On the Fly

by Catherine Gayle

“Can you put any weight on it?”

  I couldn’t a minute ago, but Eddie helped me up so I could try again. I tried to stand on it, but it felt like it was going to completely twist underneath me. “Fuck!”

  “All right, lean on me and we’ll get you off for some X-rays.”

  I put my arm over his shoulders, and JT came over to help on the other side. I glided on my good foot all the way over to the benches so they could take me through the tunnel back to the locker room.

  “He’s done for the night, Scotty,” Eddie said.

  Scotty glared at me, his face as red as it had been during intermission. “I could have fucking told you that.”

  Yeah. I was done for the night. Maybe for good. Scotty would probably want Jim to bury me and my contract in the minors again once I got over this ankle injury. Maybe he was right to want that.

  “Looks like it’s just an ankle,” Laura said to me. “That shouldn’t be too bad.”

  Just an ankle. Like any injury he could have wouldn’t be awful.

  I had to look like an absolute mess. When Brenden had fallen down and not been able to get back up again, all the blood had drained from my head. Even though I had been sitting down, I’d felt so dizzy that I’d worried I would fall out of my seat. And now, watching him being helped off the ice without being able to put any weight at all on that leg…

  “I don’t think I was prepared for this part of it,” I said. “How do y’all keep from being sick with worry all the time?”

  Sure, I’d been watching all of the Storm’s games lately. In that game when Nicky had been taken off the ice on a stretcher, I’d been horrified. And I hadn’t even known him then. It hadn’t been personal. He’d just been a faceless player on the team I worked for—just a name with no emotional attachment. This was different—definitely worse. This was watching a man who I cared for—far more deeply than I had previously admitted to myself, based on my current reaction—getting hurt. After everything with Maddie yesterday, this was too much to swallow.

  I was just glad that some of the other kids we’d met yesterday were here. Tuck was off playing in a corner, and Maddie had brought a coloring book with her because too much activity made her head hurt, and she couldn’t handle reading much either. They were completely oblivious to what was taking place on the ice. They’d only watched for the first few minutes before Tuck had succumbed to the urge to run off some energy and Maddie said the ice was too bright to look at.

  Neither of them had seen Brenden get hurt so they weren’t worried about him. Not like I was.

  “I’d like to say it gets easier,” Laura said, “but I’d be lying if I did. It’s never easy to see someone you love get hurt. That’s part of why we stick together up here during the games. Moral support.”

  Dana came over and took the seat on my other side. “They’ll take him back and do some X-rays, check him over fully. One of the team doctors is always present during the games, so he’s going to get immediate care. They’ll take good care of him.”

  “He might have to sit out a while for it to heal, stay home from this next road trip or two, but hopefully not too long.” Laura sipped from her wineglass. She leaned in closer to me, like she had been earlier when she’d been filling me in on all the gossip. “They’re always miserable when they have to stay home. That’s just the nature of being a professional athlete. But it’ll mean you get more time with him than you normally would during the season.”

  Spending more time with him would be great, but if it meant he had to be hurt, I’d rather pass. I steeled my spine and swallowed, forcing myself to keep it together. I’d been falling apart too much lately. Now wasn’t the time for it.

  “Brenden’s had a lot of injuries in his career,” Dana said.

  I didn’t need her to tell me that. Last night when he’d taken his shirt off, I’d been able to see for myself all the scars he had—on his shoulder, his arms, his face, his abdomen. They were all over him.

  She kept talking, like it was supposed to reassure me or something. “Some were a lot worse than this. He always bounces back.”

  How many times would he have to get hurt before he said enough?

  The game had started up again, and I tried to pay attention to that instead of thinking about how badly injured he was. It was all just a big blur on the huge sheet of ice, though—lots of movements that didn’t make any sense. I didn’t think I’d be able to concentrate on anything until I could see for myself that Brenden was going to be all right.

  Sara brought over a fruity cocktail and took the last empty seat near us, her smile making her eyes sparkle. She’d been gone from the owner’s box since sometime during the first period. I’d thought maybe she had gone home.

  “You look giddy,” Laura said. “Tell us why.”

  I was starting to learn that Laura Weber didn’t really ask for things; she just demanded them. No one ever told her no, though—at least not that I’d witnessed—so clearly it was working for her.

  Sara took a sip of her drink and set her glass down in front of her. “I’ve got a date, and I don’t even have to lie to Daddy about it.”

  Laura pouted. “Not someone from the team, then.”

  “Nope. He’s a loan officer for a bank that rented one of the corporate suites over there.” She waved her hand randomly at the other boxes on the same level as ours. “I ran into him outside the bathrooms. Very hot, but he wasn’t really into the game. Hockey’s not his thing. He’s just here to schmooze with clients. He took me to the bar and bought me drinks and flirted with me until I agreed to go out with him.”

  “If he doesn’t like hockey, I don’t like him,” Laura said. “At least not for you.”

  Sara rolled her eyes. “Please. You just want to keep all your little duckies in a row.”

  “And I freely admit it. But it’s only because I like all my little duckies. I want to keep you around, and if you hook up with some banker who hates hockey…”

  “It’s different for you,” Sara said. “You chose hockey when you chose to marry a hockey player. I didn’t get a choice. It’s been my whole life whether I wanted it or not. Daddy was already coaching when I was born.”

  “You could have chosen something else for yourself once you got out of high school,” Dana said. “He hasn’t tried to force you to stick around.”

  “No,” Sara agreed. “But I’m all he has—me and hockey.”

  The horn sounded, blasting through the Moda Center so loud I jumped. We all looked out to the ice to see what we’d missed. The Storm had scored, and only thirty-two seconds were left on the clock.

  “Good deal, girls,” Laura said. “We should be able to go home with men in good spirits today.”

  Most of them might be in good spirits, but I had a sneaking suspicion Brenden wouldn’t be.

  “Oh!” Dana bent over and dug around in her purse for a second. She pulled out an envelope and passed it over to Laura. “That’s for Katie. You two left yesterday before I could give it to her.”

  “Instructions on how to date a very specific teammate of her father’s without her father killing said teammate?” Laura quipped. “Because that’s pretty much the only thing she wants for Christmas, I can tell you now.”

  “Contact information for Derek Hatch. He’s an entertainment agent, and he’s looking for young talent—especially kids like Katie who can sing and act and maybe do more. Pretty much if they’d fit in with the cast of Glee, he wants to hear from them. One of my teammates from Boston College is working for him now, and she passed it on to me last week. Said to have Katie put together a ten-minute video of what she can do and send it to him.”

  The horn blared again, signaling the end of the game.

  “I’ll give it to her,” Laura said after glancing at the scoreboard one more time. The Storm had won. She slid the envelope into her own purse. “She’ll like it, but probably not as much as she’d like the other thing.”

  “How is Katie?” I asked. In all the chaos yesterday
with Maddie and then seeing Brenden get hurt today, I hadn’t even thought about her until now. “She didn’t look so hot when you left yesterday.”

  Laura shook her head. “Not really any better. We made an appointment with the doctor for later in the week. With Christmas, we couldn’t get her in any sooner.”

  The crowd in the arena started to trickle toward the exits. Over the loudspeaker, the announcer listed off the three stars of the game, who each came out and gave a final wave to the folks who were sticking around to see. Hunter Fielding, the backup goaltender who’d become the starter because of Nicky’s concussion, tossed a puck over the glass to a fan on his way off the ice after being named the first star.

  Tuck’s delighted squeal had me spinning around in my seat to see what was happening. Nicky stood in the entry to the suite in a suit and tie.

  “Hey, Ginger Ninja,” he said, messing with Tuck’s hair. Then he turned his smile on me. “Soupy asked me to bring you and the kids down so he wouldn’t have to come up here. Too much walking.”

  “All right.” I got up and grabbed my purse, then said my goodbyes to the girls. “Laura, let me know what happens with Katie. And I want to know how the date goes, Sara.”

  “I’ll give you more detail than you can handle,” Sara promised.

  “See you tomorrow!” Dana called after me as I headed out onto the concourse with Nicky and the kids. Maddie held out her hand for me once I caught up to them.

  Tuck grabbed Nicky’s hand. “You can’t walk on the red lines, Mr. Nicky.” He stopped and made a wild leap over the next line he saw.

  “Why not?” Nicky asked.

  “If you walk on the red lines, the sharks will come out of the roof and eat your head and Mommy will cry because you’ll bleed a lot.”

  “Oh, we’d better not step on them, then. I didn’t know sharks could fly.”

  “Only in the hockey place.”

  They came to another red line, and Nicky made a big show of stepping carefully over it. Tuck jumped so far forward that he fell and had to stand up again. As soon as he did, he gave Nicky a serious look. “You gotta jump so the trantosausus doesn’t stomp you.”

  “Tyrannosaurus,” I corrected him, mainly so that Nicky would have a clue what he was saying. Interpreting kid-speak could be a challenge.

  Nicky nodded, and Tuck said, “Right. Trantosausus. That’s what I said.”

  Maddie giggled.

  After we’d gone past a few sections, some of the fans we were passing recognized Nicky. He stopped and signed a few autographs, and Tuck came back to me with his mouth hanging open wide.

  “Mommy, is Mr. Nicky famous?”

  Nicky laughed. “Not as famous as Babs.” He posed for a picture with the fans and then held out his hand for Tuck again, who’d suddenly turned shy and was hiding behind my leg.

  I’d never seen him like this before. “Come on, silly. Don’t you have to help him jump over red lines still?”

  “Oh, yeah!” That was all the encouragement he needed.

  After two more sections, complete with four more red lines to leap over, we got to the elevator that would take us down to ice level. The concrete flooring down there didn’t have any more red lines for Tuck to jump, so he just walked along normally.

  Nicky led us into a different series of rooms than I’d been in after the last game we’d attended, which were filled with medical equipment and exam tables. Brenden was sitting on one at the far end with his leg elevated, talking to Jim. He had a walking boot on his foot, and a pair of crutches was leaning against the wall next to him.

  Jim turned when we came in and smiled. “There they are. Why don’t you get out of here? Take them home and have a good Christmas. We’ll talk when everyone comes back after the holiday.”

  “Yeah. Right.” Brenden wasn’t smiling. He looked as miserable as I’d ever seen him.

  “Hey, how long’s your dad in town?” Jim asked.

  “They’re staying until the new year.”

  “Have him stop by and see me sometime, okay? I’d like to catch up with him.”

  Brenden nodded. “I’m sure he’s already planning on it.”

  “Good, good.” Jim headed for the door, telling me, “Make sure he keeps that ankle up and ices it. I’ll see you in a few days.”

  “I’ll leave you, too,” Nicky said. “God Jul.”

  That was the first time I’d ever heard him speak when he didn’t sound as American as apple pie.

  “Merry Christmas,” Tuck shouted after them. Then he jumped up onto the bed beside Brenden. “Mr. Soupy, did you know that Mr. Nicky is famous?”

  Brenden chuckled, which was a positive sight. “Someone told me he might be. I can’t remember who…”

  “You gotta tell me this stuff. That’s part of our deal. ’Kay?”

  I narrowed my eyes at Brenden, but he ignored me. He and Tuck had talked about some deal yesterday, too, and I wanted to know what it was all about. He just winked at me. It’d have to wait for later.

  “Okay.” Brenden reached for the crutches and eased himself off the bed, wincing when he put some weight on his left leg. “I’ll try to keep it in mind. Let’s get out of here, though. Doc says I have to keep my ankle up. Why don’t we pick up some take-out on the way home?” He winked at Maddie and gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek.

  Tuck leaped down and moved beside Brenden, putting his hands on his hips. “Kissing Mommy isn’t in the deal.”

  “It’s not? Maybe we need to renegotiate.”

  Tuck thought about that for a second. “What’s renotiate?”

  “Renegotiate,” Brenden repeated. “It means we come up with new terms. You tell me what you need, and I tell you what I need.”

  “Okay.” Tuck pursed his lips together and tapped his finger on them. “If you get to kiss Mommy, I want pizza for dinner tonight.”

  “Now those are terms I can live with,” Brenden said. That was the only warning I got before he leaned down and gave me a toe-curling kiss.

  When he pulled away, I couldn’t seem to catch my breath.

  “I got a plan, Maddie,” Tuck whispered. “We’re getting pizza for a week!”

  Rachel brought over a baggie of ice and helped me situate my leg on her coffee table, putting a throw pillow beneath my ankle and the ice on top of it.

  Doc said I hadn’t broken anything this time—X-rays were negative, so it was just a nasty ankle sprain with a deep contusion over it where Bieksa had slashed me. It would keep me out of games for a while, probably a few weeks, but hopefully not too much longer than that. Any amount of time was longer than I wanted, though.

  Also, there was no telling if or when Scotty would be willing to let me get back out there with the team. I’d never seen him so pissed. It seemed like the stress of trying to get this team to the playoffs two years in a row was catching up to him, and I hadn’t helped that at all.

  Right now, the Storm was sitting in playoff positioning at least. But that could change anytime we played or anytime one of the other teams in the playoff hunt played, and at the moment we weren’t playing consistently. I needed to fix that in my game. I needed to do what I’d told the guys in Seattle to do—play for the team, not for myself. Lately, I’d just been trying to keep my spot. That wasn’t enough to make sure the Storm kept its spot.

  Rachel glared at me. Her lips were in the sexiest pout that helped turn my thoughts away, at least for now, from all the problems I’d caused for myself and my team tonight. “I had no intention of letting them eat pizza tonight, you know,” she said.

  I took her hand and tugged until she sat down next to me. “I know. But Tuck and I made a deal.” I kissed her again so I could make good use of that particular aspect of our deal.

  Maddie was in the chair near the window reading her book with Pumpkin curled up on the back of it, standing guard over his girl and keeping an eye on me. Tuck sat cross-legged on the floor playing some video game or another on a Nintendo DS that Babs had let him borrow. Neither
of them bothered to look up while I was kissing their mom.

  “That’s another thing,” she said when I let her go. She laughed and hit me on the chest with another throw pillow. “Why are you making deals with my kid that I don’t know about?”

  “Hey!” I took the pillow from her and shoved it behind my back where she couldn’t get it again without really working for it. “This deal is working in your favor. You get kisses.”

  “And my kids eat pizza—after you let Tuck eat mac and cheese and brownies last night. And he told me it was a secret, supposedly on your orders.”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was on my orders,” I hedged.

  “You didn’t contradict him, though. I only figured it out when I tried to clean the mess off his clothes.”

  Someone knocked on the door, and Tuck jumped to his feet. “Pizza!” He raced to the door, rushed back to get the cash I was holding out for him, and made another mad dash to get the promised pizza.

  By the time he’d completed the exchange with the delivery person, Maddie had set her book down and gone to the kitchen for paper plates and napkins. I couldn’t stop marveling over how well mannered these two kids were. I could hardly blink without them saying please or thank you, calling people Mr. and Miss and ma’am and sir. Yeah, Tuck could be a handful—and a messy one at that—but he was a polite messy handful.

  Rachel put slices on plates and passed them to everyone—giving Tuck a stack of about a dozen napkins—and sat down next to me again. “So this deal… When do I get to know what it involves?”

  “What do you think, Tuck? Should we tell her?”

  He stuffed a huge piece of pizza in his mouth. “It don’t gotta be a secret, I guess.” A gob of pizza sauce fell out and splattered onto his shirt and plate. Good thing he was sitting on the floor. I’d probably be in even bigger trouble with Rachel if he made a mess of her furniture.

  “Well,” I said, setting my plate on my lap, “last night while we were hanging out in the waiting room, Tuck and I agreed we hadn’t done a very good job taking care of Maddie yesterday.” Maddie turned as red as Rachel always did when I embarrassed her, but I kept talking. “So we made a deal that we would work as a team to take care of both Maddie and you. He’ll take care of all the kid stuff, like letting Maddie wear his cape last night to help her get better faster, and I’ll take care of all the grown-up stuff, like making sure she’s got the right protective gear on if she’s doing something where she might get hurt.”