Center Ice (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-Two

- Karen -

Tuesday was the first day of school, but that didn’t mean I had to give up on all my summer routine. I woke up before my alarm and practically sprinted out of the house and down to the park. I was eager to get away from all the family drama, and just as enthusiastic about seeing Tyler again. It was scary how much I’d missed him the day before.

I stretched while I sat on the grass waiting for him, and just as my stomach was beginning the process of tightening in anxiety he appeared, jogging easily from the direction of his billet. I stood up and waved to him, he waved back, and then I had nothing to do but stand there like an idiot as he made his way closer.

“Hi,” he said, coming to a stop in front of me.

“Hi,” I responded. We were pretty smooth.

He was looking at me as if he was trying to read my expression, and when he took a half-step closer I wiggled my eyebrows a little. I’m not sure exactly what I was trying to convey, but I got the result I was hoping for: he relaxed a little, stepped right into my space, and leaned down to kiss me.

Kissing Tyler made me understand the old cliché about people having chemistry, because there
had
to be something more than simple bodily mechanics going on to make me feel the way I did. It was like my whole body was changing state, going from solid to liquid, heating up and flowing toward him. He had one hand on my jaw, light and gentle, while the other was spread out on the small of my back, strong as it pulled me toward him. I wanted to stay there with him forever, wanted to keep going, strip down and rediscover each other right there on the grass.

But we weren’t at our secluded beach anymore, and it was full daylight. He resisted a little when I started to pull away, but then his hand released me and caught me when I staggered from the letdown. “Not the time or place,” I gasped.

“We should blow off school,” he suggested. “Nothing ever happens on the first day anyway. We could spend the whole day…” He didn’t finish the sentence, just gave me an eyebrow wiggle of his own.

“And how would the Rangers feel about that?”

“Raiders,” he corrected with a grin. Then his expression grew more serious. “They wouldn’t be impressed,” he admitted. He shook his head as if there was more to it than he was telling me, then nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. I have to go to school. And I want to run. So you, missy, you had just better keep that luscious body away from me. I am a man, and I can’t be expected to control myself; as a woman, it’s your duty to—”

He didn’t seem completely surprised by the raspberry I blew in his direction. He was right about the rest of it, though. We needed to go to school, we wanted to run, so we should get to it.

It wasn’t easy. We started off in the woods together, and where the path narrowed he took the lead. That meant I got a beautiful view of his body working the way it was meant to, and I can’t say my dirty mind didn’t remind me of a few other ways that his body could function. When we looped out into the grassy area, I sped up to run beside him, and when we got back to the narrow part of the path I sprinted ahead. Let
him
be the tortured one this time around.

Even with our good intentions, we quit earlier than we usually did. We stretched out on the grass a little and then Tyler said, “It’s important to cool down properly. Maybe we should take another lap of the woods, just walking.”

“If I go into those woods with you I am
not
going to be ‘cooling down’,” I retorted.

He grinned, looked at his watch, and looked back at me with a mischievous expression. “That’d be so bad?”

God, I was crazy about him. Not just the physical, although that was certainly taking a big role in my feelings right then. But I’d thought he was hot long before I got to know him, and I hadn’t been this out of control. No, the crazy was coming from my brain, or my heart or whatever, not from my body. I wanted to make him smile, and I wanted to tell him my secrets and hear all of his. Sure, maybe I wanted to do a lot of that stuff with no clothes on, but even
with
clothes on it seemed like a better way to spend the day than going to some stupid school.

I thought of Natalie and how much she already had on her plate, and I made a face and scooted a little farther away from him. “I need to be good,” I said.

“For how long? I’ve got practice ’til about six, then I have to eat…probably ’til six thirty? Then curfew at ten. Nobody’s going to give us homework on the first day of classes, so that’s three and a half hours. Got any plans?”

“Hmmm…I was thinking about washing my hair.”

He tugged gently on my ponytail. “Seems clean to me.”

“Well, then, I guess I’m free. You want to go to the lake?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sounds good.” Now that we had a plan, it seemed easier for us to stand up and move away from each other, at least a little.

It still took us a while to make the final break, and by the time I got home everyone else was already up and eating breakfast. Will frowned at me. “You need to hurry up; you don’t want to be late on the first day. Matt’s driving—he’ll be leaving in half an hour.”

Which gave me plenty of time, considering my traditional easy-care makeup and hair routine, but I didn’t want to argue with him about that. “Actually, Tyler said he’d come by and pick me up.” I felt guilty saying it in front of Miranda, but I didn’t think she was so weak that she needed me to be sneaking around just to spare her feelings.

And she actually managed a tight smile in my direction. “Good. If people are talking about that, it’ll give them less energy to talk about anything else.”

“Happy to serve,” I said, and I poured myself a bowl of cereal. Matt handed me the milk jug, and Will stayed cautiously silent, obviously not wanting to disturb the détente.

I tweaked Sara’s jaunty ponytail. “First day of high school—you excited?”

She shrugged then reached over and pulled on
my
ponytail. “First day at a new school—
you
excited?”

Yeah, we were just as sickening as I’d thought the family was when I first arrived, but it felt a bit different when you were one of the people rolling around in the sugar pile.

School turned out to be a bit better than I’d expected, too. I admit, I was a bit nervous, but my sweaty palms were a little cooler because one of them was pressed against Tyler’s. We ended up having English together, and Cooper was in my biology class, so it was only calculus where I didn’t know anybody. I was hoping to drop that course, anyway, so I didn’t worry about it too much. Lunch was spent with the hockey player crowd, Tyler hovering around protectively until Dawn shooed him off to get us some fries and tucked her bright red head in next to mine.

“You’re doing okay, right? Having fun? Everything’s good?”

“Way better than I expected.”

She smiled at me, then said, “You make Tyler happy.”

It was nice to hear, but a bit weird, too. “Is he usually unhappy?”

“He’s usually kind of tense. He’s a worrier, always looking for the worst case scenario. I think you make him a bit more optimistic.”

“I think he does the same for me.”

“Nice,” she said. “Me and Cooper don’t work that way. He’s super-responsible, I’m a bit of a flake; so we balance each other out, which is good, but we end up fighting all the time, which isn’t great.”

It was maybe a bit more than I needed to hear about this girl I’d only known for a couple days, but it felt good to have a friend. “Tyler and I haven’t actually had a fight yet.” I frowned. “But I guess we haven’t known each other all that long. It
feels
like a long time, but it really hasn’t been.”

“Sometimes things just click,” she said wisely. I have no idea what TV show or movie she was pulling her wisdom out of, but I liked it.

And as the week wore on, I began to think maybe she was right. It seemed like part of my life
had
clicked. School was good, especially when I got into history instead of calculus. Tyler was good, and we drove out to the lake almost every night. Even home was good, as long as I could overlook the fact that the other kids were miserable. I mean, we weren’t fighting all the time, and nobody was looking over my shoulder or bugging me to share my feelings. The talk of therapists had been abandoned, as far as I could tell, and Will may have noticed that I was gone for a few hours a night but he certainly didn’t ask me where I was going or what I was doing.

Yeah, the whole thing should have been pretty sweet. Except I
couldn’t
overlook the other kids’ misery, and I couldn’t help missing Natalie. Her kids called her all the time to check in, but it seemed weird for me to do that, so I was cut off entirely. It shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. She wasn’t
my
mom, but she was
a
mom, and that was the best I had. Except with her gone, I didn’t even have that. I played my mom’s phone message to myself, but it didn’t really help. I wanted to talk to someone, not hear words that no longer had any meaning, no matter how beloved the voice was.

So when I came home after running on Sunday morning and saw Natalie’s car in the driveway, I was totally excited. Tyler was out of town, playing an exhibition game in Brampton that afternoon, and I’d been facing a day of moping around and pretending that I was still an independent person who could have fun without her boyfriend. But if Natalie was back, my schedule was looking up.

I tried to seem natural as I pushed the back door open. When I saw the scene in the kitchen, my enthusiasm dropped dramatically. All the kids were there, and Will and Natalie, and they looked over at me as if they’d forgotten I even lived there and couldn’t figure out what I was doing in their home. Natalie was the first to recover.

“Karen,” she said, and she smiled tiredly at me. “I’m glad you’re back. Will and I were just talking to the kids.”

“Yeah, they’re telling us how much they love us, and how they love each other, too.” Miranda’s voice was razor-sharp, and I was glad she wasn’t slashing in my direction. “It’s been super.”

“We do love you all, and we
do
love each other,” Natalie said firmly. Then she looked at Will, clearly giving him another of her wordless commands.

He looked like he’d rather be removing his own appendix, but he finally said, “We love each other, but we need some time apart. In order to work on our relationship and figure out the best way to go forward.” They were clearly words supplied by Natalie, but he seemed like he was at least trying to mean them. He sounded a bit more natural when he said, “Nothing’s decided, nothing’s final, we just… We need some time. It didn’t make sense for her to be away, not when I know how important she is to you guys, and how she runs this house so well.” He looked at her, clearly hoping for a reprieve, but her face stayed stony. He winced, then said, “So I’m going to be moving out for a while. Not forever! Just for a bit. I’ll still be here all the time, and I’ll still see you; I’ll just be sleeping somewhere else.”

“Sleeping
with
someone else?” Miranda sneered. I’d been on the receiving end of her anger often enough that I was tempted to feel bad for Will, but then I remembered how much he deserved it.

But apparently Natalie disagreed. “We’re not doing that,” she said, her voice just as firm as when she’d set down the boundaries between me and Miranda. “The challenges your father and I are facing are between the two of us. We both still love all of you, and we both plan to treat you all with respect and be treated the same way in return.” She turned to her daughter and said, “I don’t need you to fight my battles for me. I don’t
want
you to fight my battles. Is that understood?”

“It’s not just
your
battle,” Miranda protested. “This affects everyone in the family! It was bad enough when…” She glanced in my direction, remembered that we’d been doing pretty well with our crisis-inspired truce, and shrugged her way into a slightly different word choice. “When everyone
thought
they knew what he was up to. But at least there was always a chance that they were wrong. Now, with this happening…they
know
, Mom. And it affects all of us.”

“No,” Natalie said quietly. “It doesn’t. If people know something about Will’s behavior, that affects their opinions of
Will
. Anyone who tries to judge any of you based on his actions isn’t someone whose opinion you should value.”

I wondered if that was a rule that anyone had ever been able to follow, anywhere, and I could tell that Miranda was having about the same reaction. But she stayed quiet, at least.

There wasn’t much more to say after that. I snuck away downstairs while the family continued its disintegration above me, and I tried not to think about how much of it was my fault. Sure, Will had been a cheater forever, but Natalie hadn’t been faced with a daily, cranky reminder of it until I arrived.
Something
had clearly triggered this change, and finding out that her son was a cheater as well had probably only been part of it.

All the excitement I’d felt when I’d seen Natalie’s car was gone. I headed for the shower and tried not to think, but it was hard to avoid it. These weren’t my parents. It wasn’t my family, not in any real way. So I didn’t have any right to feel the loss, but I did anyway. I felt it a lot.

Chapter Twenty-Three

- Tyler -

Brett Gaviston, my agent, was at our practice the afternoon of our home opener, sitting up in the stands with my dad. I didn’t even want to look in their direction. My dad hadn’t said too much more about the loan since he’d first mentioned it; he just sort of talked like it was a done deal, like it had all been decided and we just needed to wait for my birthday to finalize everything.

I’d let myself go along with that. I guess it was what I always did. I argued, I complained, and then I went along with his plans because I didn’t want to make a fuss. Even though I knew it was bullshit, a part of me still wanted to be the good son, the chip off the old block. The star of the family.

I wanted to be the good player, too. I wanted to listen to the coach and make him happy and say that I was just like some other player, some hero that everyone admired. No matter how much I protested, how much I worried that I wouldn’t be able to manage it, I wanted to be the star of the team, too.

Karen didn’t really understand it. I’d told her about the loan, and she’d shaken her head and said there was no way she’d ever go along with something like that. I believed her. Karen had no problem standing up to people. She’d say ‘no’ before the question was even asked. She made me feel weak, sometimes, but then she’d kiss me and I’d forget about all of it.

She was coming to the game that night, but she’d only come to practice once. She’d tried to be a good sport about it, but I’d known she was a bit confused by all the adults in the stands acting as if it really mattered what the kids on the ice were doing, and a bit freaked out by the girls hanging around, waiting to catch the players’ attention. I’d tried to explain that there just wasn’t much else for people to do in a small town, but she’d pulled out her phone and opened her browser and tried to introduce me to a
“
little thing called the internet”.

“Look alive, Tyler!” my dad yelled from the stands. He was always a bit more vocal when my agent was around. But we were just supposed to be doing a light skate, working out our nerves before the game, so I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. Well, maybe I should have been thinking more about strategies or skills or something else a bit more related to hockey, but my dad couldn’t tell what was going on in my brain. Thankfully.

When I got off the ice, he and Gaviston were waiting for me. “Get changed and we’ll go get something to eat,” my dad said.

“Something light,” Gaviston added. “You can have a big meal after the game tonight.”

“I need to be back at the arena by four thirty,” I said. Really our pre-game meeting was scheduled for five thirty, but I generally liked some time alone before games, and I absolutely wanted as little time with my dad and Gaviston as possible.

“No problem.” My dad sounded impatient. I guess it was okay for me to take my mind off the game as long as I was sending my thoughts in the direction he wanted.

So I got changed, and we went to one of the big chain restaurants up on the hill, and even though I was tempted to order half their menu, just to piss Gaviston off, I settled for a chicken breast and Greek salad.

He ordered a burger with a side of fries, the bastard. And he and my dad had beer while I got a Coke. It was a good way to remind me that I was just a kid, I guess. I mean, I wouldn’t have been drinking before a game no matter who I was with, and it wasn’t like I had trouble buying beer whenever I wanted. So the drinks didn’t mean anything, really, except that somehow they did.

Then Gaviston started talking about the loan. “It’ll be a flexible repayment schedule,” he said reassuringly. “If it takes you a few years to find your place in the league, you don’t need to worry about paying it off right away. I’ll charge interest at a rate set by one of the major banks, so that’ll be fair. You’ll repay me as you can. The only limitation is that you won’t be able to sign with any other agent until the loan is paid in full. But that’s not a serious limit, is it?” His smile was confident, as if he couldn’t imagine me ever wanting to work with anyone but him.

But if there was no way I’d ever want a different agent, then there was no reason for him to put that clause in the loan contract. You don’t need to force someone to do something they’d want to do anyway.

I didn’t say anything, just sipped my Coke and waited for it all to be over. I knew what Karen would say: she’d say it wouldn’t be over until I
made
it be over. But I didn’t know how to do that, not without hurting people I cared about.

It usually makes me uncomfortable when people recognize me and approach me in public, but this time when I saw a kid at a nearby table sneaking looks at me and then whispering to his dad, I gave him a big grin and pulled my shirt around so he could see the
Raiders
logo. He beamed at me, and his dad gave me a questioning look. I nodded and the kid shot out of his chair like it was an ejector seat.

“Tyler MacDonald! Tyler MacDonald! We’re going to the game tonight, me and my dad and my friend and his dad. We’re going to see you play. It’s going to be a great game, right? I bet you get ten goals. And twenty assists! We’re going to be sitting behind the bench. Maybe you’ll see us there. If you do, you could wave, okay? But you don’t have to. Not if you’re busy with the game. But I’ll see you, right up close.”

“Closer than you are now?”

The kid looked puzzled, then shook his head. “No. But now you’re just…you’re just normal. Tonight you’ll be special.”

I knew what he meant: the skates and the uniform and the attention everyone gave me. I
did
seem more special at the rink. But underneath it all, it was still just me. Just somebody normal. “I’ll look for you,” I said. “Do you play?”

“Defense,” he said proudly. “But I score goals, too, when I can.”

“Nice. An all-rounder. I try to play defense when I can, so we’d be good on the same line, right? You could take the opportunities for scoring when they come, and you’d know that I’d drop back and help cover the defense.”

His eyes were wide. Kids loved it when you talked about playing on the same line as them. But then he shook his head. “If I was on the same line as you, I think you should be the one taking the shots,” he said seriously.

I shrugged. “Maybe. You’ll have to do a few years of growing before we’d be in the same league; maybe by then your shot will be better than mine.”

His eyes had gone back to being wide. “We could be in the NHL together?”

Or the same bar league. But I probably didn’t need to spew all that insecurity over an innocent kid so I shrugged and said, “Who knows? Maybe.”

His dad came over then, we shook hands, and they wished me luck, then went back to their own table. Gaviston gave me an approving nod. “Being good with fans is important. It’s an intangible, not right there on the scouting report, but teams notice.”

“Not everything’s about getting drafted.”

Gaviston and my dad both looked at me like I was speaking Martian. Gaviston was the one who leaned in and hissed, “You need to change that attitude, son. This isn’t… It’s not high school. You can’t goof off and make up the credits next year. You can’t take a gap year and go hiking across Europe and come back and expect university to be just waiting for you. You do
not
have that flexibility.” He shook his head as if shocked that he had to explain this to me. “
This season
is your chance. Every game, every
shift
, they all count. If you screw this up, there’re no do-overs.” He leaned back and actually picked up his knife and pointed it at me. It was a dull table knife, and he was across the table so it wasn’t actually a threat, but it was pretty intense all the same. “So, no, Tyler. You’re wrong. This year?
Every
goddamn thing
is
about getting drafted. You want to go out to eat? Fine, as long as you’re making contacts while you’re out there, doing things that make scouts hear that you’re a fan favorite so teams will want to draft you. You want a summer job? Okay, because it’ll give you some spending money for the year so you can focus on hockey and do well so teams will want to draft you. You want a girlfriend? Fine. Because she’ll help you relax so you can play better so
teams will want to draft you
. Are you getting my point here, Tyler?”

It wasn’t exactly subtle. “I hear you,” I said. Then I looked at my watch. There was still lots of time, even for my extra-early deadline, but I was ready to get out of there. “I should get back to the rink. Get my head in the game so I can play well and teams will want to draft me. Right?”

Gaviston laughed and beamed at me like I was a hero. I wasn’t sure if he’d actually missed the sarcasm or was just choosing to ignore it. Either way, he waved the server over and got our bill, so I wasn’t going to complain. We walked back out to his rental, and I folded myself into the back seat and stared out the window while the grownups had their important conversations up front.

When we got to the rink, they parked and for a bit I was afraid they were going to come inside with me and keep up the harassment right until game time, but instead Gaviston clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Stay focused, Tyler. This is your season. This is your chance.”

“Don’t screw it up,” my dad said darkly.

Those were the words that echoed in my head as I made my way into the deserted change room.
Don’t screw it up. Don’t screw it up.
I slumped down onto the bench in front of my locker and stared at the ceiling.
Don’t screw it up
. It seemed so simple, when it was just words. But when I had to translate the words into actions, everything got a bit more complicated.