Page 12 of Bombshells
But I’d sprung myself on him, because I wanted a big romantic reunion. Laughter, followed by the kind of kiss that sailors gave their women after returning from war.
I didn’t get it. And after that awkward greeting in the hallway with my teammates, I’d hurried away to regroup.
The candle flickers gently. It’s not a sign. My mother only communicates in lost hairpins and memories. “You did tell me to be patient,” I whisper. “A year ought to be enough, though. He doesn’t love me, Maman. It wasn’t real. I wish you were here. I wish you could tell me what to do.”
My voice cracks a little bit. I miss my mother so much that it aches. She and I were nothing alike, just as Bryce and I are nothing alike. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t get along. She was so strong and beautiful, and I thought she’d be with me forever. Instead, she was cut down on a sunny autumn day.
Nobody plans to die young. Nobody except my mother, that is. She’d had a will, which I guess is something responsible people do. But she’d also left me a letter.
It began: Dear Sylvie, if you are reading this, then I have left this Earth. But I will never leave you, my baby girl.
Maybe I should have waited to read it, because that first line cut me in half. The tears in my eyes made it hard to keep reading. She said so many loving things. And she reminded me to work on my patience.
But she followed that by telling me that I will be loved deeply and completely. And that Bryce was my soulmate.
The letter is tucked away in a shoebox now. It hurts too much to read it. And it won’t do me any good to read it again, anyway. Maman was amazing, and many of her words will doubtless prove true.
But as I sit here staring into the candle’s flame, I can’t help thinking that she got a few things wrong.
It hurts, too.
Five
The Right Kind of Screw
SYLVIE
“You have to admit,” Charli says from a corner of our sofa. “Bombshells is a terrible name for a team. What were they even thinking?”
“It’s not terrible at all,” Fiona argues from the other end. “I love it. A bombshell is a sudden revelation. An overwhelming surprise. That’s what we’re supposed to be, in this scenario—the thing that makes New York realize that women’s hockey is great. Plus, you get the alliteration with Brooklyn.”
“But it also means sexpot,” Charli sputters. “It’s evil marketing. They think they can only sell tickets by sexing us up. If they print posters with a naked woman riding on a missile, I will quit on the spot.”
“Hey,” I argue from the floor, where I’m stretching my quads on the new rug I bought yesterday. “The logo is a cartoon bomb. No boobs in sight. But if it meant we could be paid more, and that a women’s team could be profitable, I’d almost be willing to play topless.”
I’m joking, of course, for two reasons.
First, I don’t need the money because my bookkeeping job followed me to Brooklyn. “You can work remotely,” my dad had said. “And I’ll cover your apartment,” he’d added during the frenzied twenty-four hour period where I had to decide if I was going to change my whole life and move to Brooklyn. “Just go and give this thing a whirl. Don’t worry about money.”
And the second reason I’m joking about flashing my tatas for ticket sales is that I’m hoping to get a rise out of Bryce, who’s in my bedroom right now. That’s right, in my bedroom, where I always hoped he’d end up.
Be careful what you wish for, though. A couple hours ago he texted me, asking if he could come over. So I washed my hair and put on makeup, as well as a low-cut sleeveless top.
In my defense, it’s a warm September afternoon.
But when he came through the door, Bryce didn’t even give my outfit a glance. He was carrying a small toolbox and a brand new deadbolt lock, the kind you can install above the perfectly functional locks already in place on our door.
He’d given me a perfunctory kiss on each cheek and got straight to work installing the extra lock, while my teammates looked on in amusement.
To be fair, Bryce’s helpfulness is one of the things I’ve always loved about him. All the players who ever lived with us did chores. “This eez not a hotel,” my mother would say, pinning a schedule to the refrigerator. Everyone in our home was responsible for taking out the trash or washing dishes or vacuuming the floors, at least when they weren’t on a tour bus in the hinterlands of Canada.
Bryce’s contribution was on another level, though, right from the start. He’d call on his way home from the rink to ask if my mother or I needed anything from the store. He fixed doorknobs that had stopped turning, he hung shelves, and changed the oil in my mother’s car.
“So resourceful,” my mother used to say. “The finest young man I’ve ever met.”
Forty minutes ago, when Bryce had installed the lock on our front door to his satisfaction, I’d brought him a soda and led him into my room for a moment away from the prying eyes of Fiona and Charli.
“Listen, I appreciate your concern,” I’d said. “But I feel very safe here.” I’d sat down on the bed and patted the spot next to me. “I’m only two blocks from the rink. It’s a nice neighborhood.”
