“I’m in Lucky Falls!” The statement is followed by about two minutes of giggling. “I love this town. It’s so cute and old-fashioned.”
I tilt my head back and sigh heavily.Please just get to the point.“Well… that’s nice. Hope you enjoy your stay.”
“Oh, Nat before you go. I was hoping we could meet up and you could show me around. Maybe introduce me to some of your new hockey friends?”
“I can’t, Layla. I’m busy.”
“That’s fine. That’s fine.” She backtracks. “We can still meet up some time. Grab some coffee. Catch up. It’ll be nice.”
About as nice as poking my eyes out with my skates. “I don’t think I’ll have the time.”
“Well, let’s play it by ear.”
I grunt, refusing to agree to anything.
The dial tone rings in my ear.
Well then.
My entire body starts to ache and I feel like I’ve aged two years in a day.
I don’t have any hard feelings about my breakup with Layla, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten everything that went down. My ex smiled in my face when I was healthy and coldly dumped me when I stopped being of purpose.
That kind of duplicity is something I don’t want anywhere near my teammates, my friends, or my… Riley.
Chapter Nineteen
RILEY
“Should I be concerned?” I ask, looking at the life-sized cut-out of an Asian man in a tuxedo.
“Why would you say that?” Betty pours the rest of her tea and brings it to a small table next to the window. She sees what I’m staring at and laughs boisterously. “It’s nice, isn’t it?”
“It’s… I mean he’s…” I stare at the cardboard cut-out of a man with pale skin and shiny pink lips. “Uh… who is he?”
“He’s Seo Min Jae,” Betty says confidently, as if I should know what that means.
I gingerly take a seat across from her. “Who?”
“He’s the lead singer of Neon Veil. Have you not heard of them?”
I shake my head slowly.
Betty whips out her cell phone so fast it looks like a magic trick. She then begins to play the most high-pitched, auto-tuned, overly engineered song known to man.
“What is that?” I ask. “Are they speaking English?”
“It’s Korean. It’s K-pop!”
“Oh.”
“This is my favorite song on the album. ‘Echoes of AfterImage’.The song is about the loneliness of loving someone who can’t love you back.”
That sounds like the theme song of my life.
Betty winks. “It just came out yesterday. Isn’t it great?”
I stare at the giddy woman before me. Betty Kalinsky was so tough in the repair hanger that she once made a grown man cry.
