Make Me a Match

by Melinda Curtis

  Coop studied him. They both knew Ty hadn’t been on the ice since his accident. “Let me check my calendar and get back to you.”

  “Ty Porter back on the ice.” Gideon rubbed his hands together. “Let me know when so I can take a few shots.”

  “Has to be after this Saturday.” Ty grinned. “Seems we have an ice-fishing event this evening and a bet to win.”

  Coop and Gideon started talking about potential matches as they walked outside.

  Ty followed behind his friends, but stopped when Coach called his name.

  “Own your past, but live in the present. Live in the present, but command your future.” Coach tossed a hockey puck at him. “Now if you’d stop seeing your father when you pass by the mirror, you might have a chance.”

  “I share his DNA.” Did everyone think like Kelsey?

  “Bloodlines can sometimes mean less than the ice in this whiskey glass.” Coach picked up a tumbler. “Your family is made up of those boys outside. Family are the folks you grab on to and don’t ever let go. In your case, your kin have got nothing to do with it. Trust, faith and love... That’s all that matters. Family trusts you’re going to screw up again. They have faith you’ll ask for their help to make it right. They’ll forgive you when you don’t. Because it isn’t family without love.”

  Ty studied the puck. He knew this one. It was his first save. Coach had given it to him at his father’s funeral, told him, Bad blood only defines you if you let it. You want something different, be at morning practice. Ty had left it in Coach’s office when he’d signed for the junior team against Coach’s advice. “I’ll make it right.”

  “See that you do.” Coach nodded toward the door. “With their help.”

  “What about Kelsey’s story?”

  “Seems that comes down to you,” Coach said. “Is she family or not?”

  Ty grabbed his coat from the wall and hurried to catch up with his friends. Coop stopped him with a hand to his chest when he reached them. “You were serious when you said Kelsey was leaving?”

  Ty zipped up his jacket. Now he understood Kelsey’s fascination with thick scarves. He almost needed one himself. “That’s what I said.”

  “But you shaved.” Gideon adjusted his tie beneath his thick wool trench coat.

  Ty patted his cheeks. “And here I thought no one noticed.”

  “We haven’t seen your full face in seven years,” Gideon said. “It’s hard not to notice.”

  “I still have a beard.” Not the thick one he’d worn for the past seven years. But enough not to reveal all of his scar.

  “Adolescent teenagers have more of a five-o’clock shadow than that.” Gideon pulled out his phone and started typing. “When did you say Kelsey left?”

  “Why’d you shave if not for Kelsey?” Coop asked.

  Ty squeezed the hockey puck inside his pocket. “Felt as though it was time.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  KELSEY STARED IN her rearview mirror and scowled at the bent no-parking sign protruding like a crooked tail from her trunk. Not again. She’d only wanted coffee and chocolate—a brownie, a muffin, she’d even settle for a drizzle over her latte. Chocolate righted the world. And she needed her world to be right because at the moment it was as off-kilter as the no-parking sign.

  She scanned the iceplex parking lot for Ty’s truck. Or the ice resurfacer. Five minutes. She’d be in and gone in five minutes. Less if Tilda wasn’t pouring.

  Kelsey grabbed her purse and hurried across the street toward the open sign blinking in the Clipper Ship’s window. Inside, Tilda was icing a three-layer chocolate cake behind the counter.

  Kelsey glanced at her watch. Amended her schedule. She’d be gone in less than ten minutes.

  She approached the counter. “I got my story. So it looks as if I’m heading home.”

  Tilda twisted the spatula against the side of the cake and spun the turntable to smooth out the icing. “Is it the one you wanted?”

  “It’s the kind I’ve made my name on.” She’d definitely get to keep her job. Kelsey dropped her purse on the counter. Her gaze jumped from the chocolate cake to the glass-covered dish with the dense brownies inside. She should be finishing her article and hitting the upload button. Instead, she was waffling over chocolate.

  “Then, it’s been a success.” Tilda set the spatula in the sink, then lifted the glass lid and placed a brownie in a paper bag. “You’ll earn a front-page spread, become the state’s hot topic and have your hometown to thank. Again.”

  Tilda made it sound as if she’d used the people here. Again. Well, she confessed, she had used people—most harshly, Ty. He was making her choose. Me or the headline. She didn’t know what she wanted. She’d said goodbye to him, but then again, she hadn’t submitted the article, either. She reached inside the bag and pinched off a corner of brownie. The small bite shriveled inside her dry mouth; her stomach pitched and rolled. Nope. Nothing seemed right. “My home is in the city.”

  “That’s just where you park your snow boots, at least for now.” Tilda moved over to the latte maker. “Home is where your heart is.”

  Kelsey tore off another piece of the brownie. Surely the second bite wouldn’t be flat. Surely the chocolate would steady her stomach. “First, you’d have to have a heart.”

  If she had one, she wouldn’t have her bags packed and her headlights pointed in the direction of the city. If she had one, she’d have reached for Ty, rather than challenging him. If she had one, Ty would be enough. Her brownie bites collided like pebbles stirred up in the rapids. Except, she was still standing here. In K-Bay.

  “So that’s the way of it, then?” Tilda turned on the frother and shook her head.

  Kelsey gave up and shoved the rest of the brownie in her mouth. Any minute she’d revel in chocolate bliss and make her choice. The frother quieted and she said, “Look, I didn’t come to debate hearts and homes and redefine family with you.”

  Tilda filled a coffee cup and pressed the lid on. “Why did you come, then?”

  Because the sign said Welcome. Because the light was on. Because she didn’t want to be alone yet. Kelsey crumpled up the bag and tossed it in the trash. “For the coffee.”

  “Seems a long way to drive for a simple latte.” Tilda picked up a cardboard sleeve. “Ty lives four miles down the road, works across the street and yet he hasn’t come inside this place since high school.” Tilda twisted the cardboard sleeve up the outside of the cup. “Until today. Ty came in a little while ago and ordered his first hot chocolate in seven years.”

  Kelsey wondered what Ty was diluting with the hot chocolate. “I’m sure he enjoyed it.”

  “I’m not sure I care.” Tilda handed the coffee to Kelsey. “Important thing is that he came inside here.”

  So he’d drunk hot chocolate after a very long fast. Maybe he’d just had a seven-year craving. Sipping hot chocolate didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean his coming clean about his past represented something significant. Except, there went her reporter’s radar. He could have told anyone. He hadn’t told Coop or Gideon. He’d told her.

  The door opened behind Kelsey. The blast of cold air nipped at her fingers. Coach pulled the door closed and spun to face Kelsey. “Hello there, young lady. Looks as if you’re leaving Ty again, aren’t you? I guess I’ll have to put up with his moony, mopey self, same as the last time you left him.”

  Her stomach flipped once, twice, then calmed. It had to be the chocolate finally kicking in.

  “You know what the loneliest job in hockey is?” Coach walked over to the end of the counter where Tilda waited, but looked back at Kelsey. “Well, do you?”

  She stilled, more than an arm’s length away from the door. If she lunged, she’d be out of here, no looking back, no need to look back. Her boots stayed planted. “I’m not well-versed o
n the sport.” Just a certain former player.

  “The goalie. When the team loses, it’s the goalie that carries that burden alone.” Coach accepted a large bag of coffee beans from Tilda. “Good goalies stop pucks. Great goalies get up and keep playing after the initial one goes in. And they keep getting up, no matter how many get past ’em.”

  Kelsey was the puck. She’d take her shot with her story. And she’d score. She knew it. Ty knew it. And so did Coach. Ty had gotten up the last time, hadn’t he? No, he’d stopped playing. What would he do this time? She followed Coach to the door. “What kind of player is Ty?”

  Coach shifted the coffee beans and studied her over the bag. “I think you already know the answer to that. Hockey is all about reacting. Knowing how to do so is the key, whatever the situation. Backed into the boards. Down by three goals after the first period. Winning a championship. And most important, knowing you cannot rise up on your own. Alone will get ya nowhere.”

  Ty wasn’t alone. He had Coop, Gideon and an entire town to lift him up. Kelsey held the door open for Coach. “I’ve never been good at team sports.”

  “Doesn’t mean you can’t learn.” Coach nodded to her and strode off down the sidewalk.

  Kelsey crossed the street, heading to her car. Coach didn’t know her. She’d been alone most of her life. Even in a crowd of thousands, Kelsey felt alone. She always had. Still, she couldn’t deny the idea of being a part of something tugged at her heart. More than likely it was the K-Bay air, making her breath snag inside her frosty lungs.

  Once she returned to the city and her cubicle and her life, everything would switch back to normal. Just as she wanted it. She blamed the wind for the hitch in her throat and her weak conviction.

  A woman called her name and Kelsey spotted Stacey Logan crossing the parking lot, coming toward her.

  Stacey stopped in front of her and motioned to the SUV beside Kelsey’s rental. “Best parking lot in town. Always an open space.”

  “It’s certainly worked for me,” Kelsey said. Aside from that pesky parking lot sign. She needed to put a suggestion in Ty’s inbox to remove it permanently. Clearly no one abided by the rules. The entire town did not work at the iceplex. And yet everybody seemed to park there.

  “You haven’t forgotten about the broom-hockey rematch next week, have you?” Stacey dug around inside her purse. “We need you to play on the left wing again.”

  “I spent more time in the penalty box than on the ice,” Kelsey said.

  Stacey laughed. “That didn’t look to be too much of a hardship.”

  No, the hardship had been to remember her reason for being here. And to remember what she wanted. The hardship had not been sitting beside Ty, the two of them on their own. “It was fun.” That surprised her, then and now.

  “I haven’t seen Ty smile that often in years.”

  Kelsey hadn’t smiled that often in years, either.

  “Please be there, Kels. It’s my last real laugh before treatments begin. I need a girls’ night. I need to feel strong and in control.” Stacey dumped her purse and shopping bag on the hood of her car. “Why can I never find my keys?”

  Kelsey glanced at the Phil’s Pharmacy prescription jutting out from inside the Lately Lettuce shopping bag, and that snag in her lungs returned. This time it wasn’t from the air. “I’ll try to rearrange my calendar.”

  Stacey looked over at her, hope and determination clear in her pale green eyes. She held out her gloved hand, extending her little finger. “Pinkie swear?”

  Kelsey peered down at Stacey’s hand. She’d never pinkie sworn anything. She’d never been asked. Not in grade school. Not in middle school. Certainly not as an adult.

  “I pinkie swore with my mother to never stop fighting this cancer. I pinkie swore with my father I’d live every moment with joy and dignity. And I pinkie swore with the girls I’d always have their backs.” Stacey lifted her hand. “Now it’s your turn. Pinkie swear, Kelsey, that you won’t let us down.”

  Kelsey stretched her fingers inside her glove. Surely that wasn’t a tremor in her hand. It was a simple request. A simple request that shimmied through her, made her chest expand and her smile brighter. Pinkie swears mattered. Kelsey mattered. She hooked her pinkie with Stacey’s. “I swear it.”

  “It’s done, then.” Stacey hugged her tight and then spun around to rummage inside the shopping bag. She pulled out a green tinted bottle. “Thanks for this, by the way.”

  Kelsey bent forward and read the label. “Ginger-root extract.”

  “Summer just told me you helped her find a new supplier of several products for Lately Lettuce.” Stacey shook the bottle. “This is a lifesaver and unavailable for shipping here.”

  “I only gave her the contact information for the owner of a health food chain I know in the city,” Kelsey said. In exchange for Summer agreeing to attend the broom-hockey event. Nothing anyone else couldn’t have done.

  “Well, you saved several of Summer’s customers. We owe you.” Stacey continued to pull items from her bag. “Charlie was in there, too. He was trying some natural aloe for his skin that Summer recommended after chatting with your supplier.”

  Kelsey didn’t have a supplier. She had connections, she supposed. She’d never really given it much thought. She’d simply made an introduction. Still, realizing she’d helped, well, that made her want to hug Stacey.

  Across the parking lot, Charlie and Summer, each carrying a Lately Lettuce bag, walked toward Charlie’s work truck. Summer waved to them.

  Stacey paused in her search and pointed at Kelsey, yelling, “She’s in for next week. Better get ready now, Charlie. The women are taking the boys down.”

  Charlie laughed and called back, “Not a chance. I’ve got an insider. I’ll know all your plays before you.”

  Summer hip bumped Charlie. Kelsey chuckled at the deflective move. Charlie whispered in Summer’s ear and Summer’s face became beet red. Kelsey was pulled away from watching Charlie watch Summer when Stacey shouted.

  “Bingo! Found my keys. Which reminds me, I need to tell Coop to find me a car that has remote start. Or even better, a man who can drive me around.” Stacey pulled her arm out of her purse and jingled her keys. She stuffed everything else away and faced Kelsey, wrapping her up in a quick hug. “I’m off. Next week the girls are together again to conquer the ice. We should start a broom-hockey league. Call ourselves The Flying Broomsticks.”

  Stacey tossed her bag and purse on the passenger seat, hugged Kelsey again on her way to the driver’s side and drove off.

  Kelsey had been hugged more in one day than her parents had hugged her during her entire life. She sipped her latte. It’d gone cold. Ice cold. She got inside her car and started the engine, switching the heat to supersonic blast. In only ten minutes her world had tilted again. How was she supposed to react?

  She’d made a pinkie promise to return to K-Bay. The problem was, technically, she needed to leave town before she could come back.

  CHAPTER TEN

  TY PUSHED A SLED full of fishing equipment down to the lake. A dozen buckets were positioned on the ice and a dozen chairs were opened and waiting. He’d tested the lake for patches of weak ice and replenished his bait supply.

  All they needed now were couples. And two matches.

  Gideon was up at the house, printing off another set of surveys. Coop had run back into town for s’mores supplies and more drinks. They hadn’t expected the group to remain so long at the fire pits after the broom-hockey game. As it was, this event was being held on Ty’s property, so curfews wouldn’t apply. And he had guest bedrooms with clean sheets waiting if they had to take anyone’s keys.

  The sound of an engine interrupted the squall of a hawk circling above the trees. The purr was too mild to be Coop’s truck. Ty turned around at the familiar thwap of chains agains
t pavement.

  He set his hands on his hips and waited for the car to stop in his driveway and his heart to stop racing in his chest.

  A puffed-up bundle emerged from the driver’s seat. He was beginning to have a certain soft spot for puffy things. The car door shut and still his bundle remained by the car, her hands behind her back.

  He remained where he was. Content to wait her out and his racing heart.

  She unwound her scarf, letting the ends hang down the front of her coat. “I came to report another accident.”

  “That so?” he asked.

  She nodded—he knew only because the puffball on her pink wool cap bobbed back and forth. She added, “Involving a particular sign.”

  His lips twitched from the smile that his beard could no longer hide. “Who won?”

  “It was a tie,” she said.

  There was a smile in her voice, too. He hadn’t heard that sun-infused tone since she’d visited him at training camp. Could be just a trick of the wind or wishful thinking. He stayed where he was and rubbed his chin. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I was sort of hoping you could talk to the sign’s owner and get it removed.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “So I can stop running it over.” She lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

  Again he knew because that distracting puffball flopped to the side. Her shoulder dropped; the puffball settled back in place.

  “Maybe it’s you who should move. Maybe you should stop parking there altogether.”

  “I like that spot.” She stepped off the driveway onto the first wide stair that he’d shoveled and salted that morning. The first of the five stairs that led down to the lake. And him. “It suits me.”

  There it was again. That smile filtered through her light tone. That smile that made his hands sweaty and his knees weak. And made him pray to anyone who’d listen that he wasn’t reading this wrong. “You could have texted about the sign. Why are you here, Kelsey?”

  “I made a pinkie promise.” She held up her hand, flexed her little finger. One corner of her mouth tipped up, one dimple peeked out.