“Yeah, me too,” Riggs says. “I kinda crushed on her for a while.”
“Kind of? You called her your future girlfriend before you met her.”
He claps me on the shoulder. “Guess you’ll have to add prescient to your list.”
I’ll give him that. “True,” I say, then mutter, “Fanboy. That’s your new nickname.”
He shrugs happily. “Works for me.”
He fiddles with his phone for a few minutes, texting Sapphire, judging by his dopey smile, while I answer a couple of emails from Charlotte’s school about an upcoming science fair.
When Riggs is done, he blows out a breath, then furrows his brow, his thoughts clearly shifting to something else as he turns to me again. “Do you ever, I don’t know, feel the pressure?”
“From the game?” I ask, wanting to make sure I’m understanding his question. Now and then, we’re thoughtful with each other, rather than dickheads.
“Yeah, but also just from having had such a good career,” he says earnestly.
Ah. The pressure of time. He’s a little younger than I am, so it’s understandable he’d ask me that. “I do,” I admit.
“How do you handle it?”
I’m not sure my answer will help him. “I bake.”
He laughs, then drags a hand through his hair. “I should have known better.”
I sigh, giving his question more thought. “But I also use positive self-talk, you know?”
He nods, clearly listening, since we’ve all been to the group meetings with team psychologists where they talk about this topic. “I tell myself I’m an excellent hockey player. And then I act like it. I tell myself I can handle the game, the promotion, my family, and then I fucking do it.”
He leans back against the cushy, vegan leather seat like he’s absorbing that. “Makes sense.”
He’s quiet for a beat, blowing out a heavy breath.
“Are you stressed?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nah, I’m like a Dane.”
I furrow my brow. “What?”
“The Danish people. They’re one of the least stressed people in the world. After Monaco, Lichtenstein, Switzerland, and a few other countries.”
“Okay, but you’re not like a Dane, you are a Dane. Isn’t your family from Denmark?”
“My mom is. But I guess that explains my chill,” he says with a grin, then grabs his headphones.
He shoves them on, then toggles through playlists on his phone till his screen shows an image of rain gently falling on a glass pane.
Huh, maybe that’s his stress relief. I suppose we all have to have something.
Me?
I look up recipes on my tablet. I plan out new things I want to bake. I make a schedule to buy ingredients.
And I imagine Mabel biting into a pretty pink cupcake, frosting catching on the corner of her lips.
I picture her taking a bite of a lemon shortcake and making a sinful sound.
I see her dipping her finger into cake batter and sucking it off.
