Nickolai's Noel

by Alicia Hunter Pace

  “We’re going to sleep now,” her naughty bits said sadly.

  “That’s for the best,” Noel answered.

  “Noel!” Deborah said. “I know I taught you better than to sit in polite company with your nose stuck in your phone. I declare! Smartphones are going to single-handedly bring down civilized behavior as we have come to know it, such as it is.”

  Noel had to get out of there.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Here, Paige.” Noel handed Constance’s Easter dress to her sister. “It’s all done, but it needs to be steamed. And press the hem.” Still taking care of things, but that was about to stop.

  Paige looked at her wide-eyed. “You always do that.”

  “Not this time.” She gathered up her pincushion and thread and put them in her sewing basket. “I’m leaving.”

  “Leaving?” Deborah rose from her chair as Noel stepped around Paige. “Don’t you mean going to bed?”

  “No. I’m going back to Beauford. Right now.” She walked toward the stairs.

  “Noel! Come back here. This is insane! It’s almost eleven o’clock.”

  “What?” Grandmama said. “Noel is leaving? She can’t go out this time of night. Deborah, stop her.”

  Paige stood up. “Noel! I know you’re mad at us, but don’t do this.”

  Was she? Mad at them? Yes, she supposed she was. But for what? Being right? But it wasn’t her anger that was making her leave. No. She had to get out of here because Nickolai had lied to her, her heart was breaking, and she simply could not be here anymore.

  Once upstairs, she sat on the bed and put her hands over her face. She would not cry, not over this and not for herself. She brought up Tewanda’s Facebook page again. What she’d seen downstairs was just the beginning. Tewanda had posted something nearly every day about what they’d done, where they’d eaten, and who’d they’d seen. And New Jersey wasn’t the first away game she’d been to. There was no mention of her having attended home games, nor had Noel noticed her there. How had Nickolai juggled that? And why?

  But really, did why matter? When she’d been texting Nickolai a good luck message at exactly one hour and seven minutes before the puck was dropped, Tewanda had been in the stands. Noel knew a fool when she met one, and she’d been the worst kind—one who’d known the score in the beginning and let herself forget it. Enough. She had to pack.

  As Noel gathered her toiletries and folded clothes into her bag, her phone rang. Of course. He always called as soon as the press conference and the autograph signing was over—and she always answered on the first ring. She was strong enough not to answer, but not enough to ignore the text message.

  Tried to call but you must be busy, or maybe sleeping. Team plane about to leave. Have to turn off phone for flight. Maybe sleep. Will be late so I will stay at my condo tonight. Call me tomorrow when you leave there so I can be at your house when you return. Very tired but very happy. Love you. Can’t wait to see your sweet face. And other parts.

  There was a knock at the door. Might as well get it over with.

  “Come in.”

  To her surprise, it was Webb who stepped inside.

  “Have you come to try to persuade me to stay?”

  “No. I’ve come to take your bags down. I took your car down to the corner, gassed it up, and checked the oil.”

  “Thank you.” Noel was touched. She’d checked the oil before she’d left, but she wouldn’t tell him that. “That was very thoughtful of you.”

  “It’s late. I didn’t want you to have to stop,” he said.

  “You’re a good man, Webb.” And she felt a little guilty for the disdain she’d felt for him for not standing up to the Phi Mu Machine. If she couldn’t do it, why should she expect him to?

  He picked up her duffel and train case. “Thank you. Will you text me when you’re safely home?”

  “Good idea. Then Mother won’t have an excuse to call—at least not tonight.”

  Webb nodded and lifted one corner of his mouth. “Is this all your luggage?”

  “I have a tote bag and my sewing basket downstairs. I’ll get them.”

  “Okay.” He headed toward the door but hesitated. “They love you.

  “I know. I’ll get over this. Just not tonight.”

  And she would, it was just a question of when. Of course, she and Webb were talking about two very different things.

  • • •

  It was a just shy of 2:00 a.m. when Noel entered the back door of Piece by Piece. At first, her thoughts had been a jumble of chaotic nonsense, but, gradually, she’d sorted everything and catalogued her thoughts in an orderly manner—like piecing a quilt.

  I. Why had he done it?

  Was she some kind of good luck charm, like his lucky orange Gatorade, that he, therefore, had to keep happy and endure until the season was over?

  Did he just like having two women—glamorous Tewanda on the road and during the day in Nashville for excitement, and homespun Noel in Beauford for playing house with?

  Was it a game for Nickolai and Tewanda, and they wanted to see how long they could fool her?

  II. Why had she not considered the facts?

  Men like Nickolai did not fall for mousy little quilters.

  Snow globes don’t last forever. She’d thought that one time before. She wouldn’t forget it again.

  III. Why had she ignored the evidence?

  Tewanda’s visit at Christmas. After all, who did that unless she was very sure of the man?

  He had never encouraged her to go to away games, had always said wives and girlfriends didn’t travel much unless it was playoffs, because the team spent all their time together. True, she couldn’t have gone many times because she had to work, but she might have managed one or two.

  Apart from having dinner twice with Mikhail and Sharon Orlov, they never did anything with anyone connected with the team. He had talked of going to the Tin Roof, where the team went after home games, but they never had.

  They never stayed at his condo. He’d never given her a key, probably because Tewanda still had one. Noel had only been there a few times when he’d had to pick something up.

  But she was going to his condo tonight—or this morning as it were. Might as well get this done; there was no way she was going to sleep anyway. The team plane would have returned by the time she got there. And if Tewanda was there, even better.

  She stopped in the shop to text Webb and pick up some of the big Piece by Piece shopping bags. Upstairs, going from room to room to gather the things that Nickolai had left might have done Noel in if she hadn’t been able to make her heart and mind go blank. How had so many things accumulated, and why was there so much hockey-related stuff that he had no use for away from the rink? Besides the expected items like CDs, DVDs of game film , books, magazines, protein powder, toiletries, and assorted clothes, she filled an entire bag with ACE bandages, stick tape, pads, jock cups, and hockey gloves. After an hour, she was reasonably sure that she had purged the place of everything. She’d even found in the toe of a running shoe the tablet charger they’d searched for off and on for a week before he’d given up and bought another.

  Nickolai did not buy things lightly. Too bad he didn’t have a similar philosophy about collecting women.

  Should she return the things he’d given her? Or was that childish? Aside from the jersey and the Sound paraphernalia, there wasn’t a lot. For Valentine’s Day, he’d brought her a Whitman’s sampler and a bouquet of roses that clearly came from the grocery store. Of course, there was the Victorian sterling silver needle case she’d admired in an antique shop that he had insisted on buying her.

  “You work so hard, lyubimaya, to create beautiful things. You should have beautiful tools that give you pleasure.” And then, uncharacteristically, she had whispered in his ear a sexual joke about beautiful tools and pleasure, and they had laughed and laughed.

  What had been a warm, sweet memory was now a study in humiliation. Had he repeated the scene t
o Tewanda? Had they laughed at her? Or was he deceiving Tewanda, too? After all, she had that Facebook page. Then a new thought occurred to her. Were there others? And if so, how did he fit them in?

  She pulled on a lightweight cotton sweater. She was keeping the things. She would put them away where she wouldn’t have to look at them, but the only thing of value was the needle case, and what would he do with that? Regift to his next needle-working conquest?

  When she left, Noel averted her eyes to keep from catching a glimpse of Lazy Morning.

  After all, the snow globe hadn’t shattered this time: it had disappeared into nothing. And why not? It was almost spring.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nickolai dreamed a bell was ringing, but he was determined not to let it wake him. He rolled over and reached for Noel—but came up empty. Where was she? Then consciousness took hold and he remembered. She was with her family in Louisville, and he was in his big, empty bed in his big, cold condo.

  And the doorbell was ringing. Damn. If it was Tewanda again, he was going to go ahead and do what Jean Luc had been urging him to do—get a restraining order. He rolled out of bed and groaned. His hip was killing him from where he’d slammed into the boards in the second period.

  By the time he got to the door, he was fuming, but the anger turned to delight when he opened the door and saw who was there.

  “Noel, lyubimaya. What a good surprise.” He held out his arms to her. But she didn’t come to him, the way she always did. She walked past him and set down three big Piece by Piece shopping bags. And she did not smile.

  He took a step toward her. “What has happened? Why aren’t you in Louisville still? Is someone hurt?” And an awful thought crossed his mind. “Has someone harmed you?” He went to touch her face, but she jerked back like he was a poisonous serpent.

  She opened her mouth and closed it again. Obviously she had something to say, but seemed unable to speak. Her face was white and she just stood there.

  “I brought something for you,” he said. “A silly thing, really.” He crossed the big cave of a room—open floor plan, Sharon called it—and retrieved the puck from the gray granite counter that marked where the living room stopped and the kitchen started. Though he held the puck out to her, she didn’t reach out to take it. “Is the puck from the hat trick.”

  Her brow collapsed into a deep frown, and her mouth crumpled.

  “Did you see the game? You know I got a hat trick?”

  Her face smoothed again into indifference. “I saw. I know.” But still, she didn’t take the puck.

  Feeling ridiculous, he let his hand drop. “I told you. A silly thing.” He’d thought she would want it.

  But clearly she didn’t.

  “You’re angry because I spoke of you on television? Mikhail said I should not have done such a thing, that I should not be so emotional.”

  The barest glimmer of softness played around her eyes, but it was gone so fast that he thought he might have imagined it. Finally, she closed her eyes and shook her head, as if she were trying to wake up.

  “Are you here alone?”

  What she making jokes that he didn’t understand?

  “No. Of course not,” he said slowly. “You are here with me.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I have nothing to hide. I brought these things for you.” She pushed the bags into a straight row. He had forgotten about them.

  Maybe if he made her laugh, the old Noel would come out, and this person he didn’t know would be gone.

  “No wonder you didn’t want an old used hockey puck. Looks like much bigger presents in those bags.”

  She didn’t laugh. “No. They’re just things you left at my house. I brought them back to you. And I found your iPad charger.”

  He took a step forward and looked in the bags. Razors, vitamins, sleeping pants, and the like—things he needed every day.

  Cold settled over him. “Why have you brought these things to me, Noel?” But he knew before she answered.

  “I think you know. We will not see each other again.”

  Knowing and hearing were two different things.

  “Of course we will see each other again. We will see each other every day. Well, every day that I don’t have to go away.”

  “Well.” She pulled at the tail of her yellow sweater. “Then I guess I’m going away. Because we won’t see each other again.”

  “Nyet. Is not true. You said we would go to the beach. We spoke of having a home together, with the Lazy Morning quilt. You love me. You said so.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t. I loved who I thought you were. I don’t know you at all.”

  And she was sounding more and more like someone he didn’t know—not like his Noel at all.

  “No. Something has happened, and I don’t know what. Come and sit. Let’s talk until we fix what you think happened.”

  “No.” She took a step toward the door. “I prefer to go.”

  All of a sudden, he was a little mad.

  “And I prefer for you to stay and make me understand.” Then he boiled over. “You met some old lover in Louisville, didn’t you? And he persuaded you to leave me and come back to him. He will never love you as I do. No one could!” He would find this Kentucky man, put him in skates, and teach him about body checking.

  She began to laugh, but it wasn’t that sweet, crystal, soul-soothing laugh that he craved like he craved food, water, sex, and victory; it was frantic and hollow, and it chilled him to the bone.

  “You’re a fine one to talk. Tell me, Nickolai—is that the real hat trick puck? Or is that a fake and Tewanda got the real one? Or maybe you don’t know yourself. Maybe you put two—or maybe more—in a bag and drew one out for each of us?”

  He felt like he had when he’d first arrived in Ottawa, before he understood any French, and he’d run into someone who hadn’t known or had refused to speak English.

  But clearly, this was some huge misunderstanding, and they were having their first argument. That was bound to happen. He’d had them before—only this time, he cared if the argument was resolved.

  “Noel,” he said gently. “Please come sit with me and let’s talk.”

  “No!”

  He turned quickly and pain shot through his hip. “Fuck!” He grabbed it. “Sorry for language.”

  “Are you hurt?” At last, she sounded like the real Noel.

  “Some. Nothing. A deep bruise, the team doctor said. Nothing more.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll sit a moment. But you understand, I don’t owe you anything.”

  “I never thought you did.”

  He got the feeling she wouldn’t have sat on the couch with him if it hadn’t been the only piece of furniture in the room. As it was, she sat as far from him as she could manage.

  “Just so we’re clear, just so you know I’m not a complete fool, I know you’re still with Tewanda. I know she was at the game tonight. I saw her in the crowd on television.”

  “Vse zayebalo! Pizdets na khui blyad!”

  “Please show me the courtesy of speaking English,” Noel said.

  He willed himself to be calm. “I should have done what Jean Luc has been telling me to do—go to the police and ask them to make her stay away from me.”

  “I don’t believe that’s what you said before.”

  “Nyet. No. Not what I said. Noel, I did not know she was at the game. I did not ask her there. She follows me—all over. To the practice rink, Cracker Barrel, even here. She does not go to home games. She is afraid of the other women.”

  “And you expect me to believe that? To believe that she spends thousands of dollars flying all over the country to watch you play and you don’t want her there? Nickolai, she was wearing your jersey. And you said you had never given anyone a jersey except me.” The last part came out soft and brokenhearted.

  That cut him to the core. He reached out to touch her, but she jerked away.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “Noel
, my sweet. Tewanda bought that sweater. I invited her to a game last year, and she was jealous of the other women with the sweaters of their men. She bought it after the first period in the Sound shop at the arena. What I said was true. Well, mostly true. When I told you that, I meant I had never given anyone a Sound sweater. In Russia, in the junior league, I once gave a girl a sweater. Never since. I was young. I don’t remember her name.”

  “And one day, you won’t remember mine.”

  “Is not possible. You have my heart. I told you that in front of the world on television. Why would I do that if I wanted Tewanda?”

  “You didn’t really say it in front of the world,” she said. “You only said it in front of the people who can speak Russian.”

  He put his head in his hands. This must be what it would feel like to be a poorly ranked semi-pro team facing an NHL Stanley Cup contender—no way to win.

  “I get it,” Noel said. “She’s more glamorous than I am. Prettier. What I don’t understand is why you bother with me at all. Did I stumble into being a superstition? Did you kiss me and win a game? Do you think you need me to win hockey games? Or does Tewanda know about me, and the two of you find this—” She waved her hands around, searching for a word. “Do you find this titillating?”

  “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.”