Worth the Fall

by Mara Jacobs

  In fact, now that his cock had gone down with Darío’s arrival, the pain in his knee was ratcheting up. He tried to edge it off the bed a bit and hissed in pain.

  Instantly, Darío was off his chair and around the bed to Petey’s side. “What can I do to help?”

  “I think there are some of those heating pad thingies that you put in the microwave out in the kitchen. Could you put one in for about three minutes?”

  Darío was out the door before Petey had finished his sentence.

  While he heard the rummaging in the kitchen, Petey gently massaged his thigh above the knee, then tried again to stretch it. Probably better to wait until the heating pad did its magic.

  Darío soon returned with the piping hot pad and a cup of piping hot coffee, setting the cup on the night stand and handing the pad to Petey.

  “Do you need any help getting to the bathroom?”

  Petey gingerly layed the pad across his bandaged leg. “Eventually, maybe. Probably. Let me see if the heat can limber it up before I put the brace on.”

  Darío left the room and came back a moment later with his own cup of coffee, which he drank from, and then sat back in the chair.

  Petey leaned back against the headboard doing the tiny leg lifts the doctor had advised him to do as he drank from his cup.

  “Shit, that’s strong,” he said, to which Darío only shrugged again.

  “I’m trying not to drink it in front of Katie, so when I get a chance.…”

  “So, you’re coffee cheating on Katie with me?”

  He chuckled. “In a way. She told me she didn’t care if I drank it in front of her, but I try not to.”

  “No drinking in front of her either?”

  “Sí. But that isn’t quite as hard.”

  “Hmmm. I don’t know. It’d be pretty hard to give up my beer.” He took another long gulp of the black stuff. “Yeah. No. Giving up coffee would be harder during the season. I live on it. Beer would be harder to give up in the summers.” He grinned. “I live on it, then.”

  And then he remembered that every day was summer from now on, even if the wind was blowing and snow was falling as it was outside the window behind Darío.

  Darío shifted forward in his chair. “Do you want to talk about it? Being done with hockey?”

  Did he? Should he? Would Darío even understand? As a professional athlete, maybe. As a professional golfer who could play well into his forties and then on the seniors’ tour once fifty, maybe not.

  “Do you ever think about life after golf? What you’d do?”

  The golfer looked out the window, took a drink of coffee and slowly shook his head. “Not much, no. At least not until lately.”

  “Why lately? You still have a lot of years left to play.” Golf. Not hockey.

  He took a deep breath, let it out, then turned from the window to Petey. “It all changed when I met Katie.”

  “You mean when you found out she was preggers.”

  He was already shaking his head. “No. No. Before that. I know it now. My life—the rest of my life—changed the moment I first saw her in the gallery on that golf course.”

  “Jesus. Whipped much?”

  Darío’s brows knitted together. “I do not undertand what is this ‘whipped’. As in a lashing?” His Spanish accent got a bit thicker, and his grin told Petey that he understood just fine.

  “Don’t play dumb Spaniard with me.”

  Darío laughed. “Sí, I am muy whipped. And happily so.”

  Petey laughed along with his new friend. He didn’t know Darío very well. He’d golfed with him this summer and hung with him a bit before he’d had to go back to training camp. He liked the guy. Certainly wished he could golf like him.

  Petey had been tight with Katie’s ex, Ron, too, but liked the pairing of Darío and Katie better. Ron and Katie had been too much alike, total king and queen of the prom. Boring in their perfection.

  People would look at Darío and wonder how he ever got a woman like Katie. Petey liked that. Liked the unexpected in a couple. Added a little bit of spice.

  So just when the hell was his little unexpected piece of spice coming home?

  Ten

  Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

  ~ Sigmund Freud

  After touring Katie’s nursery to see what had been done since she’d last visited and clearing away their dishes, Alison said her goodbyes and left.

  As she pulled out of the driveway, seeing the beautiful new home that Katie and Darío had only been in for a few months, made Alison think about how quickly life could change.

  This time last year, Lizzie and Finn had just gotten back together after thinking they’d never make it as a couple.

  Ron had just left Katie to be with the girl he thought he’d knocked up.

  Petey’d been in the middle of a good season, the thought of retirement still just a distant one.

  And Alison? The only thing that had changed in her life in the past year was the measurement of her parents’ downhill progression.

  She’d dated a man named Brandt, a professor at Tech, for a while the summer before that when Lizzie’d been home with her half-assed plan to sleep with Finn for a few months. But things had begun to fizzle with Brandt just a month or so into the fall. Not too long after they’d started sleeping together.

  Alison drove out of Katie’s new neighborhood near the top of Quincy Hill in Hancock, not sure where she was headed but still thinking about Brandt.

  Well, not really Brandt, but about all the men she’d dated. She was driving past the Quincy Hill roadside scenic view, when she pulled in at the last second, put the car in park, and looked out over the valley of Hancock, the canal, and Houghton below her. Though the snow was falling thickly, it was still a lovely sight, so fresh and pristinely white.

  Man, she hadn’t parked in this place in a long time. She wasn’t even sure when was the—Oh. Right. She remembered the last time she was here and decided that even picking apart the reasoning behind her failed relationships with men was better than remembering that long ago day.

  So, then, things went south with Brandt after they’d begun sleeping together. And before Brandt? There’d been Philip, a doctor from Marquette who had a satellite practice in the Copper Country. And before him? Rob, a geology consultant to one of the mining companies.

  This had been over the course of the past six or seven years. Alison took a deep breath, turned the car heater up a bit, and, trying to forget it was herself she was thinking about, put on her shrink cap.

  It was something she normally didn’t do, believing you couldn’t truly see yourself objectively, as an uninvolved outsider like a therapist would. But she tried now.

  Was there a commonality to these relationships? All three men were highly educated and with off-the-chart IQs. Just like herself.

  All three men were not from the area originally. And what inference could she take from that? Perhaps she chose to be the person she wanted to be, and not the person the small community had pegged her as for all these years?

  Or perhaps she wanted to be someone else completely? Somebody different?

  Crap, she really didn’t like this. No wonder she so seldom did it.

  Skipping the deeper self-introspection, she tried to analyze the more surface stuff.

  How long did each relationship last? Aha! No pattern after all. They’d varied pretty widely from a few months with Brandt to almost three years with Rob. Of course, when you added up all the time she and Rob were actually together, due to him living in Minnesota and only being in town sporadically for his consulting job, it was probably more like…shit.

  A few months.

  Philip? Yep, a few months if you added up actual time spent together.

  Okay, almighty shrink. Time to pull out the big guns. How did each of the relationships end? Okay, good. No pattern there. Brandt had dumped her, amicably. Philip had met someone in Marquette he wanted to see exclusively, which he and Alison dis
cussed like the civilized adults they were. And she had ended things with Rob, mainly because of the limited time they saw each other. It hadn’t felt as much like a relationship as just a prolonged series of booty calls.

  Which brought her to the grand finale—sex. It would take months, perhaps years, of therapy before a patient trusted a therapist enough to be really honest about their sex lives. Not just the nuts and bolts, but about understanding their desires and making sure their needs were truly met.

  Or not, as the case may be.

  As her case may be.

  She’d specifically chosen smart, educated men with whom she shared an interest in literature, the way they viewed the world—basically talked the same language.

  It’d been satisfactory, sometimes fulfilling, but ultimately pretty boring in bed.

  She knew. Of course she knew. But the denial had been buried so deep, for so long, that she could easily ignore it. And she had.

  But now, a few years from forty, all her friends happily settled with their men and growing families, it was time for Alison to face the truth.

  Brainy, introspective, oh-so-civilized Alison Jukuri really just wanted a caveman.

  ***

  Darío helped him hobble out to the kitchen for an actual breakfast then stood just inside the bathroom while Petey struggled to shower. After he’d dried himself off and put on some boxers, Darío assisted him in putting a new bandage on his knee, then the ace bandage, then his track pants and then the fucking brace. At least the damn thing allowed him to stand, albeit with crutches.

  He hated that he needed help with the simple tasks but had been around injuries long enough to know that the more you follow the rules the doctor laid out, the sooner you were back on the ice.

  Except he wouldn’t be back on the ice.

  By the time they got all this accomplished, he was hungry again, so they made their way back to the kitchen and Darío made him a sandwich.

  “You don’t want one?” Petey asked him when he placed Petey’s in front of him but then sat down without anything for himself.

  “No, thanks. I’m picking up something for myself and Katie on my way home. She has a craving.”

  “For what?”

  Darío let out a sigh and said, “Pasties. Again.”

  “Not a pasty fan?”

  “They are fine. But not every day. And I do mean every day.”

  Petey laughed. He loved the meat pies, but even he wouldn’t want them more than once a week. “It’ll be over soon,” he said. Darío got a look of sheer happiness on his face, and Petey felt a pang of envy.

  Trying to change the subject before the golfer launched into baby clothes and birthing methods, Petey asked, “What were you meeting with Mark about? Just wanted to shoot the shit about golf since you couldn’t be out playing it with the snow up to your balls?”

  Darío chuckled at what was a pretty accurate visualization. “That, but a little more. I wanted to get his take on an idea I had.”

  Petey motioned for him to continue as he took a large bite of his sandwich.

  “I was thinking it might be nice for the area to have an indoor driving range since the winters are so long here.”

  Petey took a drink of milk and swallowed. “You mean it would be nice for you to have an indoor driving range.”

  Darío shrugged, but grinned. “Sí. But I truly believe it would be good for the community. For as short as the season is here, there are a fair amount of golfers.”

  “Right, but they’re all playing league hockey during the winters. Or going to their kids’ hockey games. And hockey practice.”

  Another shrug. “So I’ve been told. Mark is for the idea in theory, and the university has looked at it, but they don’t think the numbers will work. Plus, it would take a large chunk of land to do it, and they don’t want to take that away from the existing golf course, which I agree with.”

  “Can it be land anywhere?”

  “The flatter the better, or at least the cheaper to develop. Which is not as easy as it sounds around here. You have a lot of hills.”

  “That we do. But, I also happen to have a huge plot of land up by the airport that I’ve been hanging on to for a while. Nothing ever presented itself as a good opportunity for it. I bought it as a write-off years ago.”

  “Flat?”

  “Very.”

  “How large?”

  “I can’t remember for sure. My business manager would know and I can call him, but I want to say it was around two or three acres. Would that be large enough?”

  “And then some. And you’d be willing to sell this land? To me?” Darío leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. Surely no longer tan from daily golf, his arms were covered in a thick sweater. The man probably hadn’t even owned a heavy sweater before this year.

  Petey took another bite of the sandwich and took his time chewing, thinking furiously as he did. Gulped down some milk, then wiped his napkin across his face.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “What do you think about a partnership on this thing? My land. Your idea. Our venture?”

  Darío blinked several times, taking it in. He sat back in his chair, his arms dropping to his sides. Then, just as quickly, he sat back up, placing his arms once again on the table. “You don’t want to just sell me the land?”

  Petey shook his head no.

  “You want to be involved?” Petey nodded. “How involved?”

  Now Petey pushed the plate and glass aside, put his own arms on the table and leaned forward. “Very involved.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re going to be spending the next three months changing diapers and being sleep-deprived. Then you’re going to spend the spring and summer on the Tour, if Katie lets you go.” He looked pointedly at Darío.

  “Katie wants me to go. She said she and the baby will try to travel with me. I’m happy to take a season off, but…”

  “She’s not going to let you do that.”

  “No.”

  “So, you, and hopefully Katie and the baby, will be gone most of the spring and summer, right when they’ll be able to break ground and start building. If we get a really aggressive contracting company—” He stopped at Darío’s raised hand. “What?”

  “You’re really serious? You want to be that involved in something you didn’t even know existed a minute ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “Again, I must ask. Why?”

  He shrugged, and massaged his upper thigh where the brace pinched him a tiny bit.

  “I was never going to stay in Detroit after I retired. I’d always planned on living here full time, I just hadn’t given much thought to what I’d do up here.” He moved his suddenly throbbing leg to a slightly different angle trying to ease the pain. “Well, it’s time to give it some thought. And I’m thinking ‘local business owner’ has a nice ring to it.”

  And more proximity to follow up on his threat to chase down Alison.

  “Besides, who else is qualified to hand out those buckets of balls to kids if not a former jock?”

  Eleven

  Hockey players have fire in their hearts and ice in their veins.

  ~ Author Unknown

  Eighteen years ago

  Alison couldn’t believe she’d finally see Petey again after their night together. The Monday after graduation, she, Lizzie and Katie had taken their gift money and gone to Green Bay for three days of shopping and lying by a hotel pool. When they’d gotten back, she’d found out through the grapevine that Petey was in Ann Arbor at a hockey camp for two weeks.

  So here they were, three weeks after that night in his truck, finally facing each other.

  She had no idea what to expect. When Petey had dropped her off at home, he’d kissed her sweetly and whispered, “See you soon.” She’d been in her bedroom before she realized how cryptic that farewell had been.

  Of course, she hadn’t said anything to Lizzie and Katie about it. It would probably blow their minds, the t
hought of her and Petey together—as a couple or even for one night only. And of course those questions—what it was, what they would be—would definitely come up. So until she had the answers, she kept mum.

  Hopefully she’d get some sense from Petey tonight. They were all hanging out at Katie’s house in the finished basement—the scene of many of their youthful misdemeanors. Katie had rented some movies, and they were all just going to chill. They all held various summer jobs, some daytime, some night, so these nights of just hanging out were becoming harder to schedule.

  Alison was the first to arrive according to Mr. Maki, who let her in and waved in the general vicinity of the basement door.

  She was assaulted by loud music—more like screaming—as she made her way down the stairs and into the large, open room.

  “What is that?” she said loudly, getting Katie’s attention.

  Her friend, who’d been standing next to the stereo moving with the music, startled and then turned the volume down. “It’s Nirvana.”

  “Hardly!”

  Katie shook her head, her blond mane loose and flowing as she laughed. “No. The band’s name is Nirvana. Aren’t they great?”

  Alison listened for a minute. Obviously her friend had different taste in music than she. “I can’t understand a word they’re saying.”

  “I know. It took me, like, twenty times, and I’m still not sure I’ve got them right.”

  “They are not coming to State with us.”

  Katie stuck out her tongue at Alison and said, “That’s what headphones were made for.”

  “Then may you and Nirvana end up in…nirvana together.” She made her way over to the corner of the sectional that she always sat in and staked her claim. “But can you tear yourself away from it for now?”

  Katie turned the volume down even further until it was just an irritating buzz, and then joined Alison.

  “How was work today?”

  “Good,” Alison answered and started telling Katie about her day in the biology lab at Tech where she’d snagged a summer internship. Typically they went to college students after they’d completed at least their freshman year, but usually their sophomore year. It had only taken taken one look at Alison’s SAT scores for them to give her the spot.