I peered at him.
“Yeah, okay. I know you’re good at those. But you run a real risk of taking ours out, too, and that’ll leave them scoring three, and those stones are so far apart, we might not be able to keep them under three points with the stones we have left.”
“It’s a risk but if I do it right, I don’t take ours out, I curl my shot behind it, and we have two points on the board. Best they can do is a raise, which still leaves us with shot that we can then guard.”
“If you do it right, and if none of our guard shots go wrong.”
“When has Alan ever delivered a guard wrong?”
“Based.”
“I can see the line.”
“Seeing the line and making the shot though…”
“I know. I miss and I take out our insurance, or leave them with an easy double.” I looked at him. “I won’t miss.”
He sighed and shrugged. “I’ll go tell him. See what he says.”
I studied the lines, clear as if someone had drawn them on the ice for me, though obviously they weren’t really there and the guys had only my word that I could see what I told them I could see.
I could definitely do it. One hundred per cent, this was a shot I could make.
I looked up at the sound of my name to see Alan waving me over. I glanced at the game clock and decided we had time so I went down to hear what he had to say.
“You sure?” he asked me.
I nodded.
“I don’t see it. If you do, you have to call it.” He looked at Robbie and Carol. “You guys can listen to his call?”
“Bien sûr,” Carol said.
“Sure,” Robbie agreed with a negligent shrug.
I said to Alan, “You’re Skip. I’ll take the shot you say.”
He smiled at me and it was more than just a Skip’s reassuring smile, which was obvious to everyone when Robbie groaned under his breath, and there was a rustle of “aws” and “oh” from the stands.
“Take the shot you see,” Alan said. “I trust you.”
“No pressure though,” Robbie said quickly, as if he was worried I’d buckle under Alan’s confidence in me.
“I got this.” I took a steadying breath, let it out, and nodded. “I got this.”
“Of course you do.” Alan’s pat to my shoulder lingered just a breath longer than necessary. “Tell me where to put my broomfor your aim and let’s finish this. We are literally four stones away from the Olympics.”
Which was when it hit me. It didn’t matter if I made the shot or screwed it up. We still had three stones, and the hammer, and even if we somehow lost this game, there was another one tomorrow.
We were going to the Olympics. There was no chance Jason Darren was taking that away from my boyfriends, my friends, or me.
The pressure fell away completely as I pointed to a spot on the ice. “About there, I think. I’ll let you know when I get back down there.”
I slid away, as calm as I’d ever been, despite the importance of the Trials, this game, and this shot specifically. It was one more stone in a million I would shoot in my life. Just a shot.
Once in the hack, I waved for Alan to move his broom a few inches to the left to better aim my delivery, then let it go.
The weight was right. The curl was not. “Hurry, Robbie! Curl!” I called. “Curl! Curl!Hurry!”
