The Hot Mess and the Heartthrob

by Pippa Grant

“Quit scaring the civilians, Berger,” another male voice says behind him.

  I slide aside, pretty sure I’ll never blink again.

  Ares unlocks the half-door that Piper just flew through, and six Thrusters in uniform follow him out onto the ice as every one of the dinky little players, including my fearless little girl, turn and gawk at them.

  Parents behind me are murmuring and whispering.

  The coach smiles broadly and takes a fist bump from one of the players.

  I don’t know which players are which or who plays what position. Names flash on their backs, some familiar, some not. Berger. Frey. Lavoie. Murphy. Applebottom. Jaeger. Klein.

  My brain doesn’t have space to keep up with all of the names of the pro hockey players, but the heavier pads on two of them tell me the team sent two goaltenders.

  I almost giggle at the idea that a professional hockey team would need two goaltenders to stop Piper and her crew from scoring.

  “Are you Ingrid?”

  I glance to my left, where a pretty redheaded woman in an official Thrusters polo is smiling at me, baby on her hip, then belatedly remember to nod.

  She steps next to me and tilts her head to the ice. The players are all bending or squatting to say hi to the kids. “Which one’s Piper?”

  “Number twenty-two.”

  She lifts a hand and flashes two fingers twice, earning an actual full grin from Ares, who instantly turns and zeroes in on Piper like he knows exactly who she is despite none of the kids’ numbers being visible.

  Then she turns back to me. “Hi. I’m Felicity. The Thrusters’ front office got a call from a concerned citizen who was worried we weren’t doing enough to support said concerned citizen’s favorite youth hockey team.”

  My eyes get hot.

  This is not fair. “He shouldn’t have—”

  “Rule number one of knowing concerned citizens—they do what they want.”

  I suck in a wavering breath. “He still shouldn’t have.”

  “Shouldn’t he?” She nods out to the ice, where Ares has taken a knee to get closer to talk to Piper, and in return, Piper’s taken a knee too, to do what her idol does despite it meaning that Ares has to lean down even farther to talk to her, and my eyes go hot all over again as I pull out my phone and start snapping pictures.

  She’s so small next to him. I want to call for her to stand up, but I stifle myself. Ares is smiling at her like he’s amused and I don’t want to interrupt the moment. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but Piper’s nodding, and then her jaw starts moving.

  “I don’t think he’s going to get another word in,” I whisper.

  “Trust me, he’s quite content with not being the one doing the talking.”

  “This is making her entire life.”

  “That’s why they do it. My dad played pro hockey. My brother plays pro hockey. My husband plays pro hockey.” She slides me a sly grin. “He’s the one talking to your daughter.”

  If there’s anything that I’ve learned since Levi Wilson walked into my life, it’s that no matter how wide my eyes go, they still won’t fall out of my head. “Oh.”

  “I also work in the Thrusters front office. I know all of these guys. It’s not in the exact same ballpark as touring the world and playing sold-out stadiums, but I’ve seen fame all my life. Famous people can do the normal things for friends and family, and they do. But they’re always driven to more. It’s in their DNA. And they don’t do what you think are the big things to show off or to impress you. At least, I don’t think this particular concerned citizen did. It’s more that when you have the means to make people’s dreams come true, there’s a responsibility to do it when you can. To share their privileges. Honestly, we feel bad this was the only weekend in the rest of your season when we could make it happen, because we know there are a lot of kids missing today. But trust me—Ares would not have said yes in any other set of circumstances, and if he hadn’t said yes, none of the rest of the guys would be here right now either.”

  I don’t ask what circumstances. I can guess what Levi said.

  “Can you tell Ares thank you for talking about his hearing when he was little? She reads that interview he did in Sports Illustrated every single day.”

  Felicity smiles, huge smiles, and I realize I missed how pretty she is. Her baby gurgles and smiles back at her and reaches for her hair. “I don’t like to use I told you so often—with Ares, I mean, because he usually doesn’t need it—but I’ll make sure he hears that his brilliant wife was right that his story would help other kids who’ve been there.”

  I swear he cuts his eyes to us at that exact moment like he did, indeed, hear what she said.

  Felicity grins.

  He shakes his head and goes back to listening to Piper.

  Our coach skates over next to us and reaches out a hand to Felicity. “Sorry for thinking you were prank calling. I didn’t even tell the parents you were coming because I didn’t want their kids disappointed if—anyway. Thank you. This is awesome. Even if I’ve done a little cursing at Murphy this year.”

  She laughs.

  Cackles, really. “He’s getting old. Good thing we have Klein.”

  And now our coach goes pink. “You’re—you’re Murphy’s sister, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t worry. I tell him every day that I heard someone say the same. He won’t know it was you.”

  “Can I get your autograph? My wife didn’t watch hockey until you joined the announcer booth. She’s a huge fan.”

  I have no idea what’s going on, but clearly, Felicity is a bigger deal than she’s making herself out to be, and she doesn’t stop with signing an autograph for the coach.

  She also slides him a massive manila envelope and says the magic words. “Tickets for all of you. For a few games, actually. Give me a call and let me know which one you’d like to do the Little Skaters game between periods.”

  My brain mentally goes to one more thing to add to the calendar, and shame washes through me.

  Piper’s going to get to skate on the ice at Mink Arena where her idols play.

  I hope she someday appreciates just how monumental this is.

  In the meantime, I have something in my eye again.

  “Mom! Mom! Come take video!” Piper races to the boards. “Ares is going to show me how to do a killer wrist shot!”

  All of us parents venture out onto the ice to get close-ups of the hockey guys with our kids. Practice runs long, but not by much, and before the players leave, they pose for group pictures with our scrappy little team. As the rest of the guys start heading off the ice, Ares bumps helmets with Piper. “Play good.”

  “I’m gonna kick butt!”

  He rises, covers her helmet with his massive gloved hand like he’s ruffling her hair, then nods to me.

  I nod back. “Thank you.”

  “Boy Band Levi likes you.” He smirks, and then he’s gone, bringing up the rear as the Thrusters file off the ice.

  “Mom. Mom. Oh my gosh, Mom. Mom. Mom, that was Ares Berger.”

  “I touched Tyler Jaeger,” another mom next to me whispers.

  “I got a picture with Duncan Lavoie.”

  “I can’t believe they knew about our team.”

  “Nick Murphy signed my purse. It was all I had that I could think to ask him for.”

  “Okay, I wasn’t paying attention to Applebottom since they traded for him—because really, how do you replace Zeus?—but did you see how gorgeous he is up close?”

  The tears catch me off-guard. Again.

  I know where they’re coming from.

  Gratitude.

  Levi did this. He arranged for the practice of these kids’ lives and gave all their parents a thrill too.

  He won’t take credit for it.

  I don’t even know if he wants me to know he did it.

  But I know.

  And so after Piper and I climb back into the car, I pause before starting it, and I pull up my text messages.

 
Can we still be friends?

  I haven’t replied to his last text message.

  Yet.

  But I grab my favorite two pictures of Piper with Ares Berger, add a Thank you, and send it to Levi.

  I don’t expect him to answer. Gossip’s slow in Copper Valley, so the radio was talking about how he’s off to start his small Christmas album tour soon.

  But before I buckle my seatbelt and start the car, my phone dings.

  Anytime.

  “Mom? Why do grown-ups cry when good things happen?” Piper asks.

  I swipe my cheeks. “Because we’re weird.”

  Anytime.

  I might not have known Levi long, but I can see his smile. I can feel the warmth in his blue eyes. I can feel his arms wrapped around me in a hug. And I can hear his voice.

  Anytime.

  If only.

  Twenty-Nine

  Ingrid

  The best thing about the holiday season is that the store is busy, so I have less time to think about the fact that Levi’s still texting me.

  Not a lot.

  Maybe every other day, and always with something like Saw your store mentioned in this article and wanted to make sure you knew, or Waverly Sweet is doing a Christmas special that starts streaming Friday night, if Zoe hasn’t already told you, but what she doesn’t know is that there’s a new song dropping during the show. You didn’t hear it from me, or No kidding, just met a guy who keeps squirrels as pets, and I cannot unsee the pictures of his pet squirrels in pajamas, and I can’t decide if I’m charmed or horrified. Have your kids put Skippy in pajamas yet?

  Stuff you’d send to a friend.

  Things that say I’m still thinking about you.

  I call Portia on my lunch break after that last text. It’s Friday, a week after Thanksgiving, and even the thick stream of customers coming for both books and to kick their feet up for a few minutes over coffee in the loft upstairs hasn’t distracted me from the squirrel message that was waiting for me when I woke up.

  “What does it mean?” I ask my best friend.

  “It means you have a stalker.”

  I almost choke on my chicken salad sandwich. “He is not stalking me,” I say through a mouthful of food.

  “He’s not leaving you alone either.”

  “It’s all so…normal. Like he’s part of my life, and like he’s thinking about my kids too, except he’s not.”

  “Is he sending you nudes?”

  “No.”

  “Sexts?”

  “No.”

  “None?” She doesn’t sound convinced.

  “I guess the squirrel in pajamas could be an innuendo?”

  “That text was the least innuendo-filled message I’ve ever seen with the words squirrel and pajamas in it.”

  “I’m suddenly really glad you don’t share Griff’s texts with me.” I shove the last bite of my chicken salad in my mouth, wipe my hands on a dirty paper towel already sitting on my table, briefly contemplate how far I’ve fallen since my military days when the mere presence of the dirty paper towel would’ve sent me into a cataclysmic fit, and fall right back to thinking about Levi doing the dishes the last time he was here.

  “Is it normal for guys to be friends with their exes? And am I an ex, or am I really just a friend who had some benefits, and now I’m being completely friend-zoned because I never left, and he’s being kind in not mentioning my little meltdown when I told him I was falling for him?”

  “One, don’t call it a meltdown. It’s emotions, and they’re normal, and healthy, and you’re entitled to feelings, especially feelings for sexy men who take care of you in ways you haven’t been taken care of in years. And two, Ingrid, the man’s playing a game. You need to ask him what he wants or tell him to go away. I don’t care if he’s the king of the whole damn world. You broke up with him. If he still wants to be in your life, he owes you that answer.”

  I don’t demand an answer from Levi.

  In fact, I reply two days later by sending him an article I stumbled over about his concert Saturday night in Chicago, and a young fan who got to live out a dream of dancing on stage with him after getting surprise backstage passes in the mail.

  Nice job, superstar, I text.

  He replies back with a gif of himself blushing during an interview.

  I’m in this weird space where he’s gone, and I miss him, and I know I need to let go, but I don’t want to.

  And when I go to bed at night, I toss and turn and flop around and wonder if he’s alone, or if he’s out with friends, or if he’s flirting with someone new, or sleeping with someone.

  He’s not mine.

  I let him go.

  And I wasn’t wrong to.

  What he did in Chicago?

  That wasn’t just a random fan he pulled up on stage with him. He gave a kid with terminal cancer the thrill of his life.

  No one else could’ve done that.

  Okay, a very, very small handful of other people in the world could’ve done it. But that doesn’t mean many of them would’ve.

  Levi’s out in the world doing what he needs to do, sprinkling happiness and magic and hope and dreams everywhere. He does not need to be here with me and my kids. Who are we to keep all of that for ourselves?

  Mind made up.

  I need to tell him to quit texting me.

  And I will.

  Soon.

  Which is exactly what I’m actively avoiding thinking about when I yank my kids up the bookstore stairs to the loft with me late Wednesday evening.

  We’re running holiday hours, so the store’s open until eight, which isn’t fair to Zoe at all.

  Her birthday always gets the shaft because of holiday hours.

  “Saturday,” I’m repeating to her for the eleventy-billionth time in her life, and feeling like a complete asshole since she used to get a real birthday, back before Grandma died and I took over the bookstore. “I promise, you’ll get a real birthday Saturday, but for tonight, Holly’s making you a special hot chocolate, and I have a stack of new books just for you, and you don’t even have to keep an eye on Hudson or Piper for me while I close up. Promise.”

  Gymnastics is over for the year. Little ninjas is on hiatus until January. Even Piper’s speech therapy appointments are done until next year, though she still has hockey practice and we have tickets to a game Sunday night.

  The store is the only big thing on my plate in the evenings right now, but it’s busier than ever.

  Case in point?

  It’s half an hour before we close, and three of the couches are full of women who are apparently having a baby shower up here.

  “Ingrid! Oh my goodness, are these your babies?”

  I freeze halfway to turning to Holly at the bar and look back at the women lounging on the mismatched couches in the middle of the loft.

  Oh, god.

  Levi’s mom is here, and she’s beaming at me.

  I lift a hand and give a small finger wave. “Hi, Ms. Wilson. Welcome to Penny for Your Thoughts.”

  She makes a face. “Call me Donna. Please. Ms. Wilson sounds too much like my daughter-in-law, and while I adore her, there’s no way I could keep up with her.” She rises and beckons us over. “Is that Hudson? Oof. I see what Levi meant.”

  I look down and catch my son shoving a handful of marshmallows from the hot chocolate bar into the back of his pants. “Hudson.”

  The other women with Ms. Wil—with Donna are all smiling. “I definitely see Beck,” one says.

  “You have no idea how much Davis is sitting in that smile,” another replies.

  “Thank god my boys were angels and I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the third says.

  And the fourth, who’s closer to my age than the matrons all comparing my son to the Bro Code guys, cracks up as she rubs her very pregnant belly. “Your boys were the worst, Mrs. Rivers. Next to Wyatt, I mean. Thank god for girls.”

  “I’m a handful,” Piper tells her.

 
“She really is,” Zoe agrees.

  “Piper,” Donna says. “How’s hockey?”

  My middle child beams at her. “Ares Berger thinks I’m awesome.”

  “So I heard. Zoe, how’s your birthday been?”

  While Zoe lights up and tells the story—again—about how one of the boys in her class accidentally dropped one of her birthday cupcakes on the floor and how the teacher didn’t see it and almost wiped out, my eyes get hot and wet.

  Levi’s been talking about us. Not just me, but us. And all four of us are drifting closer to the group of smiling, happy ladies like they have some kind of magic magnetic pull.

  “Where are my manners?” Donna shakes her head. “Ingrid, do you know Michelle Ryder? And this is her daughter, Ellie, and our partners in crime, Carol Rivers and Alice Remington.”

  “I’m not a partner in crime,” Ellie says. “I’m not old enough for the cool club yet.”

  “If you need to get back to work, we can sit with the kids,” Donna says. “We all remember the working years.”

  The other moms give emphatic nods.

  I sniffle, because my nose is hot and wet too. “I—you don’t have to—”

  “How many times did I catch Beck in my cookie jar when the boys were growing up?” Carol asks Michelle.

  “At least three times,” Alice answers.

  “A day,” Ellie adds, and all of the mothers crack up. She grins at me. “They all raised us. Together. It’s what they do. They can handle anything, and they can’t sneak out of the store and leave you with wild unsupervised children up here. Promise. Although I can’t promise they won’t spoil your kids silly. Not a single kid left under thirty for any of them, and they only have three and a half grandkids among all of them. They’re all twitchy to spread more spoiling.”

  I shake my head. “This is—”

  “A birthday gift for Zoe,” Donna interrupts, her eyes glinting exactly like Levi’s do.

  It’s an ambush.

  Except it feels like a warm hug instead of something I need to put on armor to get through. “Not exactly fair,” I finish quietly.

  Donna smiles again, and for a minute, I see my grandma not long after I moved in with her.

  Compassionate. Full of love. And completely understanding.