Delay of Game

by Catherine Gayle

  “What the hell do I have to be stressed about? I’m in the fucking hospital where they’re doing everything for me.”

  “Yeah. You just keep thinking like that, Daddy.” I rolled my eyes. He tried to set it down on the table next to him, but I wasn’t going to have any of that. “Keep it in your hand. Just in case.”

  “I’m not going to get stressed from watching the game.”

  “Good! But I’m not going to hold my breath that they’ll win. It’s the playoffs.” Anything could happen. “And if they go down two games to none…”

  He scowled at me, but he kept the ball on the bed with him, placing it next to the remote control that operated everything.

  Before getting settled, I wheeled the table out of the way and grabbed the pudding cup he’d left untouched. He raised a brow, and I mimicked him. “What? It’s chocolate.” I snagged the spoon he’d left on a napkin and then did a little furniture rearrangement, sliding the more comfortable chair in his room over so it was beside his bed.

  By the time I was done with that, the pre-game show had started. As of tonight, each of the eight playoff series throughout the league had at least gotten underway. Since we were on the West Coast, they were able to recap with highlights from some of the other games that had already been played tonight, and they even took us to live footage of a game between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Washington Capitals that had just gone into overtime.

  I ate my pudding and kind of paid attention, but it was really only half-assed attention on my part. I liked hockey because it was what Daddy did for a living, but I’d never been what anyone would call a die-hard fan. If it wasn’t his team, I didn’t really care. And when it was the Boston Bruins, I really didn’t care—they were the team that currently employed the dude my mother ran off with. He was a scout for them or something.

  They switched to covering the Storm and the Canucks, finally, giving us a wide shot of the entire ice surface as both teams came out for their warm-ups. That was when I started to pay a little more attention. The commentator pulled Kally aside for an interview and asked him some idiotic questions about what the team had to do better tonight.

  I could tell him what they needed to do better tonight. They needed to fucking play better, that was what.

  Maybe it was a good thing I wasn’t a pro hockey player.

  Kally gave the expected answers and winked into the camera for Noelle before skating off to finish warming up. I stole a glance over to see how Daddy was doing. The television had his rapt attention. He was hanging on every word, every moment.

  When the camera remained on the Canucks’ side of the ice, he grumbled under his breath something about, “Trying to see who Bergy had fucking scratched.” It was good to know that even though he’d just had major heart surgery, Daddy would never change.

  My phone rang. The generic ring tone again. I dug it out of my purse just to be sure it was who I thought it was. Jonny. Yeah. Not going to answer that right now. I pushed the button to reject the call and shoved the phone back in my purse.

  “Who was that?” Daddy asked. The broadcast had gone to a commercial break, so he was able to focus on something else, at least for a moment.

  “No one.”

  “You can answer your phone, you know. It’s not going to bother me.”

  It would sure as hell bother me, though.

  “It wasn’t important,” I said, hoping he would just drop it.

  The commercial break ended, and the commentator on the ice had shoved a microphone into Hammer’s face. That was all it took for Daddy to let it go. Hammer talked about how he and Bergy were splitting the workload with Daddy being out of commission for a while. He said they had called upon some of the older, more experienced guys to help out, too—Webs, Kally, Zee, and a few others. Daddy kept nodding his head with everything Hammer said. They cut back to the studio then, updating on the overtime game in Pittsburgh.

  Then Daddy’s cell phone rang. He looked down at the screen with annoyance, drawing his eyebrows together. Most people knew not to call him when he was watching a game.

  I expected him to do like I had done and press the button to reject the call, but he surprised me by putting the phone up to his ear.

  “This is Scotty,” he barked into it. He stayed quiet for a minute, grunting here and there. I got up to put my pudding cup and spoon on the rolling table along with all the rest of the remains from Daddy’s dinner. None of it looked terribly appealing. No wonder he hadn’t finished it. He grunted again, a little louder. “There’s nothing wrong with her phone other than that she isn’t answering it. Hold on.”

  My heartbeat slowed to a stop. What the fuck? I didn’t answer his calls, so Jonny decided to call my dad?

  “Here,” Daddy said, holding the phone out to me. “Take this. Go out in the hall and talk to your boyfriend so I don’t have to hear things I don’t want to hear. I’ve got hockey to watch.”

  My hand shook when I took the phone from him.

  IT WASN’T FEAR or nerves or anything like that causing my hand to shake as reached for Daddy’s phone. It was anger. Or maybe rage would be closer to the truth. I couldn’t remember a time in my life that I’d been more pissed off with anyone than I was with Cam Fucking Johnson right at this particular moment.

  I let the door to Daddy’s room close gently behind me, even though every nerve ending in my body was begging me to slam it, before putting the cell to my ear. “What do you want, Jonny?” If the hall hadn’t been filled with people—nurses, orderlies, family members visiting patients—I wouldn’t have kept my words nearly as nice and profanity-free as I did, but there was no hiding the acid in my tone. Granted, I hadn’t attempted to hide it. I wanted him to know just how upset I was.

  “Just to talk to you.” He sounded calm. Too fucking calm. It just made me want to let my pissed-off-ness boil over, but that wouldn’t be anywhere close to satisfying since he was just on the other end of the telephone and not right in front of me where he could really feel it.

  I headed toward the stairs so I could get to the exit. I’d feel a lot better about saying whatever the hell I ended up saying to him if I was outside and away from all these people. “So why don’t you fucking talk, then?”

  “Okay,” he said. “My dog sitter said you’ve been to see Buster some more. Thank you for that.”

  “Don’t fucking thank me. I didn’t do that for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “I did it for your damn dog.”

  “Okay.” Still, with the calm thing.

  “I didn’t see any point in being pissed off at Buster just because I’m pissed off at you.” I was sucking in breaths as though I might never get another full one by this point, heading down the second flight of stairs. Daddy’s room was on the sixth floor. I could have taken the elevator, but I wanted the chance to walk off some of my mad. Plus the stairs were as good as deserted. I didn’t have to watch my language so much.

  “That seems reasonable,” Jonny said.

  What the fuck kind of response was that? For that matter, why was I the one talking?

  “I thought you wanted to talk,” I bit off, huffing and puffing.

  “We are talking.”

  “No, I’m the one fucking talking, and you’re saying shit like ‘Okay,’ and ‘Mmm-hmm,’ and it’s pissing me off.”

  “What would you rather I say?”

  “I’d rather you tell me why the fuck you thought you’d call my dad’s phone to get to me when clearly I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Because we can’t work through anything if you won’t answer your phone.”

  One more flight of stairs to go. I’d broken out in a sweat about two flights ago, but I couldn’t slow down now. “We don’t have anything to work through.”

  “Don’t we? Because I was under the impression that you were angry with me.”

  “See? You’ve already worked that out for yourself. You don’t need to fucking talk to me to understand that, and you don
’t need to use sneaky, underhanded methods to get me to talk to you. Methods, by the way, that will only serve to piss me off even more than I already am.” I made it to the hospital’s main lobby, my heels clacking on the floor and echoing in the cavernous space as I marched toward the exit.

  “What shoes are you wearing?” he asked.

  How the hell could he hear my shoes on the phone? “None of your fucking business.”

  “Okay.”

  Again, with the fucking one-word responses. “What shoes am I wearing? A new pair with razor-sharp stiletto points I could use to stab you with if you were here, that’s what.”

  “Sounds like you’d be really hot in them.”

  How could he keep responding like that when I was threatening him with bodily harm? Not that I would go through with it even if I was wearing shoes like the ones I’d described and not the sensible pair of pumps I was actually wearing, but why wouldn’t he fucking fight back? I dropped down on a bench beneath a tree and let out an indignant and thoroughly undignified grunt.

  “How did your doctor’s appointment go?” he asked when I stayed silent.

  “Fine.” Two could play the one-word-answer game.

  “Did you ask my questions?”

  “Some.”

  “Are you going to fill me in?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why are you trying to goad me?”

  “Because.” Because if I couldn’t get him to react, to fight back, then I was the only one out of the pair of us behaving like a child, and I didn’t like that thought. I might actually be more upset with myself at the moment than I was with him simply for the fact that I was allowing him to get so completely under my skin.

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t you have something you have to do right now?” Something besides driving me up the wall with being so fucking rational and calm?

  “I’m doing it,” he said. “I’m sitting in the press box with a few of the other boys, and we’re watching the team warm up on the ice. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  “Maybe you should pay more attention to that and less to me.”

  “What do you think I need to watch for? It’s just the warm up.”

  Yeah, so he had a point there. Damn it.

  “Why did you talk to my dad without coming to me first?”

  “Because I know you,” he said. “I’ve watched you for two years, and I see how you won’t let anyone in. Not men, at least—only the girls and your father. The rest you push away before they get close enough to matter.”

  I was glad he wasn’t here to see the way I was blinking back tears. I didn’t want him to see how easily he could get to me. “That’s so not even close to t—”

  “It is true,” he interrupted. “You’ve had this revolving door of men coming and going from your life, none of them sticking around for more than a date or two. I’m not willing to let you push me away so easily, and I thought the best way to be sure you can’t is to get to you through your dad.”

  “Behind my back.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Behind your back. Because you’re stubborn as hell.”

  That part was the truth, at least. I had to grant him that much. I was pretty sure Daddy was the only person I knew who might be more stubborn than me. Although, I might have to give Jonny a position on the stubborn scale. Somewhere below me, though.

  I could only sit there, sulking.

  “Sara?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s make a compromise.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, but I supposed if I didn’t at least hear him out, I’d still just be acting like an immature brat. “What kind of compromise?” I muttered.

  “I agree not to do anything behind your back anymore, to come to you first. And you agree not to shut me out.”

  I’d prefer to stick with just the first part of that, but that wouldn’t exactly be a compromise. “Okay. Deal.”

  “Will you be at my house when I get there late tonight?”

  “I don’t know.” The whole team would be back after the game tonight, which meant that Zee would be home with Dana again—at least once they got in at whatever ungodly hour their flight would land. She’d want to have some time alone with him. I really shouldn’t stay with her again tonight, but I didn’t want to go to my house, either, as long as Daddy was still in the hospital. Stupid abandonment issues. That wasn’t a good enough reason to go to Cam’s place, though, and I had a lot of good reasons to stay the hell away from there.

  “Okay,” he said after a minute. “If you’re not there, I’ll see you sometime tomorrow.”

  He made it sound like a promise.

  OTHER THAN BUSTER, my house was empty when I got there at some time after four in the morning. He ran circles around my legs, almost tripping me while I tried to get my suitcase inside, yapping excitedly the whole time.

  “Yeah, I know. Out of the way.” I shoved him back with my foot since he wouldn’t have a clue what I was saying. Once I closed the door and let go of my carry-on bag’s handle, he was practically trying to climb up my legs. I bent down and picked him up, and he licked my face all over, plying me with his dog breath. The whole time, his tail kept wagging so hard I worried I might drop him. He might be seven years old, but he still acted like a puppy. “Calm down, bud.” I scratched behind his ears, but that only got him more worked up.

  Times like this, I hated that I had to leave him alone so much. I’d tried boarding him early in my career, but at that point I hadn’t figured out how to train him properly because of his deafness, and he had been more than a handful, especially considering his size. It was easier to find one person I trusted to come and take care of him in familiar territory than it was to send him to a strange place with strange faces.

  Granted, some people might say that I still hadn’t trained him, considering how I let him run all over me so often.

  I plopped onto the couch and spent a few minutes petting him until he finally calmed down a bit. It was easier to deal with my disappointment that Sara hadn’t come over while being on the receiving end of such unconditional love, even if it was just from a dog.

  I really needed to get to bed, though, so I got up and took him outside so he wouldn’t start whining before I was ready to get up in the morning. Once he was out back and racing through the yard like the lunatic he was, I shut the door and took my bag upstairs.

  Mom had always made it a habit to unpack as soon as we returned from a trip, and I’d picked that up from her. Even after all these years of living on my own, I’d never been able to break myself of it.

  I opened the bag, took out my suits, and hung them in the closet. I’d only gotten half of my stuff out by the time Buster came racing in. He leaped up onto the bed and dove headfirst into the suitcase, nosing a couple of things out with his enthusiasm.

  My phone charger dropped to the floor from his efforts. When I retrieved it, I set it on the nightstand beside me and glared at my dog. “You’re lucky that you’re cute, you bastard.”

  He barked as if to signal he agreed.

  I finished putting everything away and forced Buster out of the suitcase so I could put it on the shelf in the closet. He stayed put in the center of the bed while I did that and then changed my clothes. I washed my face and wished I could shave. My beard was already getting scratchy, and it had only been a few days of letting it grow.

  Shaving wasn’t going to be an option for a while, though—hopefully. I might not be playing in the playoffs right now, but my team was, and that meant I was going to do whatever I could to keep them there. Yeah, playoff beards were a stupid superstition, and they didn’t have a damn thing to do with what happened on the ice. But superstition or not, they were tradition, and I damn sure had no intention of breaking a tradition.

  Especially not after the boys had won tonight. We had gotten behind early due to a couple of miscues in our own end, but the boys had clawed and fought their way back into the game until they’d f
orced another overtime. Once we were there, Nicky had shut down the Canucks’ offense until the second OT period, when Jared Tucker—JT—had snuck in a garbage goal just by hanging out in front of the crease and getting lucky with a rebound bouncing off his ass and going into the net.

  It was a hell of a lot better going home at night after a win.

  It would have been even better if Sara had been here waiting for me.

  I crawled into bed, and Buster grumbled at me for disturbing him. He’d already settled into his usual spot, right smack dab in the center of the bed, and was halfway asleep. I tried to get to sleep, too, but I didn’t get there easily.

  Even though she’d said she didn’t know if she’d be here, I had allowed myself to hope that she would. Disappointment rose up like bile in my throat, and nothing seemed capable of washing it away.

  SHE DIDN’T ANSWER her phone when I called after practice. It wasn’t a complete surprise. Yes, she’d agreed to the compromise I’d suggested, but even when we’d discussed it, I hadn’t gotten the sense that she would hold up her end of the bargain. I’d hoped she would. I liked to believe that people would do what they say they would do. But I hadn’t fallen into the trap of trusting it would happen this time.

  Like I’d told her that night on the phone, I knew her. That meant I knew just how ridiculously inflexible she could be sometimes, especially when it came to pushing people away before they got too close. My guess was I’d already gotten closer than she’d wanted to let me, and that had scared her, so she was pushing back.

  Now I had to figure out how best to go about breaking down her defenses. I tossed my pads into my stall and grabbed my duffel bag, debating my next step.

  “Jonny!” Burnzie called out from the other side of the locker room. “Come have lunch with me.”

  A lot of the boys had already left for the afternoon, but he and a handful of the others were still hanging around. Burnzie hadn’t been involved in today’s practice. He’d had a maintenance day today, coming in for some physical therapy to treat a lingering knee injury that had been plaguing him for the last couple of months.