Two for Charging Bonus Story - Leonora's Husbands

Leonora's Husbands

1.

Phil: Full team cookout at my place June 26th. If you’re not there, your grandmother had better be dying. And Nieminen, I know yours died last year.

Nieminen: Thank you for reminding me.

Jax: Cool. What’s the occasion and what should I bring?

Phil: We’re getting it catered, no need to bring anything

Phil: Sorry Nieminen

Nieminen: [shrugging emoji] she was awful. Why are we partying?

Tom: June 26th is three days after playoffs end.

Phil: Do you have a point?

Tom: If it’s a team event, wouldn’t it be better to do it during the season? Some guys probably already have flights home.

Dmitriyev: only book when we lose

Gustafsson: otherwise bad luck

Phil: See? it’s fine.

Jax: Note he still hasn’t told us the occasion

Phil: Ben tells me I have to inform you my mom is throwing us a wedding reception

[several people are typing at once]

Breezy: Awesome, Phil! Congrats! What time should we be there?

(Excerpts from the Sea Lions Team and Coaches Group Chat, 03/15/2026)

Leonora rolled around on her chair to get her measuring tape out from the drawer she’d left it in two customers ago. She had both her current customers’ measurements on file, but she liked to check. Their weight fluctuated so much during the hockey season.

Besides, they were both gorgeous specimens. No one would begrudge her the chance to get her hands on them.

Professionally speaking, of course.

“What are we looking for today, gentlemen? New walk-in outfits? Or do you have an event coming up?”

“It’s not really an event,” Luca grumbled.

“It’s a wedding!” Chris protested.

“He didn’t send a proper invitation. And they’re already married.”

Leonora raised an eyebrow. “I do not follow.”

“Phil and Ben got married at city hall last year, but they’re doing a reception this summer.” Chris unzipped his jacket and set it on the coat rack.

Luca followed suit. “It is an elevated garden party.”

Leonora hummed in understanding. “Well, it is good to have clothes to straddle the line between casual and formal, and it is good to have the right materials for summer. Do either of you have anything in linen?”

Good Italian boy that he was, Luca said, “Of course.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Anything suitable for a wedding?”

“It’s not a wedding.”

“So, no. How about you, Chris?”

He shook his head. “You made all of my nice clothes.”

“Well, then. Measurements first.”

Having them both undressed and up on the dais where she could follow each line of muscle was a rare joy. She hoped the NHL would never tire of demanding their players wore suits to walk in. It was a joy to work with them. Not that she didn’t appreciate all sorts of bodies; businessmen who sat at a desk all day brought their own challenges with them. But so few businessmen were routinely photographed by the press and put online, showcasing her work for the whole world.

Heedless of the artistic process surrounding him, Luca continued to moan.

“It’s a big event, I don’t understand why he won’t call it what it is.”

“Oh, so it is a big event and we do need clothes for it,” Chris crowed.

“We will get all dressed up and he and Ben will show up in sweatpants.”

“Ah.” Leonora snapped the measuring tape shut after noting a slight decrease in Luca’s waist size, as if he had anything to spare. The trials of the hockey season. “They are like my Seppo, then.”

“Your husband?” Chris asked.

“My first husband.”

“He wore sweatpants to marry you?” Luca’s tone was gratifyingly shocked.

Leonora moved over to measure Chris. Thick waist, thick thighs, long arms. Kind smile. “No, no, of course not. He wore a suit. My father made it, a fine thing, worsted wool in charcoal.”

“But he didn’t want to.” Chris didn’t phrase it as a question, and Leonora loved him for it.

“No, he did not. Seppo enjoyed a quiet life. A beer each day after work, Football with the other men from the village on Thursdays, perhaps a child or two someday. Comfortable.”

Luca put his shirt back on. “And you married this man?” he asked, fabric still covering his mouth.

The tape snapped shut a tightly, stinging Luca where he stood a bit too close to Chris. “Ow!”

“There is nothing wrong with a simple life.”

“Of course not,” Luca agreed. “But you are not a simple woman.”

Leonora said nothing and finished measuring Chris in peace. The two of them continued gossiping about their team—the things Leonora had heard about this team, the stories she could tell the press…but then, selling confidential stories about drug use and infidelity was gauche and she didn’t know who might be interested in hearing details about how much Tom Crowler doted on his dog.

Measurements complete, she got to her feet and pulled out the fabric swatches. She had a grey, a beige and a tan in a linen blend she liked for Luca, but she wanted the sage green for Chris.

“Whatever you think,” he said, agreeable as always.

“I don’t know.” Luca fingered the beige, a good choice for him. Perhaps a shirt in a pale red to go with it. “Isn’t it too much for…the occasion in question?”

“Do you know why I divorced Seppo?” Leonora asked.

“He wasn’t enough for you,” Chris said, as if it should have been obvious.

“Oh, no, no. He is a lovely man, and very happy with his second wife and their children. But if you are a person who appreciates fashion and you are always dressing down to match your surroundings, you do yourself and them no favors.”

“So you were too much for him,” Luca interpreted.

They were so young. “We simply were not right for each other, which was neither of our faults. I had ambitions in life, wanted to see the world and make something of myself, and he wanted to stay where he was.”

She left them to get out a stack of shirts. Chris could use a few more in plain white and she had a run of pastels that might suit Luca marvelously but might also make him look rather peaky; she wanted to see which it would be.

When she returned, they were both mostly dressed, though Chris hadn’t finished buttoning his shirt, and they sat side by side on the chairs by the changing room.

“Do you, um.” Chris licked his lips. “Have you thought about the offer from Ottawa?”

Luca scoffed. “Of course not.”

“They have way more cap space. They can pay you what you’re worth, you know the Sea Lions won’t go nearly as high.”

“Chris—”

“No, I mean, Leonora’s right, you’re not a low-key guy, you deserve people to notice you.”

“Chris, I—”

“And we can do long-distance, I don’t want to block your career, or if you’d rather we break up—”

“Chris!” Luca grabbed his partner by the chin and turned his face so Chris could no longer avoid meeting his gaze. “I do not want to break up. I do not want to go to Ottawa. I do not care how much money they offer, I want to stay right here with you.”

“But you…you deserve more.”

“Let me decide what I deserve?” Luca asked. “So what if the Sea Lions offer me less? It will still be millions, and what do I need? I have a place to live, I have enough to travel home when I want to, I have more than enough to spend on fancy suits. And I think there will be some left over to take my boyfriend on a nice vacation or two.”

“Oh.” Chris’s lips parted on the sound. “Wow. Um, he sounds like a lucky guy.”

“I’m the lucky one.” Luca pressed a kiss to his knuckles. “I won’t tell you I don’t have ambitions, because I do, but I can fulfill all of them right here, with you by my side.”

Leonora nodded in approval and bustled out from the back, shirts slung over her arm. She wondered how Seppo was doing these days.

****

2.

You are cordially invited to the wedding of

Jaxon Grant and Tom Crowler

on July [blacked out] in [blacked out]

Ceremony begins at 3 PM, followed by drinks, dinner and dancing.

Dress code: Formal.

In lieu of gifts, we ask that you consider donating to the Pot of Gold shelter for LGBTQIA+ youth or the SPCA.

(Image of an invitation with the caption “[ring emoji] [groom emoji] [men kissing emoji] posted to Jax Grant’s Instagram account on 01/12/2027)

Top comments:

grant16rox: The royal wedding of hockey

sealionsfan1682: Did you have to put this online?

“It’s going to be outdoors, though,” Chris pointed out, fingering the wool-silk blend Leonora offered. “In July.”

“Only the ceremony. The reception is air-conditioned.”

Chris looked over at Luca with a frown. “How do you know?”

“Henderson’s fiancé called your phone the other day to ask, so I called Jax.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s my duty as the best man’s boyfriend.” Luca said the latter so solemnly he had to be joking, and judging by the way Chris reached out to poke him, he knew it too.

“So you think this will be okay for hot weather and indoors?” Chris asked, turning back to Leonora.

“I imagine so. Besides, you men never leave your jackets on all the way through dinner at a wedding.”

Chris smiled ruefully. “You have a point.”

“Do you have your speech prepared yet?”

With a big, heaving sigh, Chris collapsed into one of the chairs. Leonora set about calculating how much fabric she would need for his suit.

“I don’t know, I don’t want to embarrass them.”

“You’re Jax’s best man,” Luca said incredulously. “Your job is to embarrass them.”

“No, my job is to plan a kick-ass bachelor party and make sure the day goes off without a hitch.”

“And to hold an embarrassing speech.”

“What am I supposed to do, stand up there and tell all their friends and family about the time I caught them making out in the locker room? Or the time I caught them making out on the team plane? Or the time I caught them making out in the weight room?”

Leonora chuckled. “An illicit tryst at work is a heady thing, I’m sure you two know all about that.”

Chris blinked up at her innocently. “Do you?”

She paused, pencil in mid-air. “Ah,” she sighed. “After I left Seppo, I moved to Milano. My father had nothing left to teach me, so I worked at a big fashion house there for a while. Which is where I met Antonio.”

“Husband number two?”

“Mm. Luca, what are we making you for this wedding?”

“Can’t I wear the linen from last year?”

She glared at him. “You are the best man’s date. You must match.”

“Must I?”

“Of course you must. What are the wedding colors?”

“Teal and navy,” Chris told her promptly.

He had to be joking. Surely they wouldn’t get married with the team’s colors…oh, but who was she kidding? Of course they were. “All right,” she sighed. “Chris, you must wear navy, which will leave Luca in teal, yes?”

They shrugged in unison.

“I want to hear more about your illicit affair with a coworker,” Luca said.

“It wasn’t illicit.” Leonora turned on her heel to get more fabric swatches from the back. Unbidden, the first time Antonio made love to her came to her mind. He’d been taller by quite a lot, so much so he could lift her up and hold her against the wall in the storage room where they kept off-the-rack models at the gentleman’s tailor she’d worked at in Milano. They’d nearly come to blows about the correct way to take in a too-large set of trousers and the next thing she knew, he’d been kissing her with her legs wrapped around his hips and the rest was history.

A very handsome man, Antonio. Enough so she forgot about some of his other qualities.

Something of her melancholy must have shown on her face when she returned from the storage room.

“I like working with my…with Luca,” Chris volunteered. “It gives us so much in common.”

She patted his cheek. “That is because you are a sweet man.”

“And, um, Antonio wasn’t?”

“Hm, no. Antonio was…” She sighed and pushed one of her pens more firmly into her hair. Ever since it had begun going grey, it needed more implements to keep it in check. “Focused. Attentive. Passionate. Jealous.”

“He sounds awesome.” Chris snuck a not-very-subtle look at Luca.

“In many ways, yes. But he didn’t enjoy being bested.”

“And you bested him,” Luca guessed.

She inclined her head. “The danger of working together. So, what do you think of these patterns?”

They exchanged a glance, but dropped the subject and leaned forward to examine her draft. “Double-breasted?” Luca asked.

“A little more formal than what you have now.”

“Hm. So long as there is no top hat.”

“Silly boy.”

She thought the topic had closed, but before they left, Chris asked, “Leonora? If you knew that about him, why did you marry him?”

She closed her eyes. “I thought perhaps he would change. I was young and foolish, and after how safe and boring being with Seppo was, I suppose I wanted danger.”

“Was he? Dangerous?”

She considered. There had been one time, one single time, when she’d looked up local women’s shelters in the phone book afterward. She’d never gone. Instead, she’d taken her boss’s letter of recommendation and used it all the way overseas. “I think less than I imagined at the time, but more than I wanted in my life.”

When they were gone, she had a smoke break outside. She meant to kick the habit years ago, but every now and again, the pack she kept hidden above the spools of thread in her workroom called to her.

“I hate that she went through…well, you heard,” she heard Chris say from the street at the end of the alleyway her shop opened up into.

Leonora froze.

“Yes,” Luca agreed. “Some men are not worth the oxygen they waste.”

“And I guess we’re lucky I don’t care about you being more successful.”

“I am not.”

“You won the Norris twice in a row. I think they’re going to name the move after you, you know the one you do with the, like, two-step shuffle before you shoot?”

“And you’re going to be Captain of one of the best NHL teams in the league when Tom retires.”

“No I’m not. You’re getting it.”

“I won’t take it.”

“Not this again.”

Leonora shook her head. Neither of them were anything like Antonio. They would never begrudge each other one instant of success, not least since they were teammates.

“Besides,” Luca said, “I think you are taking the wrong lessons from the story.”

“Oh?”

His next words were too indistinct for Leonora to hear them.

“Luca! We can’t do that at work!”

Ah. Perhaps better if she didn’t hear it, then.

****

3.

[Video footage of Chris and Luca jumping up and down on either side of Diego “Mooney” Lunes to the beat of Icona Pop's I Love It. All three men are wearing heart-shaped sunglasses and their shirts are open. Differently colored strobe lights shine down on them.]

Caption: bach party with the men of honor

Top comments:

clions2010: He knows it’s “Maid of Honor” and “Best Man”, right?

looneymunes: @clions2010 I said what I said

(Posted to Diego Lunes’ Instagram account on 06/30/2028)

“You’re sure you want to re-wear these?” Leonora asked for the third time, inspecting the wear on the linen suits she’d made two years ago. All easy to mend, of course but... “I could do so much more—”

“Mara would kill us if we got something specially tailored for her wedding,” Chris explained. “It’s supposed to be low-key.”

“Supposed to be?”

Luca shrugged. “Diego has a big family and they all want to be involved. They don’t seem to care all that much about what the couple wants.”

“Hm.” Leonora frowned. “It is their wedding.”

“Yeah, but Mara worries a lot about not being a typical WAG, you know? I think she feels like she ought to not rock the boat too much. And Diego doesn’t care about the wedding part, he just wants to be married to her.”

“Hm.”

“You’ve done the whole wedding thing a couple times,” Chris pointed out. “Was it always the way you wanted it to be?”

“Completely.” Leonora left out that she didn’t always know what she wanted. At twenty, with Seppo, she wore the lace dress and the Cathedral veil. She drank wine with her family, she danced with her father. She forgot to eat anything, too caught up in the celebration, and her toenails were bruised for weeks afterward from standing in her shoes all night.

When she was twenty-five, she wore a suit she’d tailored herself in crisp ivory, complete with a blood-red pocket square. Antonio complimented her handiwork and fed her bites of cake so slowly the photographs were practically pornographic.

A decade later, in California with Ian, she wore a long brown skirt embroidered with flowers and doves and a white blouse and they had a picnic in the park with all their friends. It took all kinds.

“Perfect,” Luca said. “Could we bring Mara inside?”

It transpired they’d brought the bride along and forced her to wait on the street, which Leonora could only apologize for. The poor girl couldn’t have been any more transparently uncomfortable.

“I don’t wear dresses much,” she said. “And we went to Diego's cousin's quinceañera last year. You should have seen the stuff they wore. It was all so poofy.”

“It is your wedding day,” Leonora said firmly. “You wear what makes you comfortable.”

“Right, um. So I was wondering if you do suits for girls?”

They spent an enjoyable half hour pouring over current runway trends and patterns as well as materials, searching for the sweet spot between too feminine and not feminine enough.

“Okay,” Mara said at last. “I can work with this. Honestly, I started wondering if Phil and Ben had it right all along and we should have gone to city hall.”

“My last two weddings were at city hall,” Leonora opined. “It is a fine place to get married.”

“Two?” Mara asked, eyebrows raised.

“Of four,” Luca supplied. “You never told us about your third husband.”

“Ian. Lovely man, will not wear anything not made of linen or hemp. Irreconcilable difference.”

Silence greeted her statement and she smiled to herself as she entered the order for the fabrics she’d need for Mara’s wedding outfit. It would be a masterpiece if she did say so herself, delicate and strong all at once.

“You did not divorce a guy just because he wouldn’t wear a suit,” Chris said.

Leonora cracked a smile. “You know me so well. No, there was more to it. We wanted children but couldn’t have any of our own. We thought about adoption, but ultimately by then it was too late.”

That hadn’t been the be-all and end-all of it, of course. Nothing so complicated could be told so simply. Being married to Ian had turned Leonora into a completely different person, as every relationship somehow did. Riding BART every day in her handmade, elegant suits only to take them off and change to simple, homespun fabrics in the bright, airy house Ian owned in Berkeley felt like taking off a uniform at the end of a long day. It took her too long to notice how the clothes she wore at home, the organic, vegan food, the hiking vacations, had become another costume she wore. By the time they knew for certain there would be no little ones to teach how to grow their own tomatoes and wash cloth diapers for, Leonora had been relieved.

Too much to tell the young people in front of her. They had it all in front of them, those big decisions. She wished them the courage to make the correct ones.

“I’m sorry,” Luca said gently.

Leonora smiled tightly. “It’s in the past. Now, Mara, you are marrying a hockey player, no?”

“Yeah?”

“So money is no object.”

“I mean, I guess, but it’s such a waste—”

“You know you don’t have to choose, yes? You can wear a suit to the ceremony and a dress to the reception, and they can both be as simple or as poofy as you want.”

“Hm. Do you do dresses?”

They went a second round with designs, then, and in an admirable show of sneakiness, Chris and Luca asked a few more questions about things Mara liked about weddings and things she didn’t. It was a shame Leonora didn’t intend on any more weddings of her own, she could use such dedicated helpers.

Leonora pulled the curtain shut to take Mara’s measurements. As she got to work, voices floated through from the other side of the shop.

“You haven’t changed your mind, have you?” Luca asked.

“Hm?”

“About children.”

“No.” A pause, then Chris asked, “Have you?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Okay then.”

The wet sound of a kiss followed, then another.

“Do they know curtains aren’t soundproof?” Mara wondered idly.

The kissing sounds subsided, after. What a shame.

****

4.

“In what’s sure to be the hockey wedding of the upcoming summer, pictures have emerged of Kilian Howard proposing to his longtime boyfriend at his family’s farm in Victoria, BC. We can’t wait to see what Howard wears!”

Top comments:

firecrackers_spark: see, this is a romantic location for a proposal. There’s a view and everything. Grant proposed on the ice, what a cliché. Firecrackers 1, Sea Lions 0.

seelionssaylions: @firecrackers_spark — “which team is the most gay” is not a competition bro

firecrackers_spark: @seelionssaylions — not “which team is the most gay”, you guys won that. which team is best at being gay.

(Posted to hockeygossip.net on 08/02/2030)

“I cannot believe Howie is getting married,” Luca griped, fidgeting as Leonora measured across his shoulders.

“Hold still,” she told him.

“He’s a baby.”

“He’ll be twenty-six before the wedding,” Chris said mildly. “You’re just bitter because you found a grey hair yesterday.”

“You don’t have to remind me!”

“Hold still,” Leonora snapped.

“What is wrong with you?” Luca turned to eye her.

She sighed. “This is perhaps the most important wedding you two will ever attend, in fashion terms. All eyes will be on you, the photographs will be everywhere. I need to show my best work.”

“Oh, right,” Chris said. “I forgot.”

Forgot. Of course he had. Kilian Howard had singlehandedly revolutionized the walk-in look, helped along by the NHL loosening their restrictions on clothing. “You don’t happen to know who’s doing the grooms’ clothes, do you?”

Luca’s nose scrunched up. “I imagine it will be a designer of some sort. Perhaps Prada. Ever since Tom got Howie onto that sponsorship, he’s been insufferable about it.”

“I much prefer having male athletes who dare to show some fashionable nonconformity.”

“Of course,” Luca hastened to agree. “It is simply…not for me.”

Leonora laughed. “No, I know how you two dress. I will have to do my best to show my abilities with the classics.”

“You could go a little wild with the pocket squares,” Chris suggested. “Or maybe, like, a cool waistcoat?”

He’d learned so much since they met. She patted him on the head.

Luca muttered something about playing favorites.

“I can’t help it,” she told him. “He reminds me of my Jack.”

“Jack? Your fourth husband’s name is Jack?”

“Yes.”

“I thought it would be something…I don’t know, out there. He has to be special.”

Smiling to herself, Leonora said, “He is.”

Jack had none of Seppo’s casual charm, none of Antonio’s passion, none of Ian’s conviction. He was entirely himself all of the time, in a suit or a T-shirt.

“So what did you wear to that wedding?”

“A vintage sundress. It caught my eye in a shop in Haight-Ashbury and I made a few alterations. It was only a formality, though. Tax reasons, you know.”

“Really?”

She shrugged. “After three times, the paperwork does not mean much. It’s the choices you make.”

“So no wedding?”

“No. My family would not attend a fourth one, anyway. They don’t think it will last.”

Chris’s brow furrowed. “Rude. Of course it will.”

She patted his cheek. “Jack said so too, yes. But we are not…ah, conventional.”

“How so?”

“We don’t live together, or see each other every day.”

Luca and Chris exchanged a glance. They probably couldn’t even imagine, being that they spent every waking minute together. But it worked for her. As she’d aged out of each previous relationship, she found she needed her own space more and more and what she truly wanted out of life was a partner who made time for her when she asked, a partner to go on vacations with and out for dinner with and into bed with, but a partner she could leave to his own devices when she preferred.

“To each their own,” Luca offered.

“Indeed.”

Leonora put away her tape measure and rose to her feet. Her joints cracked, belying her age. “The real question, gentlemen,” she said, “is how many more wedding suits I am going to make that are not for your own nuptials.”

They both broke into laughter.

“Quite a few, I hope,” Luca said.

“We’ve learned from all our friends, and from you,” Chris told her earnestly. “If we ever do it, it’ll be for tax reasons and we’re not telling anybody.”

She tousled his hair again. Privately, she doubted the men who had pulled the two of them in as groomsmen or best men over and over during the last five years would let them get away with privacy, but it was nice they knew what they wanted.