“You think I’m cute?”
“I think you're cocky.”
“Not the worst thing I’ve been called.” I smile at her, popping my gum, and she shakes her head, but I don’t miss the small huff of laughter she lets out.
“What about Silas?
“What about him?”
“Well, you and Noah are off to Toronto next year, yeah?”
“That’s the plan.” I take a sip of my drink, rather than say anything else.
Chloe studies me for a second like she’s decided there’s a different question she actually wants to ask. Thankfully, she’s spent enough time avoiding things to recognize when someone else is doing the same.
“So, what’s the third Stooge doing then?”
“Stooge?”
“Yeah. Larry, Moe,” she points back at the tents over her shoulder before pointing at me, “Curly.”
“It’s the hair, isn’t it?” I ask, running a palm over my head and she shrugs with a playful grin. “Well,Mois done after this year. He has plans to work for his family’s real estate company.”
“That’s a shame. He has some of the best gap control I’ve seen in a long time.”
“Yeah. Recruiters have tried to get him for a while now, but he—” I pause when her comment actually sinks in. The only thing hotter than Chloe talking about gap control mightbe if she started talking about edge work. “That’s some pretty advanced terminology for someone who just started dating a hockey player a few weeks ago.”
She shrugs a casual shoulder. “I used to play.”
“Play what?”
“Hockey.”
I don’t hold back my surprise when I ask, “When?”
“Mmm.” Her lips twist as she thinks. “I was probably ten when I started, and then I played all throughout middle school.”
Of course she did. I really shouldn’t be surprised by stuff like this anymore. “Why’d you stop?”
I can sense her hesitancy when she looks down at her lap and pulls on the sleeves of her sweatshirt. She wears the same look she had on earlier in the car. I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees, and settle in. It’s my low risk way of saying, ‘You can tell me anything.’
“It’s kind of a long story,” she finally says.
“If you’re telling it, I’m listening.”
She searches my face, weighing something in her head before she finally speaks. “When I was nine, we went to my aunt and uncle’s house for Thanksgiving. He had shoveled the pond out back, gave me my first pair of skates, and took me out on the ice. Of course, I was natural,” she says playfully.
“Well, of course.”
She smiles briefly and then looks back down at her lap. “My parents enrolled me in an all girls hockey team, and a few years later, Savannah showed up. She was the girl that everyone wanted to be friends with. It was always, ‘Where’s Savannah?’ ‘You want to come to my birthday party? Maybe. Is Savannah going?’”
I can’t stop the snort that comes out of me because I’ve gotten to know Savannah over the last few months, and I canunderstand the appeal of wanting to be friends with her, but you’ve got to be willing to risk getting your head taken off first.
“For whatever reason—and I’ll never question it—Savannah didn’t care about any of it. After practice it was always me she ended up talking to.” She smiles at the memory.
“Anyway, one day I was struggling with something, it was so insignificant, I can’t even remember what it was now, but I was packing up my bag, confident that it would be my last day and that I wasn’t coming back. She talked me out of a fit. She said,‘There’s always going to be some shit. It’s how you deal with that shit that defines you.’I was in such shock that she said ‘shit’ because we barely had all our adult teeth. I can still remember the way her black waterproof mittens felt on my face when she wiped a tear off my cheek.” She brings her sweatshirt covered fist to her face, like she’s reliving the moment.
“Ever since then, it’s been us against the world. When we were younger, I just thought she was my best friend, but when her mom passed away…” Chloe’s voice cracks, along with something inside my chest as she bats away the tears now falling from her eyes. “Something changed. Savannah quit the team, and I knew she was never coming back. I didn’t want to do it anymore without her, but more than that, I couldn’t stand the thought of her being alone. So, for the first time in my life, I quit something without a second thought as to what my parents, or coach, or anyone else thought. I spent every minute that we weren’t in school with Sav. Some days, we did stuff to keep her mind occupied; other days, we just quietly watched movies to get lost in another world. And then there were days when she would rest her head on my lap, and I would comb my fingers through her hair while she cried,” she whispers the words, but her loyalty is screaming.
