I looked. And his eyes met mine immediately. “Nice picture,” he said, handing it back to me. He didn’t wink or anything cheesy like that. But there was an unmistakable flare of interest there.
Stellar job, deflector shields.
I took my ID back, shoved it into my pocket, and then took a big slug of the cold water he’d poured me, just for something to do. He went away, and mercifully it was a different server who delivered my beer. I looked out the window and wondered how long it took my parents to check into a hotel.
And where was my sister? Lori was supposedly taking the Metro North up from New York, where she worked as a minion on Wall Street. I hadn’t seen her since the summer. Or anyone else for that matter, except my teammates and my textbooks.
November had been brutally busy. We’d played six hockey games that month, winning five and tying one. It was a streak unheard of in Harkness history. While our team had been solid for the past two years, we’dneversat so firmly atop the Eastern standings before. If I didn’t think it would jinx me, I would have taken a screen shot of our record and hung it on the wall.
Even better, I’d managed to pull my weight in every game. The truce that Rikker and I established probably had something to do with it. Since our chat in his room, we’d had a nod-and-continue-walking-by relationship, which suited me fine. He knew things about me that I wished he didn’t know. I could never quite forget that with a single drunken utterance(hey, you want to hear a funny story about Graham?)he could end my life as I knew it.
But he didn’t do that. And, like he promised, he’d stopped reminding me that he could.
For the last few weeks we’d been just two teammates on the ice. Rikker just did his job feeding shots to Hartley, and I did my job warding off the other team’s offense. For the most part, my life had slipped back into control.
Until tonight.
Earlier this week, I’d realized that my parents’ visit to Harkness would rain down a new shower of awkward into my life. And that’s why I sat there gulping my pint in the restaurant, wondering how I could get a second one without making eye contact with the sexy waiter. Hell, my parents’ arrival in town made me want to change my drink order from ale to Bourbon.
“Mikey!”
I looked up to see my sister hoofing it in a skirt and heels across the room towards me. And my parents were right behind her. I stood up to greet them, taking the onslaught of affection like a man. My sister squeezed me, my mother tousled my hair and kissed me. My father gave me the regulation one-armed man hug with a back slap.
We all sat down, and the family chatter began. My sister complained about her job while my father asked me questions about our last game, and what Coach had in mind for Saturday. Mr. Tight Pants came back to take drink orders and drop off a basket of warm cornbread. I took a single surreptitious glance at his ass as he walked away. I usually wouldn’t risk it when my family was around. But the place was crowded. I could have been looking at anybody.
“I got Red Wings tickets for over Christmas,” my dad said.
“Yeah?” I dragged my attention back to the table. “That’s awesome.”
“If we drive down on the twenty-sixth, and return the next day, you’ll have another three days before you have to fly back.”
“Can’t wait,” I said. And it was true.
“I would have gotten tickets to the Winter Classic, but…”
“I know. My game schedule.”
But Dad only beamed. “Too busy winning!” He grew up in Texas, where they don’t play much hockey. He had been a big football fan his whole life, until I started skating. Now he followed the Red Wings — and me, of course — with red-blooded enthusiasm.
Three servers approached our table at once, so that our five salad plates could land on the table almost simultaneously. That’s how fancy a joint this place was. As a stylized pile of greens landed in front of me, I got a whiff of men’s cologne. I didn’t even have to look up to guess which waiter had just served me, leaning the smallest fraction of a degree closer than necessary.
With my deflector shields firmly in place, I didn’t even blink.Peddle it elsewhere, buddy. Although, my empty beer glass was exchanged for a full one, even though I hadn’t asked for it. So I was grateful. But not grateful enough to spare him a thankful glance.
Too risky.
I forked up a bite of the fern-like salad. There were dried cranberries and some kind of candied nuts in there. It was great. As long as they didn’t run out of turkey in the next ten minutes.
“This is so good!” my sister said. “It was a great idea to come here, Mom. Thank you.” Three years older than I was, Lori had always been the family kiss-up.
“I’m just sorry you can’t stay the night,” my mother told her. “We would have gotten you a room.”
“I have to work tomorrow,” she grimaced.
“That is just ridiculous.”
“Beth,” my father warned. “Those training programs are rigorous. Lori is busy mowing down the competition.”
My father loved that phrase — mowing down the competition. Dad loved winning. There were a couple of tricky years there in middle school when I wasn’t doing so well in football. He tried to help, but I could just feel his frustration with me. The fact that he didn’t know much about hockey when I started playing was actually part of the appeal.
