“Wish I could say the same, honey.” He pointed to her hair.
“Do you want me to go out and get some croissants?”
He gave her a look. “As much as I enjoy watching you delay the inevitable, you need to call your Antony.”
“He’s not my Antony.”
Carmine pushed the phone into her hand. With a jolt, she saw he’d already dialed for her. “Say hi to Ace, for me,” he said, making his way back into the kitchen.
With her heart straining against her ribs, Maxine waited as the first ring went through.
He answered, breathless but cautious. “Maxine? Can I see you?”
“My apartment,” she sputtered out.
“Now?”
“No. I’m at Carmine’s. I’m leaving soon so—”
“I pick up you,” he interrupted. “He lives above store, oui?”
“Uh, oui…I mean yes. But I don’t want—”
“I’ll be ten minutes.” Then he hung up.
“—you to do that,” she finished into the dead air.
With Carmine’s help Maxine get her hair back in the ponytail, but her makeup had been cried off long ago. He let her wear the long sweater, but she only had her short black skirt and fishnet stockings to pair it with. Carmine had suggested she wear the red dress, but Maxine didn’t think that was funny at all.
With a kiss on the forehead, Carmine sent her down the stairs, her high heels clicking at each step. When she opened the door that edged the sidewalk and stepped out, her shoe disappeared into a foot of snow.
Antony appeared on the other side of the snowbank, his field coat open, only wearing a t-shirt underneath. He swooped over the snow and without uttering a word, picked her up in his arms, and carried her to the passenger door that was already open.
The entire ride back to her apartment was in silence. She didn’t dare glance at his profile, scared she’d lose her nerve and start crying all over again. Maxine thought of that imaginary stake, sticking out of her chest, temporarily plugging the spill of blood.
Once in her apartment, they both stood awkwardly as if reliving that first night again, except this time there was no rush of a pulse or pinging electricity between them. With her coat still wrapped around her, Maxine sat down at the small dining table and slipped off her high heels.
“I was afraid you’d never call,” he said, pulling out the chair across from her. The stubble and dark circles under his eyes hinted at a sleepless night. The plea in his glance was impossible to ignore.
“Tell me the truth,” she said, “about everything.”
“I’ve never told this to anyone.”
It took Antony almost half an hour to explain what happened the night of the accident. He pushed himself off the chair, walked around the living room, pausing at the window, and then sitting on the couch, all the while his expression contorted to different levels of pain as the words came out. When he was finished, he slumped on the couch, staring at his hands clasped on his lap.
Maxine asked, “Why did he lie about driving?”
“So I could go on and take his place,” he explained. “He had state of mind, even right after accident…he knew he’d never make the pros, and that I would be charged with drunk driving. We’d both be ruined, our parents, too. If I had waited for cab—” He raised his hands then let them fall back into his lap. “Different life—for whole family.”
“But he’s so hateful,” Maxine said. “I understand that he feels cheated, but he’s choosing to have no life at all. He lives through you, Antony! Can’t you see how damaging that is for both of you?”
For the first time, Antony lost his tired countenance. A flash of resistance crossed his features. “He gave me chance to play professionally. If he hadn’t lied, I might still be in jail, he’d be in cheap care home, and our parents would have second mortgage, probably work two jobs.”
“You got yourself into the professional league.”
“I owe him.” Antony sat up straighter. “You’d do same for Westley or thin twins.”
“I wouldn’t take their life as payment for my sacrifice, though. You do something out of love because you want to, not because of obligation.” She pushed away from the table and went to the kitchen.
Antony made his way over, he put a hand on the counter close to hers.
She stared at their hands, almost touching. This was the moment Maxine wanted to keep dodging. She could feel the stake pulsate in her heart. “Am I your good fu—” She stopped, unable to even say it out loud. The crudeness twisted her stomach. “I mean good luck charm?” she whispered.
He was still as stone and then said, “Oui.”
“So every time we were together…?” Her voice cracked. She kept staring at their hands on the counter.
“Non.” He moved his hand over hers, his thumb brushing the tops of her knuckles. “At first you brought luck to every game, but I want to see you anyway. Then I want to tell you, but I was afraid of losing you.”
She waited for him to say something convincing. Another gap of heavy silence pushed between them. Antony’s hands moved to her shoulders, turning her to face him. “I love you. J’ai besoin de toi, I need you.”
The rigidity in her stance started to melt. Carefully, Antony leaned closer to kiss her, his eyes dropping to her lips. Maxine only had one choice. The stake would have to be pulled out, and it would hurt like hell.
“No,” she said, placing a flat palm against his chest. “I have to make decisions based on my own happiness.” As she stepped away, a deep visceral pain pulled inside. “And I will never be happy kissing you again because I’ll always wonder if it’s real.”
He stared at her hard. “Je t’aime! Why is this hard for you to believe?”
“Because you’re so good at making me believe anything you say, I don’t know what’s real about us.”
“This is real,” he said, taking her face in his hands, kissing her softly at first, then nudging her mouth to open with his tongue, firm and desperate.
It would be so easy to fall into bed with Antony, but Maxine was determined not to let that happen. Make choices based on your own happiness, she repeated in her mind like a mantra.
It took all of her willpower to stop kissing him. “No,” she cried, her voice was garbled. “It’s too much…you’re too much.”
“Why is this wrong? I care for you.” He ran a hand through his hair, the longer piece slid back over his forehead. “How can you say it is too much? For me, you are never enough.”
She blinked a few times, her eyelids felt swollen. “But it’s not real, Antony.” She waved a hand between the two of them. “This fast-paced affair is based on lies. It was a fantasy, a dream…and now it’s time to wake up.”
“Meaning?”
“I’ve been living with my head in the clouds, trying to convince myself that what we started was true, but it’s not.” She sniffed. “Our worlds are too different. Ever since that first night I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen.”
“What to happen?”
“Proof that we don’t belong together.”
“Mais, je t’aime.” His eyes blazed and he reached for her. “I love you.”
“Stop,” Maxine’s voice was strained. She fought back the tears. “You say you love me, but you used me. You don’t know what love is!”
The muscles in his face grew rigid. Antony stomped to the fridge. He opened the freezer door and took out the chocolate ice cream, still labeled with Johnny’s name.
“This is truth,” he said, “I love you, I want to make love to you and only you—but it’s not enough, oui?” Then he slammed the ice cream container down on the counter. “You rather wait for Johnny the jerk to return. Is that how you want to be loved? By someone who doesn’t want to even look at your face when he has sex with you!”
It was as if a silent bomb went off in her little kitchen. For a moment neither one of them spoke.
“Oh shit—je suis desolate.” His shoulders crum
bled. “Please, je suis idiot.”
Maxine stood in a trance, trying to focus. All of the intensity imploded upon itself inside her heart. How could she live with this constant rising and falling of passion? “I can’t have you in my life,” she said.
He squeezed her shoulders, tilting his head to get her eyes to focus on him. “Maxine, regard moi.”
“We can’t fight fate. This is how it’s supposed to end between us,” she said dully, exhausted.
“Non.”
“Whatever we had wasn’t love, we were just…using each other. I was your good luck charm and you were my rebound.”
“Rebound?”
Her voice sounded empty. “You were supposed to help me get over Johnny. A fun fling, someone to make me feel desirable again. I’m sorry, I never thought I’d fall in love with you, or that you’d want to be with me…but we can’t keep going like this. I spent four years working on the last relationship. I can’t waste any more time on someone who lies to me.”
“And you get to decide our future?” Antony’s arms dropped to his sides like dead weights. “No matter what I want?”
“Maybe if we’d been completely honest with each other in the beginning…” Her voice trailed off. “Things might be different.”
His Adam’s apple rose and fell. “I was supposed to help you get over Johnny?” His voice was cold, distant. “Did I?”
Maxine walked toward the apartment door, it seemed like her feet were inside blocks of cement. She watched her hand turn the knob. Her heart was screaming for her to stop, but her brain was making the decision today. “You have to go now,” she said, completely spent. She opened the door wide and stood to the side.
“Answer my question first.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She couldn’t look at him, instead Maxine kept her gaze drilled into the space beside his wet boots. “You’re no longer my rebound, and I won’t be your good luck charm anymore.”
Antony didn’t move at first, then swiftly he brushed past her, his footsteps faded down the hallway away from her.
Chapter Thirty
“The next four weeks are crucial.” Coach Foster leaned forward in his chair. Antony discretely looked around his office; there was a framed vintage Toronto jersey, and probably a thousand sticky notes with unreadable messages.
“I liked what I saw in practice today,” he said. Coach Foster picked up a pen and started clicking it. “From now on, every game is like a playoff game. We can’t afford stupid loses like last night.”
“Yes, Coach.” Antony’s hair was still wet from the post practice shower. A drop of water trailed down the nape of his neck, then traced his spine.
“You played good, Laurent, you’ve really stepped up with Sullivan gone. Not many guys can take the place of the assistant captain. You skated well with him in practice today. I think he’s ready to come back.”
A chill settled over Antony’s skin. Sullivan had been off with a knee injury since before Christmas. That coupled with another top forward all but guaranteed Antony’s ice time would be cut in half.
He could hear Jax’s voice snarling at the circumstance. “We were that close to a five-million-dollar deal and those nitwits had to get healthy.”
“…so you’re moving to the fourth line,” Coach Foster said. He paused and Antony tried to harden his features, become stoic. “This is not a demotion. You took chances with the puck, I like that, but we’ve got Sullivan and Kaizer back and injury free. They’ll be driving scoring changes through the neutral zone. You’re the biggest guy on the team—you’re the enforcer. It was great the way you stepped up, providing goals when we needed them, but a good defense will make us impenetrable.” He paused and pressed his lips into a hard line. “You can do that for me, right?”
Antony had the odd sensation he was being cajoled. “Oui, of course, Coach. Anything for the team.”
He didn’t bother turning on the radio for the drive home. Along the street, gray snow banks dotted the sidewalk. Since the storm two weeks ago, the temperatures had risen, melting the fresh layer off the older mounds of snow. He fought the urge to drive past her apartment building. That’s not your style, he kept reminding himself.
After a quick trip to the corner grocery mart, Antony made his way home. When he arrived at his apartment, Marc was working with free weights in the spare room they used for the home gym. Antony put the bags of food on the counter and poured a glass of orange juice. As long as he went through the motions of everyday life, the void she’d left behind would grow smaller until one day, the finiteness of the memory would merely quirk an eyebrow, like a footnote to a favorite movie.
But not tonight, not yet.
Antony made his way down the hallway to his bedroom. The clink of weights stopped. Marc wheeled around to face him; sweat was running down his red face. A cautious smile slipped into place. Antony realized it would be as close to an apology as he’d ever get from Marc. “How was practice?” he asked. “Sullivan cleared?”
“Oui,” Antony gripped the glass. “Kaizer, too.”
Marc’s half smile melted. “Ah,” he said knowingly. The return of the assistant captain and the star forward meant fewer chances for Antony to prove his worth on the team. “Any headaches today?”
This topic, his possible concussion, was the only safe ground they could talk about these days. The buffering shield had been built up between them long ago, first as rivals on the ice, and then as secret enemies, bonded to each other by an unspoken vow of survival.
“Non.” Antony kept walking to his room.
“Dizziness? Fainting?” Marc called to his back.
“Non. Je vais bien…I’m fine.” Antony had been riding a crest of headaches but hadn’t passed out since the night of the storm. The dizziness had stopped, and he felt good on the ice today. Antony closed the bedroom door behind him and closed his eyes.
I will never be happy kissing you again because I’ll always be wondering if it’s real.
The thoughts he kept at bay in the daytime, now flooded his consciousness, torturing him.
You were my rebound.
With the lights off, Antony wandered to the window, keeping the vertical blinds open. He stayed there watching the sky darken. His breath fogged up the window. Using his finger, he wrote her name on the glass. Then he called her.
After five rings, her voice mail message came on, and he readied himself for the beep.
“Bonjour, Maxine,” he started. “Voici, Antony. Je t’aime…et je pense que vous me aimes aussi.” He took a drink of juice and leaned against the cool glass. “Today I buy cilantro for chicken avocado soup. Mint was on sale in little pots. You should buy one. That way you could always have fresh mint when you wanted. Room temperature, remember?”
He smiled into the phone. It was almost like talking to her.
“I won’t call again,” he said. “This is last message from me, ever. You won’t trust me and I can’t change what happened. And Johnny is still—” He took a few breaths wishing he’d taken English lessons because everything in his heart wouldn’t translate. “Before I met you, I was lonely.” Antony began to regret making this call, he sounded stupid, a dumbass muscle head. Still, he was telling her the truth, and he hoped she’d at least understand. “But this is worse,” he continued, “because now I know what I’m missing. “Tu me manques…I’m missing you.”
He ended the call and stayed at the window, watching the lanes of traffic stop and start below.
Where can Antony Laurent go from here?
The cruel irony of the past two weeks was unrelenting. He’d played seven games since he last saw Maxine, in total he’d gotten four assists, and three goals. It seemed Maxine wasn’t his good luck charm after all.
The first week after they broke-up the team was in Montreal and he’d spent all his time either practicing or in the gym, using any activity to take away the rage, expend the energy, to help rid the constant deep ache in his chest.
Then, after the las
t two games at home, he broke down and called her from his car still in the Air Canada Centre parking lot, but he hung up after two rings. He knew his number would show up on her phone, he didn’t care though. If she was looking for an excuse to call him, he’d given it to her.
He’d come to depend on her presence to give him some semblance of romance, to believe that anything could happen—that he deserved to be happy.
When he looked at the patio window, he remembered making love to her for the first time and how her breath had left patterns of frost on the glass. When he first woke up in the morning, he reached to the other pillow where her red hair had once cascaded over the edge in thick waves.
He was doing all right today, keeping up appearances, disguising the hole that had ripped through his heart. But then at the grocery store, beside the cilantro, he saw the potted mint.
Damn.
In the backseat of that fateful cab ride, Maxine had reached between her breasts picked it out and said, “I prefer my mint room temperature.” Antony reasoned he probably fell in love with her at that moment.
And that’s when it hit him.
She’d pulled him into a kiss at the club.
Right after she’d plucked the mint so seductively, she’d invited him up to her apartment.
She was the one who asked him to kiss her.
She was the one who went up against the wall in the park, crooking her finger, asking him to join her.
Venez ici.
Maxine invited him to Carmine’s shop, they’d started to kiss, then she’d pulled him to the back room! She was the one who was doing all the seducing for Christ’s sake!
Antony glanced at his phone, buoyed by this latest epiphany. No, he reasoned, he already told her he wouldn’t call again. This conversation needed to happen face to face. But this time he’d have an ally with him. Antony walked over to his closet, running his fingers along the hangers. He suddenly had the need for a new suit—a trip to Henry Roman’s might be the perfect solution.
The Right Fit Page 20