The Last Whistle

by Jamie Bennett

  “Yes, ready!” I said, jumping up to stop her words as Meredith frowned in her direction. She was very, very protective of her brother, and I wanted them both to like Marley. Actually, I wanted everyone to like her as much as I did, because she needed more people on her side. But that plan hinged on her not insulting Meredith’s brother, not swearing at Gunnar’s parents—basically, she couldn’t behave in any of the ways that she usually did with me. I knew she didn’t mean the things she said, but they wouldn’t know that. So when she opened her mouth again, probably to say something about Brendan’s guitar playing, I put my arm around her shoulders and walked us to the front door.

  The November rain had changed to snow earlier in the week, then back to rain, then to more snow, so the landscape was a mix of white and muddy with everything frozen solid. It had made me very, very worried about my house, but it was holding up for now. More of Gunnar’s crew had broken off to take a look and they had also been extremely concerned about the rot. “You’re going to keep living here?” one of the guys had asked me. “Hey, are you the girl who fell off the roof last summer?”

  The answer to both questions had been yes. I’d spent a few nights on Gunnar’s couch, which had its benefits as proximal to him, but I needed to be in my cottage to prepare it for Marley. And also, to keep myself from attaching like a mussel and never leaving Gunnar’s side.

  “Let’s go,” Marley urged me, trying to tug me down the brick path in front of Meredith and Jory’s house, but I knew that I had to be careful on the slippery ground. The last thing I wanted to do was break something right before I met Gunnar’s parents. The Bronco started beautifully due to the new battery I’d had to buy after it had died again (and then again), and we were off. I leaned and looked through the light snow, frowning at the road.

  “They’re going to like you,” Marley announced.

  “What?”

  I didn’t need to look over at her to see the eye roll; I felt it. “Gunnar’s parents, they’re going to like you,” she said with exaggerated patience. “You guys are good together and they’ll like that.”

  “Really?” Now I did look at her, to make sure she was being serious. “You really think we’re good together?” Of course, everything we were doing felt good, so good, so, so good—so, so, so good. But…

  I got to see her roll her eyes this time. “Hallie, you act like you’re going to start singing or something when he comes into the bookstore and he smiles so much it makes me tired. Are his teeth for real?”

  “He has a beautiful smile. Gorge.” I swallowed. “Um, do you think that’s a problem, though?”

  “That I want to knock his teeth in for smiling so much at you?”

  “No. And don’t touch his teeth. I mean that he’s so, I don’t know, perfect. And I’m…”

  “What the hell are you?” she asked me angrily. “You’re awesome. You’re beautiful and awesome and smart. He knows it, too,” she said. “He told me so.”

  “What? What did he tell you? When? Why?”

  “I asked him if he was just screwing around with you, because then I was going to have to hurt him. He said no, of course not, because he thinks you’re great. He’s really into you. Hallie, keep us on the road, ok? Damn, you’re, like, crazy about him.”

  Yes, that was accurate. “What else did he say? Did you actually threaten him?” I demanded to know. I continued to wring out details from her on our way to the stadium, where we got to park in a special lot due to the pass Gunnar had given me, and go in a special door to the suite area, and even up a special elevator.

  “This isn’t bad,” Marley said, and I knew her well enough to see that even though she was sneering slightly, she was very impressed. “Will you stop doing that? You’re going to mess it up.”

  I removed my hands from my hair. “Is it ok? Do I look ok?”

  “Did Gunnar care when your eye was swollen shut and you had to use those ugly glasses?” she asked me.

  “No, he liked my glasses.” He had actually mentioned the word “hot” regarding me wearing them.

  “And you look a lot better with both eyes open,” she told me. “You look beautiful. But why you give a shit, I don’t know. You’re already smarter and nicer than anybody else.”

  “So are you,” I said, but I took her hand before we went into the box because I needed the emotional support and also so I didn’t fall on my entrance. I just didn’t do as well with contacts.

  It turned out that Gunnar took after his parents. They were as nice as he was, so welcoming and happy to meet me. He had told them about me, how my family had owned the bookstore and all the plans we had to improve it, and all about Marley, and they were thrilled to meet her, too. His mom showed me pictures of her grandchildren, all of them tall and blonde and beautiful, and then she and Marley started to talk about the oldest one and her problems with an English teacher and a boyfriend, and what she might like for Christmas. I listened carefully so I would get some hints for Christmas for Marley, as well, and also to head off any potential language and/or rudeness problems, but they got along very well.

  “What do you think about the game today?” Gunnar’s dad, Haakon, asked me. “Gunnar says you take a more mathematical approach to football.”

  I had looked at the numbers so I told him what I’d researched, but I finished with, “That doesn’t matter, I’ve realized. It’s more about the desire to win than any of the statistics I compiled.”

  Haakon nodded. He looked so much like his son, except that his blonde hair was now white, and he was so frail. So, so frail. “Gunnar has that desire in spades. It was always a lucky thing for him, because he used to be smaller than the rest. He grew,” he pointed out. “We were glad, due to the bullying.”

  I sat up straight. “Bullying? What? Why? Who did that?” Minnesota wasn’t too for me and Marley to make it there since my car was running better.

  “Once he got so big, that stopped,” Haakon assured me. “And his older sisters took care of quite a few problems. They’ve always been very protective. It was that my son always had such a soft heart,” his dad told me. “He still does. He can take things very hard, and he struggles with change. Next year will be difficult for him when he retires. We know,” he said. “Gunnar is also not good with hiding things.”

  I nodded. I bet his family could read him like a book.

  “And with me gone,” his father continued. “We’re glad he’ll have you.”

  I nodded again. “I’m glad, too,” I whispered, and looked up at the ceiling of the box. I hoped could help him with the losses that he would face. I was going to do every single thing I could.

  “Hallie?” Marley asked sharply. She narrowed her eyes at Haakon. “What’s he saying to you?”

  “No, it’s fine,” I assured her. “We’re just talking about the future.” I saw Gunnar’s mom turn her head, and then she was looking up at the ceiling, too. It was going to be a hard winter for everyone.

  When the game started, we all turned a laser focus to that. Gunnar’s parents had watched him play in probably a thousand games, but for me, every time he stepped on the field was pretty much a fresh agony of worry. Was he going to get hurt again? Would this time be so bad that he wouldn’t be able to keep playing, or even end up permanently, horribly injured?

  Marley let me hold her hand again and constant popcorn also helped. I took a breath at halftime and checked my phone to see how Gaby was doing. She was going to her mom’s house for the holiday, which she wasn’t happy about, and neither had she been pleased that her disgusting, lying, philandering boyfriend wasn’t going to be with her.

  “I’m not sorry that he’ll be with his kids, because that’s one of the things I love about him, that he’s such a family man!” she had told me.

  Sure, a family man who cheated on his wife. I swallowed down those words.

  “It’s just that she’s still here,” Gaby had continued. Even with the snow and the terrible weather, the wife had stuck around Michigan, and th
e question in Gaby’s mind was why. “She always goes to Florida, that’s what Shep told me. For the last twenty years, she’s spent every winter there! So why not now?” she’d asked me plaintively.

  “Maybe she likes Michigan more. Or maybe she’s thinking she should keep an eye on her husband,” I finally couldn’t stop myself from saying. “He is her husband, Gaby. She has first dibs on him.”

  “You’re trying to say that she should have the only dibs on him, but they don’t have a real marriage,” she had argued, and then went on to tell me all the personal, private things that Shep had shared with her about his failed relationship with his wife. The fact that he had blabbed all that to Gaby made me hate him even more, but she kept telling me how much he loved and trusted her to tell her the truth about his life.

  After a while, I’d had to clue her into one important fact: “All that may be true, and his relationship may be terrible, and they don’t even like each other, but he’s still married to her! If he loves you, Gab, shouldn’t he be married to you, instead?” I’d heard her crying, sobbing, through the phone and she’d hung up.

  We hadn’t spoken very much since that call, and I was worried about her. I figured she’d be watching today, since it was a Carter family tradition to watch all the games, so I took some pictures of the field and wrote, “Go Woodsmen!” She wrote it back and added a heart, which I took to mean that I was forgiven for telling her the truth, as hard as it had been for her to hear.

  The Woodsmen won. They steamrolled, actually, and Gunnar, thank goodness, was fine. I watched him through the binoculars I had brought, holding them carefully over the eye I’d recently injured but that really looked a lot better since I could open it all the way. I saw him walking off under his own power when the last whistle blew, then talking with Jory and some of the other guys on the sidelines. Laughing, too.

  “He’s ok,” I announced to the box, and when I took the binoculars away from my face, his mom, Frida, smiled at me.

  “We’re glad you’re keeping an eye out,” she said.

  “Just the one, since you poked yourself in the other,” Marley added.

  Meredith and her brother had already left midway through the third quarter to get home to finish the dinner she had started. The nice security guard who had helped me when Gunnar had been injured now drove Frida and Haakon out to their RV. Marley and I walked together down to the lounge to wait for the players to come out. Even though she tried very hard not to be impressed at the VIP treatment we were getting, her own eyes were pretty big in her face as we waited on a couch and looked around the fancy room.

  I nudged her. “Not bad, right? Did you see the food they have set up for all the families?”

  “Yeah, I put some of it in your purse already,” she answered. “I guess I could get used to rich stuff. You should keep Gunnar around so we can keep getting it.”

  “I’ll keep him around,” I agreed. I didn’t care about sitting in a box or the big buffet, but I had already gotten used to having Gunnar and Marley in my life, and I wanted to keep them both in it. I needed them in it, especially when the year had been so hard. This Thanksgiving without my dad was already pretty difficult, and I had a feeling that Christmas might be worse.

  “What?” Marley asked me. “Why do you have that look on your face?”

  “I was just thinking about losing people,” I admitted. “I was remembering when I came home last winter, with my dad so sick. Sitting in the cottage when it was all so dark. The weather, I mean, but also…everything.”

  Slowly her hand came over and took mine. “But is it better now?” she asked, and I nodded at her. “Gunnar’s dad is sick, right? Is he going to die?” she asked, and I nodded slowly again. She scowled. “That sucks.”

  “It does.” The corner of my mouth trembled and I put my fingers over it to hold it still. “It sucks for all of them.”

  “Well, he’ll have you here. You’re good at helping people,” she said. “You just keep showing up and then, like, we want you around always.”

  “I want you guys, too,” I told her. “Always.” I picked up my purse from the floor to check if I had any tissue or a napkin and I found that it was stuffed full and heavy as lead. “Marley, how much food did you put in here?” I dug around. “Oh, no, we can’t take a block of cheese. And shrimp?” I fished those out from under my wallet as she shrugged and said she didn’t know why not, when they were offering it for free.

  Maybe they wouldn’t have missed the cheese or the crustaceans, because there really was a huge spread set up for all the families, friends, and guests. The lounge was extra crowded today and as the players started to come out from the locker rooms, they hung around to sign autographs and to talk to all the visitors. It actually felt a lot like a party. Jory and another of the guys from the offensive line walked out, one at a time because there was no way that both of them could have fit together even through the extra-wide door.

  “He’s coming,” Jory announced instead of hello. He squinted at me. “What happened to your head?”

  “Your fiancée did my hair,” I informed him. “Blame her.”

  “Yeah, she likes to do that stuff.” He kept looking. “She did a good job,” he finally said, and I took it as a compliment to myself and said thank you. I introduced him to Marley, and he pointed out the guy he was with, who was also coming to our Thanksgiving dinner.

  “That’s Darius,” Jory said. I recognized him from my unfortunate night at the Silver Dollar bar, when I’d ended up wearing the drinks. “He’s bringing the pies for us.”

  “Three apple, four pumpkin, and mincemeat,” Darius said with satisfaction.

  “Mincemeat? Is that a real thing? I thought it was only in those old books that Hallie makes me read.” Marley made a face like she was going to retch. “I’m not eating a pie with meat in it for dessert.”

  Darius started to explain to her why she would love it, and I wished him good luck in trying to convince her of anything. I looked past their big bodies toward the door, watching for Gunnar, but I saw someone else instead. I remembered him saying that his father had an ownership stake in the team, and that was why the security guard had let him slime his way into this room with friends and family. Carey Winslow didn’t deserve to be eating the lovely appetizers that the Woodsmen had provided, and I frowned in his direction. He grinned at me from across the room, the same old smile that always worked on everyone with two X hormones.

  A harried-looking woman stopped chasing a little boy long enough to get in Carey’s face and say something angrily. Then there was a crash on the other side of the lounge and she took off after a second child. Carey ignored the whole thing and sipped from a flask he took from his pocket.

  “Who is that?” Marley asked me. “Why are you staring at that guy? He looks like he’d be an asshole with that shit-eating grin. Is he?” She pointed across the room at where Carey was now talking to a very pretty woman because obviously his grin had worked on her, and she was smiling right back at him. The lady I assumed to be his wife was currently crawling under the buffet table to yank out one of the little boys, the one who looked just like his father, and Carey didn’t pay one whit of attention to any of them. What a revolting, wretched excuse for a human.

  “That guy doesn’t matter,” I told Marley. “I’m not sure why I’m wasting my time staring at him. Look, there’s Gunnar.” He was already smiling as he approached us, and I smiled back, my heart beating faster because of the way he was looking at me. But then he glanced over at where Marley was still signaling, and his warm, happy expression turned into a frown when he saw Carey there. And then he started walking in that direction.

  I did, too, and Marley was right behind me. “What’s Gunnar doing?” she asked me. “Why is he going over to that guy?”

  “He’s not doing anything! There’s no reason for him to do anything at all to Carey.”

  “Wait, do something to him? Are they going to fight?” she asked gleefully. “Gunnar could kill him, ri
ght?”

  “No, Gunnar’s not like that,” I told her, but when we got close enough for me to hear what he was saying into Carey’s face, I wasn’t so sure.

  “Stay the hell away from Hallie Holliday,” he was growling, an inch away from Carey’s nose.

  “What?” Carey asked. “Hallie?” He actually laughed a little. “You think I’m interested in that—”

  Now Gunnar grabbed his shirt and Carey lost the smile. “I don’t want to hear her name coming out of your mouth.”

  “Gunnar.” I took his arm and felt the muscles bulging under his sleeve as he lifted Carey onto his toes.

  “If you see her, you go. Don’t walk, run in the other direction. Don’t be within a hundred yards of her.” He shook Carey’s shirt. “Do you understand me?

  Carey looked a little dazed and I felt the need to step in further. “Gunnar, you should let him go. We need to leave and have dinner.”

  “Carey, what’s going on here?” The unfortunate woman whom I had identified as his wife stared at Gunnar’s hand gripping her husband’s shirt, but she didn’t look worried. She looked very, very angry. “What did you do now?” she hissed at him.

  “Nothing!” he told her. “I don’t want anything to do with Hallie!”

  “That’s your mistake, asshole!” Marley chimed right in. “Who is this guy?” she asked me.

  “Ok, everybody, can we take a bit of a breather?” I suggested. “Gunnar, please release him. Marley, this is just someone I knew in high school. He and I don’t get along.”

  “Did he make fun of your clothes or something?” she asked me.

  “No! No, we didn’t get along because…because he’s unkind and impolite,” I finished, and she rolled her eyes. “Yes, he’s an asshole, ok?”

  Gunnar gave him one more shake and dropped his shirt, and Carey smoothed down the fabric. His grin came back. “Seriously, Hallie? Are you going around and telling stories about what you think happened ten years ago?” he asked me, and laughed. “I didn’t give a shit about you then, and I don’t now either. You think I’d screw around with her?” he said to his wife, and she flicked her eyes over me and shrugged. “Relax, man,” he told Gunnar, who was swelling again in anger. “She’s all yours. I wouldn’t go near her.”