“Is going to be over there with the figure skaters, Huddy. You’ll have to take the rookie.” She throws a thumb at Quade. Huddy huffs and rolls his eyes.
“Fine.”
“Hey.I’m right here, man.” The rookie calls out holding his arms and stick out. Then calls to our parents, “Your kids are brutal.”
“You have no idea.” Dad huffs shooting me a wink.
I line up for the face off against Huddy. We fight for it, but he sweeps it out to where Fitz is waiting.
Mr. King is on him though. He doesn’t make it easy.
When he gets the puck from Fitz, he makes his way down the ice with it.
He scores on Ronan.
The next play goes quickly, and holy smokes Allison can play!
She gets the puck from my dad.
“Coming to you, Matty!” She calls as she swipes it sideways to avoid Mr Liam.
I’m wide open when I shoot the puck. I hold my breath as it sails through the air and pings off the top of the net.
I try to keep my head up like Dad always says but it tips down anyways as it gets taken down the ice. Huddy scores on Ripley.
“Hey kiddo.” Allison says and wraps her arm around my shoulders. “That was still a beautiful slapshot.”
“Yea but I missed.”
“True. You had really great form though. Especially for a nine-year-old.”
“Really?” My head snaps up. She smiles.
“Really. Now let’s go kick their butts. Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
We don’t win. It’s okay though. Dad is skating around the lake with Allison, and they hold hands when they think no one’s watching.
“I think it’s working!” Huddy says, turning his skates sideways to stop in front of us. Ronan and Ripley come too. “I thought of another idea!”
“Well, what is it?” Fitz asks, leaning on his stick. He’s more excited about our plan now.
“You have to spend the night at my house tonight, so Santa brings your presents there! Then we can spend Christmas as a family!”
“Don’t you think Santa will still drop his presents off at his house though?” Ripley asks, rubbing his eyebrow.
“Santa knows.” Hudson rolls his eyes. We watch Emalyn do cool spins and jumps around the ice.
“Look. That’s how your dad is always looking at mom.” We snicker at Ronan watching with his mouth hanging open.
Mr King chuckles behind us and we nearly fall out of our skates. He has hot cocoa for both of us.
It was a good day.
Allison blasts her christmas music on the drive home. This time she pretends to have a microphone in her hand. Huddy and I sing alone when she holds it out to us.
Dad agrees to our sleepover after Allison says it's reallyreallyokay.
