Page 1 of Rookie Recovery

Chapter 1

Jamie

I still dreamed of skating.

Frigid air whipping my face, blades cutting into ice, stick soft under sweat-soaked gloves. The roar of the crowd—a mottled cacophony of cheers and boos and swears and taunts. The smell like winter cold and locker room perspiration, anticipation and fear, all rolled into one.

I even felt the tranquility embedded deep in my soul despite the high of adrenaline, the crash of my heart against my ribs, the heave of lungs. All so familiar, so real. So present. That pulsing rhythm of the game. Hockey. Life. Hockey. Life. Play. Win. Play. Win. Play. Win, win, win.

Peace, calm, rightness. This was where I belonged.

And then, I woke up.

To a seventy-pound golden retriever sitting on my chest licking my eyeballs.

“All right, Brady, I’m up.” I nudged the wriggling, waggling ball of oversized fluff off my lap. “It’s Saturday. Don’t I get to sleep in?”

Not that I’d been out partying last night and needed sleep. Not that I was ever out anywhere these days. I pushed myself up—only to realize I was not in my bed. Or anyone else’s bed. Nothing that exciting. I was, in fact, sprawled out on my living room couch. Late morning sunlight streamed in through my balcony doors and the floor-to-ceiling windows alongside them.

“Dammit.” I swung my legs over the edge of the massive leather couch to rub the ever-present ache from my left knee. Assessed the still-open laptop on the coffee table, the papers sprawled all around it in a tidal wave of disorganized career advancement and life goals and other adult-sounding things I should’ve tackled earlier than thirty-seven years into my existence.

Brady whined, then thumped her paws on the couch cushion in an attempt to get me fired up and ready for the day—or at least ready to take her for a walk. Instead, I rubbed sleep from my face and woke up my laptop.

Lesson Seven, the screen still read, right where I’d left it at some wee hour of the morning before I’d—evidently—toppled backwards in sheer exhaustion. Or some subconscious acceptance that while a physical therapy doctorate degree was within my ability to obtain, somehow, a basic business certificate was not.

Dr. James Sullivan, DPT—business school dropout.

Such a nice ring.

Brady whined, and when that didn’t do the trick, took her game to the next level with a cool jab of her paw to my thigh. Sidewalk-softened pads scraped over my gym shorts, and when I gave in and made eye contact, she commando-crawled herself across the couch and into my lap.

I dug my fingers into her fur and closed the laptop. Business school could wait. Maybe my brain would wrap around profit margins and Maslow’s fucking Hierarchy of Needs better after some fresh air and a few hours in the weight room.

Right. Keep lying to yourself, Jamie.

On the table, my phone blinked with a new message I could have replied to without even reading. But I opened it anyway. Sure enough …

Katie: You’re coming tonight, right?

There it was.

Katie was my closest friend—in work and outside of it—but sometimes, she didn’t know when to lay off.

Me: No.

I stood, displacing the extra seventy pounds of golden retriever from my lap so I could more effectively hobble into the open kitchen, bypassing the formal—rarely used—dining table. The chef’s kitchen was all granite, stainless steel, slick tile, and a whole bunch of other fancy things I didn’t need. Instead, I hauled the blender out of the drying rack.

Katie called while I was pulverizing protein powder, banana, and peanut butter into something that might have been lunch or breakfast, but was ultimately another bachelor meal.

“I told you I’m not going.” I shoved the phone between my shoulder and ear to drink and tie my sneakers at the same time. I couldn’t pass business school, but I could multitask like a motherfucker.

“Stop being an old man.” Katie huffed on the other end of the line, probably in from a long run through the city, or up north at one of the trails around Moosehead Lake. Off season, she did a lot of running.

“I resent that.” I reached for the leash hanging on the coat hook by the door. Brady spun four circles, sat, then spun two more, in case I’d missed the first batch. “I have to study.”

“Study, shmudy.” Katie’s eye-roll was almost visible in her voice. “That’s an excuse to avoid fun and team spirit and hockey all at once, and you know it.”

“Bullshit.” I opened the door in small increments so Brady didn’t barrel through like a horse from the gates and followed her out into the hall. “I do actually want to pass this class.”

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