Confessions of a Former Puck Bunny (Taking Shots)

by Madsen, Cindi

  I opened my purse to grab my lip gloss, and the corner of the card Andrea Green had given me poked my finger, almost like it thought I needed a reminder it was there. My heart tugged me one way while my brain tugged me another.

  It would be easier to get a job with a book publisher after I gain more experience… Say Ryder and I work out, that’s two years here in Boston.

  I knew I was getting way ahead of myself, but if I was going to try out the optimism thing, I needed to think things all the way through.

  Will Andrea even remember me after two years?

  I ran my fingers across the edge of the card. Two years was a long time, and she probably attended several functions and handed out a lot of cards.

  In two years’ time, she could be in a completely different job with a different email address.

  So if I played out the scenario, and Ryder and I made it through the ups and downs of my job here and his hectic hockey schedule, not to mention the many outside forces that I didn’t want to think about because they overwhelmed me, he’d be looking at NHL teams after that.

  What if I waited all that time to try to get my foot in the door with a publisher that would let me edit novels, and Ryder went somewhere else? What if he was drafted to an NHL team in the Midwest or West Coast?

  Not every publishing job was in New York, but my odds would be better there, and I wondered if I could afford to even think about putting it off.

  But the other option was accepting that in a little over a month, I’d simply tell him good-bye, and that’d be the end of us.

  My heart knotted, growing tighter with each beat. What if I ended up walking away from the best thing that ever happened to me because I didn’t have enough faith in forever? The truth was, I’d felt lonely for so long, simply drifting through life and ticking off the days with nothing to look forward to. I knew all too well that someone like Ryder didn’t come along every day. Jobs came and went, but love…?

  A mixture of longing and anxiety swirled through me.

  Could I change my entire future for a guy who’d referred to me as a friend after I’d climbed him like a tree and kissed him?

  He fixed that this morning, though.

  There’d been a lot of ups and downs between me and Ryder—more than I liked and enough that it was hard to feel totally secure in our relationship and that it could handle many more hits. Part of me felt like I’d forgiven him a little too quickly last night, mostly because it made me feel like I’d completely lost control. But he’d overlooked the way I’d pushed him away again and again and willingly glazed right over my past with his teammates, something I could still hardly believe.

  All that crappy stuff is behind us. He’d proudly introduced me to his parents this morning, and things were changing between us and growing stronger every day. Surely we were over the up and down rollercoaster and on our way to smooth waters territory.

  Which meant it wasn’t absolutely ridiculous to consider staying in Boston for him, right?

  I leaned back in my chair and pinched the bridge of my nose. This was more stressful than I thought it’d be, and I was only in the theoretical stage.

  It’s just an email. Who knows if I’ll even get the job?

  Backup plans were always a good idea—something both Ryder and I agreed on.

  I finished composing the email, read through it until words no longer made sense but I was sure the grammar and spelling were correct, and hit send. Then I grabbed my phone and called Ryder, but it just rang and rang.

  I didn’t bother with voicemail, just disconnected the call and went to packing up for the day.

  When my ringtone split the air, I grabbed my phone embarrassingly fast. Good thing no one was here to witness how desperate I was to talk to my boyfriend.

  Only it wasn’t him—it was my mom.

  “Hey, Mom.” I hadn’t talked to her in a long time, and in a nice turn of events, I felt more excitement over chatting with her than worry over what would come out of her mouth—if there was anyone I could wax poetic with over my cute hockey player boyfriend, it was my mother.

  “You’ll never guess what happened…” Mom paused, so apparently she literally wanted me to guess.

  “You got a job,” I said.

  Mom laughed. “Seriously, Lindsay. I know you can’t see my outfit right now, but it’s not made for working.”

  “Okay. Hmmm. You got a puppy.”

  “Again, this outfit isn’t for scooping up puppy poo.”

  I tested the limits of my chair, leaning it back and propping my crossed ankles on my desk. “I give up.”

  “Well, you know Mike Grabonski?”

  Even though I’d been trying to stay clear of the hockey world before slipping and falling right back into it with Ryder, I knew the name. He was a hotshot winger for The Pennsylvania Pistons. “Yeah. He’s a pretty big name in the NHL right now.”

  “He and I have been dating, and long story short, I’m moving in with him next month.”

  I pulled out the fake happiness I stored up for occasions like this. Over the years, I’d had to dig it up many a time. I didn’t know what had happened to the boy toy she’d been so excited about a whole month or so ago, and I didn’t bother asking. On the bright side, Mike Grabonski was at least semi-age appropriate, and I think I read he was recently divorced, so another silver lining—maybe more like gray, but hey, I’d take it. “That’s so exciting. Tell me all about him.”

  She launched right into it, and between all the details—some of which I would’ve rather not known—I didn’t have a chance to tell her about my hockey player. In fact, as she talked about how she was relocating yet again and basically putting all her eggs in his basket, I started worrying that I was still more like her than I wanted to be.

  …

  One whole period to go in the Hockey East Championship game and my voice was completely raw from screaming. Back in my former hockey game days, I’d always been on the demure side of the cheering, worried more about looking pretty instead of being overly invested in the game. Naturally, winning always meant players in good moods, but this desire for them to win ran so much deeper. I wanted this for Ryder. And I’d become about as eloquent as a Bruins fan after drinking their bodyweight in beer.

  “I think maybe I need a mini-break,” I rasped to Megan, who was seated to my right.

  She laughed. “I like not being the only crazy potty-mouthed fan in the near vicinity.” Lyla and Whitney cheered and occasionally talked smack about the other team, but Megan and I were more over-the-top, peppering ours with F-bombs aimed at the other team and refs. After all, she had two boys on the team that she cared a lot about, and obviously she’d gone to a lot of games in her life.

  That prickling sensation I’d experienced since arriving at the arena hit me, and I glanced over to see that sure enough, Ryder’s dad was glaring in my direction. Again. Wow. He really doesn’t like me.

  What the hell went down between Ryder and his parents?

  I’d dropped his car off last night, but he’d been at the gym, so I’d just left the keys with Dane and went back home to crash. By the time I’d finally gotten a hold of him this afternoon, he didn’t want to talk about it and he was getting ready to start his pregame ritual. Apparently their coach was pissed that having this year’s tournament taking place at the TD Garden meant they weren’t sequestered enough. Not that I didn’t see his point, but it happened to be super convenient for me that it was in town.

  “I’m going to go get a drink,” I said two minutes before the second—and final—intermission. Hopefully I could beat the crowd and be back in my seat before the next period started. “Anyone want anything?”

  Megan handed me a wad of bills and asked for “nachos and something caffeinated, the biggest size they have” and I took off up the stairs and headed toward the nearest concession stand. The line was massive but moving, and after ordering, I turned, food and drinks in hand, and nearly bumped right into Ryder’s dad.

 
“Oh, sorry.”

  “Don’t you recognize me at all?” he asked.

  I did my best to not look at him like he was crazy, but considering the question, I doubt I pulled it off. “Of course I do. I just saw you yesterday.”

  “I’m not talking about yesterday.”

  “You mean the quarterfinals game?”

  Frustration etched his features. It felt like I was failing a pop quiz in a class I’d never taken.

  “I know your mother,” he said. “Didn’t Ryder tell you?”

  My muscles tensed. “No. He was busy preparing for the game.” I wanted to believe that was why he’d neglected to mention it, although considering the information, you’d think he could’ve fit it in.

  “Well, it’s been over a decade, and your mother didn’t bring you along often, but you’d think you’d remember, considering I put you both up in an expensive apartment in New York for almost a year.”

  Instinctively I knew that I shouldn’t respond that I couldn’t possibly remember every guy my mom dated, especially going that far back, even if it were true. One face blurred into the next, and I’d learned not to get attached. I only bothered to commit them to memory if we moved into the guys’ houses. Even then, I’d felt like a stray cat they’d picked up, and I knew at any moment, they might find a cuter cat and kick both Mom and me out. Or she’d be the one to find the better tomcat. And now I really needed to abandon my cat metaphor, because shit was getting weird, and it was already weird enough.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t remember you. Are you sure it was my mom?” There were probably a lot of girls in your past, just like there are a lot of guys in hers. There’s no way it’s—

  “Yvette Rivera?”

  Swallowing became impossible. Vaguely I felt the condensation from the soda dripping down my hand. A fuzzy feeling crept across my brain and the ground no longer seemed steady under my feet.

  “Yeah, I’m sure that I met her on the hockey circuit,” he said. “Just like I’m sure that you’re playing my son the way she played me. She’s the reason my marriage broke up, did you know that? She destroyed everything I’d built up for years, but I’m sure she never gave a second thought to that, either. She was the type of girl who barged in, made demands, and then left someone else holding the bill.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out. I’d thought a lot about the guys who’d broken Mom over the years. How they would use her and discard her and then we’d need a new place to live. I’d never really thought of her using and discarding guys.

  He advanced a step, crowding my space. “I worked hard to get Ryder to a place where he could have a long NHL career ahead of him, and I won’t let some girl come in and manipulate him for her personal gain.”

  “I’m not manipulating anyone,” I said, righteous anger flooding my body. “I genuinely care about your son. And one thing I’ve learned about him is that if he wants something, he’ll make it happen. What he needs is for you to give him a fucking break and acknowledge how good he is, or to get the hell out of the way. That might not be what you want to hear, but if you care about him, you should know that.”

  “And if you care about him, you’d stop messing with his head and let him have a chance. He’s been playing worse ever since you entered the picture, and his future is riding on these playoffs. You don’t honestly think you two are gonna skip into the sunset and live happily ever after, do you?”

  I clenched my jaw, my pulse pounding faster and faster, until my temples throbbed. “I’m not some naive girl waiting for a guy to come in on a white horse and save me.” I’d almost added like my mom was, but right now I wasn’t exactly sure my picture of her was completely accurate. “I realize that he and I are on different paths. I’m perfectly capable of saving myself.”

  He crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. “Maybe you’re smarter than I gave you credit for, then. But consider this… For Ryder to achieve the great things I know he can, I’m not the only one who needs to get out of his way.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Ryder

  What the hell was I going to do? Every time I saw Lindsay in the stands, I thought about how I needed to break the news that her mom and my dad…

  I wanted to stop that stupid voice in the back of my mind that whispered maybe I didn’t know Lindsay as well as I thought. It was what Dad wanted, and I hated that it worked, even a little bit.

  Those fights before my parents got divorced were especially ugly.

  Blips from those awful days played through my head. My mom, standing there with tears running down her cheeks. “Who is she?”

  “How could you humiliate me like that?”

  Dad lifting his chin, never one to back down or say he was wrong. “It was nice to have someone appreciate me for once.”

  “She appreciated you for your money. She played you for the fool you are. But now you’re free to go be with her. Like I said, I’m done.”

  No matter how many times I told the downer thoughts to shut up, they drifted up again. The initial bomb drop had been bad enough, but what really screwed me up was that last line Mom had delivered, about how Dad went to be with his mistress, only to find she’d moved on with his teammate. I supposed for Mom, it was poetic justice, but for some reason it was seriously fucking with my head.

  Lindsay’s not her mom. Maybe she started out going for hockey players for sport, but that was all over by the time she and I got together. Besides, I was the one who pursued her so hard in the first place.

  “Ox!” Dane smacked the side of my helmet. “Where are you right now? Because you’re not here, and we fucking need you to be.”

  I jerked my attention to him. I thought I was distracted with thoughts of Lindsay last game, but this was that times one hundred. If my interest in Lindsay were merely a passing thing, I wouldn’t think twice about what I’d found out. In fact, I wanted to go back in time and unlearn that her mom had been one of the reasons my parents broke up. I wanted to go back to yesterday morning when the only thing that existed in the world was her and me, naked in my bed.

  But there was no going back.

  “I’m here,” I said to Dane, determined to let the game shut out everything else. If I didn’t get it together, we’d lose the championship game of the Hockey East Tournament and fail to advance to the NCAA Tournament, and then I’d never forgive myself for letting my team down.

  I set up and glared at the opponent I was going to take out as soon as the whistle blew. For the next twenty minutes, there’d be no more thinking about what Lindsay and I were or weren’t.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Lindsay

  The mood at the Quad was often cheery—effects of it being the weekend and a lot of alcohol tended to do that to people. I’d been there plenty of times after BC won a hockey game, too, but I’d never seen it like this.

  Excitement vibrated off the walls along with the music, and my already victorious mood buoyed even higher.

  “Have you seen our boys yet?” I shouted to Megan over the crowd and my words were immediately swallowed up.

  She tipped onto her toes and looked around, and then lifted her phone. “I don’t think they’ve made it here yet.”

  Usually we would’ve waited outside the dressing room, but it was seriously a mad house, with extra parents and press thrown in, so Whitney stayed back to report and catch a ride with Hudson, and the rest of us fled before we were trapped in the parking lot of the TD Garden for hours.

  “Let’s grab drinks now,” Lyla said. “Once the guys get here, the line’s going to be crazy long.”

  If that’s not crazy long, I thought as we neared the drink table, I don’t know what is. Still, like Lyla said, it was only going to get busier, so we might as well settle in and grab the guys’ drinks, so by the time they arrived to catapult the celebration to the next level, we’d be ready to properly toast their success.

  If only standing and waiting didn’t give me way too much time f
or thinking. I hadn’t told the girls that I’d basically been accosted by Ryder’s dad as I’d left the concession stand. I wanted to, but something held me back.

  I didn’t want to know what that something was, but I did. Those last words echoed through my head over and over. I’m not the only one who needs to get out of his way.

  Am I in Ryder’s way? I liked to think of myself as supportive, and he’d told me he needed me. But I didn’t quite believe he truly did, and it scared me how much I cared about him and had started to rely on him. If I was sad, I knew just the sound of his voice would cheer me up. If I needed math help, he’d drop everything to come to my aid. If I felt lonely or was stressed or just had a crappy day, having his arms around me pushed all the bad away and made everything right with the world.

  Maybe I was holding him back without knowing it because I wanted us to work out so badly. After all, his dad was completely blind to how much pressure he put on his son, and how he never gave him a single freaking compliment, and even though he was a complete ass, I didn’t doubt he thought he was doing what was best for Ryder.

  I had a feeling that pressure and the weight of those expectations was why Ryder constantly pushed himself to the brink in the gym, going above and beyond being in shape to the point of exhaustion.

  Now I come around, all needy and demanding attention, both for math help and because it never feels like we get enough time together. I’m sure if I kept asking for more, he’d try to make me happy to the point of sacrificing his well-being.

  Possibly he’d even say he wanted me to stay in Boston and try to make us work long term, even if he knew he couldn’t balance both.

  On reflex, I checked my phone like I’d been doing every few minutes since sending off my résumé. Still no word on that job, but I had a list of possibilities stored on my phone, along with Andrea Green’s email address. I’d told myself I should at least email her and see if she’d heard of any open positions so I knew all my options before making a huge decision about my future. But so far, I’d yet to compose that email.