Page 44 of Playmaker

“Oh my God!” I giggled. “So, windmill followed by a faceplant?”

“Mmhmm. It was hilarious. I’ve seen that video at least ten thousand times, and it still cracks me up.”

“It sounds funny as hell! Was he mad?”

“Oh, yeah. He grabbed his stick and left. He still played with us after that, but he stopped being such an ass to me.”

“Good.” I gestured with my drink. “Valuable life lesson for him.”

“Exactly! And actually, a few months after that, he stopped coming around. I thought he was mad about me playing, but then I found out it was because he had joined an ice hockey team. Which was how I learned ice hockey was a thing. So I talked my parents into getting me lessons, and here I am.”

“Wow. Does that kid know you’re at this level now?”

She laughed. “Well, considering he’s married to my sister now, he can’t really avoid it.”

I let out a laugh of disbelief. “Oh, yeah? What does he think?”

“He’s super supportive, just like the rest of my family. As I was getting older and he realized I was getting serious about hockey, he started helping me. Like we’d do little drills and scrimmages on the street, and if we were at the rink at the same time, he’d give me pointers.”

“Oh. Damn. So he really turned it around.”

“Maturity.” She shrugged. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

“There is that. Does he still play?”

Lila nodded. “Not pro or anything. He’s in a beer league, and he still plays in the street with my nieces and nephews and some of the neighbor kids. I sometimes join him, too. But he kind of saw how much hockey had to take over someone’s life if they wanted to pursue it as a career.” Her expression turned a little sad. “I knew I wanted to go to the Olympics the first year I saw women’s hockey at the Games, so I was on a serious trajectory from the time I was like eleven. I think Ian saw how much I had to pour myself into the sport, how expensive it was for my parents—all of that. And he just decided that wasn’t for him.”

I studied her, wondering how far to pursue this. I was curious about her history, but especially with as much as she’d resented the version of me she’d thought was real, it might’ve been a minefield of sorts. Treading carefully, I asked, “It was tough coming up, then? Playing hockey as a kid?”

She stared at the table, her expression distant. “It was hard. Like… really hard.”

“Yeah?”

Without looking up, she nodded. “My parents were amazing about supporting me, but hockey is stupid expensive. Especially when a kid grows out of their gear faster than they can wear it out.”

“I remember,” I said quietly. “After the divorce, my mom had a hard time paying for a lot of it.”

“My parents did too. I wore a lot of very, very used gear.”

I gave a cautious laugh. “Hey, some of that stuff wasn’t bad, though. It was already broken in.”

“I know, right?” She laughed too, and with some actual feeling. “The first time I got a new chest protector, I was like, what’s up with this bullshit?”

“Seriously. It was skates for me.”

“You didn’t use new skates?”

“Not until I was almost sixteen. My brother always gave me his old skates, so they were totally broken in.”

Lila groaned, absently stabbing at one of the remaining ice cubes in her glass. “Ugh, I wish I could go back and tell younger me to appreciate the used skates. Breaking in a new pair is just…” She made a hilariously disgusted face.

“Right?” I chuckled. “I’d wear my skates until they fell apart if the equipment managers would let me.”

“No kidding.” She stabbed at the ice cube again, then nudged the drink aside. She picked up her phone, but instead of looking at the screen, she just turned the device over and over with her long fingers as if she needed something to keep her hands occupied. “Anyway, so yeah, the equipment was expensive, plus all the fees and travel. That was tough on my parents, but they did the best they could.”

“That’s great,” I said. “That you had their support.”

“It is. And the other tough thing was… I’m a girl. When I was playing in U8 and U10, nobody really cared that I was a girl playing alongside the boys. Some of the boys could be a little weird, but… I mean, they were eight-year-old boys.” She shrugged. “We were all weird at that age.”

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