by April Fire
“Why not?”
We sat out, wrapped up in robes, and went to town on all the food that Jones had ordered; tea, coffee, pancakes, fruit, croissants, toast. I hadn’t realized how starving I was, having skipped dinner the night before. Once I was satiated -- and trust me, that too an impressively long time -- I sat back in my seat and looked over at Jones. Okay, there were some things that needed to be said here.
“When are you going back?” I asked, my voice small. I didn’t want to have to imagine him leaving, not so soon, but this had obviously been some kind of desperate mission of romance, and I couldn’t imagine he’d be let off from training that easily.
“Tomorrow,” he admitted, and my heart sank. He took my hand reassuringly, squeezed, and then spoke again.
“And I’d like you to come with me.”
“Huh?”
“The way your family were speaking to you back there…” he trailed off, apparently too annoyed to go on. “It’s your decision, but I’d love it if you didn’t have to put up with that shit. And maybe…it would be easier to raise the baby together if you were a little closer. I can’t leave the city, but if you like…”
“What, would I be moving in with you?” My voice was higher than I had expected. I was excited at the prospect, but nerves were nagging at the edge of my brain; I wanted to take this slowly, wanted to take my time.
“I was going to set you up with an apartment in the city,” he replied casually, as if offering to buy me a place was nothing.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I know it’s a lot, but I can’t ask you to drop everything and move across the country for my convenience and not offer to pay for at least, well, all of it.”
“I have some savings put away,” I waved my hand. “And you know I wouldn’t let you pay for everything by yourself. I’m a self-sufficient woman, I’ll have you know.”
“Oh, I know,” he flashed me a smile. “Just that the prices in the city are stupid-expensive and I’ve got all these earnings that aren’t going anywhere.”
“You can help out,” I responded carefully. “If you want.”
“I do,” he confirmed. “But don’t worry, I’m not going to interfere. I just want you and the baby closer, that’s all.”
“That sounds pretty fucking good,” I nodded with a sigh, draining my fruit juice and placing the glass back of the table. “I don’t think I can bear it here another day.”
“I know, I heard the shit your family--“
“And not just them,” I cut across him, glad to finally have someone to bitch about this to. “Everywhere I go, it’s people looking at me like they’re embarrassed for me. Everyone knows about David and the wedding, and you can be sure that if my family knows about the pregnancy, now everyone else does too.”
“I forgot how bad this place could be,” he groaned. “I remember when we were in high school, everyone knew everything about everybody.”
“Yeah, it’s still pretty much just as bad,” I agreed. “Except that instead of who’s throwing up their lunch, it’s who got dumped by their fiancé at the altar. I think that little escapade provided gossip for this place into infinity.”
“Probably,” he shrugged. “So you’d be happy to get out?”
“Hell, yes,” I nodded. “And that money that we were supposed to use for our honeymoon, it’s got to go somewhere.”
“Well, you will be getting out of town,” he pointed out. “So, I suppose it’s not being entirely misused.”
“Exactly,” I raised a new glass in a mock-toast towards him and took another sip. “God, I can’t wait till I can have champagne with this OJ again. That’s the one thing I miss about not being pregnant.”
“Well, not long to go now,” he glanced towards my stomach, even though my bump was hidden under swathes of dressing gown.
“Well, five months,” I pointed out, placing my hand on my bump for comfort. It was small but certainly there- I wondered how big it would get over the next twenty weeks. Mom had been tiny, but then, her sister had grown into the size of a boat over the course of both her pregnancies.
“It’s going to go so fast, I promise,” he smiled. “By the time we’ve got you all moved in and set up down there—“
“And then all the time I’m going to spend in bed with you,” I raised my eyebrows at him playfully. “It’ll fly right by.”
“Is sex good for the baby?” He looked confused. “Sorry, I’m so clueless about all this stuff.”
“I don’t know about the baby, but it’s good for me.” I fluttered my lashes up at him in an exaggerated tease. “And I’ll lend you all the baby books I own. You can read up on everything before she comes.”
“It’s a girl?” His face lit up, but I shook my head.
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “I guess I just can’t imagine having anything but a little girl.”
“Fair enough,” he took a bite of his toast. I hesitated before I spoke again, knowing that there were some questions that hadn’t been addressed that I needed dealt with.
“Jones?” I looked up at him, my brow furrowing. His eyes widened with worry.
“What is it?”
“Those…other women,” It was painful to even talk about them, painful just to linger on their existence, but I knew I had to know the answer to my question.
“Yeah?”
“Are they still in your life?” I forced myself to meet his gaze, however much I wanted to pretend this conversation wasn’t happening. “Are we…exclusive, now?”
“Yes,” he looked relieved, as though he had been expecting something so much work. “Oh God, yes. It’s just you. It always has been.”
“But you said about the--” I was confused, but he held his hand up.
“She asked me out, but I said no. I was asking you about it because I wanted to check if you were in the same place I was,” he explained, and when I opened my mouth to point out how dumb it was, he got there first.
“And yes, it was pretty fucking stupid,” he agreed. “But I was stupid. Am stupid, probably, in ways I haven’t even thought of yet.”
“Probably,” I agreed. “So…it’s just us?”
“Kyra, I don’t offer to get apartments for all my women in the city, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he pointed out gently. I grinned and looked down at my lap for a moment.
“I know, I know,” I nodded. “I just needed to hear it.”
“You know I’ll never have a problem saying it,” he murmured, leaning towards me over the table. I lifted my gaze to meet his, and I knew then and there that we were going to say it; that it was going to happen. It was soon, too soon by all the standards I’d lived my life by, up until that point, but I couldn’t have given less of a damn. I needed to hear it, and I needed to say it. We were just waiting in that sweet moment before it happened, both of us taking our time, urging the other to come out with it first.
“I love you,” I whispered, and a smile so enormous it looked as though it would split his face in two erupted across his cheeks.
“I love you too,” he affirmed, and leaned towards me to kiss me. All morning breath forgotten, I kissed him back, happily losing myself to this man, this man who’d waited so long for me, who’d come back for me, and who loved me. It didn’t get much better than this.
Cutting Ice
April Fire
1
EMILY
I would have cried all the way there if I wasn’t driving myself.
I had never been so torn about making such a huge life decision; every other time, the obvious answer had presented itself to me, and I’d gone with that. When it came time to break up with my high school boyfriend to go to college across the country, I knew exactly what I was meant to do, so I dumped Darren and hopped on a plane to New York. Hunting my first job, I wondered briefly whether leaving my entire life behind so I could pick up an editorial position on a small but prestigious paper all the way back across the States was the righ
t decision- but I knew in my heart that it was. But this time, when the call had come through, I was left completely unsure as to what I was really meant to do.
The call, which my editor Paul directed straight to my office, was from one of our higher-ups, the head of the publishing corporation that owned the paper. They were pitching a story- a story that Paul knew would be right up my alley. I’d written about sports for as long as I’d written, and was currently doing a weekly column for the paper that had been pretty well-received so far. So when the head office got in touch and said that they wanted someone to go immerse themselves in an up-and-coming hockey team across the country and write an investigative piece on their rise to notoriety, there was only one person they were ever going to send out to cover it. I remember nodding my way through the phone call as though they could see me, before I hung up and stared at the opposite wall for five full minutes.
I really thought I would be here for at least the next few years or so. Yeah, the article wouldn’t take forever to write- I would be gone six months at the most- but it was another upheaval. I had hoped that when I chose to come to the Herald, I would finally find some of the stability I’d been craving since I left home. And I had found it. I had found it with Joel.
We’d met through work. I was covering the opening of his new restaurant back when I first arrived, and we hit it off at once The age difference didn’t seem to matter too much (he was thirty-one when we met, a full decade older than me), and we soon fell for each other and moved in together. I’d been so busy with work before that I had never bothered much with relationships, and he was the first. I loved him with every inch of my being, more than I thought it was possible to love someone.
Loved. That was the operative word, I thought, as I finally saw the lights of the town I would be living in for the next few months on the horizon. When I told him about the opportunity I’d been given, I assumed that it would be a bit of a change for us, but that we would stick it out. It wasn’t forever, and after all, absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?
“I’m not waiting for you that long,” Joel snapped, wiping his hands on the towel next to the stovetop. I leaned up against the counter, gripping on for dear life.
“Why not?” I demanded. “We’ve been together two years. I won’t even be gone that long!”
“It’s not you going,” he sighed. “It’s that you don’t…you obviously don’t want to settle down yet.”
It took me by surprise, but he was right. He had ten years on me, and he would be looking at starting a family and getting married and here I was, running off across the country to pursue a story and leaving him behind.
So we broke up, and I packed a bag full of clothes and pictures, throwing everything into the back of my car. At least I didn’t have to worry about finding a place to stay. The paper was paying for my accommodation, so I wouldn’t have to slink back to my family and ask to crash on their couch for a while. Still, it felt as though my heart physically ached. I had thought we were forever, in the foolish, certain way you think your first love will last. I had known that it was wrong from the start, if I was honest with myself, known that we were at different places in our lives, but I had ignored it in the hopes that we could figure something out one day down the line. Turns out I had just been putting off the inevitable.
It was a seven-hour drive, and I did it in a day, desperate to put as much distance between myself and him as I could. I had been given the name of the town and the location of the training ground that I’d be hanging out at for the next few months, and that was it. The team management had agreed for me to come cover the team in the hopes of attracting a few sponsors, but Paul reminded me that that didn’t mean I had to produce a flattering story. I hadn’t written an investigative piece on this level before, and I was nervous about pissing someone off- the team, the players, my editors. I just had to trust that they wouldn’t have sent me here if they didn’t think I could do it.
It was late when I pulled up to the apartment they had put aside for me. I fumbled in my pocket for the key I’d been sent a few days prior, unlocked the door, and made my way upstairs.
I found my apartment, opened the door, and flicked on the light. It was small, a studio, but it was just what I needed after leaving Joel. I didn’t want acres of empty space that only I could fill. The smallness of the place made me feel a little less lonely.
I dumped my suitcase next to the bed, and fell face-first into the threadbare mattress. And, although I’d been fighting the urge to cry since I left the city, I found that the tears weren’t forthcoming. Maybe I was too tired, maybe I was too nervous about tomorrow, but I didn’t want to cry. I flipped onto my back, stared at the ceiling, and wondered if this escape might have been a better decision that I thought.
2
SAM
“Hey man, you coming out tonight?”
As I pulled off my pads and stripped out of my sweaty clothes, I shook my head.
“Nah,” I replied with a shrug. “Boss wants to talk to me.”
“What have you done now?” Derrick rolled his eyes teasingly at me and closed his locker, leaning up against the cold metal and observing me with amusement.
“Nothing!” I protested.
“That you remember,” he flashed me a smile, and went to grab his stuff. “I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah,” I waved him off. “Catch you then.”
I slammed my locker door shut, and stared at my distorted reflection in the metal in front of me. I flashed myself a smile, trying to psych myself up. The boss wouldn’t want anything serious with me. I was killing it in training, and I’d scored four times in our last couple of matches.
I wondered if this had anything to do with the guy in the stands I hadn’t recognized. He’d sat in at training today, and seemed to be paying plenty of attention to me. I didn’t think much of it at the time, too focused on the game at hand, but now I thought about it. It was kind of out of character for the boss to let anyone else see our training methods. It must have been something big.
I made my way through to his office, pausing for a moment when I found myself face-to-face with the plaque on his door: Johnson Mapplethorpe, Coach. We always joked among ourselves that he had two last names for a name, and I smirked slightly at the memory. I wiped it hurriedly from my face. The last thing I wanted was to be caught out grinning like an idiot at some joke at his expense. He wouldn’t take kindly to that.
I pushed open the door, and Johnson looked up. His glasses were pushed to the top of his head, and he quickly whipped them off. He never liked to be seen with his glasses on.
“Sam, come in,” he nodded to the seat opposite him. “Take a seat.”
I did as I was told, glancing down at the paperwork on his desk. It was covered up by an enormous unfolded newspaper, something called the Herald. He had it open to the sports pages, with a column circled in blue pen. I looked back up at him, and managed a smile.
“What’s up?” I asked, hoping that I was going to like whatever answer he gave me.
“Sam,” he steepled his fingers and looked over the top. “I’m not going to beat around the bush here. An offer has come in.”
“Huh?” I wrinkled my nose. We were barely out of the local leagues. Surely, no one was paying that much attention to us?
“A scout from the Philadelphia Soars was in the stadium today,” he continued matter-of-factly. “He liked what he saw, and they’d like to make an offer for you.”
“What the fuck?” My eyes widened. The Soars? They’d been around for decades, one of the best teams in the country. I had to be getting screwed with. Johnson cocked an eyebrow at my language, and I lowered my eyes apologetically.
“You don’t have to go,” his voice was a little softer, hopeful, as though he didn’t want me to leave. “But they’ll need a decision by the end of the month.”
“This month?” I exclaimed, parroting every word that came out of his mouth in my surprise. He nodded.
“That’s right,” he affirmed. “If you go…they’re offering quite a price for you, Sam. It would be a big boost to the team’s finances if you went…”
My jaw hung open, and he quickly dismissed that line of reasoning.
“But it’s up to you, Sam,” he promised, reverting to the Dad-like kindness and sympathy that he could occasionally display for his players.
“Is that it?” I asked. I needed to get out. It felt as though the walls of his office were closing in on me, and I might be trapped forever unless I got out now.
“That’s it,” he nodded, and I got to my feet.
“Sam?”
I turned to look at him, my fingers already wrapped around the door handle.
“Take your time with this.”
I nodded sharply but didn’t answer, opening the door and heading out into the corridor. I could hear the squeaking of the shoes of the kids who came in to practice after we did. I headed to my locker to grab my stuff, and then out to my car. I sat there for a few minutes, my brain spinning. How had this happened?
I looked over to the doors of the stadium, and thought back to the first time I’d walked through them. It had been almost ten years ago, when I was in middle school, that I first picked up a hockey stick, and I loved it at once. I got picked up for the high school team, and, when I left, I declined college and instead went to join the Kingstown Crows. Back then, we were a tiny team, hardly even notable on a local level, known by practically no one. We barely even existed. I had always hoped to move up from them one day, as did everyone who had started out there. And then, something strange happened” we started to win.
It started with just a few games here and there, enough to land us in the upper half of our state-wide league for the first time in a few years. Though I wanted us to go further, I put it down to luck, used my bonus to move into my own place and go out for way too many nights on the town. The next year, we ended up at the top of the state league, getting promoted to a tri-state table that we hadn’t seen the likes of in more than two decades. And now, we were slowly crawling our way up that. Where other teams seemed hung up on what they might lose, we were focused on what we could gain, and it was thrillingly exciting to watch our stock slowly increase as we put away goal after goal, to see our stadium begin to fill out as coming to watch us play on a Saturday night became a legitimate pastime for the people of Kingstown. We turned from town wide punchlines into something people could be proud of, and I wasn’t ready to leave that behind.