Scott (Owatonna Book 2)

by RJ Scott

  “I know you will. We’ll be here for a week to make sure that you’re back on track.”

  I smiled because having them there made me happy. I hated this empty house so much. I missed Scott desperately.

  “Mm-hmm,” Mimi said as she hooked and pulled yarn with incredible speed. I didn’t have time to ask what that sound was for.

  “What about this man of yours?” Mom asked, her coffee steaming in front of her little nose. I’d gotten that from her, that tiny nose, and the set of my eyes, the rest of me was pure Gerome Ritter from my curly hair to my tiny toes. Mom had made sure I knew where I came from and where I was going. She guided me with words that I sometimes had to spend hours deciphering. “Have you decided how to take him back into your loving heart?”

  “I uhm…” I nibbled on my lower lip. It was sticky and sweet with syrup. “He’s… I just, he’s capable of being mean to people.”

  “We’re all capable of being cruel, Hayne. The human heart runs to dark, horrid places,” Mom replied, lowering her mug to the table. “From what you’ve told us, this young man needs you now more than ever.” I nodded. Curls tumbled over my face to tickle my nose. I left them there, better to hide behind. “People can change, Hayne. See if you can find it in that big heart of yours to offer Scott an olive branch. I sense a love that most would envy in you for this man. And knowing you as I do, I’m certain he loves you with as much passion as you feel for him. How could he not?”

  “Mm-hmm,” Mimi chimed in as Mozart gave way to Faulkner’s New Beginning, and I had to wonder if she’d picked this soundtrack beforehand. Knowing her, she had.

  My suit felt itchy, the tie too tight, my slicked-back curls too firmly pasted to my head. Mom and Mimi stood flanking me, smiling and talking to the hundreds of people who had filed into the exhibition to see my painting. My cheeks hurt from grinning, the pancakes from breakfast sat in my belly like a rock, and my head was swimming. The many names, phone numbers, business cards, congratulations, and heaping praises for Winter Knight swirled around inside my head. The museum was packed, the air thick with chitchat, perfume, and piano music provided by one of my fellow OU college students.

  “… your thesis on?”

  I blinked up at the tall man with the long nose. “Oh, uhm, I’m thinking of something that might reflect figure/ground relationships within the parameters of Jung’s Red Book and symbolic artwork.”

  “Jung, as in Carl Jung the psychologist?”

  I opened my mouth to reply to Mr. Tall Man when Scott appeared to my right, dressed in a finely cut dark gray suit, his hair combed, his cheeks still pink from the razor.

  “Ahem? Jung like the—?”

  “Excuse me.” I gently pushed around Mr. Tall Man, shoving my glass of sparkling pink ginger ale at my mother, and took the fourteen steps to Scott. His gaze traveled over me. I grew hot and hard and giddy all at once. “My knight has arrived.”

  He blushed at that, his hazel eyes clouding with some deep emotion that made my pancakes feel light as butterflies.

  “I thought you might have security throw me out.”

  “Never. Not ever.”

  He gave me a crooked smile. The blueberry butterflies took wing. “That’s nice to hear. I wanted to come support you, and him.” He waved a big hand at the painting. “I miss you,” he tacked on quickly, as if hoping to sneak it in.

  “I’ve missed you too.”

  And then we stood there like two idiots, soaking up the sight of each other. Someone walked by, nudging me into Scott. I threw the clumsy art patron a dark look, then realized it was Mimi, sashaying past in her flowery yellow dress and thick woolen shawl combo, her curls drawn to the top of her head where they flowed downward like a waterfall.

  “Would you like to find a bench and talk? Maybe have a drink?” I sputtered, oddly aware of everything all at once.

  “No champagne, thanks.”

  “Oh, there’s pink ginger ale. It’s sweet as a cherry pop and makes your nose bristle and twitch. What?”

  “You’re the most incredibly adorable thing ever. I’d really like to find a bench and have some ginger ale with you.”

  I nearly swooned into his strong arms, but instead I offered him a hand. He slid his palm over mine, causing a massive surge of blueberry butterflies to beat against my breastbone. We went to the bar, spoke to Diana and Professor Poole, and then I led my knight to a rounded cement bench placed under a modern painting of a snowstorm blowing over a lake.

  I sipped my bubbly drink, eying him over the rim of the flute. He rolled the stem of his glass between his fingers, his sight darting to me time and again. The piano picked up a lively little waltz tune, something from Strauss that made me long to dance with him once more.

  “I wish I hadn’t asked you to go,” I blurted out and took a tiny taste of my drink.

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh yeah, I think… I was scared. I still am.”

  He nodded, his overly long hair brushing the top of his ears. “I get that. I scare myself. I’ve been doubling up on counseling, missing seeing you at the grief meetings…”

  “I couldn’t go. I knew you’d be there. And if I saw you, I wouldn’t be able to process properly. You make me giddy and airy, stupidly flouncy, and unable to think in tones other than pinks and yellows.”

  “Those sound like really happy colors.” I nodded, and my curls stayed in place. Mimi’s hair gel was incredible. He shifted on the bench to face me. “I want to make you happy, I always have, but I’m still working on me. I think I need a lot of work.”

  “I think you’re a canvas with just a blue dot on it.” He raised a brow. “Every work begins with a small application of color. With a skilled hand and a gentle brush that droplet of indigo can become a masterpiece.”

  “I can listen to you talk for hours.” He lifted his hand, reaching for a curl, then hesitated. My gaze moved over his face, searching for the truth of Scott as it rested in his eyes and the curve of his lips and the strong line of his jaw.

  “Go ahead and pull it free.” He smiled and tugged a stiff curl from my skull. It fell down over my eye, lying there like a stick. That made us both chuckle. “If I asked you to come to dinner tomorrow night to meet my mother and Mimi, would you come? Or have I pushed you away for good?”

  He toyed with the curl, rubbing it, but the gel was just too powerful. The back of his fingers brushed my cheek. I drew in a breath and waited, on tenterhooks, for him to accept or decline my offer of a fattening olive branch.

  “What time?”

  The butterflies broke free.

  Thirteen

  Scott

  I decided in the space of a few seconds that I was going to love Hayne’s family. It wasn’t any one particular thing, but the way they hugged Hayne, and then me, as if I was worthy of being hugged, left me with the warm and fuzzies. They smiled at me, pulled me into a four-way hug, but it was the way Hayne’s mom hugged me again, soft against me, murmuring that everything was okay into my ear.

  I was seriously going to lose my shit, break down in front of them, but at least it was just the four of us sitting in Hayne’s kitchen and not a crowd of people in a restaurant.

  His grandma, Mimi he introduced her as, was wearing the same flowery yellow dress as she had worn last night, silver clips in her corkscrew hair, her lips in a permanent smile. There was humor in her eyes, and she was the one who kicked off the questions.

  “So tell us about yourself, Scott,” she said, and I groaned inwardly. That was a pretty wide question, and I wasn’t sure where to start.

  “Mimi, don’t start with the interrogation,” Hayne’s mom said with a laugh. Her name was Mona, and she said I should call her that, but it didn’t feel right on my tongue. I didn’t want to disrespect her, so I decided if I needed to call her anything, it would be Mrs. Ritter. She was gorgeous, and I could see her son in her. Her hair was long and blonde, not curly, but I’d seen the wedding photo of Hayne’s parents, the small blonde standing next to the tal
l, striking man in the police uniform. Hayne had come by his soft curls honestly, a mix of his parents, but he’d gotten his dark hair and eyes from his dad.

  Mrs. Ritter had cooked tonight, a stew with huge chunks of beef, vegetables and piles of freshly baked rolls, and I was desperate to dive in, but I guess answering Hayne’s grandmother’s question wouldn’t delay eating for very long, because I didn’t have a lot to say to Mimi or Mrs. Ritter.

  “I’m studying chemistry, in my junior year. I love it.”

  There, that was enough, and I hoped I would get away with that.

  “Eat,” Mrs. Ritter demanded, and I rapidly forked up a mouthful of tender steak.

  But Mimi wasn’t done at all. “So you took drugs to cheat at hockey?”

  The steak choked me, and I nearly spat out a mouthful of gravy, coughing and sipping at my water to get ahold of myself. I could argue that wasn’t the truth about cheating, but I’d long since come to terms with the fact that actually, yeah, it was cheating to cover up the alcohol abuse and grief with the steroids. I certainly hadn’t been honest with my team, my coach, or even myself.

  “I was drinking. A lot. I mean, I was drunk most of the time, and I’m not proud of it. Then my hockey suffered, and then I had an easy solution handed to me. The steroids were just another step in addiction.”

  Own your pain. Monica’s soft words were bouncing in my head. I sure was owning my pain right here and now.

  “That’s just a result,” Mimi began, and I heard Mrs. Ritter sigh softly, as if she’d been expecting this. She didn’t stop Mimi from talking though, and Hayne smiled at me in sympathy. He surely wouldn’t let Mimi go too far and dig too deep, right?

  “I’m sorry?” I said when it became obvious she’d paused to wait for me to talk.

  “The drinking was to hide something, I guess, and the drugs, well, that was just a way of hiding the drinking. So what was it you were trying to escape?”

  I blinked at her. Surely she knew? Hadn’t Hayne told her the full story? I had a complicated answer about how I didn’t feel right in my own skin, that some days I had felt so black and hopeless that I hadn’t wanted to get out of bed, or that I felt as if I was losing my mind.

  “My brother died; it was grief.” The weight that lifted from me when I finally said the words was immense. I’d never admitted to anyone other than Hayne that I was lost in grief and that I couldn’t find a way out.

  Mimi considered me for a moment, then patted my hand. “Grief is a terrible thing. When my Gerome died, God rest his soul, it was only because Mona wouldn’t let me pull away, made me a strong part of Hayne’s life, that I didn’t lose my way. When a family breaks apart after a loss, it can leave every person vulnerable, and I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  So Hayne had told her the full story, about Mom and Dad, and everything. I was grateful and annoyed all at the same time. Not annoyed with Hayne, but with Mimi for making me talk about things.

  But she got you to admit out loud why you’ve been so fucked up.

  Mrs. Ritter interrupted the quiet face-off between me and Mimi, dropping her cutlery to the table. “I forgot the butter,” she announced pointedly, and when she came back to the table, the curious tension was easing. Was it important to Mimi for her to get me to admit my dark parts in front of her daughter-in-law and grandson? Or was she some wise old woman, like the ones in the movies, who knew exactly what to say and when?

  We moved on to other subjects then. Hockey, art, school, but the one that got me was when Mrs. Ritter asked me what I wanted to do for a career with a degree in chemistry.

  “I have no idea,” I blurted. I’d never given any thought to what lay beyond college. I know Dad had wanted me to go the professional hockey route, even if it meant languishing in the lower leagues and never making it to the NHL. Of course, Mom didn’t have an opinion either way. “Maybe research or teaching.”

  Where did those completely viable options come from?

  “We always need teachers,” Mimi said.

  “And people who can find ways to cure diseases,” Mrs. Ritter offered.

  Yeah, I really liked these two.

  They just seemed to care.

  The melancholy settled in for the long haul after Hayne’s family had left. The house was emptier, and the things I’d said with so much confidence to them seemed almost unobtainable in the light of day.

  Teacher? Yeah, right. That would mean more education, and I was only funded for the time I had left here at Owatonna. Research chemist? That would take a lot more than what I was capable of achieving right now. I’d fucked up a lot already this year, and unless I pulled myself together, I was done. The thought of that made me low.

  Being low made me think my life choices were useless.

  Which made the blackness even worse.

  Monica called it spiraling, and even though I could see myself doing it, I didn’t know how to stop it. I’d even snapped at Hayne for spilling paint on my Eagles jersey. Like I even needed to hurt him right now, for God’s sake. And to top it all off, today was my first teaching session at the rink, and I could imagine the hostility from the parents, the screaming kids, Coach staring at me from the sidelines, not to mention that Coach wanted to see me beforehand.

  I had to go with paint on my jersey, feeling like a fraud for even wearing the number seventeen on my back when I wasn’t part of the damn team. I wish I’d worn my generic Leafs Nation jersey. No one would point at me and shake their heads for that. Unless they weren’t a Leafs fan, I guess.

  “Shut the door, Scott,” Coach said and gestured to the chair in front of his desk. I shut the door, then took the seat, thankful I only had ten minutes or so before I had to be out on the ice. “How are you?”

  “I’m good,” I lied.

  “And the support group?”

  “Super helpful.”

  Coach nodded. “Good, excellent. Okay, now this team of kids…” He immediately bombarded me with stats and reviews and roundups, and I realized he was focusing on the hockey and not on my issues. I tuned back in when he finished what he was saying and turned serious.

  “I’ve talked to the parents, about you making amends and using this experience to connect with the kids, show them that drugs are bad, make them fully aware of their options. You agree with that?”

  Of course I had to nod. Not that I wanted to become a walking lesson in what not to do to a bunch of kids.

  He rose from his seat, clapped me on the shoulder, half hugged me, and I’m not ashamed to say I accepted the compassion for what it was, and leaned into him.

  When I removed my skate guards and took my place on the ice, I collected ten kids, six boys, four girls, and got them all to take a knee. I crouched down with them because hell, they were all really short little people.

  Coach had suggested we work on skate skills, so that was where I started. We warmed up with lazy figure eights, from one end of the rink to the other, me in front like a momma with her ducklings, the thought of which made me smile. Every time we passed the top end of the rink, I came face-to-face with a phalanx of hockey moms and dads, and part of me was waiting for them to say something. No one came down and demanded that I stay away from their kid, so I counted that as a win. As we skated, speeding up a little, and then slowing, building up the warmth in our muscles, I turned and began to skate backward, watching the kids skate, seeing in all of them something I’d lost a long time ago: excitement about skating. Warmed up, I set out some small obstacles, including a two-inch jump and a pole to slide under, then added cones to work on corners, and a small container with a flag to indicate change of direction.

  They listened to me. Every single one of them looked up at me and listened, and slowly, piece by piece, the blackness slipped away.

  One of the boys held back, seeming to be all kinds of uncomfortable, rocking on his skates, and I was careful to keep an eye on him. He was frowning behind his mask, and the way he gripped his stick made me think he was stressing about some
thing. I split them into small groups, rotating one-on-one time and then finally managed to get some time with the kid. Ethan, he said his name was. Ethan, nine, and did I know his big brother Andrew who was six years older than him and was brilliant. His words, not mine.

  “Andrew’s real good,” Ethan said, and I leaned down to listen to him.

  “I saw your crossovers. I think you’re really good as well.”

  Ethan looked around as if he was scared someone would hear him. “I can’t do the jumps so well.”

  I crouched in front of him, fussing with the lace of his right skate, so I could whisper my wise words of advice and experience, for what they were worth.

  “I couldn’t get the hang of the jump for the longest time when I was your age, not until I realized that I was jumping with my feet, and you know what? You need to lift your whole body, feel the jump all the way to your nose.”

  He blinked at me. “My nose.”

  I nodded grandly. “Yep, all the way to your nose. You ready to try?”

  He glanced from me to the tiny jump and back again. “Sure,” he said, sounding anything but. I watched this little kid pull back his shoulders, then wrinkle his nose. He skated for the jump, and I willed him to make it, which he did. Just. His landing was a little wobbly, but the elation I felt that he’d managed to get over that pole was more than I could contain. I high-fived him and touched my gloved fist to my nose.

  Right there and then all thoughts of being a teacher or a researcher went out of my head. I could imagine working with kids and their hockey, maybe sleep on Hayne’s floor for the rest of my life, living off ramen and canned hotdogs. At least kids and hockey could be fun.

  When the kids skated off to get changed, a couple of the dads made their way over to me. Not the moms, they all sat quietly, and I quickly assumed the two men had been delegated to talk to me.

  “You got Ethan to jump,” one man said and extended his hand. “Nice job. Andrew finds it all so easy, but Ethan has a little fear in him.”