PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
ALAN
Droppingthe pages I’d been studying, I pinched the bridge of my nose, rubbing at the tender gouges my heavy glasses had left in the skin. I only needed them for reading, so I rarely wore them.
“You know I could have summarized all of that for you into a nice video,” Michael said, sitting down across from me and handing over a beer.
“The numbers don’t stick unless I see them.”
He sighed, because he knew that about me. “Though I don’t see why it matters. This is such a nothing tournament. Doesn’t count towards any of your stats or standings.”
“I know.” I glanced around the room, as if looking for someone who might overhear me in the privacy of my own living room. “We aren’t working well as a team. Having some of the best curlers doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll win if we can’t work together. I’m just trying to integrate?—”
“Let me stop you right there,” Michael said, a hand flat over the spread of papers. “I do know why you decided to play in this little bonspiel. I know what you’re worried about.”
“I want to get to the Olympics, but honestly…?”
“Not with this team.”
It was my turn to sigh and take a long drag from my bottle. “It was a mistake agreeing to the twins.”
“Our bank account was completely empty. We needed the money.”
“It was too high a price.”
Michael remained silent, because he knew what I was talking about. It wasn’t just that our four-man team didn’t work well together on the ice. As our alternate, the dynamics didn’t affect Michael as much as they did our Vice-Skip, Carol. While Carol’s public persona gave a lot of golden retriever energy on camera, his actual vibe was a lot more vizsla. He thrived on personal connections and closeness.
The Darren twins were not the ones to give him that. They didn’t listen to me on the ice, they made Carol feel disconnected and anxious, and truthfully, while they could deliver a stone accurately on a perfect ice surface, they didn’t tend to adjust quickly enough to less than ideal conditions. Neither of them trusted my calls for brooming.
They’d grown up playing in an exclusive club with all the perks and privileges and none of the adversity that made a good curler a great one. Add to that the more volatile twin, Jason, was pissed off he hadn’t been made Skip, and yeah. As a team, we were more than a bit of a hot mess.
“I was hoping a nice, low-stakes tournament might give us that final push to… I don’t know.”
“They would have to be on board with that idea,” Michael pointed out. “And they aren’t. They’re here for the potential podium run, and nothing else.”
“I’d rather give their sponsor the money back and bootstrap our own run than do it with them, if I’m honest.”
“Which explains all this.” He sat back, sipped his beer, and flipped idly through the papers on the table. “You don’t reallycare what their stats are in terms of whether we can beat them. You’re looking for new players.”
I nodded. “I just wish all the clubs kept stats.” I waved at a small stack of printouts from two of the clubs that would be participating in the same tournament that we had entered. “The guys from Timmins and Hurst are out. They’re all too young. No experience.”
“The Timmins guys have good stats.”
“Not very many of them. And not under pressure. Do they have stamina and grit? Stats don’t show that. Thunder Bay has a couple of potentials. I only need one.”
“You can’t replace one twin and not the other,” Michael warned.
“Oh, I have no intention of it. But I have you for Second, and Carol as Vice. I just need a Lead.”
Michael leaned over the table again. “You have to put Carol back on Lead. It’s what he’s good at.”
“And I will. If I can. He’s a decent Vice, and finding a new First will be a lot more likely than finding someone who can hold down the Vice spot.”
“I just hate that for him. He’s not thriving.”
“I suspect he’ll be a lot more comfortable with just about anyone other than a Darren brother.”
