“Hello?”
“It’s Jason.”
The entrance buzzer sounded, and the main door opened. Up the stairs I bounded, and when I reached it, her door was ajar. I pushed it in.
“Doc?”
Sniffles. She was sitting on the sofa with a box of tissues and reddened eyes. Something in me reared up, an urge to hurt what had hurt mine.
“Who did this to you?”
“You did! Or more to the point, you didn’t. I’m not pregnant!”
Shit. “You’re sure?”
“I got my period today.”
I took a seat beside her, the rage in my chest at seeing her so upset barely subsiding to a simmer. If we’d been friends, I would have put an arm around her, given her physical comfort, but we weren’t. We were in a weird liminal space where the rules were slippery and unknowable.
“We can try again.”
“I-I know.” She pushed her glasses back up her nose. “I just thought that now it was happening that it would be?—”
“Happening?”
“Yes. I assumed the hardest part was finding the candidate. That wasn’t hard at all. You just rocked up and offered!”
“You make me sound easy.”
She raised an eyebrow. I had amused her.
“You did offer your services rather quickly. Have you ever impregnated someone before?”
I averted her headlight-bright gaze. “No. But there’s nothing wrong with my boys.”
“So it’s my fault?”
“Didn’t say that. Doc, you’re a scientist. Think it through. Did you really think we were going to succeed the first time out?”
She blew out a breath that ruffled her bangs and set her chin stubbornly. “I wanted it to.”
“You know something? I’ve wanted to win the Cup for my whole career. Fifteen seasons and no joy. Didn’t mean I didn’t try or that my team was no good. It just didn’t happen. But I still think I can do it this year because if I was to give up on that dream, I’d be giving up on life!”
She peered at me. “I can’t believe you’ve never won the whole thing. Though you came close three years ago. McCluskey should have been ejected for that hit he made on you.”
That hit ended my playoffs a round early. Who was to say how far we would have gone if I’d stayed in?
“You’ve been keeping track of my career?”
“Purely from interest in the gruesome details. So much blood.” She reached for my eyebrow, her fingertips soft against the scar left by McCluskey’s stick. In an all-out melee, I’d lost my helmet, and that wily prick went for the kill. Anyone with eyes could have seen he did it deliberately, but the zebras were skating blind that night.
I was glad my old misfortune had given her something to think about other than her own misery. Our misery, because we were a team here, and I wanted this, too. Maybe I liked her warm fingertips on my face as well.
“I think I can win this year.”
“The Cup?”
“Among other things.”
