“You showed it to him?” Anne gaped at her. “He's going to be sitting there with Kessler?”
Jenna nodded. “I didn’t want to, but I knew it would be killer. And yeah, tomorrow night.”
Rhonda looked skeptical. “They know what Country says on that channel, right?”
Jenna nodded again. “I think the producers are fine stirring up some sort of controversy. Our ratings have been taking a nosedive at the network, and I think they were hoping that once HEC started going again this season, it would bring everything up with it.
“It hasn't?” Melissa asked.
“Not the way that they hoped.” It was baffling, even to her. After three years there, they’d always seen a massive boost in their programming, especially anything surrounding the Saturday broadcasts.
Anne took a drink from her tumbler. “So Country's their sacrificial lamb?”
Jenna laughed. “Oh, trust me, Country is not innocent.” She thought back to his practice segment in the studio. How Gentry's eyes had sparkled when he'd gotten into it with Glen about that penalty.
“Country’s never given a shit what people thought of him,” Tina said. “Do you remember when he did that striptease at grad?”
Anne chortled. “Yeah, and Mrs. Spencer had to be the one to drag his sweaty body off the stage.”
Melissa winked. “She liked it. You know she did.”
“Or when he wore that mustard-brown suit on New Year's?” Anne blurted.
“Ahhh, I haven’t thought about this in years! Apparently he still has a wild streak.” Tina waggled an eyebrow, and before anyone else could force another hot-Gentry memory down her throat, Jenna slapped her hand on the edge of the tub.
“And how would you know that?” Jenna asked. It didn’t seem like Tina was making assumptions based on his online presence.
Tina stared at her with wide-eyed innocence. “I still talk to Curtis and Ryan sometimes.”
“And they hang out with Country?”
“They’re on his hockey team.” Tina took a long drink of her wine to avoid having to answer any more incriminating questions.
Jenna gaped at them. “You guys seriously thought I was so fragile that I couldn't handle any of this information?”
Anne winced. “We didn't want to tell you right when you moved back . . . and then it felt weird to bring it up.”
Tina nodded. “There was never a good time.”
Rhonda dropped her legs, sloshing water across the tub. “Wait a second, if this was the boyfriend, then why did the two of you break up in the first place?”
Jenna shot Anne a look. Her friend shrugged. “I told her you guys had dated and that you broke up, but I didn't feel like the rest of it was my story to tell.”
Jenna couldn't blame her for that. “It's kind of a long story.”
Melissa glanced down at her smartwatch. “It's only eight o'clock, and I still have half a bottle of wine to dish out.”
Jenna laid back and stared up at the pinpricks of light winking awake in the charcoal sky. This would be easier if she didn't have to look at their faces. “Gentry and I started dating in high school . . .”
Jenna thought back to the day they'd finally made it official after dancing around their attraction for months. At least on his end. She'd been choreographing for a lot longer than that.
That night, he'd finally kissed her out back by the trees, wrapped in the scent of campfire and freshly mown grass.
From that moment, it had been all over for her. She'd loved him. Everything about him. His brazen confidence. The way he pushed himself on the ice. How every moment of her life was enhanced when he was in the room. They'd been inseparable their senior year of high school and, while they couldn't be attached at the hip once they both started university, they were still in the same city for the first year. Then Country had moved to Toronto on a hockey scholarship. She'd transferred to Windsor, and they'd been dead-set on making the three-hour travel distance work.
It had worked. Up until she'd gone in for her screening.
Jenna shared all of this without dropping her gaze from the sky. "When my mom got breast cancer, she begged me to go get tested."
