by K R Collins
“You ready for our road trip?” she asks.
“I’m driving and picking the music.”
“No country.”
“Duh. We’re listening to Christmas carols.”
Their only options for clothes were their game day suits and Condors gear, which means Sophie shows up to Quebec’s minor league game in a T-shirt with her name and number on the back. Teddy at least had a general long-sleeve. Sophie has a ball cap on and hopes it’ll be enough for her to pass as a fan.
“Fucking punks!” a drunk fan shouts as they look for their seats. “Go back to fucking America!”
“You should’ve brought your Bobby Brindle jersey,” Teddy whispers.
“Then they’d be throwing punches. Besides, it’s from when I was a kid. It wouldn’t fit me.”
They take their seats, only a handful of rows back from the glass. On their left is a young girl and her father. Sophie elbows Teddy as they sit down. “Make sure you watch your language.”
Teddy glances over at the girl and nods. “Okay, Mom.”
She elbows him hard enough for him to grunt. She smiles angelically when he glares at her.
“It’s okay,” the girl says as Sophie sits next to her. She’s in a Bobcats T-shirt, and she has a dozen clips holding her hair back. They’re all bedazzled and catch the light every time her turns her head. “I know all the bad words. In English and French.”
“You must go to a lot of hockey games then,” Teddy says.
The girl’s smile falters. “We go to Trois-Rivières games sometimes. I asked Santa if I could go to a Quebec game this year, but there are a lot of kids in the world, and sometimes Santa runs out of money before he reaches our house.”
The girl’s dad shoves his hands into his pockets and carefully doesn’t look over at them. Sophie’s family didn’t grow up with a lot of money. Her dad’s parents were the ones who took them to hockey games and bought her her Brindle jersey. Her parents wouldn’t have been able to afford Sophie and Colby both playing hockey if her mémé and pépé didn’t help. Sophie took care of her equipment to make it last as long as possible, because Christmas was the only time she’d get new gear.
The girl plays with her hair, twisting it up in the style Gabrielle prefers before letting it drop back down. Sophie does a mental check of their schedule. “Would you like to go to a Quebec game in March? The Concord Condors come to town on the 3rd.”
Now the dad looks over. “Lady, if this is a joke—”
“It’s not,” Sophie promises. She pulls out her phone and opens ticket sales for the Quebec-Concord game. She turns the phone so the girl and her father can see as Sophie navigates the site. “Okay, so you and your dad. Is there anyone else in your family? Mom? Brother or sister?”
“I have a mom and a little brother, but they don’t care about hockey.” The girl glances at her dad as if she wants to know if she gave the right answer.
Sophie buys four tickets. “Where should I send these?”
“You—” The guy shakes his head but types his email in.
“Will you be there?” the girl asks. She tugs on the sleeve of Sophie’s shirt. “Are they your favorite team or something?”
“I will be there. Maybe I’ll even see you.” Sophie bought them tickets near the glass so she can find them during warm-ups. The girl probably won’t remember her by then, and she certainly won’t be there cheering for Concord but it’s okay.
“I’m Estelle. You’re really nice for a stranger.” Introductions half-done, the girl throws herself into Sophie’s lap so she can hug her.
“Oh, um, nice to meet you.” Sophie awkwardly pats her back until Estelle slips back into her own seat again.”
The dad clears his throat. “Yes, thank you, Miss…”
Aware of the FOURNIER stamped across her back, she says, “It’s Sophie.”
Teddy laughs himself silly next to her, and he only laughs harder when Sophie elbows him to try to shut him up.
“How come you’re here in Concord stuff?” Estelle asks. “We’re playing Sherbrooke tonight, not Manchester.”
Teddy continues to laugh and Sophie decides to ignore him. “We’re big Concord fans. I grew up a Montreal fan, though.”
Estelle scrunches up her nose. “You’re not cheering for Sherbrooke, are you?”
“Definitely not. We’re here to see Gabrielle play.”
It’s the right answer, because Estelle lights up. “She’s the best. She’s my favorite player in the whole world.” The players pour onto the ice for their warm-ups and Estelle taps Sophie’s arm. “Do you want to come bang on the glass with me? Sometimes, if you’re loud enough, the players notice you.”
It’s a terrible idea. There’s a chance they won’t be noticed if they stick to their seats and Sophie keeps the brim of her cap tipped down. Standing at the glass will definitely get her noticed and will probably end in at least a dozen pictures of her up on Twitter. But Estelle’s wiggling in her seat, anxious to go, and Sophie’s not very good at saying no.
“As long as your dad’s okay with it.”
“He is!” Estelle leaps out of her seat and grabs Sophie’s hand. “Come on, we don’t want to miss Gabrielle!”
Sophie’s tugged down to ice level. Estelle presses her face against the glass, but she doesn’t bang on it until Gabrielle skates toward them. The goalie’s in her pads, but she isn’t wearing her helmet yet, and Estelle pounds both her fists and calls out Gabrielle’s name.
Gabrielle spots Estelle first and then Sophie. She comes to a dead stop, snow-showering one of her own teammates. The guy grumbles and wipes the water off his face. Then he looks up and his mouth falls open.
Sophie gives an awkward two-fingered wave.
Estelle jumps up and down, delighted Gabrielle’s stopped, and Gabrielle skates over until she can tap her paddle against the glass, right where Estelle’s face is. Estelle squeals and launches into French too fast for Sophie to keep up with.
Eventually, Gabrielle has to finish her warm-up, and Sophie and Estelle return to their seats. Estelle throws herself into her dad’s lap as soon as they’re there. “Gabrielle noticed me! This is the best game ever! Thank you!”
Sophie can’t remember the last time she watched a hockey game to enjoy it. This isn’t a tape to review for a scouting report, this isn’t her own game to pick apart. She splits a bag of popcorn with Teddy, but she forgets about it when a play in the defensive end takes all her attention.
The Bobcats have numbers back, but they lose track of their coverage and the Mammoths set up in their zone without a problem. Gabrielle squares up to the shooter and bats the puck away when it comes at her. Her teammates fail to clear the puck and she has to fight off another shot.
Another failed clearing attempt leads to one of the Mammoths’ defensemen taking a monster of a shot from the point. There’s a Mammoth planted in the crease, and he whacks Gabrielle with his stick as she tries to make the save. Instead of catching the puck in her glove, she bobbles it. It lands on the ice, and as she tries to cover it up her own teammate, while trying to clear the Mammoth out of the crease, knocks her out of position. A second Mammoth player finds the loose puck and tries to stuff it home. Gabrielle kicks out her pad to block the initial shot and throws herself down on top of the puck.
“Holy shit,” Teddy breathes, reverent. “You were right.”
“Future of Canadian goaltending,” Sophie says.
The game ends in a shutout for Gabrielle despite her team’s defensive failings. Once it’s over, she tips her mask off her face as her teammates swarm her to give her head pats. Then she looks over at where Sophie had stood during warm-ups. She doesn’t look for where Sophie is now, but the message is clear.
“We’ve been summoned,” Teddy whispers.
Sophie says goodbye to Estelle and her dad. She and Teddy head into the bowels of the stadium to find the locker room. It doesn’t take long before they’re stopped by a haggard employee with a “STAFF” lanyard. Sophi
e would guess he’s a college intern, and he puffs himself up to block their way.
“Don’t make me call security,” he says.
There had been four brawls in the stands during the game, proving the Montreal-Quebec rivalry begins early. Sophie isn’t trying to make this guy’s night any harder so she smiles as she takes off her ball cap and says, “I’m looking for Gabrielle.”
As far as big reveals go, it’s anti-climactic, because the guy doesn’t recognize her. “You and everyone else in this building. Look, whatever you’re offering, she isn’t interested.”
“People have been harassing her?”
The guy rolls his eyes. “She’s hot as fuck, of course people are bothering her.” At Sophie’s glare, he holds up his hands. “Not me. I, of course, respect her greatly and would never look at her too long and—do I need to call security?”
Their standoff is interrupted when a man in a full suit rounds the corner. He gestures at the kid with his clipboard. “Jeremy, there you are! Where the fuck have you been?” He notices Sophie and coughs. “Uh, pardon my language, ma’am.”
Sophie ignores Teddy’s laughter. “Ma’am isn’t necessary. I prefer Sophie Fournier.”
The kid—Jeremy—shakes his head. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“I was hoping to see Gabrielle before I have to fly back to Concord,” Sophie tells the man in the suit.
“Of course. I’m Brett Meyers, assistant coach for the Bobcats.”
“Nice to meet you. This is Teddy Augereau, one of my teammates.”
Meyers leads them down the hall and stops outside the locker room. “Wait here, I’ll make sure everyone’s decent.”
“Because we’ve never been in a locker room before,” Teddy mutters.
Sophie elbows him—even though it hasn’t shut him up the past four times she’s done it tonight. The next time he volunteers to road trip with her, she’ll remember he’s doing it so he has a front row seat to making fun of her.
“The Fournier VIP experience is fun,” he adds. “We should do this more often.”
“Never again.”
Gabrielle emerges from the locker room, somehow regal in her Under Armour. Her face is flushed from the game, but it doesn’t make her look like an angry tomato the way Sophie always does. Her hair is still in the elaborate crown she does for games, not a single strand out of place. Honestly, Sophie finds her a little intimidating.
“What are you doing here?” Gabrielle asks.
“We were in the area, and I wanted to see you play. Do you want to grab dinner before we have to head home?” Maybe this was a mistake. They don’t know each other so Sophie wasn’t expecting Gabrielle to be friendly but this is borderline hostile.
“I need to shower. Can you wait?”
“Of course,” Sophie answers.
Gabrielle looks between them as if they’re a puzzle to be solved before she goes back into the locker room. Sophie doesn’t breathe again until the doors close behind her.
“She’s, uh, kind of intense,” Sophie says.
Teddy barks out a laugh. “No fucking shit.”
Gabrielle warms up during dinner which Sophie attributes both to good food and the steady stream of goalie talk. She and Teddy discuss positioning and share horror stories, and she relaxes the more the meal goes on as if she realizes this wasn’t some kind of trick or trap.
They’re nearly done when she glances at Teddy’s empty glass of water. “You should use the bathroom so you don’t have to make five stops on your way to the airport.”
Teddy lifts his eyebrows as if he’s going to protest. Then he shrugs. “I could take a piss.”
Once he’s out of earshot, Gabrielle fixes Sophie with an inscrutable goalie stare. “Why are you here?”
“Our schedules lined up and I wanted to see you play.”
“You wanted to see me play?”
Sophie feels judged or maybe accused, and she squirms in her seat even though she hasn’t done anything wrong. “It’s you and me in the League. I want to support you as much as I can.” Maybe next year Elsa will come over and maybe at this upcoming draft more women will be drafted but it isn’t a guarantee.
She braces herself for another dismissal, but Gabrielle breaks their eye contract as she says, “It’s lonely sometimes.”
“My teammates are great, but they don’t always get it.”
“I spend all this time training them only for them to be called up or traded. Do you know how many times I’ve had to tell them not to touch my hair?”
“The first time I ordered chocolate cake at a restaurant they shied away, because they thought I was on my period.”
“Idiots.”
Speaking of her idiots, Teddy should be back by now. She glances around the room, and a smile tugs at her lips when she sees him chatting with the bartender.
“Did he get lost?” Gabrielle asks.
“I think he’s giving us space. They do try. But sometimes…this was nice.”
Teddy spots her looking and takes it as his cue to wander back over.
“I have a phone,” Gabrielle says. “You can call me.”
Sophie’s smile grows as they exchange phone numbers.
It’s late enough when Sophie lands in Manchester for her to consider napping on one of the airport couches, but she knows her mom would be able to tell. Instead, she drives home and sleeps long enough to be functional but not personable.
She wears her ball cap tipped low, because she doesn’t want to talk to any fans while she’s half-asleep and grumpy. Her mom, of course, takes her hat off after hugging Sophie. She tsks at the dark circles under her eyes. “You’re not driving home. You look exhausted. Give your father your keys.”
Her dad waits until he has her keys to ask, “Late night?” with enough derision in his tone for her to know pictures have been posted of her at the Trois-Rivières game last night.
She itches to take her keys back. It’s not like she has a game today or even a practice. She’s on her Christmas break, and if she wanted to spend the first few hours of it watching a hockey game it’s her choice. She doesn’t need to defend herself. She still jams her hands into her pockets and says, in her bland media voice, “It’s important to support the other women in the League.”
“If she makes it, she’ll be your competition. You should be focused on your game.”
“Elsa’s going to be my teammate. Does that mean I can support her?”
“If she ever comes over.”
He’s always been able to cut at her without even trying.
Colby’s quiet the whole way home. He doesn’t even sing along when her mom finds the radio station with Christmas carols. It takes Sophie most of the drive to realize he isn’t being quiet because he’s tired like her but because something’s wrong. She waits until they’re home and her parents are unpacking in the guest room to corner him in the kitchen.
“Is everything okay?” she asks.
“Shayna and I broke up.”
Sophie isn’t prepared to be comforting, and she scrambles for something appropriate to say. All she comes up with is, “Sucks.”
He shrugs. “We both knew it wasn’t working, but I thought if we tried a little harder then maybe…I still gave her her Christmas present. I wasn’t sure what else to do with it. I shouldn’t be bringing you down.”
“You can talk to me.” They’ve always been close, but it’s been harder to keep in touch since she made the jump to the NAHL. There’s a million different demands on her time, and she feels guilty for not making more of an effort. “Hey, why don’t you come down for a week at the end of January or February? We can hang out, and I’ll introduce you to the guys. I’m sure they’d take you to a bar and get drunk with you or whatever it is people do when they break up.”
“Hopefully I’ll be past that stage by then but sure. I have some vacation time I can use.”
“Vacation?” their mom asks, coming into the kitchen. “Are you going somewhere?”
“I’m visiting Sofe for a week.”
“No!” their dad calls from the guest room.
Sophie narrows her eyes, a bit of fight still left over from the airport this morning. “You’re coming. It should be the week we play Philly. Ritchie and the UNH guys are driving down for the game. You can sit with them and heckle all the Falcons.”
“Ritchie’s coming to a game?”
Colby looks like he has a dozen questions so Sophie opens the fridge. “Who’s hungry? I have a ton of food.”
There’s a Family and Friends skate on the 26th, and Sophie laces up and hits the ice, because even if it isn’t a formal practice, it’s nice to be able to skate. The team kitchen is full of hot chocolate and pastries, things not on their diet plans but the kids will be happy. She’s pretty sure she saw Nelson’s nephew with two munchkins covered in snowflake sprinkles when she stopped in to grab a Gatorade.
The ice is full of her teammates and their families, and she only feels a small pang as she skates her first lap. Yesterday morning, her mom made blueberry pancakes and they ate around her island counter before opening presents. She drove them to the airport yesterday afternoon and now her apartment feels too empty with only her in it.
“Where’s your brother?” Teddy asks as he falls into stride with her.
“Back home. They left last night.” Her attention is caught by X, sitting in a sled as his kids try to pull him around the ice. She laughs as Benoit Jr. grunts and pulls harder.
“You spent Christmas alone?”
Sophie rolls her eyes. “Hardly. I spent Christmas Eve and morning with them. And you’re one to talk. I thought you stayed in Canada.”
“I spent half of Christmas with my family, now I’m spending the second half with Alyssa’s. Her parents flew in to visit, and I was told I wasn’t allowed to hide in Canada the whole time. But I’m still with family.”
Sophie looks around. X tells Benoit Jr. to put his back into it and laughs as Sabrina plops herself down on his lap, tired of trying to pull the sled. Witzer and Zinger are play-fighting as Kevlar’s niece blows her whistle and tries to give them each five-minute majors. On the other side of the ice, Lindy’s in goal in all his pads so the older kids can practice their shots.