Page 80 of On the Power Play

Delia frowned. "So how do you know each other if you didn't play on the same team?"

"Fly was helping out on the coaching staff for World Juniors the first year I was there."

"World Juniors?"

Fly leaned in so he didn’t have to yell over the noise from the crowd. "A tourney for national teams with players under age twenty."

Delia turned to Jack. "National teams? As in, you played for Team Canada?"

Jack nodded. "So did this guy. Just back when you and I were in diapers."

Fly scoffed. "You were at least swinging on the monkey bars by then, bud." He pointed at the other side of their bench. "That's my girlfriend. She didn't want to walk over everybody, but I'm sure she'd love to say hi to both of you at some point."

"Between first and second." Jack said.

Delia got the reference and felt embarrassingly pleased with herself. There are three periods in hockey. At least she had that much straight.

The stands were filling up fast, and their own section had multiplied exponentially since they'd sat down. Delia nudged Jack as Fly shuffled back toward the steps. "Tell me who everyone is."

Jack started at the top with an older woman wearing a navy blue quilted coat over a sweater that looked like it had come straight off the rack at Northern Reflections. She was showing something on her phone to a little girl with strawberry blonde hair. "That's Ryan's mom and his daughter Amaya."

"He's on the team?"

Jack nodded. "Yeah, I'll point him out to you during the game. That's Jenna?—"

"I know her from the livestream."

Jack shot her a look. "If you fake cheat on me with Country, we're going to have words."

Delia laughed. "Imagine the press on that, though. You'd be the poor sap who got blindsided by a fame-hungry pop star. Women would flock to you." Joking was good. Even if she was still circling her attraction to him like a coyote. How was it so bad? How was it So. Good?

"True. Though, I doubt Jenna will see the benefits." He pointed at a group of women sitting next to her. "Those are some of Jenna's friends. I honestly don't remember all their names, but I know that one sitting next to her is Rhonda."

Delia raised an eyebrow, noting Rhonda's bronze skin, her high cheekbones and tight sweater. Interesting that he remembered her name and nobody else's. Guilt sank in her stomach at the thought after everything Jack had told her back at the bed and breakfast. Jack hadn't been with someone in three years. On paper, they both sounded crazy.

But hookup culture was stressful. Awkward. She'd faked an orgasm just to make one of her trial experiences end, then pretended she had a dog that needed to be let out so she could escape before nine o'clock. Not that he would've wanted her to stay since they hardly knew anything about each other. She'd never felt so empty as when she'd walked down that sidewalk to her car.

Sex felt incredible, yes, but with someone she didn't feel a real connection with? There were a lot of things that were pleasurable for longer than two minutes and didn't chase with existential dread and self-loathing. Sitting on the beach. Eating a dark chocolate brownie, for example. If anything, Jack's avoidance of physical relationships after being with someone he'd wanted to spend forever with made her jealous, not judgmental. He’d had something real. What was her excuse?

"That's Mike's family, Curtis's wife and kids." Jack finished off the row, then pointed to the end of their bench. "You already know the Thompson's, but that's Penny on the end there. Brett's girlfriend. And right below her are two of Emma's friends, Lindsay and Vaughn. She works with them doing design and photography. They come to the pub and Sunday Supper every once in a while. They're the ones that helped with the renovation of the bed and breakfast you're at."

Hands shot up, waving at Jack when they noticed him looking their direction. Delia took them all in. Talking and laughing, handing out beers from a cooler, hugging, smiling.

They sat back down on their fold-out foam seats. "You’ve only known these guys since October?”

“Yeah.”

She shook her head. “It’s impressive. How close everyone seems. Like you're one big happy family."

Jack exhaled. "That's what a team is supposed to be."

Delia thought about the only teams she'd ever been on, most recently IndieLake. Some of them had felt like this. Debate team. Definitely a strange, close-knit little family in grade ten. Her weekend team at the restaurant. Some of them had been better team players than others, specifically the cook who always left her a thick slice of mocha mud pie on the edge of the counter around eleven o'clock when the lounge was still full but the dining room was slowing down.

But IndieLake didn't feel like a team. Not like the Snowballs, at least.

Delia perked up when all the players started back toward their benches. "Are we starting?"

Jack nodded, and it was only then that Delia noticed his brows were knitted together. So easy to read. “Are you nervous?" He shot her a confused look. "For the Snowballs. You said this game will determine who they play first in the playoffs, right?"

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