Center Ice: Chapter 18

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here tonight,” Jameson says as he comes to a quick stop in front of me. His words are casual, but his tone is laced with suspicion.

“Didn’t we decide I was going to volunteer with the team when I wasn’t traveling?”

“You know Audrey’s not going to be here tonight, right?” he asks.

This feels a bit like a trap. “Why would I know that?”

“I thought you two talked.”

“Not often enough that I know her whereabouts,” I say right as Graham skates up, grabbing onto Jameson’s leg with both arms.

“I had strep throat,” he tells me.

I almost say, I know, but catch myself. Jameson doesn’t need to know that Audrey texted me Sunday to thank me for the children’s ibuprofen I’d left on her back steps that morning, and again as they left the doctor’s office to tell me the diagnosis.

“Oh yeah? Are you feeling better now?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’m not con-tay-jus anymore.” He struggles over the word. “But now Mom is sick. I’m staying with Uncle Jameson and Aunt Lauren again tonight so she can rest.”

“Oh no. Does she have strep too?”

Graham shrugs right as Jameson mutters something about her being too stubborn to go to the doctor. I’m about to ask more questions, but Jameson picks that time to start practice. So instead, I spend the next hour working with six- and seven-year-olds on some basic shooting skills while worrying about Audrey and why she hasn’t gone to the doctor if she’s sick.

And when it’s time to leave, I drive straight to her place. I call her when I’m a couple of blocks away, but she doesn’t answer. So I send her a text instead.

When I knock on the back door, I see movement through the frosted glass. I’m surprised when she opens the door without me having to bang it down.

She stands in the doorframe as if she could block me from coming in. Her dark hair is greasy and held off her face in a messy ponytail, and she looks deathly pale. I reach out and place my hand on her forehead, and her lips turn down at the corners in response to my touch.

“You’re burning up.” I know she’s an adult capable of taking care of herself, but I’m worried about her just the same. I hate seeing her sick and in pain.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” she croaks, her voice hoarse, like she’d been screaming at a concert all night.

“Have you been to the doctor?” I ask, even though I know the answer.

She folds her arms across her chest in defiance, and her chin tilts up as she says, “No.”

“Why not?”

She looks away, focusing on my Jeep sitting at the bottom of her back steps. “You found the parking space, I take it.”

“Yes, and I’m about to throw you in my car and take you for a strep test.”

“The doctor’s office is closed.”

“Yeah, but you can do a rapid strep test at almost any pharmacy. I checked the one two blocks away, and it’s open for another half hour.”

She leans against the door frame so quickly I’m afraid she’s about to collapse. “Drew, I don’t even have the energy to get dressed.”

“Which is exactly why you need to go take a test. If you got strep from Graham, you can get antibiotics and feel better in, like, twenty-four hours. Why wouldn’t you?”

Looking away again, she clears her throat as she refuses to meet my gaze. Then she winces in pain, and I’m guessing that her throat hurts too much to respond.

“Audrey, when Graham had all the symptoms of strep, you took him to the doctor’s, right?”

She looks over at me and nods.

“Your throat hurt too much to talk?”

She nods again.

“Where’s your health insurance card?” I ask.

Reaching over, she grabs her purse off the kitchen counter right inside the door. I scoop her up in my arms—shocked she doesn’t protest—then hold her tight against me while I reach out to shut the door and press the button on the keypad to lock it.

She rests her head against my chest as I take the few steps down to the back alley. The crisp fall air is cold tonight, and by the time we reach my Jeep, she’s shivering even though I can feel the heat radiating off her.

“When’s the last time you took something for this fever?” I ask as I pull the door open with one hand and maneuver her into the seat.

“Don’t remember.” The words are practically mumbled.

I don’t understand why she’s being so irresponsible about taking care of herself, but I’m also willing to bet there’s a reason, because she’s old enough and mature enough to know better.

When I climb into the driver’s seat, I reach over and turn her seat warmer on, and by the time we’ve driven the few blocks to the pharmacy, she’s half-asleep in the seat. “Think you can walk in, or should I carry you?”

Her eyes shoot open, and then a faint smile graces her full lips. “Why are there plastic ducks lined up on your dashboard?”

I glance at the row of plastic ducks that sit wedged between the dashboard and windshield. “It’s a Jeep thing. So…are you walking, or am I carrying you?”

“I’ll walk.”

Forty-five minutes later, we’re back at her place. I made her take ibuprofen and drink a bottle of water while we waited for the positive test results at the pharmacy, and now that we’re home, she can eat something and take her antibiotics.

I get her seated at one of the barstools, refill her water bottle, and go about making her some toast.

“You want to tell me why you didn’t go to the doctor when you started feeling sick?”

“Not really,” she says. She lays her forearm across the counter and leans down to rest her forehead on it.

“Audrey, left untreated, strep can turn into scarlet fever. You’re too smart to not take care of something like this.”

“I just don’t like going to the doctor.”

“Why not?”

“Too many bad memories.”

I consider how much to push her for information. She’s not volunteering it, but I want to understand what the fear is. “Want to talk about it?”

She’s silent for so long, I’m thinking maybe she fell asleep, but then she says, “My mom died of cancer when I was a teenager. There were a lot of doctor’s visits. A lot of hospital stays. And eventually, a lot of hospice equipment in our house. There were also a few misdiagnoses, and I just don’t trust doctors.”

I come around the counter and set her plate with her toast in front of her, then pull out a seat for myself. I rest my hand on her back, wanting her to know I’m here for support. “I’m sorry you went through that.”

“Me too,” she says, then she sits up and pulls the plate with her toast closer. She takes small bites and washes them down with water, while I sit next to her, wishing there was something I could do to take her pain away. I’m not so worried about the strep, as that’ll clear up quickly once she’s got a couple of doses of the antibiotics in her. But I wish her past wasn’t so painful for her.

“What did you do about doctors and hospitals when you were pregnant, and for Graham’s birth?” The shame that I wasn’t there for that, to support her and help her, feels almost overwhelming in this moment. I’ve already let her down so much in the past, but there’s nothing I can do about it now, except be there for her moving forward.

“I had a nurse practitioner who worked with a doula, and I gave birth at a birthing center instead of a hospital.”

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you then,” I tell her, chest tight.

“We’re not dwelling on that,” she says softly. Her voice is scratchy in a way that I’m sure reflects how sore her throat is, but it’s sexy, nonetheless. “Remember?”

I glance over at her and nod. Her big blue eyes now have sunken purple hollows beneath them, but even sick and without a dab of makeup, I’m still struck by her natural beauty.

“My dad died when I was Graham’s age,” I tell her. “I don’t remember him, really. He was a linesman for the electric company and a car crashed into the truck holding his lift when he was up in the bucket working on an electrical pole.” A shudder runs through my body as I picture the terrible scene of his death, and Audrey moves her hand to my forearm. “You know the state law about how there has to be a police detail now any time there’s a public works project? My dad is one of the reasons that law exists.”

She squeezes my arm, but doesn’t say anything. Then she rests her head on my shoulder, but after only a minute, her hand on my arm goes limp and her head feels heavy. This is the second time she’s fallen asleep in as many hours.

“Hey,” I whisper, not wanting to startle her. She jolts awake anyway, her head flying up off my arm. She relaxes when she sees me sitting next to her, but I have to wonder if this reaction is left over from years of being woken up by Graham in the middle of the night when he was younger. “Let’s get these antibiotics in you and then get you to bed.”

I push two tabs out through the foil on the back of the plastic holder, and hand them to her with her water. She swallows them down with a little wince, and without thinking, I reach out and smooth the wrinkle across her brow.

“C’mon, I’m going to carry you upstairs.”

“I can manage the stairs,” she whispers.

“You couldn’t even walk up the half flight of stairs to your back door when we got home twenty minutes ago”—I slide one arm under her knees and another behind her back, and lift her from her seat—“and now you think you’re going to do a full flight of stairs on your own?”

“I could have done it if I had to,” she says as she relaxes into my chest.

That sentence haunts me as I carry her through the entryway and up the stairs. How much of her life has been defined by that sentiment—I could have done it if I had to?

Her eyes are already closed when I lay her on her bed. As I set about taking off her shoes, unzipping her hoodie, and then lifting her enough to get her under her covers, I keep thinking the same thing: I don’t want her to have to do this all by herself anymore.

But what does that even mean? What can it mean? I’m gone half the season for hockey, and I have this one year to prove to the Rebels that they should sign me to a new contract. There’s never been a more important year in my career. Because I have to stay in Boston to help with my mom—she has to be my number one priority when I’m not playing hockey. It’s what I committed to when I moved back. It’s what I promised my sisters. It’s what’s right, after everything she’s done and given up for me over the years.

And now there’s Graham. I want to get to know my son. It’s going to be enough of a struggle to find the time to spend with him. How could I throw Audrey, and any potential feelings I have for her, into the mix too? It wouldn’t be fair to make her my fourth priority. Like I told her the other night, she deserves to be someone’s first priority.

As much as I’ve tried to come up with a different solution, I arrive back at the same conclusion each time.

I reach over and turn out the bedside lamp I turned on when we came in, but then Audrey’s arm flies out like she’s grasping for something, and her hand lands on my stomach, only inches from the waistband of my sweats.

“Stay?” The word is so quiet I’m not sure if I heard it or imagined it.

“What?” I whisper, reaching down and smoothing her ponytail back away from her face.

“Will you stay for a minute? Rub my back until I fall asleep?” I don’t know if it’s because she’s half asleep or sick, but she sounds so vulnerable. She could ask me for just about anything, and I’d say yes. She’s the weak side I didn’t know I had and am not sure I want to give her up. But what choice do I have? I can’t be what she needs.

“Sure,” I say as I sit on the edge of her bed.

She scoots toward the center of the bed and rolls on her side. “I’m making room so you can lay down.”

I chuckle to myself when I consider what happened when we were lying next to each other on her couch the other night. But she’s sick, and so it’s not like anything is going to happen tonight.

I lie on my side, facing her back, and let my hand stroke up and down her spine. She’s not burning up like she was before, but she’s still warm.

“Thank you,” she says, her voice groggy as she’s clearly on the edge of sleep. “I really hope I don’t get you sick, though.”

“My tonsils were removed when I was seven. I can’t get strep.”

“Good. Because it’s been nice having someone take care of me for a change.”

I rub my hand along the bumpy ridges of her spine, then sweep over her upper back like I’m tracing wings along each side. “Anytime, Audrey.”

The orange light of early morning is streaming through the open curtains at the edge of her room as the sun rises just enough to light the sky, but not high enough to be visible above the three- and four-story brownstones of the South End.

Audrey’s in the center of the bed, lying on her stomach with her arms folded so her elbows are out and her hands are beneath her cheek. Her face is turned away from me so I can’t see if she’s awake, but her low and steady breathing has me pretty convinced she’s still sleeping.

Knowing she needs as much sleep as possible to recover, I get up as quietly as I can. I didn’t mean to fall asleep here last night, but since I did, I’ll make her some coffee before I head out.

In the kitchen, I get the coffee going and then look around for something I can use to write a note. There’s a packet of papers sitting on the counter along the wall, so I head over to see if it can be written on. When my eyes land on the photocopy of a family tree, with the lines to write in the members of a family, my jaw drops.

The tree has a line drawn in pencil straight down the middle, from the top of the tree right through the trunk. The right side is completely shaded in, like Graham took his pencil and scribbled as hard as he could across the side meant to house the information about his dad’s family. On the left side of the tree, Audrey Flynn is listed on the branch labeled Mom and small red hearts are drawn around her name. The small branches below it, meant for siblings, and large branches above it, meant for grandparents, are all blank.

My stomach flips over, the bile rising to the back of my throat, and I swallow it down, but it feels lodged there, burning away at my esophagus. I grip the edge of the counter and look up at the ceiling. “Fuck,” I mumble under my breath as my fingertips press into the countertops so hard it makes my knuckles ache.

“Yeah.” Audrey’s soft voice fills the space, and I glance over at her standing in the opening to the kitchen. Her skin glistens with a thin sheen of sweat, like her fever broke in her sleep. Her tank top clings to her, and her sweatpants hang on her hips. She looks exhausted, but she walked down the stairs by herself and is leaning against the door frame without looking like it’s holding her up—which is progress. “That was a tough kindergarten assignment to have sent home. I’d asked if he could draw his own family tree so he could include Jameson and Jules. But there was a note on it from his teacher that just said, ‘Graham decided he didn’t want to draw his own family tree.’”

A hundred questions run through my mind—about what Graham does and doesn’t know, about why her parents aren’t listed there, about whether she eventually wants to give him siblings…

“Audrey—” The angry buzzing of my phone stops me short, because when I glance down at where I must have left it on the counter next to my sweatshirt last night, Caitlyn’s name is flashing on my screen.

And I know. Right in that split second, I know that I fucked up. I was so concerned about Audrey last night that I completely forgot I was supposed to be at my mom’s house early this morning so I could bring her to an appointment at the hospital. “I’m so sorry,” I tell her, “I have to answer this.”

She nods and folds her arms under her chest, and I’m already grabbing my keys and my wallet and shoving them in my pocket. “I’m on my way,” I say into the phone.

“Where the hell are you?! I’ve called you four times. You were supposed to be at Mom’s an hour ago.”

“I’m so sorry. I overslept. I can be there in, like, twenty minutes.”

Caitlyn barks out a laugh. “You can’t get anywhere in Boston in twenty minutes. It’s rush hour. By the time you get out here, and then back into Longwood Medical Center, you’ll miss the damn appointment, Drew.” She spits out my name like I’m the world’s biggest asshole. And in this moment, maybe I am. “This is kind of an important one, you know.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.”

“I have to leave for work. I’ll bring Mom with me. You can meet us at my office and take her from there.”

Even though the doctor’s office Caitlyn works at is only two blocks from the hospital, we generally try not to do this type of hand-off with mom because it can be confusing for her. But right now, we don’t have a choice.

Caitlyn hangs up on me, and I look at Audrey helplessly. We deserve to have this conversation about Graham, but I can’t do it right now. “I’m so sorry, I have to go. I was supposed to take my mom to an appointment this morning.”

“It’s okay, Drew,” she says, and she sounds resigned. “I get it. We’ll talk later.”

I’m angry at myself, and at this situation, and at the way I’m making her feel like she’s not a priority. But isn’t this what I was reminding myself about last night—that I already have too much on my plate? She deserves better than what I can offer her right now. She deserves someone who can give everything to a relationship, who can put their whole focus on loving her like she deserves to be loved.

She locks the door behind me, and I take the steps down to my Jeep, knowing that there were no good choices in this situation, but feeling like I somehow made the wrong decision, nonetheless.