“Too fast according to who? Who cares what anyone else thinks if that’s what we want to do. There’s no rules in life, Ellie.”
She was still hesitating.
“You can play with Indie all the time…Until you want one of your own…” I couldn’t help but look down at herstomach.
“Eyes! Eyes up here!” she said, and I just chucked. She bit her bottom lip and looked beyond me then, thinking, and I could see a small smile fighting at the corner of her lips.
“You’re crazy,” she finally said.
“Nah, nothing wrong with a bit of manifesting into the world.”
She patted my chest and was quiet.
“What’s goin on in that pretty head?” I asked.
“I thought we were done,” she confessed.
“Nah, I think you’re stuck with me. We need each other, babe,” I explained to her. “Besides the fact that I probably shouldn’t drive myself back home because I’m prolly even more concussed thanks to you,” I said, to which she rolled her eyes. “I love you, Chellie, my littlebrat.”
Her glassy eyes danced, and her smile lit up her whole face. “I am not saying you are a brat tamer if that’s what you are looking for, you big dummy.”
“It would help if you did though,” Iwinked.
“I think I’ll keep ya around, baby shakes and all,” she said with a wry smile.
When she looked back up at me, I smoothed a tear away from under her eye.
“You and me, babe.”
I hugged her, treasuring how comforting it was, and enjoying the lavender scent of her hair.
She pulled back from me suddenly, and I internally rebelled, thinking she’d found another problem, but then she asked, “Did you bring me a cupcake?” and my body shook with happy laughter against her.
I guess Grey had been right all along.
Epilogue- TJ
The days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve are supposed to be lazy.
I’m a firm believer that those days are for pajamas and movie marathons.
Not bag skates run by yourgirlfriend.
I skated to the boards and grabbed a water bottle to squirt some into my helmet. We still had a couple minutes of practice left, but my whole body was aching, and Ellie was yelling at us to get moving again.
Her whole strategy aimed to make us lighter on our feet, but in order to do that, I think she tried to wear us down first.
I caught her eye from across the ice then, and gave her the old up-down look, and I think I detected a small blush creeping into her face. She hated when I made her all hot and bothered at work, but I loved it. She was just so damn graceful and gorgeous, even when she was in drill sergeant mode out here on the ice.
After Coach got wind that she’d moved down here to Detroit with me, he requested a meeting with her. Next thing I knew, she was hired on as a power skate coach for the Detroit Crewman, so she really didn’t skip a beat in moving at all.
She also started coaching figure skating in the afternoons at a local rink, and she even registered some of her girls in a basic skills competition in the coming month. I knew she was nervous about it, but I also detected a bit of excitement. Her whole goal with coaching skating was to try and help shift the rink culture in a positive way, and after some convincing, I think I showed her she couldn’t do that without helping girls compete. I also told her we’d be switching spots and I’d be in the stands supporting her for a change, and I think she likedthat.
We all gathered around Ellie, who made the red Crewmen Coach hockey sweats look way better than anyone else in the organization, to hear her explain the last drill. Sometimes it was kind of funny to me how we all towered over her but then she could beat our butts in any of her drills. She definitely humbled us when it came to our skills out here.
The last drill of the day sounded simple enough- just crossovers in a circle- but she always made us go faster or slower depending on her mood and how cruel she wanted to be. Sometimes she played Taylor Swift music and made us do crossovers to the beat of the music, which was oddly relaxing, but the trick was that she also had us passing the puck while doing this, so we always had to bealert.
After the group got moving, we completed a couple quick passes within the circle, but then Coach’s whistle interrupted us, signaling that practice was over.
