by Heidi Betts
“I was upset,” Grace reminded her.
“I know, but…What if, because you were so upset, you jumped to the wrong conclusion?”
Grace’s head snapped up and a single blond brow quickly followed. “You’re taking his side now?”
“I’m on your side, you know that,” Ronnie replied. “If you said the sky was green, I’d agree with you. I guess I just can’t stop thinking what a shame it would be for you two not to be together if this is one giant misunderstanding. You made such a terrific couple, and if you’re wrong, if he really didn’t cheat on you…then you’ll be losing out on something truly special.”
“So why is this the first time you’re telling me this?” Grace wanted to know, only slightly annoyed.
“Because my knee-jerk reaction was the same as yours—that Zack was guilty as sin. But seeing as how he hasn’t backed down about being innocent after all these months—even with his very closest friends—I just have to wonder, that’s all.” Then Ronnie sighed. “All I’m saying is that I’d hate to see you lose something so important on principle alone. Especially if it turns out you’re wrong.”
It took Grace a moment to get past her initial impulse to argue, to defend herself. And as the urge to fight and defend slowly passed, she let herself absorb and contemplate Ronnie’s words.
Okay, so what if Zack were innocent?
Her immediate response was to give a harsh mental scoff and don an invisible suit of armor to protect herself.
But then she thought, Well, damn, there’s the knee-jerk reaction Ronnie had been talking about.
Had she been doing this all along? Had she fallen back on pointing fingers and heated accusations because they felt safe to her? Because it was easier than opening herself to more pain, more disappointment?
Letting her arms drop to her sides, she moved slowly back to the table and curled up once again on the cushion she was using to sit on so her butt wouldn’t go numb. Her hand shook as she reached for her wine and downed the entire glass.
The rich liquid filled her mouth and warmed its way down to her stomach. Nice. Exactly what she needed. Now if she could just mainline another gallon or two, she thought she might be able to get her emotions under control.
Muffin, who had practically licked the etchings right off his plate in an effort to consume every speck of spaghetti sauce, sat up, gave a low, odious belch, and padded behind Grace to climb onto the couch. Three roomy cushions wide, and he took up nearly all of them.
“I’m sorry,” Ronnie murmured quietly from the other side of the table. “I didn’t mean to upset you so much. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Yes, you should have,” Grace said, surprising even herself.
Leaning forward, she grabbed Ronnie’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “You’re being honest, and even if it’s not something I want to hear, maybe it’s something I need to hear.”
Her throat grew tight, and she paused a moment to swallow and blink back tears. Ronnie’s eyes, too, were glistening with moisture, she noticed.
“And who better to slap you upside the head when you’re being an idiot than your very best friend?”
Ronnie gave a watery chuckle, and Grace joined in, relieved when the heaviness in her chest began to ease.
Grace set her glass on the table and said to herself as much as to Ronnie, “I’ve replayed that scene in the hotel room in my mind a thousand times. And seeing that other woman in his bed…I don’t know, Ronnie, it just seems so painfully obvious. You see women all the time whose men are running around on them, and they’re the only one with blinders on so thick they can’t see it—or aren’t willing to see. Or wives of politicians whose husbands get caught red-handed, with their pants around their ankles, and the women just stand by and take it. To each her own, I guess, but that is soooo not me. I expect more from a relationship, and I sure as hell expect more from the man I’m supposed to marry and spend the rest of my life with.”
As though sensing her distress and wanting to offer his sympathy, Muffin stood up and put his head in her lap. Grace leaned down to kiss the top of his head and pet him absently as she said, “I mean, I caught him with a half-naked woman in his bed. It’s kind of hard to deny undeniable proof—and something I saw with my very own eyes.”
Ronnie shrugged. “I know, I’d feel the same way if I were you. But can I ask you something? What is your heart telling you?”
Grace considered that for a long, drawn-out moment, and then she murmured, “That I made the right choice.”
A few hours later, after they’d finished their take-out Italian cuisine, polished off the bottle of merlot, and half watched, half snoozed through Under the Tuscan Sun, Grace yawned and stretched out full-length from her position on the floor. Muffin’s loud, staccato snoring echoed just above her head from his carefree drape along the entire length of the sofa.
White was perhaps not the smartest decorating choice for someone who owned a giant, slobbering Saint Bernard, but then, she hadn’t had a giant, slobbering Saint Bernard when she’d chosen the color scheme. Next time around, she would definitely go for darker shades, like Drool Pool Brown and Fur-covered Chestnut.
She was even considering covering all the furniture in plastic like some 1950s hausfrau whose main goal in life was to keep her god-awful yellow and green floral living room set perfectly pristine for all eternity. Of course, in Grace’s case, it wasn’t a matter of keeping things pristine, but simply avoiding the need to replace her furniture every couple of months due to doggie wear and tear.
Though it was barely ten o’clock, she and Ronnie had both had a long week, and their starchy dinner was beginning to take its toll. Add to that a fair amount of alcohol and a conversation that had put her emotions on the mother of all roller coasters, and she thought she could easily crawl into a cave and hibernate until spring.
“You don’t have to go, you know,” she sleepily told Ronnie, who was pushing herself vertical, looking not much more alert than Grace felt.
“I do,” her friend replied reluctantly. “Dylan’s all excited about spending our first Christmas together, and I promised I’d be home tonight so we can drag ourselves out of bed at the crack of dawn to go tree hunting.”
Grace made a sound in her throat that was half snort, half groan, pushing up on her elbows and climbing reluctantly to her feet, as well.
“I know,” Ronnie agreed. “He wants a giant Douglas fir. I want something we can blow up with a tire pump, then squeeze flat and store away after the holidays.”
Grace chuckled, moving to the entertainment center and hitting the button to eject the rented DVD. As soon as that was done, she switched to TV mode and automatically—all right, maybe not entirely automatically—switched to Cleveland’s main sports channel.
“Make him haul the thing in by himself, then out again after Christmas, and clean up all the dead needles in between, and he’ll never bug you about getting a real tree again,” she said, punching down the volume on the television and hoping her voice covered enough of the noise from the screen to keep her friend from getting suspicious.
“No kidding,” Ronnie said, moving across the room to gather her things. Once she was bundled from head to toe, and ready to brave the wind and frigid temperatures of Cleveland in December, she raised her head to meet Grace’s gaze. “He’s taking me home to spend Christmas Eve with his parents,” she said softly.
“Oooh, holidays with the folks. He must really like you,” Grace teased, shoving a couple of take-out containers under her arm to be taken to the kitchen, washed, and added to the recycle bin.
“Yeah,” Ronnie agreed with a smile bordering on weak. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous about that. I’ve met his parents. We’ve done lunch and a couple of dinners. But Christmas …” She gave an indelicate shudder.
Grace sympathized with Ronnie’s bout of nerves, but she couldn’t claim to know anything about spending holidays with the S.O.’s parents. At least not from personal experience.
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��d never realized before how odd that was. But then, neither she nor Zack had exactly grown up like the Brady Bunch. Or the Cleavers or Ozzie and Harriet.
More like Ozzie and Sharon.
Her own mother had been a B-movie Hollywood starlet…but an A-list wannabe. She’d harbored dreams of fame and fortune and a star on the Walk of Fame, but had never gotten close to any of them. Instead, she’d gotten involved with too many untrustworthy men—managers, talent agents, and assorted lovers—who promised her the world, but delivered only lies, disappointment, and misery.
Drugs, alcohol, bad choices, and bad judgment had all driven Lola Fisher into an early grave. Much like Marilyn Monroe, she’d been found dead one morning in her own bed, booze on the nightstand and an assortment of pills spilled across the pink satin sheets.
Grace had been only twelve years old at the time, and to this day, she still wasn’t sure if her mother had accidentally overdosed or taken her own life. The medical examiner’s report had revealed exactly nothing; the media had run rampant with outrageous versions of both possibilities; and the gossip mills had speculated on everything in between.
It was an accident.
It was suicide.
It was murder.
It was tragic and senseless and left a little girl who’d had only one parent to begin with—and not a terribly doting parent, at that—an orphan.
Blinking rapidly and swallowing hard to dislodge the sudden lump in her throat, Grace hurried into the kitchen to dump her armload of trash into the sink. For a second, she stood there, hands curled around the edge of the counter, head down, breathing carefully in and out, in and out.
It had been years, years since her mother’s death. Since she’d been heartlessly packed up and sent halfway across the country to be dumped on the doorstep of a grandmother she’d never met. How could it possibly still have the power to catch her off guard and shake her up like this?
Ridiculous. It must be the late night. The movies. The evening’s topic of conversation. The holiday season. Anything other than actual sentimentality, when Grace prided herself on her distinct lack of sentimentality.
Pushing the precarious thoughts and emotions to the back of her mind, she returned to the living area, where Muffin was still snoozing and Ronnie was still bundled up like the Abominable Snow Monster.
“You’ll be fine,” Grace assured her, picking up where they’d left off so her friend wouldn’t suspect she’d dashed into the kitchen in an attempt to actually run away. “Take a nice bottle of wine for them—and a couple more for yourself”—she added with a sly wink—”and act like it’s any other, nondenominational visit.”
Ronnie inhaled deeply and nodded as best she could with only her eyes, nose, and mouth visible. “I suppose you’re right. And he’s going with me to my parents’ for New Year’s, so I suppose it’s only fair.”
“There you go,” Grace said, turning back to the coffee table to collect more leftovers.
As she leaned down, reaching for the empty glasses and bottle of merlot, a movement on the television screen caught her attention. She raised her head, expecting to see the usual for a hockey game—well-padded and suited-up players skating their hearts out, zipping up and down the ice, cracking their sticks into that little black puck like their lives depended on it.
Instead, the action was in slow motion for an instant replay, and what she saw made her heart tumble down to her toes, hitting every rib and internal organ along the way.
“Oh, my God.” The words slid past her lips on a hiss of air as the oxygen left her lungs. The bottle she’d just picked up slipped from her numb fingers, cracking into the edge of the table on its way to the carpeted floor, and she slowly followed it down, her knees turning to jelly.
“Oh, my God,” she said again. Gaze riveted, she sank to her knees, only peripherally aware that Ronnie was moving toward her, shifting her attention to the TV, as well.
“Oh, my God.” This time, it was Ronnie who breathed the words in disbelief. And then she was yanking off her hat and gloves, unwinding the scarf from her neck, and digging into her purse. Cell phone in hand, she punched frantically at the tiny buttons.
Somewhere in the back of her brain, Grace registered her friend’s actions, and even some of what the play-by-play announcer was saying to describe the events taking place at Quicken Loans Arena, but she couldn’t seem to make sense of it.
She didn’t know who the Rockets were playing, and didn’t particularly care. All she knew was that—thanks to yet another instant replay—a player from the opposing team, suited in white and black, was racing down the center of the ice, shifting his stick from right to left, right to left as he steered the small disk of vulcanized rubber toward the Rockets’ net.
In front of the net, weaving slightly in his typical defensive stance, was Zack. And then the puck was launched, went flying. Zack deflected, kept the black-and-white team from scoring a goal, and sent the puck back in the opposite direction.
A second later, that first player hit Zack square in the chest. His back hit the metal frame of the net with what looked to be brute force before both men lurched sideways and began to fall…and were quickly covered by half a dozen other players from both teams.
That in itself wouldn’t have been so bad. Hockey was a rough sport. Zack had garnered his share of cuts and bruises. He’d suffered bone fractures and breaks, concussions, muscle pulls. It was a minor miracle that he’d managed to retain all of his own teeth—for which Grace had always been unaccountably grateful.
But as they went down, Zack’s helmet flew off and his left leg caught on the edge of the net.
The leg held, but his body didn’t, twisting him like a Twizzler beneath the weight of a dozen players.
Grace knew it wasn’t possible to actually hear the rending of bones and tendons, or the smack of his head hitting the ice, but she could have sworn she did. Could have sworn that above the clamor of the crowd, of razor-sharp skate blades cutting over the ice, of the grunts and sounds of impact from the dog pile itself, she heard Zack’s injuries taking place one by one.
Even so, she might not have been concerned if the part of the incident they replayed most often wasn’t the part where everyone got up and skated away to resume play.
Everyone except Zack, who remained unnaturally still, his blue and red Rockets jersey a stark contrast to the crystalline ice beneath him.
“What’s going on?”
Ronnie’s voice, harsh and demanding, broke through Grace’s stupor. It took a moment for her to realize, though, that her friend wasn’t talking to her.
“We’re watching it,” she said into her cell phone. “How badly is he hurt?”
Dylan. She must be talking to Dylan. He was at the arena, covering the game for Sports Weekly, and he would be able to give them better updates than the commentators, who even now were merely speculating about Zack’s condition.
Where the hell was the team doctor?
Why wasn’t anyone calling 911 or doing something to help Zack?
Or had they already, and she just wasn’t seeing it?
Because she wasn’t there! Dammit, she wasn’t there!
While they’d been dating, she’d attended all of his home games. And if it hadn’t been for these last six, hellish months, she would have been there right now. And if she was …
If she was, she might have altered something, made some small difference in their lives so that Zack wouldn’t be lying on the ice, unmoving and …
No, she wouldn’t think it, not even for a second.
“Okay. Keep us informed.”
After clicking her phone closed, Ronnie sank to the floor beside Grace and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, hugging her close.
Just as she did, the picture on the screen changed, this time showing medical personnel surrounding Zack. The team physician lifting Zack’s eyelids to check his pupils, taking his pulse. Paramedics with a stretcher, waiting for the signal to load him up and transport him to the
hospital. They were all moving too damn slow for Grace’s peace of mind.
“Honey.” Ronnie whispered the endearment slowly, softly, in the tone of voice people used when they had to break bad news and they didn’t want the other person to have a complete and total nervous breakdown.
Grace started to shake her head. She didn’t care what her friend told her, she wouldn’t accept it. Zack was fine. She might not love him anymore, but she didn’t want him to be hurt or…worse. He was fine, and she wasn’t going to let herself believe differently.
“Honey,” Ronnie said again, “Dylan says it’s bad. Zack is unconscious, and the doctor can’t get him to respond. His head cracked the ice pretty hard. His leg is messed up, too. They’re taking him to the hospital, and Dylan is going to follow. We can meet him there, if you want.”
Still numb and reeling, Grace sat where she was until all of the television coverage was over. Until she’d seen Zack loaded up on the stretcher and wheeled off the ice. Until the rest of the Rockets, who had surrounded their fallen teammate as closely as they could, broke away.
As soon as there was no camera trained on Zack and she knew there was no chance of catching another glimpse of him, she turned to her friend. There was nothing but concern and compassion in Ronnie’s eyes, and she knew that if she said the word, they’d be in the car, headed for the hospital in a flash.
But was that what she wanted? Did she want to sit in a crowded emergency room waiting area, pacing and worrying about a man she wasn’t supposed to care for anymore?
All of her friends—save the two who were currently honeymooning in St. Thomas and didn’t even know about Zack’s accident—would be there. All of Zack’s teammates, the Rockets coach, the team doctor, and other assorted team associates would be there.
The press would be there. Reporters from all of the media outlets, both large and small. Newspaper, magazine, television…Cameras everywhere, snapping her picture, speculating on whether she and Zack were back together. Whether she was grief-stricken over his accident or secretly pleased that the man who’d two-timed her was finally getting his just deserts.
