Him
: Chapter 24

The kids aren’t nearly as hung over as they should be. I’d forgotten how the teenage body can bounce back from anything. All the day’s drills are over already, and nobody even looks green.

Now the teens are scrimmaging on the practice rink, and Killfeather is kicking some serious ass. Every time he makes a save I feel like I did something good. This kid is going to be great someday. He’s scholarship material, and I hope the father Killfeather complains about can appreciate it.

The young forwards Wes has been coaching are finally pulling it together. They’ve taken quite a few shots on goal already. And Wes is reffing the game. Even the lazy backward circles he skates are fluid and powerful. There’s so much talent in this room right now I can hardly believe it. This is why I’ve made the 2,500-mile trek every year. For this.

There’s another attack on the net. Shen makes a tape-to-tape pass to Davies, who doesn’t hesitate. He fires it into the goal before Killfeather can stop him.

A small whoop of victory rises up from the scoring team. “Smoked you, Killfeather!” Davies yells. “You’re a sieve, sucka!”

Oh, fuck. Here we go. I watch Killfeather push his mask up. Then he takes his water bottle off the top of the net and pours some into his mouth. I’m half expecting him to spit it into Davies’ face, because my boy’s face is red. I brace for disaster.

Killfeather tosses the bottle onto the net. Then he locks eyes with me.

Please don’t blow like a land mine, I silently beg him.

My goalie actually gives me a small smile before he speaks. “Yeah, Davies. You owned me. Only took you two dozen tries, you big bad thing.” He yanks his mask down over his face and picks up his stick.

Wes is grinning when he skates over to retrieve the puck. “Good attitude today, kid,” he tells Killfeather.

The teenager looks a little smug when he tosses the puck into Wes’s hand.

I’m so engrossed in this little drama I don’t notice heads are swiveling to look at someone who’s appeared behind the penalty box. “Jamie! Over here!”

I turn around to replace Holly standing there, waving her arms. “Holly,” I say stupidly. “What are you doing here?”

She rolls her eyes, her hands on the hips of a tiny pair of jean shorts. “That’s a heck of a greeting, Canning. You can do a little better than that.”

“Holy crap,” Killfeather blurts out. “Coach Canning’s girlfriend has a great rack.”

“Shut it,” I mutter, glaring at him.

More than a dozen teenage boys are now eye-fucking Holly in her teeny shorts and skimpy top. My neck is hot all of a sudden. And that’s before I glance at Wes.

He skates up, a twisted little smile on his lips. “You’re having a visitor, Canning?”

“Um.” I’ve lost the ability to speak, because I’m busy sifting through all the uncomfortable conversations coming my way. “Holly, this is my friend Wes.”

“I remember you from the hotel,” she says with a wink.

Wes keeps his own smile waxed on, and you’d have to know him as well as I do to see the sneer beneath it. Yikes. “Looks like you should quit early, Coach. Take your girl out for drinks. Catch up a little.”

“That would be awesome,” Holly says. “I stopped at the dormitory first, and Coach Pat said I could probably shake Jamie free.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say slowly. “Let’s head out.”

“You kids have fun,” Wes drawls. Then he turns his back on me and blows his whistle. “Let’s go, ladies! Enough standing around.”

That’s how I replace myself removing my skates and exiting the rink an hour early with Holly.

“God, you look good!” She stops on the steps of the building to hit me with another blinding smile, then stands up on her tiptoes and… kisses me. Her mouth is smaller and softer than I expect it to be. Confusion must be written all over my face, because she says, “Sorry to surprise you, but I thought it would be fun.”

“It’s… Wow,” I stammer. “How did you get here?”

“Well, when I threatened to take up trapeze, my uncle lent me his car. Thought I’d get away for the night.”

I do the math. It’s got to be a five-hour drive from Cape Cod. “Wow,” I say again. Apparently “wow” is now three quarters of my vocabulary.

“Jamie,” she says, staring up at me. “Stop freaking out.”

“What?”

She tilts her head to the side, and those familiar blue eyes study me. “You’re panicking. Why?”

“Um…” I can’t tell her. But I can’t not tell her. Because Holly is almost certainly planning to stay with me tonight. In fact, last summer I told her she could visit and I’d make it work, but she hadn’t been able to swing it then.

Fuck.

“Honey.” She reaches up to cup the side of my neck. “Is there someone else?”

My heart spasms, because there is someone else. Sort of. Wes and I aren’t a couple, exactly. We’ve never had one word of conversation about it. But there’s no way I’m sleeping with someone else right now—that just wouldn’t be right.

“There is,” I admit.

Her eyes widen. She’d asked the question, but she still seems pretty shocked by my answer. “Who is she?”

I shake my head. “You don’t know her. I’m sorry,” I say quickly.

She takes her hand off me and steps backward. “Okay.” She bites her lip. “I should have called.”

“I’m sorry,” I repeat.

And I am. Holly has only been good to me. But after graduation, we’d had a little talk. She’d said, “I want to see you when you’re in Detroit,” and I’d said, “That’s probably not going to work.”

She’d said, “We’ll see.” And now here she is, her face turning red.

“Look,” I tell her. “Let’s go have ice cream. Or tequila, if you prefer. I want to catch up with you.”

“We’re still friends,” she says softly.

“Always.”

Her eyes wander away from me and over toward the lake. She takes a slow breath and lets it out again. “Okay, Jamie Canning. Show me Lake Placid. You always talk about how much you love it here.” Her gaze returns to mine. “Show me why.”

For a moment, my mind goes straight into the gutter, because Lake Placid means something a little different to me this summer than it ever has before. But I clobber that thought and hold out a hand for her. “How do you feel about waffle cones?”

She closes her fingers around mine. “I feel pretty good about waffle cones.”

We spend the afternoon together walking all over town. Holly likes to poke around in the little touristy shops, and this gets old pretty fast. But since I’ve ruined her day once already, I just go along with it. I show her the toy store with the awesome rubber band guns, and she buys one for her brother. They have targets set up inside the store, so we stand there for a long time trying to outshoot each other.

A few doors down there’s another kitschy shop, and I hold back my sigh when she leads me inside. She stops to look at a bunch of Miracle on Ice coffee mugs, while I wander over to the back aisle where they have a bunch of candy for sale in bulk. And when I take a closer look, I let out a bark of disbelief.

“What is it?” Holly asks.

“Purple Skittles!” I grab a bag and hold it under the chute. “Pull the lever,” I tell Holly. She does, and I don’t say “stop” until the bag is full. Then I chuckle all the way to the checkout counter.

“What’s so funny?”

I toss my wallet onto the counter. “I have this friend,” I begin. I feel like a heel describing Wes that way, but it’s the best I can do at the moment. “We used to send this box back and forth with, like, gag gifts inside.”

“That’s fun. And he likes purple Skittles?”

“Yeah. Except the last time I sent him purple Skittles in the box, you had to buy all the colors at once. I bought four giant bags at BJ’s…” Holy God, the name of the store causes an inappropriate bubble of laughter to rise in my chest. “I sorted them myself and sent him only the purple ones. Then I shared, like, five pounds of the other ones with my high school buddies at a party. It was a kegger, and when they did the Technicolor yawn, it was really Technicolor.”

She hip-checks me. “Thanks for that visual.”

“My pleasure.”

When we step outside, she clears her throat. “Jamie, I need to replace a place to stay tonight. Can we sit down somewhere so I can use my phone?”

I don’t answer right away, because I’m wracking my brain for a solution. Which doesn’t come easy, because the dormitory is always plenty full. “Let me replace you a hotel room,” I suggest.

“I’ve got it,” she says quickly. “Seriously. It’s no big deal.”

Still. “Let’s sit on the porch at the dorm. You can use the wi-fi. And if everything is booked up, I’ll ask Pat for help.”

“Thank you.” Her voice is low.

Another apology is on the tip of my tongue. But I don’t say it, because I don’t think she wants to hear it.

There’s nobody in the rocking chairs, so I set Holly up with the wi-fi password and tell her I’m going to get us a couple of drinks. “I’ll be right back,” I promise. Then I shoot up the stairs and drop by our room, hoping that Wes is there.

The room is empty.

Before I leave again, I dig out that gift box Wes had sent me in Boston. I’d brought it all the way to Lake Placid, because I was trying to decide whether I should restart our meme. But then he showed up here, and I forgot about it entirely.

Now I dump a motherlode of purple candy into the box and close the cover. Setting it on his pillow, I wonder if I should leave some kind of note. But what the hell would it say?

Before Holly showed up, it didn’t seem to matter that Wes and I were hooking up without any sort of discussion about it. We didn’t need a label. This room was like our private bubble—everything that happened here was just between us. The rest of the world didn’t matter.

And that was fine. Except the rest of the world still exists, whether I remember it or not. Suddenly this whole thing has gotten all kinds of tricky, and not because of Holly—that was just an awkward moment with a friend. In a few short weeks, though, he and I would land on two different NHL teams in two different cities. We were heading for an upset regardless, and I just hadn’t realized it.

Hurrying back downstairs, I grab two sodas and take them to the porch where my ex-fuck-buddy waits. “I found a place just outside of town,” she says. “It wasn’t even expensive.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want you to—”

She holds up a hand, silencing me. “It’s fine, sweetie. And in the morning I’m going to drive back to Massachusetts, okay?”

“We could—”

Holly shakes her head. “You have a job to do. And it’s not your fault, Jamie. I didn’t… I wasn’t being smart.” The words are firm, but her eyes water a little, and it kills me to see it.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I do care about you but…”

Once more she waves me off. “You were never dishonest, Jamie. Don’t start now.”

Well okay then.

We go out to dinner together. I pick a nice seafood restaurant right on the water, but as we eat our crabcakes, the mood is subdued.

“Will you tell me about her?” she asks at one point.

I shake my head. “Let’s not do that.”

Holly gives me a rueful grin. “I was just trying to be a big girl about it.”

I take a long look at her. “Can I tell you something I’m trying to be a big girl about?”

Holly giggles, and I’m happy to have made her do that. “What?”

“The idea of moving to Detroit depresses the hell out of me.” I haven’t said that to anyone yet, and it feels good to get it off my chest.

She stirs her drink with her straw. “I know it’s not the prettiest city in the world, but you can replace a nice place there, I bet.”

I shake my head. “Urban decay isn’t the problem.” Although it isn’t helping me picture a life there. “I don’t know a soul. And I’m not getting any playing time next year. Let’s be honest.”

“Oh, honey.” She sighs. “The first year could suck. But you’re good at what you do.”

“See, I know that. It’s not that I lack confidence. But the odds of really making it as a goalie are awful. It isn’t just the first year that might suck. It could be five years where they play me twice a season, and I’m just waiting around for my big chance. Or they send me to the minors, and I play seven games instead of two.”

“Or someone could get hurt, and your number could come up.” She puts her hand over mine. “But I know what you’re saying. It’s a long shot. And it won’t be your fault if it doesn’t work out.”

A waiter comes over to take our plates out of the way, and Holly orders a piece of blackout cake. “And two spoons.”

I’ve never been a fan of blackout cake, but now is not the time to point that out.

“I don’t like feeling ungrateful,” I tell her. “Everyone is so excited for me—they hear ‘NHL’ and get stars in their eyes. I’m not sure what to do.”

“I guess you show up and try it. Give it a year?”

“Maybe.” That’s the easy choice. But I can see how I could end up waiting forever. You could keep telling yourself, just a little longer! “Maybe there’s something else I could do with that year, though.”

“What does your friend Wes think?” she asks suddenly.

“What?” The mention of his name startles me.

“What does he think about Detroit?” She waits for my answer.

“I, uh, haven’t asked his opinion,” I confess. “He wants to be in the pros so badly. I’m not sure he’d understand. But it’s different for him. There’s more demand for centers. And he’s got that Frozen Four win…”

“Should have been yours,” Holly says firmly. She’s loyal to the core.

I look across the table at her wide-set eyes and wish things were different. If I was in love with Holly, life would be less confusing.

But I’m not. And it isn’t.

When the dark chocolate cake arrives, I tell her I’m too full to have any. Then I pick up the check on my way to the men’s room, so she can’t get to it first.