The Last Whistle

by Jamie Bennett

  I winced away. “Yes, but—”

  Gaby looked over my shoulder. “Hi, Carey!”

  “Hi, Gabbers,” Carey said and took her by the elbow to kiss her cheek. “Hallie,” he continued, but when he bent to give me the same treatment, I stepped back.

  “You guys should work out your problems,” Gaby said. “It’s a party! And you can’t hold on to grudges and hate.” She tried to drink from her glass, but the margarita had run dry. “I’m going to the kitchen to get another. Go ahead and make up.” She walked, mostly straight, toward the blender.

  Carey Winslow laughed. He was drunk too, I noticed. His eyes were way too bright and his famous smile looked crooked, off. “She’s just the same as she was in high school,” he commented. “She never could hold a drop of liquor. It was fun.”

  “You’re a pig,” I told him angrily.

  “I didn’t ever try anything on her!” he told me, his face totally innocent. “I mean that she made us all laugh with how she acted, how loud she got and the speeches she made.” I frowned at him, and he imitated me, pulling his own mouth down in an exaggerated grimace. “Come on, Hallie. Are you going to be pissed at me forever?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He smiled again and threw up his hands. I saw the wedding ring there; I’d heard that he had gotten married to someone from his college. “You were always a real…spitfire.” He laughed. “Was that what you thought I was going to say?”

  “I don’t care what you have to say. I’m leaving.” I started to do just that, but he grabbed my arm.

  “Don’t walk your sweet ass away from me,” he said, using the silky voice that worked on women. It had worked on me, anyway.

  “Sweet ass?” Please.

  His eyes were right on it, though, and his gaze was very interested. “What about if you and I went into the guest bedroom and—”

  “You’re married!” I said indignantly. “And even if you weren’t, hell would freeze over before that ever happened.” I jerked my arm away from his grasp. “I hate you.”

  “Hallie, Hallie,” he said, shaking his head. “You really hate me? Why?”

  I glared furiously. He knew perfectly well why.

  “If it makes you feel better, my life fucking sucks.” Carey leaned down toward me, his breath hot and sharp with alcohol on my face. “My fucking girlfriend got pregnant and my father made me marry her. She hates it up here. She wants to move to Bloomfield Hills and join a country club.” He shook his head. “We have two kids, two fucking kids. Can you believe I’m already a dad? I’m too young for this bullshit. I want to go out and live and she’s telling me to teach them to play baseball.”

  “You should. You should be home with them, your family,” I told him. “And if you haven’t figured out by now about how to prevent future pregnancies, let me give you a tip: condoms.” I turned, whipping him with my oversized ponytail, and stalked into the kitchen.

  “Here you go, Gaby,” the guy making the margaritas told her as I walked up, practically shaking after my encounter. He handed her another glass of frozen liquid. “I brought my blender tonight just for you.” He patted the machine and watched her longingly as she tasted the drink.

  “Yummy!” she told him. “Thanks, Leo!” She granted him one of her stunning smiles and I could practically see his heart break under his shirt. “Is there enough left in there for my friend Hallie?”

  “No thanks, I’m good,” I answered. “I have to go.” No way was I staying here with Carey, and especially not Carey if he was drunk and obviously beer-goggling.

  “Don’t leave!” she told me. “Stay, please, Hal! Leo, get her a drink.”

  Gaby’s bartender grudgingly shook out the bottom of the blender into a glass for me, and I grudgingly took it and sipped. I had to give it to him, it was delicious. “Thank you. Cheers,” I told Gaby, and we clinked.

  “To us being lucky in love!” she said loudly, and Leo the blender guy raised his hand like he was volunteering. “Gravy, speaking of love!” she yelled, and pointed at the door, where a huge figure, a head taller and a body wider than anyone else at the party, had just come in. “It’s Gunnar!” she continued at the same volume. “Gunnar Christensen!”

  Gunnar? Gunnar was here. And he was already looking so uncomfortable that I rushed over, the margarita lapping up over the lip of the glass and onto my hand.

  He caught my elbows as I lurched and prevented a spill onto his shirt. He looked tired, and his blonde hair was still wet like he’d just stepped out of the shower. “Hi,” he said, flicking his eyes around the room. The noise and conversation had basically stopped at his entrance, and even the people pawing each other in the corners had come up for air to gawk at him.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” I said, smiling hugely, and after a second, he smiled back down at me. “That was a great game. Are you hungry?”

  “Thanks. Yes,” he answered, and let me lead him through the throng of Gaby’s friends back to the kitchen.

  “Gunnar, this is my friend Gaby,” I introduced them, and started to root in her refrigerator for something for him to eat. She had a box of baking soda, a limp carrot, and a bottle of sparkling water.

  “It’s so nice to meet you,” Gaby hollered. “I’ve heard so much about you!”

  I stood up quickly, bumping my head on the freezer. “Ow! No, you haven’t!” I told her, glaring.

  “I mean, no, I haven’t!” she quickly and resoundingly agreed. “Hallie and I never talk about you! You’re not on her mind at all!”

  I closed my eyes for a moment as I rubbed my head. This was excellent.

  “Gunnar? I’m Leo,” the margarita man said, holding out his hand, his voice tremulous. “Go Woodsmen!”

  And that opened the floodgates. Even Holland, who was usually too cool for school, made her way over. She pretended that she suddenly needed a lime from the cutting board on the island, and oh, by the way, she could introduce herself to the famous football player.

  I stood a little to the side, watching as Gunnar negotiated the autograph requests and the attention, knowing how he hated it, and wondering if I should step in and do anything. But just because he was uncomfortable, it didn’t mean that he was ungracious. He answered questions, listened to their Woodsmen memories and some unsolicited football advice, and signed everything except when Torie Kurwa pulled her top lower and pointed to her boob with a sharpie and a smile. Gunnar pretended that he didn’t even see what she was referring to, but I sure gave her a look when she walked away disappointed. He was polite to everyone.

  And darn, but was he handsome. His cheeks were a little flushed, a deeper bronze against his tan, and his bright blue eyes stood out, even with all the other starling shades of Gaby’s apartment. I found myself wanting to hug him and drag him out of here so we could be alone. Then what would you do, Hallie? I asked myself. Maybe I could amaze him with the new bruise on my calf, the one that resembled Great Britain, from when I’d stumbled on a rock outside my house as I tried to take pictures of the kitchen fire damage for the insurance adjuster. Oh, the insurance…

  “You really know him?”

  I instinctively stepped away from Carey Winslow’s voice at my side. “Yes,” I answered briefly.

  “Huh,” he said, sounding interested. “Gunnar Christensen.”

  At that moment, the man himself looked my way and raised his eyebrows. When that wasn’t an obvious enough signal for me, he said, “Excuse me,” to the people clamoring around him and moved his big body out of the crowd and over to me.

  Before I could speak to him, Carey put out his hand. “Hey there, Gunnar. You may not remember, but we’ve met a few times. My father is part-owner of the team.”

  “Oh, sure,” Gunnar said, completely unconvincingly, but he shook Carey’s hand. “You know Hallie?” he asked, looking between the two of us.

  “Hallie and I are old friends.” Carey put his hand on my shoulder but I pushed it off.

  “We’re not friends. I’d rather
be friends with a putrid, rotting corpse,” I told him.

  “Same old Hallie,” Carey said, and laughed as if I had made a joke.

  “Do you want to stay here?” I asked Gunnar. “Gaby doesn’t have anything to eat besides mustard on stale crackers. I want to say goodbye to her and then we can go.”

  “Let’s go home,” he agreed, and put his own hand on my shoulder. This was totally unlike Carey’s touch, which I welcomed about as much as I would a rat crawling on my arm. I actually turned my face and almost rubbed my cheek against Gunnar’s skin before I stopped myself. “I’ll order take-out for us,” he told me. He pulled out his phone to do that, looking at his screen rather than back at everyone in the living room staring at him.

  I went off to find Gaby, who was now earsplittingly advising a man to live his dream of starting an artisanal garlic farm, even if he was allergic. She broke off to give me a giant hug, completely drunk and completely thrilled that I was leaving with Gunnar. Which she told me in a piercing shriek, because apparently her increased consumption led to increased volume.

  “YOU’RE GOING HOME WITH GUNNAR CHRISTENSEN?” she bellowed. “HALLIE, I’M JUST SO HAPPY FOR YOU! THESE ARE SERIOUSLY HAPPY TEARS!” Because, yes, she was also bawling. It took me a moment to assure myself that she was going to be ok, and that she was actually having fun, before I felt like I could leave her. All the eyes in the room were on us as Gunnar replaced his hand on my shoulder and I let him guide me toward the door.

  I followed him, first into a parking lot of a restaurant where a waiter carried out several huge bags that he placed in Gunnar’s car, and then back to our gravel road where he turned down my driveway. “I figured your place is still better than mine,” he said. “You only have the one hole in the wall that shouldn’t be there.”

  “Don’t forget the extra one in the roof. And I have the smell of smoke, which adds a certain flavor to every meal,” I added. I pointed to the bags from the restaurant. “What did you get for me?”

  “I got almost everything on the menu, so you get to choose.” He walked toward the house, and it was only then that I noticed how stiffly he was moving.

  “Gunnar…”

  “I’m fine,” he answered, before I had even asked it. “A little sore is all. Maybe you can rub it for me.”

  My stomach jumped into my mouth. “Oh.”

  He laughed. “I’m just kidding—you don’t really have to. Let’s eat.”

  After leaving all the windows open and washing every surface in the cottage, it did smell better inside. It was also nice and chilly, so I left on my coat and turned up the creaky heat while Gunnar took out plates and forks. I watched him do it, and found it to be a combination of exciting and comforting that he had been around enough that he knew my kitchen.

  He really had bought almost everything on the menu, and he was starving—hungry enough that I had to wonder aloud why he had even bothered to go to Gaby’s house instead of heading right home. “I felt like it,” he explained, which didn’t make sense to me. But mostly, we talked football while we ate, and then got into talking about the bookstore. Thinking about being back there had been a bright spot for me in the last few days and I had plenty more to say, especially since the screen on my old laptop had briefly flickered and I thought there might be hope for retrieving the business plan I’d previously written up.

  “If not, I can rewrite it. If you’re interested,” I quickly added.

  “I am,” he said. “Go get your laptop and I’ll see if the IT guys who work for the team can kickstart it.”

  “I wouldn’t actually advise kicking it,” I mentioned over my shoulder. “It did nothing when I tried it.”

  When I came back to the kitchen, Gunnar was yawning. “Sorry,” he mumbled, and rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Long day. Long time with the trainers after the game.”

  “I wish you hadn’t come to Gaby’s house!” I exclaimed.

  “Now I know you well enough to guess that you wish that because you’re concerned about me, not because you didn’t want to see me,” he interpreted.

  “Exactly! Come relax on the couch. I washed all the cushion covers so it smells ok,” I urged him, and he did push back from the table to follow me and settle in my living room. “You know what? Instead of making you talk to me, I’ll read to you. I’ll pick one of my favorite books.” I headed to the shelf, which did still reek pretty well, and selected a volume. “Have you read a lot of Jane Austen?”

  His head was back, eyes at half-mast. “That’s a hard no on me and Jane Austen. But I wouldn’t mind hearing some,” he added quickly. “If that’s your favorite.”

  “Or, I could rub your back for you,” I threw in casually, but he just chuckled a little.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  Sure, yeah, I didn’t have to touch his bare skin, his warm, smooth, naked, strong back…

  “Hallie?”

  I opened the book, glad that I already knew the first lines by heart, because like the rest of my body, my eyes seemed to be burning and I didn’t think I could have actually picked out the words. It was lucky that my mouth could work. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife,” I recited, and with that familiar, well-loved sentence, my heart slowed its racing. I focused my eyes on the book and got lost in in it.

  “You have a nice voice. I like to hear you,” Gunnar said. His eyes were closed. “It sounds like music when you talk.”

  “Thank you. It’s because I used to do readings at the store,” I said. “I got a lot of practice reading aloud.”

  “No, it’s not because of practicing. It’s your voice.” He yawned.

  Maybe I was boring him to death. “Do you like this book?” I asked curiously. “Want another one, instead? I may have your favorite on the shelves.”

  “I never read very much. I don’t know the last time I picked up a book for pleasure.” His eyes cracked open a little. “No remarks about intelligence, please.”

  “No, of course not!” I said, and thought of the times I’d insulted him about that. “My dad used to say that not everybody likes books, and it’s no crime.” I didn’t add that my dad had continued by saying, “But it should be.”

  “I like this one. Keep reading,” Gunnar said. He let his eyes close again, and I did.

  “Gunnar?” I asked softly a few pages later. His breathing was deep and even, his face and body totally relaxed. “Are you asleep?”

  Yes, he was, and I didn’t know if I should wake him.

  “Gunnar?” I whispered again, and I touched his shoulder gently, then his cheek. His skin was surprisingly soft, even with the sprinkle of blonde whiskers over it. He turned his head in the direction of my hand and sighed deeply. I let my palm cradle his face for a moment, and the rush of tenderness I felt caught me off-guard. He didn’t need me to help him or protect him, but maybe I would, anyway.

  So I reluctantly let go and found a few blankets to cover him, because I was going to have to leave the windows open all night due to the lingering smell. I tucked him in and flipped off all the lights but one, so he wouldn’t be scared if he woke up in an unfamiliar place. If someone his size was ever scared of anything, I meant. Then I went and tried to sleep myself, which meant me lying on the narrow mattress and thinking hard about the big man gently snoring on my couch.

  ∞

  No. No. No, not that either. I sighed. None of these were any good.

  “What?”

  I looked up, startled. Marley had been ignoring me for almost two full weeks, and the sound of her voice was unexpected, to say the least. “Huh?”

  “Why are you staring at your dumb broken phone and sighing? You’ve been doing it for, like, an hour.”

  I had only been looking for a few minutes, I was sure, but I nodded in agreement because I was so grateful that she was saying anything at all. “I’m going to dinner at someone’s house and I’m trying to figure out what to wear. Ne
w ways I could combine what’s in my closet.”

  She motioned at me and I turned the phone so she could see the screen, and when she did, she made a face like she might vomit on the table. “What the hell is that? Are you joining a cult or something?”

  “No! I have a skirt that length and I thought I could pull it out. I don’t wear it very often.” Because I tripped on it. “If I wore it with a sweater—”

  “You would look terrible,” Marley informed me.

  “Thank you.”

  She sighed and rolled her eyes. “You do need help. I never saw anyone who dresses worse than you do. You have more money now, right? From the bookstore?”

  “So you have been listening to me! I knew those earplugs were fake,” I said. I had been talking to her constantly, even if I hadn’t thought that she was paying attention and maybe that she couldn’t hear me around the giant orange rubber things she’d ostentatiously stuck into her ears one afternoon.

  I had told her about starting again at the store: about opening the door with the key that Gunnar had left in an envelope on my front step and walking into a place that felt so familiar and safe, even if it wasn’t really mine anymore. I had told her about the renovations that I was starting to supervise with the crew from the Feeney place whom Gunnar had jettisoned to work on the problems in the building, how I was reviewing all the inventory, how I had polished the front window so that the gold “Holliday Booksellers” gleamed again.

  “How could I help but listen to you? You never shut up.” She scowled, but she took the phone from me and started to flip through all the images of clothing I’d been studying. “You’re going to dinner? With a guy?”

  “Well, yes,” I admitted. “With my neighbor and his friend and his friend’s fiancée.”

  “Your neighbor?” Another eye roll. “Sure, yeah. Well, if you wear any of those outfits, he’ll either mistake you for his grandmother or from someone out of this book.” She slapped the cover of the novel she was supposed to have read.