(Posted to hockeygossip.net, on 02/17/2025)
Drinking coffee with Phil’s ex-wife was not how Ben had pictured his wedding day.
They’d scheduled the court appointment for ten thirty.By nine, none of them were dressed, and they had two unexpected guests.Breezy sat at the table, looking gaunt and hungover, wrapped in the hideous crochet throw blanket.Ben hoped he’d take it with him when he left and conveniently forget to return it.
Charlie kept looking back and forth between everyone and making increasingly panicked faces.
Ben couldn’t help but agree.
“So,” Phil said, serving up a dish of scrambled egg whites.Ben wasn’t sure if he made them in an attempt to fool Breezy or Camille.When they were alone, Phil used the whole egg.“What brings you here, Camille?”
“I returned to the States yesterday,” she said, tossing her long, sleek blonde hair over her shoulder.“When I turned my American phone on, I had a large number of concerned texts from Tom Crowler.”
“Ah, fuck,” Phil said.“Let me guess.He sent those sometime in November?”
“I looked up your game highlights.”Camille pursed her perfectly lined lips.“I never liked when you fought.”
“No one likes when hockey players fight,” Ben muttered.“It’s ridiculous.”
“You’re gonna have to make me a list for the fridge,” Phil said to him.“Top ten silliest things about hockey.You’ve only gotten to five so far.”
“Did I talk about the goal horns?Those are easily places one through three.”
“I see you’re doing fine,” Camille interrupted.“The knee again?”
“Yeah.”Phil refilled his coffee cup.“Been rehabbing it pretty intensely, and the trainers think I’ll heal up well.I might even make it back for playoffs.”
Ben grimaced.Playoffs was pushing it, but he knew Phil wanted to actively decide which game would be his last instead of letting a freak accident in St.Louis take him out.He glanced across the table and was alarmed to find Camille with an identical grimace on her own face.
“You came all the way here because you were worried?”Phil asked.
“It’s a short flight from LA,” Camille said.“And of course I worried.We were married for five years.”
“And now we’re divorced.”
“Yes, well, that doesn’t mean I don’t care anymore.”
Breezy squinted up from his egg whites.“So youdocare?”
Ben patted his head.“He had a tough night.It’s a little early for double negatives.”
Chuckling richly, Camille looked at him.“And you are?”
“This is Ben,” Phil said.“He’s…um…” He looked at Breezy.Then he looked at Charlie.Then he looked at his watch.
It was nine fifteen.
All of them had to shower, dress, and find the paperwork.It would take at least half an hour to get to the courthouse and find parking, and Ben had never met a bureaucratic process it didn’t pay to be early for.
“I don’t wanna, um, tell on you guys before you’re ready,” Charlie said carefully.“But it’s getting late.”
“We do need to go soon,” Phil agreed.
Breezy blinked out from his blanket cocoon and made no move to get to his feet.Camille leaned back in her chair.She probably still thought of it as her chair.Her table.Her house.The notion made Ben irrationally angry.
He lived here now.He planned to live here for the foreseeable future.But so far, he’d actively avoided leaving any of his stuff lying around; everything that truly belonged to him was in the guest bedroom.
He should move it over to Phil’s room.
