Center Ice: Chapter 19

“Tell me again why you’ve pulled that hat down so far you probably can’t even see?” Lauren teases as we walk down the steeply pitched steps inside Boston’s Liberty Arena, where the Rebels play their home games.

“He’s not going to see you, you know,” Jules says from behind me.

“Oh?” Lauren says, her voice taking on the higher-pitched note of interest. “Are we talking about this now?”

I grip the railing in the center of the stairs so I can shoot a look at Jules over my shoulder and not go tumbling down headfirst. I really can’t see much from under the brim of this hat. The players are already on the ice warming up, and the last thing I need is to make a scene and draw attention to myself.

I haven’t talked to Drew since he left my house yesterday morning, and I’d really rather he not know that I’m here tonight.

“No,” I say, my voice strong and certain. “We are not talking about this right now.”

“We’re going to have to eventually,” Lauren says, pausing as she looks around for her fiancé. He and Graham went ahead while we stopped to grab some drinks and popcorn, but they’re not in our usual row.

“Yes, but eventually is not now.” A few rows up from the ice, I see Graham standing on a seat with Jameson holding on to his waist so he doesn’t fall, and waving up at us.

Lauren laughs, but continues down the stairs until she gets to the row where Jameson sits with Graham. “Babe,” she says, and it amuses me to no end when she and my grumpy brother, who absolutely melts for his future wife, use these terms of endearment for each other. “Are you just down here to watch warmups?”

“No, these are our seats.”

“Our seats are up there,” she says, hitching her thumb over her shoulder and motioning behind us.

“Remember, I said I was getting new seats this season?” he asks.

“I remember you saying you were getting more seats,” she says, and that’s how I remember it too.

Jameson previously had two season tickets for his former team, and they were eighteen rows behind the Rebels’ bench, which would have put seventeen rows of fans between me and Drew. This set of six seats is only five rows back from the bench, and the knot of dread in my stomach curls its tendrils into my chest. Unless he never glances up, there’s no way he’s not going to see us here every time he comes off the ice, especially since right now there are only a few other people scattered amongst the seats between us and the glass.

“This was what was available if I wanted six seats together.” He shrugs. “Why? You don’t want to see the game up close and personal like this?”

A shiver runs across my shoulder blades. Back when Jameson played for the Rebels, our family had season tickets and we’d go together to watch him play. Dad always loved the brutality of hockey. If there was a dirty hit or a fight broke out on the ice, he’d be the first one out of his seat cheering. But that’s the part I hate, and the part that worries me about Graham loving this sport so much. It’s hard to imagine my sweet boy getting pummeled, and even harder to imagine him hurting someone on purpose.

“They’re great seats,” Lauren says as she scoots into the row and takes the seat next to Jameson’s. “No complaints.”

Jules sighs as she scoots into the row and sits. “Ugh. I feel like I can smell their sweat from here.”

“They’re not even warmed up yet,” Jameson says. “Stop being so dramatic.”

“I just hate hockey,” Jules says.

“We know,” all of us say in unison.

“Why did you come if you hate hockey?” Graham asks his aunt. It’s an innocent question, though the answer is anything but. There was a time when Jules loved hockey, then a trip to Las Vegas ruined it all.

“Because I love you, Bud. And I wanted to see you watching your first professional hockey game.”

When Jameson promised Graham he’d bring him to the first home game this season, I’d assumed he meant the home opener. Then yesterday, after I finally showered and was feeling a bit better, Jameson called to remind me about tonight’s pre-season game.

I feel weird being here without having told Drew I was coming, but he hasn’t reached out since he rushed out for his mom’s appointment yesterday morning, and I felt awkward being the one to contact him. I rationalized coming tonight by assuring myself he’d have no idea I was here. But now…?

We need to talk. We need to figure out what we’re going to tell Graham, and when. I need to know when he’s planning on telling his family, and I want to talk about how we should tell Jameson. But we can’t have that conversation, or at least not in person, because when this game is over, they’re hopping on their plane and heading out for two pre-season road games. He won’t be back until later this week.

From her seat next to me, Jules knocks my elbow with hers. When I glance up, she looks toward the ice. Drew’s standing there talking to the Rebels captain, Ronan McCabe, who looks pissed off—but that’s kind of his default. It’s funny, though, because I can’t quite get a read on Drew. He doesn’t seem quite like himself.

Then McCabe skates away and Drew’s gaze drops to the ice as he takes a deep breath, and then looks up, his eyes scanning the stands. He gives Jameson a nod, then his eyes widen. Graham is waving at him frantically, and Drew gives him a smile and a wave, and then his eyes move down the row. When he sees me, he quickly turns away, skating over toward the blue line where some of his teammates are congregated.

I know it’s just because he doesn’t want Jameson to notice him looking at me. But two nights ago, he took care of me while I was sick and he slept in my bed, and a week ago, he was halfway to making me come before Graham woke up sick. So him ignoring me now stings, and it’s an important reminder that this is exactly why it’s a mistake to get involved with Drew—there are too many complications.

If I want him to have a relationship with Graham, and I do, then I can’t be a drain on his time. He knows what his priorities are—what they have to be—and I have to respect that. Besides, the absolute last thing I need in this world is another broken heart. And as I watch the women who are up at the glass for the warmups wearing his jersey and yelling his name to get his attention, I know that’s what Drew is…a heartbreak waiting to happen.

“What’s wrong?” Jules leans in toward me and whispers.

“Nothing.” I rest my head on her shoulder, using her thick blond hair as a pillow. She’d come home yesterday—a full day early—because I’d texted her that I had strep, and I’d neglected to mention that Drew was there taking care of me. She’d found me asleep on the couch an hour or two after Drew left, and forced me to take a shower. By last night, I’d felt like I was on the mend, and I woke up this morning with barely a sore throat. Drew was right about getting the antibiotics and taking care of this, and I feel a bit ridiculous that I didn’t go on my way home from pole dancing when I first felt sick.

“You’re going to have to tell people soon.” Her whispered words graze over my hair, and the knot of dread settles into the pit of my stomach. “Everyone’s going to figure it out—not only because Graham looks so much like him, but also because he can’t take his eyes off you.”

My eyes are fixed on Drew, so I haven’t missed the number of times his have flicked sideways to glance at me while he’s on the ice stretching. Watching him, with his knees spread on the ice as he lightly bounces and shifts his weight to each side, stretching out his inner thighs and groin, has the desire snaking up through my core and winding its way around that pit in my stomach. I don’t know which emotion—desire or dread—should win out.

From my other side, Lauren whispers, “See something you like?”

I jolt up, my head flying off Jules’s shoulder as I sit ramrod straight and make sure I’m looking anywhere but at Drew. In my peripheral vision, I see Jameson turn to me. “You okay, Audrey?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Jules just poked me in the side, is all.”

From my other side, Jules’s shoulders shake with laughter.

The players finish their warmup and head to the locker room. Hockey players are the most superstitious athletes you’ll ever meet, and I wonder what Drew’s doing right now. I imagine him quiet and focused on game day, the way he was when he was really trying to understand calculus. But he could have any number of things he does right before a game, and I’d have no idea—because I don’t know him anymore, and probably never really did.

Instead of sitting there through the music and announcements and driving myself crazy trying to figure out who Drew is now, I excuse myself and head to the restroom. By the time I get back, the arena is dark and the blue and white lights are flashing to announce the Rebels. While the music blares and the players skate out through the mist at the entrance to the rink, fans are whipping around the white towels with the dark and light blue Rebels logo that they handed out at the entrance to tonight’s game. The entire arena is filled with a palpable sense of excitement at having them back on the ice again for the first time this season.

And for the next two hours, it feels like I do nothing but focus on my own body. On making sure that I don’t let my eyes track to Drew when he’s on the bench, only a few rows in front of me. On reminding myself to breathe every minute he’s on the ice, because I’m both elated to see him skating and also terrified something will happen to him. On how my fists clench with nerves each time he takes a face-off, and how quickly I jump out of my seat when he scores the second goal of the game.

By the time we’re halfway through the third period, my whole body is exhausted from the tension. So I leave before the game is over, carrying a sleepy Graham down the escalator to the street, and catching a cab home.

And an hour later, with Graham fast asleep in Jameson’s old Rebels jersey he didn’t want to take off, I’m now sitting on my bed with a wholesome British baking show on the TV across the room, and a pile of clean laundry that needs folding spread out before me.

Next to me, my phone lights up with a new text.

I honestly don’t want to wait to talk to him—there’s so much to figure out—but I also think the conversation we need to have deserves to be in-person.

I actually laugh out loud at how ridiculous that statement is.

My brother was a professional hockey player, and I know all about the debauchery that goes on the night after a win. The VIP rooms in clubs, the women who flock to wherever the players will be, the alcohol that flows freely. If Drew was in town, he most definitely would not be sitting on my bed folding laundry with me.

Even my thoughts feel like a broken record now: I need to be the responsible one here. Because having flirty text exchanges with Drew is not going to get us to the point where we can co-parent Graham.

If I let things happen between me and Drew, and then it didn’t work out, I can’t have him walking out of Graham’s life like Scott did. I know Drew thinks he’d never do that, and it’s probably not fair of me to assume he’d be anything like Scott in that situation. But at the same time, I have to consider the possibility. And it would be a hundred times worse for Graham this time around, because Drew actually is his dad. Plus, he was young enough when I was dating Scott that eventually he forgot about him, but that wouldn’t be the case with Drew.

Which means this conversation needs to be shut down. Right now.

I turn my phone over, screen down, so I won’t be distracted by his texts. And then I sit on my bed, folding my laundry into neat piles while I watch people bake savory meat pies. And I try not to wonder what it would be like if Drew was here keeping me company.