Page 20 of Wicked Serve

“This is a quiet room,” she says, pointing to a sign on the wall.

I scowl at her as I silence the phone. She just blinks at me, clearly equally annoyed, before going back to work.

I spoke Russian to Isabelle three times: once because she asked if I was fluent, so I replied ??, and waxed poetic about how pretty she looked in the dress she was wearing, and two times while she was asleep. “Sunshine” describes her perfectly in English, but the Russian term of endearment, c???????, solnishko, translates more directly to “little sun,” and that’s what I think of when I look at her.

I haven’t seen her since she pressed her lips to mine and ran like she hadn’t just awakened every nerve in my body. If I’d been thinking clearly, I’d have dragged her back and told her exactly what I think about our summer fling.

Instead, she slipped through my fingers again.

My phone lights up with yet another call.

“Maybe you should take that,” the girl says.

“Maybe you should mind your own business,” I mutter as I stand, grabbing the phone.

I leave the quiet room and duck into an alcove in the hallway. I run my hand through my hair, rubbing the back of my neck, as the call connects. A cold tendril of panic hooks into my heart. I know I should block his number, but whenever I try, I can’t quite make myself.

Five minutes. I’ll give him five minutes.

“Dad?” I say in English.

“Only six calls this time. That’s an improvement.”

I’ve heard people call Russian a harsh language, but that’s not true if you understand it, and it always sounds extra-smooth coming out of my father’s mouth. I can imagine him perfectly, even though I haven’t seen him in person since my eighteenth birthday, when the no-contact custody agreement ceased. Tall and broad-chested, with a long, handsome face. A crooked nose, but that’s to be expected after a lifetime of playing hockey. Brown eyes like mine, and the same defined jawline. He has a face that looks good on camera. Even when his teeth were all chippy, his smile would draw stares.

I stand straighter, despite the fact he’s thousands of miles away and can’t actually see me. He used to hit my legs with his twig to correct my posture while skating, and it stuck.

I shouldn’t answer when he calls. However talented and charming he is—and believe me, plenty of people think he’s a great person, an excellent ambassador for Russian hockey—I shouldn’t keep letting him into my life. He’s a manipulative asshole when sober and worse when drunk. He controlled as much of my life as he could, and hurt my mother, and then eventually hurt me, that New Year’s Eve so long ago.

Sometimes I wake up drenched in cold sweat, unable to breathe. And sometimes... sometimes I wake up missing him. He put me in the hospital, and I haven’t eradicated the part of me that still loves him.

“What do you want?” I ask, switching to Russian. “I’m in the middle of something.”

“Visit me.”

I nearly drop the phone. “What?”

“You haven’t seen the club. I think you’ll change your mind once you tour it and meet everyone.”

“Change my mind about what?”

“I was always your best coach, Nikolai. You don’t need more college.”

“You have to be kidding.” I laugh shortly. “I’m not going to play for you.”

“Are you so sure that team in California will want you now? From what I heard, you made quite a mess.”

That team in California. Like he doesn’t know all the teams in the NHL; he spent a disastrous few years playing for the Penguins before injuries forced him—and his wife, and three-year-old son—to Moscow. He revived his career, but never made it back to the NHL.

“It’s none of your business.”

“You’re my son. Of course it’s my business.”

“I thought you wanted me to play for the NHL.” I’m glad I’m speaking Russian now, because I’m getting angry, and I doubt anyone passing by understands what I’m saying. When I was little, my father dreamed of making a comeback in the league through me. It shifted, once he retired from playing and started to coach professionally in the KHL, but I figured that wish wouldn’t have just gone away. Not completely. “Isn’t that where the money is? You always said things would have been different if you stayed in the league.”

Would they really have been different? Would he have loved my mother more? Would he have loved me more?

He sighs. My body tenses at that sound, anticipating a raised voice. But when he speaks, his tone is calm, almost flat.

---