“No idea,” Audrey replies as we walk over to the corner to drop off the mat. “But I’m sure not very many.”
She smiles at me, and it’s not sympathetic. It’s kind of supercilious, which I don’t get. But I don’t want to ask her about it because I’ve not finished my rant. I was up all night last night thinking of all the reasons why Sebastian and I had to crash and burn, why this wasn’t just me messing up something that was destined to be amazing. I even wrote it down. Just one giant cons column in a notebook while I sat at my kitchen table at four a.m. It didn’t make me feel a whole hell of a lot better but I figured if I expressed the facts to someone else, and they agreed, that would make me feel better.
“I let him and his ability to give orgasms cloud my better judgment,” I announce.
“Evil, evil orgasms.” Audrey is not even pretending not to mock me now.
“Audrey!”
We exit the yoga room and she wraps an arm around my shoulders as we head toward the juice bar. Jessie is behind it finishing off a super green smoothie for Mrs. Waters. “Let me finish this for you, because I know you too well.”
We sit next to each other. Jessie smiles at us and we twist our stools to face each other. “After you let the possibility of reoccurring orgasms override your ridiculous hatred of all things and people that have anything to do with pucks and ice, you then didn’t let yourself freak out over the fact that Sebastian was a serial monogamist.”
“Right! I mean with anyone, hockey player or not, the fact that his last serious relationship ended basically at the same time he met me should have had me bailing,” I agree and reach over the bar to grab two coconut waters from the cooler built into the bar.
“Yeah. It’s got to mean that you two couldn’t possibly have legit feelings for each other because there are rules to true love.” Audrey nods her head emphatically as if agreeing, but she’s actually being a sarcastic little brat. “A mandatory waiting period of three months between romantic encounters and a full oral history of your pasts as well as full names and family trees and debt history must be exchanged before tongues enter each other’s mouths…or other orifices. If all those boxes aren’t checked, your feelings can’t be real.”
She’s spewing so much sarcasm right now I’m surprised it doesn’t knock me off my bar stool.
“Hey, best friend, you need to read the manual again. You’re doing it wrong,” I quip, trying to make light of it, but I’m actually getting kind of pissed off. Jessie giggles at that so I know, even though she has her back to us as she chops fruit on the back bar, she’s been listening the whole time.
Audrey’s pretty face breaks into another smile but this one is sympathetic. “I’m sorry, Shayne. I really am, but I am not going to help you talk yourself out of trying to win him back. Because I think you should.”
I swallow a mouthful of coconut water and admit to her what I haven’t even dared to admit to myself. “I don’t know how to do that.”
She drops her hand on top of mine on the bar and squeezes. “You can start by talking to him.”
Jessie reaches under the bar and dangles the key to his BMW in front of me. “He still hasn’t picked up his car.”
She doesn’t have to tell me this, because I see it in the parking lot every morning.
“But he told me he wanted to pick it up while I was in a class,” I remind her, because I explained all this to her on the phone the day after it happened. Of course, maybe it wasn’t clear through my sobbing. “He doesn’t want to see me.”
“Yeah, and you didn’t want to fall in love with a hockey player.” Audrey winks and pats my hand again. “In the words of the Stones, you can’t always get what you want.”
Jessie leans closer and adds, “But if you try sometimes…” She and Audrey start to sing. “You just might get what you need.”
I can’t help but laugh at them, but it comes out as a nervous squawk because all the sadness in my body is being replaced with terror as a plan forms in my brain. The Winterhawks are in San Francisco for the next four days. They would leave tonight. They had to win tomorrow night or be eliminated.
If this were my dad, the last thing he would want would be my mom, or any woman, distracting him. It wouldn’t matter what was going on, or how serious, he would be furious if his focus was pulled off of hockey for even a second. Dustin had been the same way. The one playoff run while we were together in college he barely even spoke to me. He told me he needed to be alone to focus, but he was actually off getting chlamydia between playoff games. But Sebastian isn’t Glenn Beckford or Dustin. He kept trying to prove that to me, and now I have to prove to him I am not going to hold other people’s mistakes against him.
As if she can hear my thoughts, Jessie leans on the counter and smiles at me encouragingly. “Go see him before they leave tonight. Do it for me. If you two get back together, then Seb will have a date for my wedding this summer!”
I laugh at that and her grin deepens. I pull myself off the bar stool and hand her my empty coconut water. “I need to take a shower and try to make myself decent. I have a plan, but I’ll need your help.”
“Tell me what you need and I’ll do it,” Jessie promises and glances behind her at the clock on the wall.
“Can you get me a Deveau jersey?” I ask, embarrassed.
She grins and nods emphatically. “Piece of cake!” Jessie glances at the clock on the wall. “They have practice for another twenty minutes, and then they’re heading to the airport. You get ready; I’ll get the jersey.”
Here goes nothing.
Chapter 45
Sebastian
Jordan and Avery are pulling into the VIP lot at the airport at the same time I am. I park in the spot next to Jordan, get out of my SUV and head to the trunk to get my luggage. His playoff beard is in full, unruly mountain-man mode, just like mine. I know our crazy facial hair contrasts ridiculously with the suits we wear to and from games. We get weird looks from some travelers at the airport, but hockey fans get it.
