Page 28 of Power Play

“It died.”

For the past year, Janice had been coming by once a month to work on my jacked up feet. A hockey player’s feet were no joke and nail care was something I took very seriously. After Janice and I had our little fling several years back, she actually left Portland to enter a nursing program, which crushed me because no one had her magic touch.

So when I heard she moved back into town with her little girl, I begged her to take me on as a side job.

Things must not have worked out with her and Tess’s dad, which meant she was a single mom raising her kid, so naturally I gave her as much money as she would accept.

She would only agree to take me on if she could bring her daughter, which I was totally cool with. I liked kids. I mean, Tess was a little tricky in that she wasn’t into sports at all or video games. But it was all good. We figured out our thing. Mostly,she sat on the couch reading books while her mom worked her magic. But we did watch some shows together. And the kid was crazy about animals. Swear to God, I considered getting a dog, just so Tessa could love on it.

Whenever the team did cool family stuff, I always invited Tess and Janice. We went to the aquarium one time and there was that Cirque Du Soleil thing. It was fun.

In fact, there was one point where I almost wished things could have been different between me and Janice.

I liked Janice and I liked Tess.

But I wasn’t that guy. The guy to settle down without love, and I didn’t love Janice.

There were times I wished I could be that guy that fell in love. That got swept away with emotions.

There was only one time when love felt possible.

I glanced back down at the little girl. So serious with those glasses and her mouth set in a straight line. And I thought, for no good reason, of Kit.

“What’s up?” I asked Janice and shut the front door.

“Let me get Tess settled and then we can talk,” she said, and I followed them down my hallway of dreams as I liked to call it. All my jerseys and awards. The good press clippings. Pictures with movie stars.

Maybe that’s why the little girl reminded me of Kit. She wasn’t impressed by any of this stuff either. She held her mom’s hand and marched down the hallway like my whole life was uninteresting.

“Wanna hear a joke?” I said.

“Yes,” Tess said, looking over her shoulder at me as we walked by my Olympic gold medal.

“Why did the old man fall in the well?” I asked.

Yes, I looked up dad jokes to tell her. I was shameless.

She thought about it until we got into the living room where she turned around to face me. Her hands on her hips like she was a coach giving a locker room dressing down. “Why?” she asked, and I was pleased she didn’t come up with the punchline herself. Half the time she did. The kid was smart.

“Because he couldn’t see that well.”

Tess smiled, revealing her missing front tooth. “Good one,” she said.

It was no Stanley Cup, but her smile made me happy.

Janice opened up her bag and pulled out a book and a little water thermos for Tess. God bless, women and their bags. They were like magician’s hats. Even the little ones. I saw a woman at a party pull a bottle of Jack out of her purse with little collapsible shot glasses.

It was amazing.

“I’m just going to talk to Liam in the kitchen, okay?” Janice asked her daughter. Tess, already curled up on my giant couch and immersed in her book, gave her mom a thumbs up.

That book she was reading was serious too. Not a coloring book. Or one of those picture books. Like there were chapters and she needed a bookmark.

I found myself following Janice again, this time to the kitchen.

She wore a dress, navy blue and not tight, but not loose either. It looked seriously classy. Like she was an actress in a law show. Even her hair was classy. Coiled up at the back of the head.

The party girl I’d met that summer six and a half years ago was long gone. The professional who came and did my nails usually wore baggy sweatshirts and yoga pants.

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