

Still, it made him self-conscious. There was a stereotype in there about skinny guys who liked thick girls and he didn’t appreciate giving anyone ammunition to talk smack about Mara. He got the impression she’d had enough of that to last a lifetime.

He took a last fortifying deep breath and got out of the car.

It took her a few minutes to answer the door when he knocked. If he didn’t know for a fact she was there he might have given up. When she finally opened it a crack, the first thing he saw was a frying pan clutched in her hand.

“Whoa, it’s only me!”

“Diego?”

“Yeah.”

She pushed the door open all the way. “What are you doing here? I thought you guys had a fancy pants party going on.”

“I thought you were stuck, and I quote, “cleaning fruit punch off of every surface in the known universe” and could use some help.”

She stepped back, letting him in. “You seriously left a team New Year’s party to help me clean up after teenagers?”

“Yeah. Who did you think was at the door?”

“I don’t know, a robber or something.”

“A robber who knocks.”

Mara huffed and stood aside to let him in. “Or someone here to do a hate crime.”

Diego followed her down the hall toward the group room. “So your plan for this robber slash murderer was what, to sauté them?”

She whirled around on him, pointing a finger. “Okay, you shut up.”

“Is that any way to treat your helper in need?”

She rolled her eyes, but a smile tugged at her lips. She had full lips, pink and pouty, and he let himself stare for a moment.

In general, he tried not to be gross. He didn’t ogle her gorgeous tits, her round ass, the way her shirt sometimes rode up to reveal a hint of skin around her waistline. He’d noticed, of course he’d noticed, but he didn’t stare.

But her lips were right there in front of him. They were the same height, so he could see them too well and he just couldn’t stop himself.

“Diego?”

“Hm?”

“I asked if you were sure you wanted to spend your night cleaning up weird stains in a homeless shelter.”

“Oh, uh.” He shifted his weight from foot to foot and looked at her eyes and nowhere else. “Yeah.”

“Sea Lions party was that lame?”

It hadn’t been. The food was great, the drinks were top-notch though he’d abstained since he drove, he enjoyed hanging out with his teammates, and the glamour of a few minor sports celebrities showing up to party with the team hadn't stopped being new and exciting for him. But when he had a pretty, funny, clever girl texting him all evening about how bad her night was going, Diego had priorities. “Yeah, super lame. I ditched when PR got done taking group portraits.”

She shuddered dramatically. “Can’t believe you have an actual PR department. How do people actually get paid to make athletes look good on camera?”

“We may be handsome fuckers, but we are also very stupid.”

She laughed so hard she snorted. “Sorry,” she got out between guffaws. “Oh my God, sorry. If anyone had told teenage Mara jocks were this funny, she’d have kicked their asses.”

“Bet teenage Mara was a riot.” Diego flicked the lights in the den and surveyed the chaos. “Jesus, what happened here, World War three?”

“Teenage Mara wanted to start riots.” She handed him a trash bag and a pair of gloves.

Hot, he nearly said. “Were you, like, a punk?”

“I had a nose ring and I thought it made me so alternative.” She shook her head at herself, then pulled a wet rag out of the bucket she must have left on the table before. “I wore all black for about three months. Not my color.”

He could picture it immediately, teenage Mara with a little ring in her cute nose that tilted up just a little at the tip. Black would wash her out a little, but with her arms crossed and her eyes stormy he’d have joined any riot she wanted.

“Sounds badass.”

“Trust me, it was not.”

For a while, they cleaned in silence. The room looked awful but picking up the trash helped faster than he would have thought. Luckily, the flooring was linoleum, so it cleaned easy.

“Hey, um, I never said thank you for your Christmas gift.”

“Yeah you did.” Diego held up his arm with the rainbow friendship bracelet Riana told him she’d made. It had a few lumpy rows, which gave it character and made it the perfect thing to play around with during video review.

“That’s from the kids, for all the stuff you gave them. Way too much, by the way, you’re gonna spoil them.”

“They deserve a little spoiling,” Diego said.

“Yeah, but I meant to thank you for your gift to me.”

Diego turned to see her, but she was busy scrubbing a stubborn stain on the table with her back to him. “I did wonder whether you got it. Luca said he passed it along, but…” Diego trailed off with a shrug. Despite sharing a room with Luca on the road, he barely knew the guy. Luca did not share his feelings unless those feelings were irritation and anger.

“Yeah. I guess I didn’t know what to say.”

“Well, “thank you” is a good start.”

“Thank you, kind sir, for volunteering to come to a concert with twenty-three teenagers,” Mara said.

“Okay, now without the sarcasm.”

“Seriously, thanks. It’s a great gift for the kids but an unpaid work night for me.”

“I figured.”

He inched closer to her, picking up empty soda cans and candy wrappers as he went. When he came to a halt a hair’s breadth from her, the scent of her shampoo rose in his nose. “You okay spending a whole evening with me?”

She turned toward him, her shoulder brushing his chest. He could count the freckles on her nose.

“Yeah, you’re okay company.”

“Okay, am I?”

She had such a great smile, even when she mocked him. “Yeah, I mean, you’re no Emily but your meme game is strong.”

This close, he could smell her sweat under a layer of deodorant. God, he wanted to touch her bare skin, to bury his nose in the places where the scent of her was the strongest, to lick.

“I try.” When had his voice gone all hoarse?

She licked her lips and the flick of her pink tongue nearly did him in. He could do it now, lean in and—

“Hey, Mara?”

Mara turned toward the source of the noise with a smile, easy and relaxed like they hadn’t been inches apart. Like Diego hadn’t been about to kiss her.

“What’s up?”

A girl inched inside and in the light, Diego recognized Laura. She smiled at him tightly. “Hola, Diego. Feliz años nuevos.”

“Tú también.”

“Um,” Laura said when the greetings were over, gaze flicking between the two of them.

Diego picked up his trashbag. “I’m just on garbage duty. Pretend I’m not here.” He crossed to the other side of the room and began sorting party decorations into reusable and definitely not.

“So I got a call from my aunt,” Laura said. “She, um. She’s in town for the holidays and I guess someone finally told her where I was.”

Mara pulled out one of the chairs and gestured for Laura to sit. Laura did, the beads at the ends of her braids clacking with the movement. “What did she say?”

“She said…” Laura trailed off, looking down at her knees. “She said I was welcome to come home with her and she thinks my dad is an asshole and she still loves me.”

A smile spread across Diego’s face. Laura could be with family, someone who cared for her, someone who would give her the support and one-on-one attention she needed.

“Do you trust her?” Mara asked.

“Yeah, she’s cool. But…”

“But?”

“She lives in Portland. And that’s really far away, and if I go and it goes to shit…”

Mara nodded. “Too risky. You’re safer here. You can stay in touch on the phone.”

Diego frowned. He risked a glance at Laura and found her looking down at the table, eyes glossy. “You think I shouldn’t…”

With a heavy sigh, Mara shrugged. “I can’t make a choice for you.”

Diego studied the way her fingers tugged at a loose thread in her jeans, the downturned twist of her mouth. Her opinion was clear.

Laura said nothing but she stayed in her seat, clearly unsure of how to proceed.

Diego set his trash bag down gently and pulled out a chair opposite them. “You mind if I cut in?” he asked Mara.

“Go for it.”

“Is your aunt in town for a few more days?”

“She usually stays till Three King’s Day.”

“Okay, so why don’t you have her come down here, meet everyone, talk to you in person with some other people around before you make a decision?”

By the way Laura brightened instantly, Diego knew she liked the sound of his suggestion much better than turning her aunt down flat.

“And if you decide to go with her, then she and Mara need to get to know each other and do a bunch of paperwork, am I right?”

“Yeah,” Mara said.

“I’m gonna call her right now.” Laura got to her feet, phone already in hand. “Maybe she can come tomorrow.”

In the doorway she paused. “Mara?”

“Uh-huh?”

“If I do leave…can I still call you? And Emily and Riana and everyone?”

Mara’s face softened into a smile. “Of course you can. No matter if you’re in Portland or Portugal, you can always call us.”

Laura nodded once, and then they heard the creak of the stairs and the soft tones of someone speaking Spanish on the phone late at night.

“Thanks for that.”

“Nothing to thank,” Diego assured her. He wondered if he ought to push it, ask why she’d shut down the idea of a relative so hard when he knew she needed the extra space and resources. But she got in ahead of him.

“I never know how to react when a relative shows up out of the blue and offers to take one of my kids.” She twisted in her chair so she faced him, both elbows on the table, lower arms stretched out in front of her.

“Wanna tell me why?”

“When it was me, when I was their age, there was no shelter. I mean, this was also rural Pennsylvania, so go figure, but I got passed around from relative to relative and they all thought they could fix me. I was lucky I only had a few months left of school when it happened because I ran out of people to take me in after four months. All I had was my savings from shitty customer service jobs to get me across the country to college, and then I had nothing but scholarships and loans and if I can save Laura from the disappointment…sorry, you don’t want to hear all this.”

On instinct, he laid his hand over hers at the center of the table. “Of course I do. I mean, I’m sorry that happened to you, and if you don’t wanna talk about it, that’s chill, but I wanna know.”

She shook her head, but didn’t pull her hand away. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a disgustingly good person?”

“Isn’t that why you like me?” he dared flirt.

“I like you for your snooker memes and your willingness to clean up after a teenage New Year’s party when you could be out hitting on models or whatever it is you jocks do for fun.”

I'd rather hit on you, he thought, but it wasn’t the time, not when he could see the shimmer of tears in her eyes. Instead, he rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand. “We can keep cleaning, or we can have a glass of…” he glanced over at the decimated beverage station. “Seven Up, ew, and you can tell me about your family.”

She managed a little laugh and he counted it as a win.

3.

Riana: Okay, so I’m thinking, like, the baggy jeans obviously. But a sweatshirt too? It’s so shapeless.

Emily: Yeah but that’s her whole thing! Wear comfy clothes and don’t let dicks objectify you.

Riana: Right, right, but she’s cis. For some of us, we gotta look the most feminine to pass at all times.

Emily: …I get where you’re coming from, but you’re always a girl no matter how you dress. And also we all love you here.

(they hug)

Top comments:

jayyyyyyyDEN: you’re all very pretty but if we’re late because of this imma spill my drink on you

(From: Emily's private Instagram account with the caption “getting ready for billie eilish omggggggg”, posted on 01/17/2025)

Diego had been to Cyberian Arena approximately shit-squillion times in the last half year. Between games, open practices, and PR events, if he was going to hang out somewhere on his day off, he would just as soon not do it at Cyberian. Of course, he’d never seen it without ice. It seemed like a stupid thing to get hung up on, but within two minutes of Billie Eilish’s opening act starting, Diego was drowning in sweat. Apparently, thousands of screaming fans and no sheet of ice made a place a lot warmer. 

The other issue was the noise. How was he meant to keep track of all the kids when the band was so loud he thought he couldn’t hear his own thoughts? Thank God Phil’s more practical mind prevailed over Jax’s insistence that concerts were better in the standing area when they chose which tickets to buy for the teens. At least with reserved seats the chaos was slightly limited. Diego peeked over at Mara, deep in conversation with Jayden. He wondered how she did it.

When he imagined this night, he imagined he’d be sitting next to her, all the kids around them spellbound by the concert and fully ignoring them. Instead, they were on opposite ends of the block of seats the team booked for the kids, her by the exit, him by the wall, and it was a constant barrage. “Can I get a drink?”, “I need the bathroom”, “I can’t find my phone, what if it got stolen?” On and on the questions and concerns went and Diego could barely understand a single one. He had to ask the kids to repeat themselves at least twice every time.

He didn’t even notice when the first band left the stage and he only knew Billie Eilish showed up based on the sudden swell of applause, too busy trying to find Chloe’s phone with his own flashlight.

It finally turned up (buried in the bottom of her purse) midway through Bury a Friend, but then he had to take Riana and Emily to the restroom and loiter around the door while they used it in case anyone decided to be a jerk about Riana using the correct bathroom.

By the time the last encore ended, Diego was more exhausted than at the end of double overtime.

Phil managed to borrow the team bus for the evening, which was a blessing. Diego couldn’t imagine having to navigate BART close to midnight with twenty-three amped up but tired teenagers. On the way back, Chloe burst into tears after Jayden made fun of the merch she bought and it took Emily, Sammy and eventually Mara to calm the entire argument.

After, when all the doors to the bedrooms were closed, though hushed voices still sounded all throughout the house, Diego collapsed into one of the chairs. “I am so sorry we gave them concert tickets.”

“Are you kidding?” Mara asked. She took the chair beside him. “Did you see how happy they were? How much fun they had? This was amazing.”

“It was so much work.”

“Yeah, but worth it.”

She wasn’t even lying. She actually meant it. She was thrilled to have spent the night solving crises and getting her ear drums blown up because it made the kids happy. Her shirt was wrinkled, her hair was frizzy, she had dark circles under her eyes, and she was smiling widely.

His body swayed toward hers instinctually. That smile, it pulled him in. Those lips.

He’d nearly closed the distance, nearly kissed her when he realized what he was doing and pulled away instantly.

God, he was such an idiot.

He didn’t deserve her, she was such a good person and all he did was play hockey for a living.

“I should get going,” he said weakly. “It’s late.”

+1

“Number Three of our top hockey WAGs in San Francisco is Allie Jenkins. This executive travel planner made waves with her engagement to top defenseman Jimmy Hayes and her wardrobe since has been inspired!

Number Two is Cheryl Vanderbilt. Cheryl reached notoriety with her fashion brand on social media and caught the eye of Mike Vanderbilt when he still played in Boston. Rumor has it the pitter patter of little feet will soon be heard at Chez Vanderbilt and we can’t wait to see the cute baby outfits!

And who could Number One be besides Camille Easton, the team’s very own model? Sure, she and Phil Easton reportedly split this past summer, but we can always hope for her return!

Top comments:

clions2010: (GIF of a young woman in a bonnet staring up at the camera saying “She’s so refined, I think I’ll kill myself”)

seelionssaylions: ranking gold diggers by how well they dug gold. stay classy hockey media

(From: SF Sea Lions WAG ranking, posted to hockeygossip.net on 01/12/2025)

“Are you ever going to kiss me?”

“What?” Diego’s spine sprang ramrod straight at her question.

“Don’t front, Diego, you were about to and you pulled away again.”

“Again?” And there his voice went, going squeaky and high. This was not how he'd planned this conversation.

“You were gonna do it on New Year’s, weren’t you?”

He ran his fingertips along the table. There were stains in the shape of glasses. He wondered if the shelter had coasters.

“Diego?”

“Yeah, I was.”

“So what gives? Why do you keep pulling away?”

He looked over at her. Her blue eyes were stormy, her forehead drawn tight with frown lines. He didn’t want to be the cause of that expression.

“It’s because of me, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he admitted.

“I knew it. You all talk a big game about how you wanna be inclusive and open to the community and shit, but you’d never really date a bi girl or a fat girl, would you?”

He reared back.

“I mean, I knew it was a bad idea to get my hopes up, but why do you keep coming around and, and helping me with stuff if that's how you feel? Is this some fucked up “good enough to bang, not good enough to date” situation?”

“You had hopes?” Diego’s mouth was dry as the desert.

She stopped mid-tirade. “Yeah, some cute guy leaves a swanky New Year’s gala to help me clean up soda stains and popcorn kernels, sue me, I got ideas.”

“You think I’m cute?”

Her cheeks flushed. She crossed her arms across her middle, unintentionally framing her chest. “Ugh, shut up, this is embarrassing enough as it is.”

Embarrassing? It was the best thing he’d ever heard. “So you mean I can kiss you?”

“You could have before you decided to be a dick about me being bi—”

“I don’t care about you being bi!”

She paused and drew away, eyes narrowed.

Hastily, he backtracked, “Or, like, I care ’cause it’s part of you and I think you’re awesome, I don’t care in a bad way.”

“So it’s the fat thing?”

“No!”

She leveled him with a disbelieving look.

“You’re fucking perfect.”

Her mouth, her pink, plump lips, dropped open.

“I love the way you look.”

She didn’t seem convinced. “You don’t have to lie to make me feel better.”

“Mara, don’t make me be explicit about the things I want to do to your tits before I’ve taken you out on a date.”

Finally he’d managed to shock a laugh out of her. “You really want to date me?”

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely.

“So why…”

“You’re so fucking far out of my league it’s not funny."

“What the fuck? Diego, you’re a professional athlete! I’m—”

“You’re fucking gorgeous! And you went to college and have a real job. You help people and shit, I just play hockey! I never even took the SATs. Why the fuck would you want to date me?”

“’Cause I like you.”

Everything about the way she said it, the stubborn tilt to her chin, the sweetness of her words, made his heart leap. He took her hands in his and pulled her toward him. She yelped, falling forward, and he caught her and slid their mouths together. He was a little impressed by his own dexterity, but mostly delighted to finally taste the laugh straight from her mouth.

“That was so smooth, motherfucker,” she said as they pulled apart.

“I know, right? Who knew I could do that?”

She smoothed a hand down the front of his shirt. “This might not be, um. Easy.”

“Because of all the stuff you said a minute ago?”

“Yeah. I’m not really cut out to be a hockey WAG.”

He shrugged. “Lots of things aren’t easy. But you know what is?”

“Hm?”

“Me. I’m super easy.”

He kissed her while she was still laughing, safe in the knowledge that if he kept making her laugh from somewhere deep in her belly, they would be just fine.