“You buying these?” He asked it like the question exhausted him.
“Yeah,” I sucked in a breath. “For my friend, she-”
“Take my advice,” he cut me off. “Run the opposite way. Girls will just break your fucking heart and leave you in the dust.”
He busied himself with ringing them up then.
“Eighteen seventy-five,” he grumbled.
I quickly handed over my debit card and stared at him wondering what the hell happened. He was always a happy-go-lucky kind of guy… But now he seemed shut-down and harsh, especially for a guy who just had an epic first season in the Big Show. I woulda killed for that opportunity. I’m sure every single guy around here would’ve.
“Thanks,” I said as I grabbed back my card and the soakers.
He just nodded and went back to restocking the hockey tape behind him.
______
When we parked in front of the Callahan house, Duke quickly scampered out, and I walked around back to grab his bag from the bed of my truck for him.
We all lazily walked up the front walkway, beat from the long day and ready to just lounge around in their basement for a while.
Instead of hiding away like she had this morning, Sav was waiting there for us in the foyer, standing with the help of her crutches in some joggers and a cozy sweatshirt with her hair piled on the top of her head in a messy bun.
Nick moved toward her quickly and gave her a kiss on the lips. “You look beautiful. Good work gettin’ up and after the day.”
“Chel time?” Duke asked, choosing a game that Sav could play too.
Nick immediately raced Duke down the steps then, leaving Sav up here alone with me.
Now here’s the thing that’s tricky. I knew what Nick was thinking. Nick left her here to make her feel normal. He’d already baby-ed her enough today and if he continued, he knew she’d get fed up with him. But… this wasn’t a normal situation… She couldn’twalk… and I wasn’t sure if she knew how to go down steps on crutches yet. A small worry in my brain whispered, what if this was like lefts and rights for her and she moved the crutches down on the step first instead of jumping down with her working foot first? A mental image of her sprawled at the bottom of the steps flashed in my mind and it made an unworldly kind of panic rise up to my throat.
“You need a lift?” I said, feeling my head nod yes. It was a question, but I said it more like adirection.
“No,” she said sternly. “I can do itmyself.”
“But you don’t have to,” I prodded.
“But I can,” she said, staring me down. She crutched forward, but that panic bubble burst in me. I reached out, grabbed her waist, and hoisted her up in the air away from the steps, making her crutches clatter to thefloor.
“Too bad,” I told her.
She harrumphed, but I felt her give in and loop her arms around my neck. It felt…right. I felt like her protector, and I cherished the quick minute that I got to be the man for her.
When we reached the bottom of the stairs, I walked over to the couch and plopped her down, then went back for her crutches and the soakers I bought for her.
From across the room, Nick gave me a head nod to thank me. I couldn’t help but think that if he knew my thoughts, he surely wouldn’t have been too happy with me… I tried to push that out of my head though. Sav was the focus today. Trying to make her feel better. It was her dreams that were crushed, not ours.
When I handed her the new soakers, she looked at me confusedly.
“Stick ‘em right over the tops of the crutches so it doesn’t hurt so bad,” I advised. “They helped a lot when I was a kid.”
She looked down at her crutches again, piecing together what I said. “That’s so nice of you. Thank you,” she said quietly. “Can you…?”
I nodded and ripped open the package and helped her fix ‘em overtop of the harder rubber.
She stood up, hopping around before getting the crutches back under her, and then relaxed. “That is so much better, thank you,” she said. The tension seemed to dissipate out of her for the first time today, and I felt relieved knowing that I could help her even the tiniestbit.
“It’s going to be so different not going to the rink every day,” she said, twisting her lips. “But change can be nice…” her voice went higher at the end of the statement, and I knew by the way she was searching my eyes that she was really posing it as a question.
