Tomboy (a Hartigans romantic comedy)

by Flynn, Avery

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Blackburn Back to Being A Bust?

  Settle in, hockey fans, we have a lot to unpack when it comes to Zach Blackburn and the faltering Ice Knights. After weeks of playoff-worthy games, it seems we have back the early season team unable to put the puck between the pipes. Then, there’s Blackburn. It seems not even Lady Luck could help after the defenseman’s parents came out with one of the ugliest stories I’ve seen in decades. The accusations of cruelty against Blackburn made by his parents did a one-eighty on his approval ratings.

  It was kinda hard for them not to when his mom told TMQ, “He was always a selfish boy, but I thought he’d grow out of it. And then when he signed that first contact, I thought it was our duty as his parents to help guide him however we could. If he wanted us to do that for free while collecting early on our retirement funds? I’m his mother, I’ll sacrifice everything to make his life better. And now we just make do. I mean, it’s not easy to make ends meet when you’ve run through all your savings, but I wouldn’t dream of asking Zach again to help us out even if he does earn millions. I mean, we’d asked before, and he made his feelings known. Now we just watch his game on the library internet because we can’t afford it at home or a cell phone.”

  Ouch.

  Lady Luck gave a rousing defense of him, but Blackburn has refused to comment on TMQ’s story, and hasn’t said a peep about it beyond “no comment” and an extended middle finger when a reporter asked during a post-game press conference. Yeah, that was just the beginning of Harbor City realizing that the most-hated man in town was back again.

  And since then, he’s returned to start-of-the-year form on the ice, too happy taking crappy penalties and skating like he was gliding through molasses as fans chant “Blackburn sucks.”

  So the question, hockey fans, is, has Blackburn returned to form or is this just a temporary glitch?

  Comments:

  TypeAB+: He’s a bust. I coulda told you from the beginning that he’d fizzle out. Don’t trust a guy who fucks over his mom.

  Kris K.: It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He sucks. Trade him. And Lady Luck was never all that wow, either. Maybe if she got a makeover, but yeah, she’s a six on a good day.

  GregDaGoat: Wow. Amazing how people love to build people up and then watch them fall.

  TypeAB+: We’re just telling it like it is, ya homer. He sucks now. His chick is some kind of tomboy man hater, and she’s sucked the hockey skills right out of him.

  The Biscuit Mistress: And I’m shutting down comments because too many assholes seem to be trolling here.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Zach had no interest in answering his door. Too bad that didn’t stop whoever was on the other side from pounding on it. It had to be Stuckey. Zach never should have given him the code to his security gate. It had just seemed easier, though, since his fellow defenseman had been picking him up for practices. He should have stuck with Uber. Now he had to deal with whatever bullshit was on the other side of his front door when all he wanted was to sit at the card table in his kitchen and play solitaire.

  “Open up the door, Blackburn,” Stuckey hollered. “Otherwise Petrov will just pick the lock.”

  “Go away,” he yelled through the door.

  “No can do,” Stuckey said. “We have a delivery.”

  We? What the fuck. Why in the hell were there enough people for a “we” on his front porch, and what kind of delivery was it? He yanked open his door and all but snarled at Stuckey, Phillips, Petrov, and Christensen, who were all crowded around his front door.

  “About fucking time. It’s cold out there.” Phillips marched inside carrying an ottoman.

  Too confused to stop him, Zach watched as the other man walked over to the absolutely barren living room like he had every right to be there. “What are you doing?”

  “Delivering your furniture,” Petrov answered as he and Christensen carried in an oversize chair that looked like the vibrating kind in the mall and followed Phillips into the living room. “My old man owns a store south of here.”

  What. The. Fuck. “I didn’t ask for this.”

  Stuckey shoved a second ottoman into Zach’s arms. “Yeah, and yet it’s coming to your house anyway.”

  He opened his mouth, but Stuckey gave him a glare he normally saved for opponents on the ice. “Just shut the fuck up and help us carry it all inside. Then it’s customary after your friends help you move your stuff in to tell them ‘thank you’ and offer them a beer.”

  Now there was some bullshit. These guys strong-arm their way into his house with a bunch of furniture he didn’t ask for and couldn’t pay for and Stuckey wanted him to give them beer? Yeah, that wasn’t gonna happen.

  “I don’t—”

  “Dude.” Stuckey picked up a box labeled TV stand that had been leaning against the door and pushed past Zach. “I told Peppers I wouldn’t punch you out if you were a pain in the ass about the furniture. The front office is already talking about trading me to Nashville. Do not increase the chances of that happening because I had to break your nose.”

  That stopped him cold. If anyone on the team was going to get traded, it was gonna be him. Stuckey was a phenom, destined to have his name on the cup. “Why would they trade you?”

  “Because we’re a great team that is playing like shit and they want to shake things up,” Stuckey said as he strode into the living room, set the box down, and started opening it.

  That made no sense. None. What did make sense was getting rid of him. He set the ottoman down next to the one Phillips had already brought in. “Then they can trade me.”

  “The ego on you,” Petrov said as he and Christensen passed by him on their way to the front door, no doubt for whatever else was in the back of Stuckey’s truck. “Blackburn, no one wants you but us.”

  “What does that mean, but us?”

  “In case you missed it, the team has your back,” Phillips said, walking in with a rolled-up rug. “We always have, even when you ignored us.”

  Zach opened his mouth, shut it, then opened it again, but nothing came out. He couldn’t wrap his brain around what the hell was going on. Four of his teammates, whom he’d all but ignored or growled at for the past week and a half, were delivering furniture that he hadn’t ordered. And putting it together. He watched Phillips unroll a dark blue rug and center it in the room. They were even decorating. He had nothing. None of this computed.

  Once all of them were back in the living room, Petrov and Christensen carrying in a huge couch, he turned to the group and asked, “Why?”

  “Fuck if I know,” Stuckey said, flipping through the directions for the TV stand. “I’m kidding. Because you’re good people. The fact that you miss that half the time isn’t my problem.”

  “So the furniture?” he asked.

  “It’s our way of saying we lurve you,” Christensen said in a mocking voice. “No, really it’s so we have a place to sit while we watch the playoffs, since it looks like we won’t be making it. We voted this as the team gathering house.”

  “I’m so lucky.” He said it in his best I’m-an-asshole voice, but it didn’t seem to have an impact on the other men in the room, who went on with what they were doing as if he hadn’t said anything.

  “I’d say so,” Phillips said. “I wish I had someone who’d go to the mat for me like Fallon did for you.”

  Now, that did stop them. That same heavy silence from the locker room hit Zach like a gut-punch. “She wasn’t supposed to do that.”

  “Stick up for you?” Stuckey asked, his upper lip curled into a sneer. “Yeah, I totally see how that would be a problem. Get your head out of your ass, Blackburn. She went after the people who’d taken a million cheap shots on you just like you nailed Hendrix after he checked Phillips from behind in the last game.”

  His shoulders tensed. “It’s not the same.” It wasn’t. He was doing his job. Fallon was spilling secrets she wasn’t supposed to share.

  �
�Whatever, dude.” Stuckey rolled his eyes. “Now, where’s the beer.”

  He crossed his arms and gave his teammates the stink eye. “All out.”

  “Don’t worry,” Petrov said. “I’ll text Svoboda to pick some up on his way here with the Xbox. Hope you’re ready to get your ass kicked in Hockey All Stars. I call playing as Gretzky.”

  An hour later, he walked out of his now fully furnished living room with half the Ice Knights roster eating pizza and drinking beer while talking shit about the video game hockey being played on his TV, now sitting on the stand Stuckey had put together. No one mentioned why he hadn’t had any furniture in the first place, or any more about what had happened with his parents or Fallon.

  “I still don’t get it,” he said to Stuckey when they both were in the kitchen getting beers. “Why are you here? Is it just to get me playing better on the ice?”

  “We’re a team.” Stuckey shrugged. “It’s what we do—on and off the ice.”

  They both stood at the island, drinking their beers and watching the others in the living room where there were enough people and enough chaos to remind Zach of the Hartigans’ house, Fallon, and everything that had changed since she’d marched into his life. Even as pissed as he was, he wasn’t ready to lose her.

  He twisted the top off his beer bottle. “She fucked up.”

  “Maybe.” Stuckey nodded, not needing any explanation of who she was. “But didn’t she do it for the right reason? That might not excuse everything, but don’t you think it’s a reason to give her another chance?”

  “She let everyone in the world see what a chump I was.” The words came out sounding the same as they had the million times he’d said them in his head, but something was off.

  “Welcome to the real world.” Stuckey rolled his eyes. “We’re all chumps at one time or another. Only those asshole MRA types think having a set of balls makes someone always infallible. You need to wake up and see past the bullshit so you’ll realize that Fallon may not have been all right but she sure as hell wasn’t all wrong, either. Everybody’s fallible, man.”

  And fuck him if that didn’t make some kind of sense, unraveling some of the anger that had wrapped around his middle like a python and squeezed him just about to death. She’d told him his reasons for wanting to keep it quiet were bullshit. He’d told her she was wrong. She’d taken matters into her own hands to defend him. It was an act so opposed to his normal worldview that he didn’t know what to do about it. Maybe it was past time he stopped with all the crap thinking about how a man should react, and instead did things the way his gut advised because they were the right things to do. Maybe it was time to be better. And when he did that, he wanted Fallon by his side.

  “What are you, some kind of love doctor?” he asked the younger defenseman, who seemed to have his head on straight—well, mostly.

  “That’s what all the ladies say before I love them and leave them, never to be tied down because that shit is so not for me.” He laughed. “Anyway, I’m just a guy on the trading block.”

  He clapped his hand down on Stuckey’s shoulder. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Yeah, well we need to win to make that happen.”

  It was a simple solution, if not the easiest one, but what good things in life ever were. “So we win.”

  Now, if it were only that simple when it came to figuring out what to do about Fallon.

  …

  Fallon couldn’t even watch the replay of the game. Sure, it was still on, but she’d tossed a blanket over the living room TV. They’d suffered five losses in a row since the news about Zach’s parents had hit, she’d come to his defense, and he’d gotten (rightfully, she could sorta admit) pissed at her for breaking his trust. She’d watched the most recent game as if the big screen was a radio while eating chocolate chip cookie dough straight from the plastic wrap (the CDC could kiss her ass with their warnings about eating uncooked food).

  A buzzer blared on the TV. “And that’s another loss for the Ice Knights, who just can’t seem to get it together.”

  Fallon flipped off the TV as she powered it down via remote then settled back on the couch, bringing her comforter tighter around her. It still smelled like him—warm and kinda woodsy with a strong whiff of I-will-fuck-your-brains-out-and-you-will-love it. She needed to wash it. She would. Tomorrow. Tonight was for cookie dough and loneliness. If she were ever to start an emo jazz band, Cookie Dough and Loneliness would definitely be the name of it.

  Finn walked into the living room carrying his on-duty bag because he was covering the second half of a shift for one of the other guys. “You finally have an entire weekend off, and this is what you’re gonna do?”

  She flipped him off. “You’re my brother, not the boss of me.”

  “Thank you for that deep dive back to middle school.” He plucked the tube of cookie dough from her grasp. “If you eat this entire thing you’ll die.”

  “If you don’t give it back,” she said, reaching while he held it way higher than her arm span, “I’ll smother you in your sleep.”

  “Relax, Fallon. I’m smarter than to try to get in your way.” He tweaked her on the nose, handed back her cookie dough, and gave her a pitying look. “Do you need anything before I go?”

  “Nah, I’m not really planning on moving for the weekend. I’ll still be here when you get off of your shift.”

  Alone. She’d be doing it all alone, was the unsaid part of that answer. Tears pricked at her eyes, and she sniffled before pinching off another piece of cookie dough and eating it.

  “Wow.” Finn’s eyebrows went up. “And I thought rooming with Frankie had been questionable.”

  Ignoring that dig, she took another deep inhale of her comforter and settled down for another night of chest-aching misery. Finn just shook his head at her and made his way to the door to go to work. As soon as he opened it, she heard three very familiar voices say hello, followed by a “bye, Finn.”

  Then, Tess, Lucy, and Gina walked into the living room armed with grocery bags. They took one look at her and did a group grimace.

  “Oh, honey,” Tess said. “You’ve got it bad. You tried to do your makeup.”

  One sympathetic group hug later, it was down to business.

  “We come armed with liquor, ice cream, and movies,” Gina said, flopping down onto the couch beside Fallon. “Tonight’s selection includes Wonder Woman, Rogue One, and The Silence of the Lambs. What kind of kick-ass heroine are you in the mood for? One who kicks ass and lives, one who kicks ass and dies, or one who kicks ass and becomes a serial killer’s best friend?” She glanced over at the blanket-covered TV and then back at Fallon with a huh-so-that’s-how-it’s-been look. “We’ll have to take that off.”

  If Fallon wasn’t ready to cry before, she was now. Her girls were here, not because she’d asked, but because they knew she needed them. She really did have the best friends in the world. She was about to tell them that when her mom walked in.

  “I came as soon as Finn texted.” Her mom took one look around the room, her focus settling on Fallon. “Are you wearing eyeliner? On only one eye?”

  “My other eye kept itching, and I must have rubbed it off.” Okay, she had cried it off as she was trying to apply it, but no one needed to know that.

  Tess’s eyes rounded, and she sat down in the chair closest to Fallon’s spot on the couch. “Oh, this is serious.”

  “It’s not serious,” she said as they all looked at her like she had three heads instead of one broken heart. “It was just an impulse buy at the drug store when I stopped in and got the cookie dough.”

  Gina reached over and snagged a pinch of cookie dough. “You never wear eyeliner.”

  “And now we know why,” Lucy said.

  Her mom made a tut-tut sound and sat down on the coffee table in front of Fallon. “I’m not buying that, young lady. Tell me everything, and Lucy, please make me a Jack and Coke—a double.”

  Where was she supposed to start? They alr
eady knew all the horrible details of the fight with Zach (thank God for group texts that eliminated the need to have the same horrible conversation multiple times). Today, she’d gotten off of work, stopped by the drug store, and scrolled Ice Knights news while she was standing in the world’s longest line. That had been a mistake. The ache in her chest combined with her crying-induced stuffed-up nose didn’t do a lot for clarifying her thought process.

  “I don’t know what happened,” she said, letting out a shaky breath. “I was reading all those stories about Zach while I was waiting in line, and I know I shouldn’t, but I scrolled down to the comments, and I guess they got to me. I had a moment of weakness and grabbed the eyeliner.”

  “So you’re saying other people’s judgment got to you, even though you know it’s bullshit?” her mom asked as she accepted the Jack and Coke from Lucy.

  Fallon nodded, understanding beginning to beat against her skull.

  Her mom set down her drink and went on: “Sort of like how Zach told you specifically not to tell his secret and you did anyway because you thought his reason of being embarrassed because of others’ judgments was wrong.”

  Oh, ouch. That hurt—probably because it was accurate. “It’s not the same. One is eyeliner. The other is his life. It was all about his pride.”

  “Oh, honey.” Her mom took Fallon’s hands in hers, giving them a comforting squeeze. “You’ve always been so very fierce. You’ve known who you were and what you wanted from the beginning. Your first word was ‘no.’ You are a warrior for others; it’s why you became a nurse—to take care of them and fight for them. I love that about you so very much, but it does not mean that you get to take away someone else’s right to make their own decisions, to fight their own battles in the way they want, even if it’s some eye-rolling testosterone BS that they’ll eventually work out.”

  “But I was right.” It was a weak argument even to her own ears.

  “That may be,” her mom said. “But it still doesn’t give you the right to supersede someone else’s wishes about their own life and how they want to live it. If Zach wanted to let his parents spend the rest of their miserable lives telling lies, then it was his call to make.”