On the Fly

by Catherine Gayle

  “Shit,” I muttered beneath my breath. I’d barely picked up the first box by the time the doors closed again. Then I couldn’t stop myself from laughing hysterically. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “No, I’m totally serious,” an unfamiliar male voice with a decidedly Canadian accent answered. It was the O sound in totally—long, drawn out, but kind of hard—like nothing you’d expect to hear in Texas. But I wasn’t in Texas anymore. People here in Portland sounded a lot more like Canadians than they did Texans, making me stick out like lump of charcoal in the middle of a pile of diamonds.

  I jumped at the unexpected interruption and dropped my box again, then turned around to see a big, young guy walking toward me in the parking lot. He was well over six feet tall, and he had slightly wild, overgrown light-brown hair sticking out of a Portland Storm baseball cap. Even though it was in the thirties out, he was in an untucked T-shirt and jeans with no coat, and he was a little sweaty, like he’d just been working out.

  The sixteen-year-old version of me would have succumbed to his physical charms and fallen into bed with him in a heartbeat.

  The twenty-five-year-old version of me had learned the hard way that good looks didn’t necessarily make for a good person.

  He stuck his hands in his pockets, and amazingly, he blushed. It brought out dimples in his cheeks. Yeah, I definitely would have done anything he wanted, back before I knew better than to fall for a pretty face without seeing what was inside.

  “Sorry,” he said. Again with that drawn-out Canadian O sound. “Didn’t mean to startle you. Can I help you with those?” He came over and grinned once he got a better look at me. “You’re Rachel Shaw, aren’t you? Soupy told me about you.”

  “Soupy?” I found myself asking, kind of numb as he deftly stacked my boxes.

  “Sorry,” he said again. “Brenden Campbell. The boys all call him Soupy…you know, Campbell’s Soup?” He picked up the stack, all three boxes, and the top one barely came to his chin. “I’m Jamie Babcock. How about you push the buttons and get the doors? I’ll do the heavy lifting.” He said that last part with a wink.

  I had just been wishing for someone to be around in the middle of the day to help me with doors, hadn’t I? And here he was. An answer to a prayer, not that I believed God answered prayers. Not anymore. But that didn’t change the fact that Jamie Babcock was ready and willing to carry a few boxes upstairs to my new apartment. I should be grateful, not instantaneously suspicious.

  “Okay. Thanks,” I finally said, nodding. I held the door open for him, and he went through. The thought that Brenden Campbell, a stranger who I’d only known long enough to shoot down his attempts to get me to date him—well, long enough for that and to make me feel tingles of awareness because he’d been flirting with me—had mentioned me to one of his teammates was unnerving. When we got onto the elevator, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “What exactly did he tell you about me?”

  He blushed again. “Just that you’re going to work for Jim, take Martha’s position when she retires.” Somehow, he managed to pull one hand out from under the boxes to brush his hair back behind his ear. “Oh, and that you’re a real pretty redhead with kids moving in across the hall from us. He said to look out for you while he’s gone.”

  The elevator stopped at our floor. I hurried off ahead of him because I didn’t want him to see how flustered I was. Why on earth would Brenden Campbell care if anyone was looking out for me? And he thought I was pretty? I’d never believed I was pretty. The whole short-redhead-with-freckles thing had always made me feel awkward, not pretty.

  I unlocked my door, and Jamie followed me inside.

  “Where should I put these?” he asked, his head on a swivel as he took in the massive state of disarray before him.

  The delivery guys who’d brought my furniture this morning had just dropped it all off. They hadn’t helped me put any of it together or set it where it belonged. I’d only managed to deal with the beds before heading to the hotel for our boxes, and that had been more than enough to leave me too exhausted to do any of the rest. I still wasn’t sure how I had found the energy to load my trunk full of boxes.

  There was too much in the way for me to send him down the hall to Tuck’s room with the stack he was holding. “Just set them over there by the bar in the kitchen,” I said.

  At least going that way, he wasn’t likely to kill himself by tripping over something he couldn’t see. The last thing I needed was for one of the Storm’s players to get injured while helping me before I even started my new job.

  He set the boxes down where I’d directed.

  When he straightened up, I said, “Thanks so much for helping me.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  I was all ready to usher him out the door, but his eyes were wandering through the maze of boxes and un-put-together furniture. “Why don’t we tackle the sofa next?” he said. “You need somewhere to sit.”

  I really wasn’t prepared to let him help me with more than what he had already. Even that had been more help than I’d wanted. I shook my head. “You really don’t have to do that. I can—”

  “I don’t mind,” he interrupted. “I don’t have anything I have to do. We’ve already finished practice, and there’s no game today so nothing I’m on the schedule for. Razor was going to come over and play video games this afternoon, but he can help, too.”

  “That’s really not necessary,” I said feebly, but he’d already pulled his cell phone from his pocket and was most likely texting this Razor, whoever Razor was.

  He slid the phone back into the pocket of his jeans. Then he smiled at me, bringing his dimples out again. “Come on. Let’s get started.” Before I could object again, he’d turned the sofa on its side and was ripping at the plastic sheeting surrounding it. “Do you have a box cutter?” he asked over his shoulder.

  I grabbed it off the kitchen counter and handed it to him. Less than twenty minutes later, he’d unwrapped my sofa and chairs, and we’d put the legs on them so they could be used. Now I had an even bigger mess than before, with all the plastic and cardboard strewn across the living room floor.

  My stomach growled, and he grinned at me.

  “I’m starving, too. We should take a break for lunch. Razor will be here anytime.”

  I should really buy his lunch, I thought. That was only fair, considering all he was doing for me. “Where do you want to go?” I asked him. “My treat.” At least I could afford it, after the signing bonus Mr. Sutter had given me.

  “Honestly, we could just stay here. I’ve got PB and J.”

  I couldn’t let him eat a peanut butter sandwich after helping me so much. Especially not after what Brenden had said to me about Jamie’s cooking ability. “I haven’t bought much yet, mainly just some kid food to get by until we’re settled. Would you rather have a hot dog and some mac and cheese?”

  You would have thought I’d just hung the moon, based on the look he gave me. “Are you serious? I would love a hot dog and mac and cheese. I’ll go take the garbage down if you’ll start on that.”

  He was only halfway finished hauling out all the cardboard and plastic when he came back up with another young guy. This one—Ray Chambers, the guy Jamie called Razor—could have passed for a Rob Lowe lookalike, at least in Rob Lowe’s earlier years. Good thing I was making more hot dogs and mac and cheese than I’d thought I would need. The two of them finished cleaning up together while I cooked.

  We ate on paper plates while sitting cross-legged on the empty dining room floor.

  They stayed with me the rest of the afternoon, helping me to put together tables and arrange furniture, unload the rest of the boxes from my car, and even to unpack a few things, right up until I had to leave to go pick my kids up from school. The whole time they laughed and joked around with each other, never once acting like there was anything they’d rather be doing.

  Despite my overprotective motherly instincts, I liked them. It probably wasn’t smart of
me. I needed to be wary, to guard my kids against predators and not trust anyone who seemed friendly and likeable on the surface. Jason had been friendly and likeable, too.

  I didn’t trust myself anymore to know who was safe and who wasn’t. Could you ever really know?

  There wasn’t any good reason why I should be the one to speak up. Not now. Not while the Seattle Storm was behind in this game by a goal.

  I wasn’t the captain anymore—they’d given that position to Harry. He’d been sent back to the AHL after being called up to Portland with me last season. It was supposedly so he could get more seasoning and experience as a leader. This was exactly one of those moments when he needed to step up and take the reins.

  I was only going to be here for the rest of this game, having already played the first two games of my conditioning assignment. I ought to leave it to him, to let him figure out the best way to lead his team. I was here to get back into game shape. Nothing else. But I couldn’t seem to stop myself. It just wasn’t in me to be silent. Like Zee, I’d always been a leader everywhere I went. Unlike Zee, I didn’t have the wherewithal to keep my trap shut when it needed to be.

  I kept my head down, staring at the tape around my wrist. “Those fuckers are winning right now because we’re leaving the D out to dry,” I said. My voice was quiet, but all the talk in the room dropped off instantly. “They aren’t a better team than us, but we’re letting them look like it because none of our forwards are thinking about anything but scoring. Everyone knows we can fucking score. That’s not the problem. The problem is keeping the damn puck out of our own net.”

  I finally looked up and saw Harry staring at me with a look of pure relief. His name wasn’t really Harry. It was Cody Williams, but everyone called him Harry because he looked like Prince Harry—bright-red hair that made me think of Rachel Shaw and her kids, who were the last people I needed to be thinking about right now. I needed to be thinking about what else had to be said to these guys since I’d taken it upon myself to speak up.

  Harry should be the one talking, but he was sitting there and looking at me like I’d just saved the day.

  “This isn’t my team anymore, boys,” I finally said. I made sure I was staring right back at Harry, just as hard as he was staring at me. “It’s your fucking team. I’m heading back to Portland tomorrow, and the lot of you are stuck with each other. You can either keep playing for yourselves, focusing only on your own game and how best to make yourself stand out to management and scouts, or you can start playing like a fucking team, like Glen wants you to play. And I can tell you one more thing,” I said. I couldn’t seem to make myself stop. “The best way to get their attention is by playing within the system and making that work for your game, not by trying to be a showboat. That means the forwards need to fucking help the D. We need to score another goal, yeah, but we also have to keep the damn puck out of our own net.”

  After that, I finally shut up. My silence was overdue. Way overdue.

  The horn sounded, signaling that we had two more minutes before the third period would begin. That meant we had to get back out to the ice.

  “Let’s get back out there and take it to them!” Glen Garner said. He was the head coach here in Seattle. He’d been the coach here last year, too, when I was the team captain up until Jim Sutter put in the call for me to join the big club.

  Glen was all about motivation and teaching. He was never the sort of coach who’d yell at you or berate you for all the things you were doing wrong—like I’d just done. He was more the guy who’d tell you the things you were doing right, and then point out a few things you could do better. In a way, they were the same thing. But it was always nicer to hear criticism worded in a way that didn’t feel like an attack.

  I liked him. He was a great guy to have coaching the young prospects. When you’re first learning how to be a professional athlete, it’s important to have someone in your corner. If you were on Glen’s team, he would do anything and everything he could to help you, even if what was best for you wasn’t necessarily ideal for the rest of the team. He wanted every player to perform to the top of his abilities, whatever that meant, while at the same time finding a way to use those abilities to help the club as a whole.

  He’d done some of that with me last season, suggesting the NHL club take me instead of one of the younger guys when all the injuries started piling up. I probably wouldn’t have been offered the contract I had been without that nudge from Glen.

  During this conditioning assignment, he had been giving me all the top-line minutes Jim had promised I’d get, but I couldn’t wait to get back to Portland. I hadn’t been able to get Rachel Shaw out of my mind, especially with the way she’d blushed right before I left and the knowledge that she was going to be living right across the hall from me.

  Yeah, she was far from the type of girl I’d usually date, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. And there was the definite complication of her kids and all that having them around would entail. But I wanted to see her again. I wanted to find out why she didn’t date. I wanted to convince her to date me. I wanted to make her blush again, because she looked even more beautiful when she was blushing.

  I probably wanted that last one a little too much. She had this porcelain, china-doll skin, and with those freckles, it turned the most amazing red when she blushed—so deep the freckles almost disappeared.

  It didn’t help that Babs had texted me a few days ago to tell me how he and Razor had helped her move in a bunch of boxes and set up her furniture, and that she’d fed the two of them. Hot dogs and mac and cheese—exactly the sort of meal kids like, and exactly the sort of food young guys like Babs and Razor still crave, even though it wasn’t what they should be fueling their bodies with.

  At least it meant that Babs got to eat, though.

  And at least she got some help with things a woman didn’t need to do by herself. Moving furniture and boxes was hard work even for big, fit guys.

  I needed to stop thinking about her so much, especially right now. I had the last period of this game to worry about—twenty minutes of hockey where I needed to play to the absolute best of my ability, especially after telling these guys how they hadn’t been, laying it all out there.

  The boys all got up and started heading through the tunnel to the ice. One goal wasn’t too much to make up, not with the bunch of highly skilled offensive prospects the Storm had playing.

  Glen held me back for just a second before I could skate out with the rest of the guys. “You said exactly what they needed to hear, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. I knew they needed to hear it. But they needed to hear it from one of their own, not from me.

  “Just keep playing like this when you get back to Portland, okay? Don’t change anything about your game.”

  I nodded and started to push past him, but he held me back again.

  “Don’t brush me off on this,” he said. “Hockey is just hockey, no matter what level you’re playing at. You were trying too hard earlier in the season. Last season, too. That’s why you got hurt.”

  He was right, and I knew it, and it pissed me off. I didn’t know how to not try too hard, though. Not when I needed to show the world that I belonged, needed to prove to Jim Sutter that he hadn’t made a mistake in taking a chance on me, needed to prove to myself that I wasn’t destined to be a career minor leaguer, nothing more than a journeyman going from team to team and league to league in a desperate attempt to prove my value.

  “Yeah. All right,” I said.

  Glen slapped a hand on my shoulder pad. “At this level, you’ve got all the confidence in the world. Just take that back to Portland with you. Slow the game down. Let it come to you. You’ve been trying to force it, and that never works.”

  I kicked the toe of my skate against the locker room wall, not looking at him. “It’s easy to say those things, but it’s fucking hell to actually do them.”

  “Yeah.” He headed down the tunnel. “But that’s wh
y you’re making the big bucks this year. You’ve got to figure out how. So do it.”

  If only I had a clue how to let go.

  I got on the road early Sunday morning, well before dawn, not even sticking around for breakfast with the boys I’d been hanging out with for the last week. I didn’t see any reason to stay in Seattle any longer than I had to, even though I didn’t have to be back in Portland to join the NHL club until Monday. Besides, I still felt weird about having been the one to speak up last night when it should have been one of them.

  By the time I got back to the condo, I was ravenous. Once I’d parked, I grabbed my suitcase and made my way to the elevator. It was only after I got into the building that I realized I should have let Babs know I was heading home so early. They had had a game last night, too, one on the road, so it would have been a really late night. More than likely he would be sleeping in this morning, considering today was a scheduled day off.

  I doubted he had a girl over or anything like that, but how was I supposed to know without having talked to him? We didn’t have any rules in place about overnight guests. I made a mental note to talk to him about that sometime. Soon. Just in case. Better to have it all out in the open than to run into an awkward situation. He’d probably never stop blushing if I interrupted a private moment with Katie Weber or some other girl.

  I got off the elevator at the twelfth floor and made my way down the hall. I was almost to my door when Rachel’s opened and her little boy came out carrying a plate piled high with pancakes and sausage links. He had a huge missing-toothed grin that made him look like a hockey player.

  Out of habit, I let my tongue slide over the flipper tooth on the bottom row of my own teeth. I’d been wearing it for over a decade. Someday, after I retired, I’d get something more permanent put in place. There wasn’t much point in doing anything permanent now, though, when I could lose more teeth at any moment.