A sticky note was tacked to her change stall. Lunch in my office—A.H. Good, Eva thought. A chance to have it out with Alison over these crazy line changes. She hadn’t come back, putting her livelihood on hold and risking her body, to be a glorified cheerleader.
* * *
Alison had never fooled Eva. They weren’t friends, not even close. As a coach, Alison was cutthroat and would do whatever it took to win, including, back when she was an assistant coach with the team for the Nagano Games, coming between her and Niki. Eva hadn’t forgiven Alison for that, but then, her expectations of her in the morals department were extremely low. And it wasn’t like Alison pretended to be the pure and honest type. She was a first-class bitch and wore the title like it was a worthy accomplishment. Everything about her demeanor screamed “I dare you.”
Alison motioned for Eva to grab a sandwich from a platter in the middle of the round conference table in her office. It was good to have a buffer between them, Eva thought, in case she got the irrational urge to leap across the table and strangle her.
Eva saw no sense in delaying the obvious. “So. Was today an experiment with Dani at center?”
“Yes and no.” Alison leaned back in her chair, arms uncompromisingly folded across her chest. “We’ll see how she does, but I expect you to help mentor her, get her comfortable there.”
Eva took a bite of her turkey sandwich, which held no appeal. It tasted like mushy cardboard. “Fine, I’ll help where I can. But when do I get back on center?”
“You don’t, most likely.”
With effort, Eva swallowed the gluey lump of congealed bread and turkey caught up in her throat. “What?”
“You’re on wing for the foreseeable future. It’s where you need to be. For your own sake, for the team’s sake. And I’m not going to argue with you.”
“I’m a center, Alison. I’ve always been a center. And I’m damned good at it.” Wing was for players who weren’t the best skaters, who (usually) couldn’t play defensive hockey worth a crap, who only had to worry about mucking in the corners, playing a north-south game, and getting the puck to their center. This was an outrage, and Eva fought to keep her voice and her red-hot Italian temper from exploding.
“Correction. You were a center. You’re not up to it anymore, not at this level, and the sooner you face that fact, the better.”
Her ears ringing, Eva thundered, “Then what the fuck am I doing here? Anybody can play wing. You don’t need me.”
A smirk played at the corner of Alison’s mouth. “My, my. I see your ego hasn’t shrunk any over the years. And unfortunately, we do need you or you wouldn’t be here. You’re the only one on the team with the experience and leadership qualities this team needs. The kids need you, and they need you to show up every game. If I put you on center, you’ll be in the training room more than you’ll be on the ice.”
Conceding didn’t come easy to Eva, especially with something as important as this. “I didn’t sign up to come back as a winger. It’s bullshit. It’s like asking Beyoncé to sing backup vocals.”
“Beyoncé you’re not. And it’s not bullshit. You know I’m right. Besides, when you signed up for this, you said you’d do whatever the team needed. I’m not asking, Eva. This is what the team needs from you.”
Eva threw the remains of her sandwich back on the paper plate in front of her before shoving her chair back roughly. “Fine. Whatever you want, Coach.” She spat the word out like it was part of the remaining bits of sandwich in her mouth.
Both women stood, their gazes as hard and unyielding as the table between them.
“And drop the attitude, Cruzie, or you’ll find yourself on the fourth line.”
In the empty hallway outside Alison’s office, Eva leaned against the cinder-block wall and let its rough, cold surface lightly scratch her cheek. She might as well be the fucking mascot, she thought, her blood boiling that she, a legend on this team, a future Hockey Hall of Famer, could be treated this way. It wasn’t right. It was downright insulting, and she should probably shove it back down Alison’s throat by quitting.
Turning her back to the wall, she slid down until she was resting on her haunches. She wasn’t a quitter. Never had been. Her nature was to fight. Well, except that one time. She quit on Niki all those years ago, but Niki had quit on her too, and it was that convenient splitting of the blame she used over and over to let herself off the hook. Their breakup was easier to accept if the blame went both ways.
So, she thought with a sense of dejection that was rare. This is what it’s like to lose something. And this time, there was no one else to blame, because as much as she wanted to lash out at Alison, she knew, with excruciating clarity, that the coach was right. She wasn’t the same player she used to be. She wasn’t here to be the star anymore. It hit her like a punch to the gut.
Chapter Five
Offside
Niki and Lynn chose seats in an upper corner of the rink, removed from anyone else so they would be left alone. And hopefully left unrecognized. They’d taken the two-hour flight from Calgary to Minneapolis to watch Team USA’s exhibition game against the Golden Gophers. It was a scouting mission and totally within the parameters of ethics. Both the Americans and Canadians scouted one another at every opportunity. Nevertheless, the two women didn’t want to draw attention to themselves during the game because they were here to work without disruption. Niki remembered scouting a game before the previous Olympics where she had to put up with a drunken fan in the next row who thought it was perfectly acceptable to trash talk her about her team’s chances against the US. She’d kept her mouth shut until, her patience finally expiring, she offered to refund him whatever he’d paid for the ticket, “Because,” she told him, “clearly you’re not here to watch the game.”
Now she did a double take at the pregame roster sheet. “Wow.”
“I noticed it too,” Lynn said beside her. They often spoke in verbal shorthand. “Eva must have pissed in Alison’s cornflakes to be demoted to wing. And on the second line.”
It wasn’t uncommon for a coach to demote a player to a different line or position or to bench her altogether as a way to send a not-so-subtle message. She wondered if that was the case with Eva, or whether Eva was no longer up to the rigors of playing top line center minutes.
The players burst onto the ice for their ten-minute warm-up. Niki’s eyes locked onto Eva from the instant she took her first step, watched as her dark wavy hair poked out of the back of her helmet, lifting in the breeze generated by her speed. She circled tightly, cut straight up the middle to accept a pass and took a booming wrist shot on her goalie. Watching her move gracefully, powerfully, efficiently with those long strides, unleashed something in Niki that rumbled like a tiny earthquake, spreading out from her core, leaving her a little breathless. Eva looked the same as she had a decade ago: lithe, agile and like she owned the rink. That poise alone made her stand out from everyone else; Niki would have recognized her from the farthest seat in the house and with one eye closed.
Shannon hadn’t been as strikingly beautiful as Eva, not by half. It was part of what had attracted Niki early on, those average looks—short brown hair, eyes the color of over-processed milk chocolate, an unremarkable mouth, a body that was neither tall nor short, neither thin nor overweight. It was almost as though, having been burned once by a fire so hot and formidable, she was afraid to go near anything like it again. Because with Eva’s beauty and the sexual chemistry that crackled between them came a volatility that Niki did not want to revisit in her next relationship. No. As exciting as life with Eva had been, she had so had enough of it.
Closing her eyes, she could instantly summon those soulful, almost black eyes of Eva’s that seemed bottomless. And with that memory came more—a hunger for each other that sometimes couldn’t wait for the bedroom when any surface would do, epic battles that would peak with screaming and sometimes throwing a nearby object. The highs were matched by the lows, the rapture equaled by the des
pair. God, she thought now. They were so young and so capricious, each cocky in thinking she was right about everything, each willing to scorch the earth without warning or reason.
The game underway, Niki and Lynn silently took notes. It was their first opportunity to see some of the young Americans in game action, but it was also a chance to scout the team’s set plays: how they ran their power play, their penalty kills, how they broke out of their zone, how they defended their own and how strong was their goaltending. Team USA didn’t play the same puck possession game as the Canadians, Niki noticed right away. Instead they relied more on speed and individual skill. It gave her fresh hope that, with quick accurate passing and smart plays, her team could beat this younger and highly skilled one.
Whenever Eva was on the ice, Niki tracked her every move. There was no need to watch her so closely, because she was already intimately familiar with how Eva played, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to see how she managed wing instead of center, wanted to see if she still had the goods to be a threat on the ice. The short answer was that Eva still possessed elite skills. She wasn’t as quick as she used to be, but her puck sense, anticipation and creativity were as sharp as ever. She knew where to be on the ice, was a great passer and set-up player but could also score seemingly at will. The remaining question was Eva’s stamina. Would she be able to handle the rigors of sixty-minute games, the bumps and jostling she’d need to withstand in the corners and in front of the net, week after week leading up to the Olympics? And what of the grueling practices? The travel? The pressure to win gold again?
It was early in the third period when some of the answers began to reveal themselves. Eva took a slash to the back of her legs while providing a screen in front of the net. She lay on the ice for a minute, then rose to her knees as the trainer came out to check on her. She skated off on her own power but headed straight for the locker room.
Lynn shot Niki a knowing look, slowly shaking her head. But what Niki knew better than anyone else was how tough Eva was. She was a fighter, and it would take a lot more than a dirty slash to keep her out of a game.
* * *
In the locker room, Eva gingerly removed her gear in the same order she always did: gloves, helmet, jersey, elbow pads and chest protector, followed by skates, shin pads, pants, socks, protective cup.
Kathleen leaned against the cinder block wall with a watchful eye. “She got you pretty good, huh?”
“Yup.”
“There’s a table next door. I’ll rub you down. Ice bath when you get back to the hotel.”
Ice baths were the worst; the thought of one immediately made her teeth hurt. Minutes later, she lay down on the massage table and let Kathleen knead her back and legs, as though she were dough and Kathleen’s hands the rolling pin. It was painful, and she had to clamp her molars tight to keep from crying out. But it helped, and after ten minutes she could walk without the pain she’d had when she hobbled off the ice.
She left her gear stowed in her hockey bag, which would be picked up and tossed in the bus for her later. She slung a small duffel over her shoulder as her team began straggling into the locker room. The women whooped and high-fived her because they’d won by two goals. Alison had her usual scowl; she was never happy unless they tromped their opponents by at least half a dozen goals.
“See you all on the bus,” Eva said, shutting the locker room door behind her and along with it the loud, exuberant chatter of her teammates. Someone had turned on a radio or iPod, because Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” boomed from within. It was going to be a long four months if she had to listen to that kind of music in the locker room. She chafed at the thought of Rihanna and Britney too. Throw in some Pussycat Dolls and she’d for sure slit her wrists. Bon Jovi or Bryan Adams she could handle.
Distracted, she rounded a corner toward the lobby and was halted by someone’s shoulder clipping her bicep. “Sorry,” she mumbled before lifting her eyes from the floor.
“My fault too.”
Eva gasped. “Niki.”
For a moment Niki wavered as though she were unsure whether she should stop or keep walking. Flee, more like. But she stopped, and where Eva expected there to be ice in those stark blue eyes, there was a melting sincerity that surprised—and nearly flattened—her.
“W-what are you doing here?” Eva mentally slapped herself for the lame question. And the stuttering…that was smooth.
Niki held up a three-ring notebook as if it explained everything. It did.
“Congratulations,” Eva said without smiling. “Your team’s lucky to have you as coach.”
“Thanks. And I hope you’re right.”
“I am.” This, Eva thought with satisfaction, was so much more civilized than the last time they were in the same place together. It was nearly six years ago, at a charity auction for women’s hockey at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. From across the room they had speared each other with glares. Glares that were almost malicious, with hurt and anger every bit as fresh as the day they’d broken up. After that unpleasant exchange, each of them had spent the evening pretending the other didn’t exist. It was also the first and only time Eva had ever seen Niki’s wife, though they were not introduced. Briefly, Eva wondered now if she should offer condolences about the woman’s death—she’d heard about it through the grapevine. But it’d been two or three years ago, and this new and unexpected civility between them left her almost mute.
“You took a nasty cross-check.” Niki’s pale eyebrow rose questioningly.
With a bravado Eva didn’t feel, she smiled and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll still be able to give your team all it can handle when we play you in two weeks.”
A flicker of a smile crossed Niki’s face. “Guess we’ll see about that.”
And then she was walking away without so much as a goodbye. Same old Niki, Eva thought. Walking away without a look back.
Eva walked a few more feet, but once she was sure Niki was long gone, she stopped and bent over, hands on her knees as if catching her breath. She slammed her eyes shut, the lingering scent of Niki’s mild perfume or body wash—something citrusy with a hint of sage or rosemary—tickling her nose, unearthing distant, shapeless memories from long ago. Her heart didn’t know what to make of this sudden thaw in their relations. They hated each other, didn’t they? Hadn’t that been the common thread that had bound them all these years? And yet it had never felt right hating Niki, especially once it became clear that there’d been no betrayal after all. But by then Eva hadn’t known how to bridge the gulf between them, how to apologize. Starting over again became more daunting as the weeks and months slipped by, and before she knew it she was off to play pro hockey in Montreal and Niki was off to…wherever it was, grad school somewhere. Boston College, perhaps.
If nothing else, she no longer had to dread seeing Niki behind the bench for the first time as head coach of her rivals. That would happen in a couple of weeks, when the two teams met in Calgary for an exhibition game. Having seen Niki now meant she could concentrate fully on the game.
Chapter Six
Game Misconduct
“How’s your hockey team doing, sweetie?” Niki smiled into the phone as Rory described her team’s latest victory and gave a play-by-play of how she scored the winning goal. Niki never expected Rory to become the little athlete she had. Shannon hadn’t an athletic bone in her body, leaving Niki to conclude that Rory’s ability must have come from her biological father. They didn’t know much about the donor; Shannon and her former lover had picked him out of a catalog. How unexpected that ten years later, neither of Rory’s two early mothers were in the girl’s life. Shannon’s partner Diana deserted them shortly after Rory’s birth, the wakeful nights and dirty diapers enough to convince her that she preferred life without kids. Niki was the only parent Rory had now.
“I miss my girl,” Niki said. “You know you’re my number one, right?”
Rory was only two when Niki and Shannon got together and four when Nik
i and Shannon married and Niki officially adopted her. Becoming a parent wasn’t something she’d planned or ever given much thought to, but Rory had been a gift. A gift to make her appreciate the little things in life, like watching her in a school play, helping her with math and reading, teaching her the rudiments of hockey. She remembered the first time she’d taken Rory to a live hockey game when Rory was four and how she couldn’t understand why a penalized player had to go sit all by himself on the other side of the ice and how shameful the timeout must have been for him. Niki still chuckled to herself every time she watched a player make the trip to the penalty box. Shame, shame.
“Okay, Mom, I miss you too. When can I come and see you?”
“I don’t know, sweetie. It’s been really busy, but I’m going to ask your Aunt Jenny if she can bring you to Toronto in three weeks. I’ll be there for a tournament we’re playing in. We’ll all stay in a really nice hotel and we’ll get to spend lots of time together, okay?”
Rory’s voice trembled, piercing Niki’s heart. “Okay, I guess.”
“I love you, sweetie, and I think about you every hour. I’ll talk to you again tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay. I love you too, Mom. Bye.”
Niki held the phone to her chest for a long moment. She’d known it was going to be hard being away from Rory—for both of them. And though they had both been in agreement about the head coaching job, it didn’t make the reality of their time apart any easier. Over the last three years, they’d come to rely on each other, to be teammates in their journey through grief, but now they were each flying solo. I’ve made a commitment to this team, Niki thought, trying to convince herself—again—that she’d made the right decision. I can’t back out now, no matter what.
Moments later she found Lynn in her office poring over scouting reports for tomorrow night’s exhibition game against the Americans. “What do you say we go out for dinner together?”
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