“Daddy! You are amazing.”
“Thanks, baby.” At least one fan was happy with him tonight. Sitting down on the bench, he stuck a finger in his ear so he could hear better.
“You could totally read his lips, too. It was so nasty.” She was talking really fast. “I was like, here we go again! And then they threw him out of the game! And then you won!”
He chuckled. “I didn’t know that would happen—the ejection.”
“Hans and I had an extra root beer to celebrate. I don’t know if I can sleep now.”
“Good try,” he said. “Go to bed, sweetie.”
“I love you, Daddy!”
“Back atcha, baby.”
“Hans wants to say hi.”
“Okay.”
“Hallo, Beak,” Hans said a moment later.
“How’s it hangin’, Hans?”
The German hipster laughed. “That was . . . something else. It was fun to see.”
“Yeah. Crazy, right?”
“I don’t know what to say. Thanks for taking a stand.”
“You don’t have to thank me. Lot of people would have said something. And now I’m going to be accused of doing it just to gain advantage on the ice. So that’s gonna be fun.”
“Ja?” Hans laughed. “Tell ’em you did it for your gay roommate.”
“Uh-huh. Think of the headlines.”
He laughed again. “Good night. I’ll pry Elsa’s phone out of her hands now.”
“Good luck with that.”
He hung up smiling.
EIGHTEEN
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
MAY 2016
When Lauren got back to Brooklyn, the first thing she did was to push back Nate’s China trip into late June. Her old hockey-watching habits had kicked in hard, and she had a gut feeling the Brooklyn team would win this series and advance to the Eastern Conference Final.
And, weirdly, she wasn’t sure she minded. Maybe she wouldn’t admit it aloud, but it was fun watching her boys win again.
She’d caught herself thinking of them as her boys again, just like in the old days. For the past two years it had hurt too much to think of the team that way. But lately she felt more relaxed in their company. Now that she and Mike were on speaking terms, it wasn’t hard for her to walk into the players’ lounge in the headquarters on Hudson Avenue, handing out the media kits that Georgia’s publicity office had prepared.
“Hey, Lauren,” Castro rumbled as he took his copy from her hands. “Do I really have to read this thing?”
“It’s a free country, hot stuff,” she said, surprising herself with her own cheerful tone. She sounded like the Lauren of years past—the one who teased the players instead of snapping at them. “But if you don’t show up to the right press conference after the game tonight, you’ll have to answer to Georgia and Tommy.”
She even gave Mike a smile as she handed him a copy. And she didn’t let her eyes linger on his darker ones, or feel the heat of his heavy-lidded gaze on her.
Not much, anyway.
The players had spent the morning with the coaching coordinators or with Ari, the massage therapist. The Brooklyn HQ had the feel of a war bunker this week. It was all hands on deck. Meals were catered into the lounge so that nobody had to leave. The publicity office was overrun with calls, which meant support staff of all stripes were pitching in.
The thrum of play-offs fever had reached even Lauren’s frigid heart. From Becca’s desk, she helped out with whatever needed doing, while also keeping tabs on the e-mail chain regarding all the current projects in New York. She and her boss were burning the candle at both ends, looking out for the team’s needs while chatting with their Manhattan colleagues all day.
She kept an eye on the sports headlines, too, even though it wasn’t her job to worry about the Bruisers’ news. There was plenty of chatter about the incident in Tampa. The league had fined Skews for his comments, and the player had issued a stuttering apology, asking for forgiveness from whoever he’d offended.
Twitter lit up with commentary. Much of it was supportive of the sanctions against Skews, but there was a lot of ugliness among hockey fans complaining about “PC bullshit” and favoritism.
There was some taunting to the tune of: Brooklyn can’t win without getting our best players thrown out of the game.
Fans would say anything at all. Lauren was used to it. But around noon on game day she saw a blog post that made her skin crawl. “Tampa’s Best Move Would Be to Take Out Mike Beacon.”
It was on a skanky site—not a real news outlet, and it was obviously click bait. But when the commentary loaded, her blood pressure spiked anyway.
Saturday’s drama aside, everyone knows Brooklyn’s real weakness. Their goal bench is the thinnest in the NHL. Without Mike Beacon they’d be down to Silas Kelly. Kelly was an early-round draft pick that hasn’t panned out. Early last season he had a few good nights, but always chokes as the season progresses. He’s never stood between the pipes during a play-offs game.
Tampa fans are probably all fantasizing about a Mike Beacon injury tonight. He’ll be watching his back for sure.
It was the most irresponsible piece of tripe Lauren had ever read.
She forwarded the link to Georgia, then just sat there at her desk, stewing over it. Georgia’s reply was swift.
I saw it. Just smack talk.
Sure. It was smack talk that had been retweeted nearly six hundred times before five P.M. But who was counting?
At six o’clock, Lauren accompanied her boss to the arena. She didn’t avoid the place anymore, but watching the action would be stressful for brand-new reasons.
When the game began, it was a brutal one right from the first face-off. Both teams skated as if they had something to prove. And they did. Lauren found herself unaccountably nervous. Maybe it’s the hormones, she told herself. The medication she’d just started taking was probably to blame for the nervous stirring in her stomach. Standing in Nate’s box, watching the boys fly down the ice, it was hard to remember that she wasn’t supposed to care about this team anymore.
For more than a decade of her life she’d watched fifty games a year. And well before she and Mike were ever a couple, her eyes used to always come to rest on the goalie. She knew his stance so well she could draw him with her eyes closed. His long limbs were loose, waiting to spring into action. Even the set of his shoulders as he watched the action was familiar.
In a month, or six weeks at the latest, this exciting detour into her old life would be finished. She might be on a jet to China, with prenatal vitamins in her carry-on.
Tell that to her thumping heart. Tampa made an unlikely shot on goal. She stopped breathing as Mike lunged for it. It smacked safely into his glove, but not before her heart nearly failed.
In front of her, Nate sat watching the game with an expression as calm as Buddha’s.
“How do you stand it?” Nate’s father asked, putting a hand on his son’s shoulder. Nate’s parents were visiting from their home in Iowa, where they were school teachers. Lauren had met them several times already. They were lovely people.