Dropping Gloves

by Catherine Gayle

  “So, what exactly are you saying?” Derek asked. In the background, he was furiously typing on his keyboard, probably already firing off emails to cancel the slew of auditions he’d lined up for me. “If you’re not going to New York, when are you coming back to LA?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “What the hell do you mean, you can’t answer that?”

  “I mean I’m not coming back this week, and probably not next week, and I’m not even sure I’m coming back at all other than maybe to pack up the condo I’m renting and move everything out.” I wasn’t sure where that had come from, but—to my own surprise—I wasn’t in a rush to take those words back. There was some truth to it. A lot of truth, actually.

  Derek fell silent for a long time, and when he spoke again, his tone was terse, his words clipped. “If you’re not going to actively pursue your career, our working relationship doesn’t have much of a future.”

  I wasn’t sure what reaction I’d thought he would have, but I definitely hadn’t been expecting that. I swallowed the lump in my throat, but another one replaced it almost immediately. This made it feel permanent, as if the decision I’d made on the spur of the moment this morning because of a headache was going to alter the entire course of my future. Just like that. A snap of the fingers. Done.

  “Are you firing me?” I finally choked out.

  “I don’t know that I’d call it firing,” he bit off. “It’s more that you’re no longer willing to hold up your end of the bargain, so there’s not anything I can do for you. You’ve been indecisive for the last four months. You’ve bombed at the auditions you’ve gone to, and you’ve completely flaked out on the others I’ve managed to obtain. You aren’t taking your career as seriously as I am, and I’m not willing to work for someone who isn’t willing to work her ass off to have the kind of career you’re capable of having. I don’t think there’s much more to say about it.”

  I was perched on the foot of my bed in my parents’ house, unable to do anything but blink back tears. He was right about everything he’d said, and there wasn’t any point in arguing with him about it. “No, I suppose there’s not,” I forced out, my voice cracking.

  We stayed on the phone for a few more minutes, hammering out the details required to dissolve our contract. By the time we hung up, my head was pounding like never before. Had I just completely ruined my chances of having the career I’d always dreamed of? I mean, sure, my first go at it had been everything I’d expected and nothing I’d ever imagined in my worst nightmares, all rolled up in one. But did that mean I should just throw out the idea of ever pursuing it again? Derek Hatch was one of the best talent agents in the world, and now I’d walked away from him.

  I tossed my phone on the bed, wishing I never had to pick the damn thing up again, and dug some ibuprofen out of my purse. Then I headed out to the kitchen. Dad was sitting at the bar with an iPad, watching film from last night’s game over his breakfast, and Mom was unloading the dishwasher. I took a glass from her and filled it with water from the fridge before tossing back the pills.

  Dad glanced up, his brow furrowed. “You sick?”

  “Just a headache.”

  “You look tired.” His voice sounded like a bark, gruff and terse. I’d come to understand that meant he was worried. He had worried about me way too much over the years. I’d given him too many reasons to worry, but I wished he would stop.

  Especially right now, when there wasn’t anything wrong but a stupid headache. “Thanks for saying I look like crap,” I quipped, scowling at him. “I am tired. I flew in yesterday and headed straight to the arena, and you know how late it was when we got back here.” I swallowed some more water and set the glass on the counter across from him, leaning on my elbows. And I grinned, hoping it would help ease his concerns.

  “I’m not saying you look like crap. I’m saying you look tired.” He shut off the video and pushed the iPad aside. “You look tired like you did when you were sick.”

  “Dad,” I said, hating the whining tone that came out of me. He was hovering, and it made me feel like I was a teenager again. I was twenty-two years old and already a multimillionaire in my own right, thanks to both my work on The Cool Kids and taking Derek’s advice to hire a financial planner as soon as I’d booked my first job. I’d made as much money in four years as Dad had made in two decades as an NHL player. It wasn’t about money, though. The fact of the matter was I wasn’t a kid anymore, and I hated that he still treated me like one.

  “You’re due for your blood work and all that, anyway,” Mom said, sliding in next to me to put a cutting board in the cabinet. She gave Dad a look. “Why don’t you call Dr. Oliver while you’re here and set something up?”

  Dr. Oliver was my oncologist. As much as I hated to admit it, Mom was right; it was time for me to get checked and be sure I was still cancer-free. Even though I knew there was no good reason to think there would be anything abnormal about my tests, the thought of going in for them always made me nervous—way worse than stage fright. Like, puke-up-my-guts-without-being-able-to-blame-it-on-chemo nerves. Getting anxious about something like that would only make my headache worse, though, so I decided not to let that happen until there was a good reason for it, like when I was walking into the doctor’s office and they were about to draw half a dozen vials of blood from my veins or something. That seemed like a reasonable time to get nervous.

  “Yeah,” I said to make Mom happy and to get Dad off my back. And I supposed I would do it to ease my own worries, too. “I’ll see when he can get me in.”

  “But not tomorrow,” Mom said, reaching overhead to put away a plastic mixing bowl.

  “What’s tomorrow?” I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from asking. Knowing my mom, she might have set me up on a blind date or a speed-dating event, and anything along those lines was the last thing in the world I wanted. She would never set me up with any guy like the ones Derek had insisted on, but that was beside the point.

  “Dani’s going to be here,” Mom said. “She’s coming down for the weekend and wants to spend some time with you.”

  Dani was my younger sister. She was in her first semester at The Art Institute of Seattle studying fashion design. Our brother, Luke, was off playing college hockey at the University of Minnesota. He hadn’t been drafted by an NHL team, but he was starting to really come into his own there and was picking up the notice of a bunch of scouts. A late bloomer, Dad called him. Luke might just turn into one of those undrafted success stories someday. That was what he was hoping for, at least, and even if he’d driven me nuts for so many years when we were growing up, I wanted it for him, too. He was my brother.

  It was a lot easier to enjoy my brother and sister now that we were all adults. I hadn’t seen either of my siblings in way too long, so there was no chance I would pass up the opportunity to spend time with Dani. “Got it. No doctor’s appointments tomorrow.” That would give me at least a while longer before the nausea-inducing anxiety kicked in, anyway. I took off down the hall, my glass of water in hand, to get on my doctor’s schedule.

  My cell was ringing when I got back to the bedroom. Probably Derek. He had likely thought of something else he needed to hash out with me in voiding our contract. I answered it without even looking to be sure it was him.

  “What now?” I demanded, sounding harried and harassed, not that I really cared. I felt harried and harassed, damn it all.

  “Katie?”

  It wasn’t Derek. I didn’t need to look at my caller ID to know that it was Jamie, but I looked anyway to be sure I wasn’t losing my mind.

  No insanity plea necessary. Jamie Babcock, bracketed by a couple of red emoji hearts, lit up on the screen in front of my favorite picture of him. Blue eyes smiling at me, light brown hair in his trademark faux hawk, both dimples peeking out, and the hint of a blush pinking up his cheeks. I’d had that image on my phone since well before he’d asked to take me to my prom. I’d
found it on the Internet somewhere during his rookie season. It was one of those iconic pictures, the sort that sums up everything you love about a person in a single shot. This one had all his kindness, his shyness, the underlying confidence that never crossed over into ego. Looking at this shot always sent my heart pitter-pattering. I supposed Dad wasn’t the only one who could make me feel like I was a teenager again, although I didn’t mind it so much coming from Jamie.

  “Sorry,” I said, trying to zap the agitation from my tone. I had no earthly idea why Jamie was calling me, though. He hadn’t done it in years—not since the day I’d told him I was leaving for Hollywood. At first, I’d looked for this picture to pop up on my phone more times than I could count. But it hadn’t happened, so I’d given up on the idea before too long. I could have called him, of course, but I had the impression that he didn’t really want to hear from me or else he would have called. “Hi, Jamie,” I said once I thought I had my head on straight. “What…?”

  “Last night, your dad mentioned he thought you were going to be in town through the weekend,” he said after a minute, saving me from figuring out what I wanted to ask him.

  “Yeah. I’ll be around for a while.” I would definitely be here longer than just the weekend, especially now that I didn’t even have an agent anymore. But seeing as how I hadn’t filled my parents in on all of that yet, I didn’t know if I should tell Jamie. Particularly since I wasn’t sure what he wanted.

  “Can I… I mean, is there a chance I could get together with you sometime this weekend? I could take you out for coffee Saturday afternoon or something like that.”

  He wanted to get together with me? Coffee wasn’t a date, but it was a heck of a lot better than the awkward conversations we’d had when I was in town over the last four years. I didn’t have the first clue where this was leading, but I’d be an idiot not to see it through.

  “Sure. Coffee sounds good.” I wanted to spend as much time as I could with Dani while she was home, but she would understand if I carved out a few hours to be with Jamie.

  “You’re staying at your parents’ house? I can come pick you up at three.”

  “Three’s great.”

  We finalized our plans and hung up, and I was in a much better mood when I called Dr. Oliver’s office. They were able to work me in for Monday morning—soon enough to appease Dad but not so soon that I would start panicking until after I’d gotten together with Jamie, an event that was likely to cause a bit of panic in and of itself. I should be able to push it all from my mind until after my sister left on Sunday afternoon. It should work out for everyone.

  I was already confused about what I wanted before Jamie had called, though. Now… Now I feared I would never be able to separate what I wanted from Jamie.

  Although I wasn’t so sure that was a bad thing.

  The last time I parked in this driveway to pick Katie up had been the night of her prom. Sitting here with the engine running and my hands in a death grip on the steering wheel, I couldn’t help but replay that night over and over in my mind. It was already at the forefront of my thoughts and had been ever since the game on Thursday, when she’d walked back into my life, as she had so many times before.

  Ever since then, I’d been attempting to prepare myself for the moment she walked out of it again.

  It was coming. It always did. She showed up here and there to visit her family, but her life wasn’t in Portland anymore. And that brought up a harsh truth: I wasn’t part of her life. Not really. I might have been at one point, but these days I was just one of the guys on the team her dad coached. She was friendly enough to me when she came. She smiled at me and talked with all the animation and enthusiasm for life that she’d always had, and she kissed me on the cheek the same as she would with just about any of the boys. But then she always returned to her other life, to the glitz and glam of Hollywood and the lure of a career doing the things she loved. The things she was meant to do.

  I couldn’t blame her for that, for wanting to live out her dreams. I was doing the same thing here. There’d never been anything in my life I’d wanted more than to play in the NHL. When I was a kid, it had always seemed like a pipe dream, something that would prove to be out of my reach. Yet here I was, in my seventh season with the Storm and my first as the team’s captain.

  I had a great life. I had a job that half the guys growing up in Canada wished they had, I got to play on a team with one of my brothers, another brother might get a chance to play in the league at some point this season—albeit with a different team—I had a fantastic family who loved me, I earned more money than I would ever know what to do with… The list of things that made my life seemingly perfect went on and on.

  Yet the only thing I could focus on since Katie had showed up a couple of days ago was the one thing I didn’t have.

  Katie.

  I’d tried dating other girls in the last few years, but I couldn’t seem to put my heart into it. That wasn’t fair to them or to me. It really wasn’t fair when I was dating one of them and Katie would pop up somehow. I always got sullen and sulky at those times, enough that I could tell it for myself without someone pointing it out to me, and I wore my broken heart on my sleeve. It wasn’t their fault I was unable to love anyone but Katie, but I took it out on them. Then she would waltz back to Portland, like she had a few days ago. Sometimes she would have an asswipe boyfriend on her arm; other times it was just her. Either way, she would tell me she wanted us to be friends. She wanted us to go on like nothing had ever happened between us. Like she didn’t have her hand circled around my heart. Like she wasn’t squeezing the life out of it every time she left.

  That was why I’d asked to see her today. Not to get her back—that ship had sailed a long time ago—but to find a way to get my head on straight again. I couldn’t afford to have my focus divided every time she showed up in Portland or I saw her on TMZ and it took me by surprise. I needed to put a true end to whatever we had once been. I didn’t know if I could be her friend when something as simple as seeing her, talking to her, hurt like a son of a bitch.

  My cell buzzed on the center console. I glanced down to see a text message from Webs.

  You coming in, or are you waiting on a personal invitation? Should I send someone out to escort you?

  I didn’t know if he had any idea why I was really here. He hadn’t said anything at practice about me taking Katie out for coffee. He’d acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

  Ours was a very different relationship these days, Webs and me. He never gave me shit about Katie anymore. If anything, he was always lamenting the fact that I hadn’t had what it took to keep her with me. The two of us tended to see eye to eye when it came to the guys she dated of late, particularly how they weren’t good enough for her. There wasn’t anything I could do about that, though.

  If he knew I was sitting in the driveway, though, odds were high that Katie knew, as well. I shut off the engine and headed to the porch. Dani opened the door before I could ring the bell, throwing herself into my arms and giving me a kiss on the cheek.

  “Home for the weekend?” I asked after disentangling myself from her.

  “Drove down last night. Mom and Katie and I went for manis and pedis this morning, and Katie said she was going out for coffee with you this afternoon.” She peeked over her shoulder and dropped her voice. “She’s sticking around for a while this time, you know.”

  I didn’t know that, actually. And while I was sure Dani thought I’d be pleased to hear it—maybe thinking that our coffee date was meant to be a date—instead it made my heart sink. How the hell was I going to tell Katie what I needed to tell her if she wasn’t going to leave soon after? I didn’t want to hurt her in any way, but especially not if I would have to see her every now and then.

  Before I had a chance to come up with an appropriate response, Katie came down the stairs and smiled at me, and my gut twisted.

  “Ready?” I asked, holding out a hand. I shouldn’t have
done that. I shouldn’t have done anything that would lead to touching her without being able to really hold her.

  Sometimes, I could be my own worst enemy.

  She took it, slinging her purse strap over her other shoulder, and smiled at me. “Ready.”

  Her palm was warm and soft against mine, her hand barely larger than a child’s. Katie was tall and slender, with blue eyes I could get lost in, if I let myself. But really, it was her hair that did me in lately. It was long and a rich mahogany brown that fell in silken waves down past her shoulders. These days, it looked exactly as it had before she’d had cancer, rich and full of life. When I looked at her hair, all I wanted to do was bury my nose in it, run my fingers through it, hold on to it with all I had in me as a reminder that she was still here. Even now, a light citrus scent wafted up to me, and I knew it was from her shampoo. She’d used the same kind as long as I’d known her. In my mind, that scent had come to be part of her.

  Dani winked at me as I headed out the door with her sister, which only made me realize just how much I might be throwing away if I went through with what I intended. If I told Katie I couldn’t be her friend anymore, the whole Weber family would have it out for me. I could deal with Webs, even though he was the one I had to see the most often. I’d finally figured out he was all bark and no bite. Katie’s mom, Laura, had been like a mother of sorts to me since I’d first arrived in Portland, and Dani and Luke had treated me like I was a sibling.

  I opened the passenger door and waited for Katie to get in before closing it and heading around to my side. Now I wasn’t sure I could go through with it at all.

  “You look like you’re about to get sick all over me,” Katie said once I sat behind the wheel and shut my door.

  I quirked a grin at her. “I’ll be sure to roll down the window and do it outside the car. Wouldn’t want to get anything on you.” I hit the brake and pressed the button to start the engine.