“Well, I can tell you with great certainty that having your cousin stop by to fuck with your car isn’t going to help.”
“It might if your cousin owns an old sports car that’s super loud and can distract a bunch of jocks while you turn whatever knobs under the hood that’ll make mine start again.”
“Arlo, you’re a jock too.”
Now it was Arlo’s turn to scoff into the phone.
“I’m aware of that. But for the sake of separating myself from the collective long enough to escape with my pride intact today, I’m just a guy who has a cousin with a cool car.”
Harrison sighed and began rubbing the bridge of his nose to ease the pain in his head. Whenever he talked to Arlo, that one spot would hurt worse than the chronic pain in his leg, and all his depression combined.
“What’s in it for me?” Harrison asked, already knowing he would bail Arlo out, but he liked messing with him. “I’m a very busy person.”
“Yeah, so fucking busy,”said Arlo. “You need to visit all five bedrooms in your haunted old lake house, and pause to take a long, contemplative sips of your gross coffee with nothing in it. And then maybe go down to the water after that to stand on the dock and stare at the surrounding nature while you remember what it was like to get your dick hard.”
The laugh that left Harrison wasn’t for show. It was so explosive it nearly gave him a stitch in his ribs.
How he loved tormenting Arlo to his breaking point. He always went on one of his famous rambles that rarely made sense.
“Don’t bullshit me, Harrison. I know you don’t have anything to do. Now come save me!”
The line went dead, and Harrison shook his head as he stared at his cellphone. He was going to the rink to see Arlo, if only to put him in a choke hold and give him a healthy dose of fear again. The kid was getting too comfortable with bossing him around.
Still, he had already taken a shower and had something to eat. He didn’t have an excuse not to go into town other than the fact that he hated being around people, especially young, rambunctious hockey players.
He brushed his hand over the scruffy beard he was sporting and sighed into the silence of his home. He knew there wasn’t a chance anyone would recognize him, but there was always that small bit of doubt that made him hesitate.
He was old news now, even with the drama surrounding his career and the accident. After all the surgery, recovery and rehabilitation, Harrison took the extra step and moved out of Kentville completely to avoid the small-town gossip.
Moving to his family’s lake house outside of Windsor had been the perfect way to escape from his past. It was far enough to evade anyone he knew, and other than having to go to town once a month to stock up on food, he had no interactions with anyone.
Arlo was the only person who visited him, and that was a hard-fought battle between them that involved a lot of stubbornness from both parties, with episodes of sleeping on the porch because Harrison refused to let him come inside.
He could have lived without seeing anyone from his family again. Harrison would have happily died alone in the woods and become a local legend that faded into myth, but Arlo refused to let it happen.
He had been dealing with the consequences of his actions ever since the night he finally let Arlo in to sleep, even if he did say it was because he didn’t want to clean up the mess the wildlife left after they had their fill of his scrawny ass.
His screen lit up, and Harrison opened the message.
Arlo: You and that awful beard better be getting in that stupid car of yours and driving to come see me.
Harrison rubbed the spot between his eyes.
He wasn’t quiet about stomping around his house, picking up the tools he thought he would need from the kitchen island and throwing them into his tool bag. Not that Arlo could see how grumpy he was, but it made him feel better as he shoved his boots on and forced himself out the front door.
The lake house had air conditioning, so the summer heat felt like a sweaty smack to his face as he jogged down the stairs into the garage. It was nice living in such a secluded area of woods, but the dense trees often blocked any breeze from making it up the hill off the lake. Being outside atmidday was nearly impossible, which was why he usually avoided going out around this time.
Fucking Arlo.
He got in his car and tossed the tools onto the passenger side seat so he could grab them and run when he got to the rink. He knew the drill since this wasn’t the first time Arlo had broken down there. They had already tried this diversion tactic several times.
Harrison backed the car out and gunned it down the dirt road, taking advantage of the private access to go as fast as he wanted without the fear of hitting anyone. Arlo could make fun of his car for being loud all he wanted, but there was nothing more fun than ripping down a flat surface with the engine roaring loud enough in your ears to block out everything else.
Everything else. Every thought, every memory and even every pain.
It was the closest thing he had to being on the ice, racing down the rink as he chased the puck, his mind focused on nothing but the space between him and the back of the net.
Harrison tore into the parking lot, both prepared and not prepared for the number of people standing outside the rink. It occurred to him that he had forgotten to ask Arlo exactly what was going on that had everyone so worked up, but that was his dumbass mistake.
