Tidings of Love

by Alicia Hunter Pace

  “Titillating? I don’t know this word.” Though it made as much sense as anything else she’d said.

  “Arousing. Sexually exciting.”

  She really had taken leave of her senses. “I find that of you, yes. Of course. You know that.”

  Noel raised her hands in frustration and made an animal sound. “But do you and Tewanda find that together, because of me? Are you playing a game?”

  “No! You make no sense, Noel. None. And I do not need you to win hockey games. I love you, yes. I love everything about you—well, except for the things you are saying now. But you don’t know very much about hockey. You are no help to me there. I won games before you. I lose games since you. You are talking crazy.”

  She sighed and closed her eyes.

  He decided to address the only thing she’d said that made any sense to him.

  “Tewanda is not prettier than you.”

  She laughed again and not in that good, Noel way. “Don’t try to tell me you don’t think she’s pretty.”

  “I’m not. She is. I know this. But you are my kind of pretty. I don’t care for her kind of pretty so much. Is too much for me, too shiny, somehow.”

  “Oh, so, now you’re saying that you like my looks because I’m not as pretty as she is. I guess you don’t like competition.”

  “I love competition. All athletes do, or they are not athletes very long. This is crazy talk. You are twisting my words. Is not fair. You know I sometimes have trouble finding the right thing to say.”

  “Try the truth. Explain this.” She turned on her phone, tapped the screen a few times, and handed it to him.

  It was one of those Facebook pages. He hated Facebook, didn’t have time for it. But he scrolled through. It was all about Tewanda and him.

  “So?” He handed her back the phone. “Those pictures are old. We went out for a while. You know this. There were pictures. She was always taking pictures and asking others to take pictures of us with her phone. I cannot control that she put them on this Facebook like they were taken later.”

  “Explain the one from the Boys and Girls Club.”

  “I can’t. I don’t know where she got it.”

  “Was she there?”

  “I would have said no, but I would have said she wasn’t in New Jersey, either. But it seems she was. She is a what Jean Luc calls a stalker.”

  “I don’t believe you. What’s the point of her seeking you out if she isn’t going to make contact?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes she does make contact. But it seems that other times she does not.”

  “You could have told me.”

  “I didn’t think of it much. You and hockey are important. Tewanda is not.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  And suddenly, he’d had enough.

  “As you wish, Noel.” Certainly, he could prove what he was saying was true. He could arrange a meeting with Jean Luc, Mikhail, and Sharon. They knew how it was. But he shouldn’t have to prove anything. “I have done nothing to deserve your distrust, so I guess I can do nothing to deserve your trust.”

  Though it hurt him more than the pain in his hip, more than any injury he’d ever suffered on the ice, he stood and walked to the door.

  “I love you, Noel. I know is early days, but I had already begun to think you would be my wife. That is still true. If you decide you can believe in us, come to me. But I will not come for you.”

  And she walked out the door with her head held high.

  He still held the hat trick puck in his hand.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nickolai had eaten his pregame snack, kicked the soccer ball around with the guys, taped his sticks, and suited up. And, oh yeah. He’d spent a delightful hour with Coach Colton where he’d been threatened with a visit from a sports psychologist.

  He didn’t need to talk to a sports psychologist; he needed to talk to Noel. And it looked like he never would again. He’d stood by his pledge not to go to her, but he’d hoped every day—and it had been a week now—that she would come to her senses. But she hadn’t.

  Didn’t she know what they’d had was special? They could be happy forever, with a family, a home, and everything that went with it. Their Christmases could be like the one at Beauford Bend every year. Or maybe it wasn’t special. What did he know about family, love, and relationships? That was the trouble.

  It wasn’t time to put on his helmet and lace up his skates, so he sat down in his stall and put his earbuds in. There was nothing left to do and nothing he could do. No one had to know he hadn’t bothered to turn on any music. He didn’t want to hear how bad his game had sucked since New Jersey, didn’t want hear how they’d lost on home ice to the Coyotes on Tuesday and then again to the Sharks on Thursday. Coach had already covered that, in case he didn’t know. If they didn’t win tonight against the Kings, morale would be at rock bottom when they hit the road next week.

  He put a towel over his head and turned his face to the floor.

  The press was already questioning whether the Sound deserved a place in the playoffs, but earned or not, they were going. How long they’d last was a different question.

  The press had also spent a lot of time speculating over what had happened to the great Glaz. Clearly, he’d lost his momentum, but why? Was he injured? Sick? Was he not mentally prepared?

  Yeah. You might say that, and he hated himself for it. Never, never had he let outside problems inside the game—until now.

  Suddenly, the towel was whipped from his head and an earbud ripped from his ear.

  “Zatknis’ ty, ublyudok!”

  “Don’t curse me in Russian.” Mikhail sat down in the stall next to Nickolai’s. “If I am to be insulted, make it good, and I want to understand.”

  “Ta gueule, baignoire!”

  Mikhail laughed. “I have told you again and again: until you learn better, do not try to speak French. You called me a bathtub.”

  “You should not sit in Daniel’s stall. He might want to sit there.”

  “He might want a win tonight. So do I, even if you don’t.”

  “How can you say that! I want to win!” Nickolai tried to put some anger in his words, but it wasn’t there. There was no emotion at all.

  “Not enough.”

  “Are you trying to make me angry?”

  “Yes. What the media says is true. You’ve lost your fire.”

  Nickolai plucked his towel from his friend’s hand and covered his head again. “Go away, Mikhail. I’m concentrating.”

  This time, when Mikhail tore the towel away, he threw it across the room. “You’re concentrating on woman trouble.”

  “I have no woman trouble. I am woman-free.”

  “That’s the problem. At least you did have a restraining order served on Tewanda. If you’d done it months ago when you should have, you wouldn’t have the problem.”

  “Meh.” He tried to look unconcerned. “If Noel didn’t believe me about Tewanda, pretty soon she wouldn’t believe me about something else. You know how it is on the road. Sharon believes you.”

  “Sharon believes me because I tell her what goes on. I tell her when a puck bunny disguises herself as a maid and knocks on my hotel room door at three o’clock in the morning. If she had to learn of it from watching television, she would sell my balls on eBay.”

  “No. Sharon is too smart to exert energy trying to sell worthless things.”

  “You make poor choices in women,” Mikhail said. “First Tewanda. I thought Noel was better. But she is not for a hockey player. If she understood the game and cared for you, she wouldn’t have done this thing at such a critical time in the season.”

  “No. Noel is the best of women. She does what she thinks is right. She thought this was right.” Why he defended her, he didn’t know.

  A tone from Nickolai’s phone signaled that he had a text message. He didn’t care but he looked at it anyway.

  Noel! Maybe she had changed her mind. Maybe she was sorry! He open
ed it.

  Good luck, my darling!!!

  He checked the time. One hour and seven minutes until puck drop time. She hadn’t sent the message for the last two games, so this must mean something. He hesitated only a second to type back:

  Am I your darling? Does this mean you will be waiting for me when I finish the game tonight?

  It seemed like hours before she answered.

  No. But regardless, I want you to win. I thought a missing ritual might be hurting you mentally.

  “Yebat’.” He threw his phone across the locker room, and it shattered against the wall. Why would she do this? Send a sweet message that she didn’t mean? It only reminded him of what he couldn’t have. No home, no warmth, no Noel who smelled like apples and fresh baked cookies, with sewing in her lap and seductive underclothes beneath her demure dress.

  Wasn’t it enough that she had taken his heart and cut it into tiny pieces? Did she also have to scatter it to the four winds? He jumped to his feet, raised his hockey stick over his head, and bellowed like an enraged rhinoceros.

  All the chatter and movement in the previously hectic room stopped.

  Mikhail rose and brought his hands together in one loud deliberate clap. One by one, his teammates joined in until there was thunderous applause and cheers.

  And all that fed Nickolai’s anger.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Noel spread fabric on the large table in her workroom. She’d shipped a commissioned piece today and was starting an alphabet wall hanging for a baby who hadn’t yet been born—a brand new project for a brand new life.

  She wished she could feel brand new.

  You could,” her naughty bits said. “If only you could believe him. You heard his agent’s statement on ESPN. He said that woman had been stalking our guy and there was now a restraining order against her.”

  “That doesn’t make it true. Besides, it was never going to last with Nickolai and me.”

  “Yeah, yeah. The snow globe and all that. Have it your own way.”

  In the last week, Noel had spent more time in this workroom than she had upstairs. It was too hard. She’d thought she’d purged her apartment of everything connected to him, but that was far from the case—there were sports ice packs in the freezer, a heating pad that had slipped between the sofa cushions, and a dryer full of clean t-shirts and socks. And best of all, the pair of boxer shorts in the bed—the last ones she’d taken off him.

  But even without those things, he was everywhere—asleep on the sofa, mixing a protein drink in the kitchen, pulling her into the shower with him.

  If this week had been hard, today had been ghastly. She had met the other bridesmaids and Emory at White Lace and Promises for Emory’s final wedding dress fitting. And Noel was happy for her friend, truly. But the wedding was two weeks away now, and she had imagined that Nickolai would be there with her, would see her in the dreamy blush-colored bridesmaid dress Emory had chosen. And there was the matching merry widow, panties, and garter belt and stockings she’d planned to surprise him with after the wedding.

  It was almost too much to bear, but she’d bear it because she loved Emory, and she was a good friend.

  And because she was the good, dependable one who always did the right thing.

  All this might be easier if Nickolai wasn’t playing so poorly. She hadn’t watched the last two games—that would have been too much. But she’d heard. Everyone had heard. Not only had the Sound lost both games, Nickolai hadn’t given the fans the goal they had come to expect from him. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d been sluggish and lackluster. Noel wasn’t egotistical enough to think it was her fault, but she felt bad for him.

  She probably shouldn’t have sent him that text. Before everything went bad, she’d set an alarm to remind her to send the good luck message at the right moment for the rest of the regular season games. When the alarm sounded on Tuesday, it had made her cry, and she’d almost deleted the reminders. But she couldn’t let go of that one last connection—not yet. And when the buzzer cried out earlier, she had thought it might help him mentally if all his superstitious rituals were in place. But then, he’d sent that message, asking that question that had gone straight to her heart and cut it out.

  It was almost time for the game. Maybe she would at least listen. She could turn on the small TV in the corner, turn her back on it, and cut the blocks for the wall hanging like she’d planned.

  But she didn’t do that, should have known she wouldn’t. As soon as the television was on, Noel laid her rotary cutter aside and sat down to watch what was left of the pregame show.

  “And the big question is, can the Sound pull this one off on home ice?” the reporter asked. “After an amazing 27–7 streak since January and securing a place in the playoffs, the Sound has lost two games straight that should have been easy wins. Will tonight make three when they meet the Kings, who they struggled with earlier in the season?”

  “Hard to know,” the other reporter said. “And of course, Sound fans are anxious to see if their golden boy, Nickolai Glazov, will have a better game tonight.”

  Then the players took the ice, so Noel was spared hearing—again—how lackluster Nickolai’s game had been.

  Oh. Jackson Beauford was singing the national anthem. Emory had mentioned that he was going to, but Noel had forgotten. The camera panned the players. Nickolai looked intense.

  And the puck was dropped. Nickolai shot wild and it went downhill from there. She had never seen him play like that—so out of control, so angry. According to the commentators, it was very different from his low-energy games earlier in the week, but no better.

  Did they have to add insult to injury by panning the stands to show all the celebrities who were there to witness this—Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman, Taylor Swift, Vince Gill and Amy Grant, Jackson and Gabe Beauford? And how many times did they have to say that Gabe was a friend of Nickolai’s and was home for Jackson’s wedding?

  “You’ve got to wonder if having the two-time Super Bowl champ in the stands is helping or hurting Glaz?”

  “If it’s helping, I’d hate to see if it was hurting.”

  Noel wanted to scream. She hated those guys, sitting all warm and cozy at their little desk, passing judgment about things they didn’t know anything about. So what if they’d both played in the NHL? You’d think that would make them more understanding.

  By the end of the first period, the Kings were leading 1–0 and Nickolai had been to the penalty box twice—once for high-sticking and once for fighting.

  Hard to believe the fights used to be her favorite part.

  The announcers were having a field day with it, too. The darling one day, the devil the next.

  A sick feeling came over Noel, and her hot, haunting words reverberated through her head.

  Good luck, my darling!!!

  We will not see each other again.

  I loved who I thought you were. I don’t know you at all.

  I don’t believe you.

  Darling one day, devil the next. Is that how she’d made him feel? But how about how he’d made her feel?

  “What?” her naughty bits demanded. “Loved, cherished? And as to what went on in bed, well—”

  “Shut up! What about Tewanda?”

  “What about her? You were ready enough to believe him when she showed up here on Christmas. You were looking for a reason to end it because you didn’t believe it could last. You listened to your family, but it’s not their fault. It’s yours.”

  “And now, it’s too late.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  Later, Noel would think it was ironic how a word could have a particular meaning one second and something altogether different the next. Bad was such a word; it could only be applied to a hockey game and a player’s performance before something worse, something unthinkable occurred.

  It happened less than a minute into the second period, and it was fast, so fast that Noel didn’t see what caused the pileup. But when she s
aw the blood on the ice, everything seemed to go into slow motion because she knew whose blood it was even before the pile unfurled and only Nickolai was left lying there face-down. But he was moving, trying to rise to his knees, so that was good, wasn’t it?

  Evidently the people running onto the ice didn’t think so. Unlike other sports, in hockey, a man down didn’t automatically bring on a time-out. Unless it was serious, the hurt player was expected to get himself to the bench so a sub could go in. But not this time; trainers and team doctors surrounded Nickolai in seconds, and the stretcher was right behind them.

  Noel needed to do something, to move, to pray, to sell her soul to the devil. But she couldn’t do any of that, because she couldn’t think, let alone move.

  Around the roar in her ears, she heard a few key words: Blade to the neck. Carotid artery? On his way to Vanderbilt Medical Center.

  My fault. He loved me and now he’s going to die.

  The reporters were nattering on, talking about other hockey accidents, speculating on whose skate had cut him, and how long it was going to take the Zamboni to clean up the ice.

  But what did any of that matter? And there was nothing she could do. For once, the good dependable one, who always did the right thing, couldn’t do anything.

  But wait. When had she done the right thing by Nickolai? He had been nothing but considerate and loving, all the while respecting her work and praising her skill. But what had she done the one time he had needed something from her?

  Refused to even hear him out, that’s what.

  He had offered her a life, and she had been the one who had relegated them to a snow globe.

  And even after all that, when she had texted him tonight, he had only wanted to know if she would be waiting for him after the game tonight.

  And she would be, if there were anything to wait for.