Ruth Sadelle Alderson

Mike wakes up hungover. He doesn't think this is quite what people mean when they talk about the Cup hangover, but it's probably the start of it. He opens his eyes carefully, but he was smart enough to pull the curtains closed before he crashed last night. He stretches a little, and a glint of light catches his eye. There's a ring on his finger.

At first he thinks that can't be right because he's supposed to have a ring, but they don't get them until next season. Then he realizes it's all wrong to be that ring anyway. It's a plain, heavy, gold band wrapped around his ring finger.

Mike swallows down his laughter. Is he really such a cliche that he got married in Vegas? What was he thinking? Why is he still wearing clothes? Why didn't Jeff stop him?

Then he blinks, and remembers the other hands sliding the ring on his finger. Hands he's seen tying skates, petting his dog, stirring pasta on his stove. Of course it's Jeff. Of course they were fucking idiots and he and Jeff got married last night. This morning. Whatever. Mike doesn't even know what time it is now.

Mike finally rolls over to look, and Jeff's sound asleep next to him. She's still wearing clothes too, so at least this isn't as bad as it could have been. Except that they're married, and Mike can see the ring on her finger from here.

He pushes at her shoulder until she blinks her eyes open and mutters, "Too early. Leave me the fuck alone."

Mike silently holds up his left hand.

Jeff blinks at him, blinks again, and buries her head in her pillow. "Later. Lemme sleep."

Mike doesn't really want to be awake yet either, so he goes to the bathroom, drinks as much water as he can stand, and flops back into bed.

When he wakes up later, Jeff's gone, and he takes a shower before he goes looking for her. She's in the main room of their suite eating a breakfast that makes Mike's stomach want to rebel.

"How can you eat?" Mike slumps down onto the couch next to her.

"I'll feel worse if I don't," Jeff says.

She sort of has a point, and Mike steals a piece of bacon off her plate. He didn't take off his ring because he wasn't sure what to do with it, and it suddenly looks even bigger and brighter on his hand. He shifts the bacon to his right hand.

There's a complicated look on Jeff's face that he doesn't know how to interpret. She's wearing her ring too, and she looks at both of them and then at Mike. She said later, but she's not saying anything - even her expression isn't telling him anything - and Mike doesn't know what to say.

He doesn't say anything, and neither does she, and he eats his bacon and takes his ring off later and they keep not talking about it until they're back in LA and then they keep not talking about it until Mike's fishing in Kenora and Jeff's on the beach in Sea Isle.

She still looks happy, about LA and about the Cup, and it's not like Mike has some pressing need to be unmarried, so it doesn't matter that much.

It's weird that no one knows about it, though. Like, obviously someone knows about it - Dewey and Lewie were with them, and there was whoever else was also in the chapel. But Mike's family doesn't know, and Dewey and Lewie don't seem to have told anyone, and Mike hasn't gotten any calls from his agent about it. That part's weird, and Mike tells Arnold about it when they're in the house in Kenora, just so he can tell someone.

*

The one blessing of the lockout is that Mike gets to stay in Kenora. LA is great, but there's nowhere else in the world that he loves as much as the lake.

I'm going to LA to skate with the guys, Jeff texts him. Cool if I stay at your house?

Mike looks at her words on the screen of his phone and texts back, I think California is a community property state. That makes it your house too.

Jeff doesn't reply to that, and the next time she texts him, it's about something else, and they keep on not talking about it.