Page 19 of Ice Me Baby

Taz arches a brow as he asks, “Which player are you working on right now?”

I flip the page around to show him. “You.”

“Me?” He shuffles closer to me. “What kind of stuff do you have in there?”

I shrug and return to writing. “I have stuff about all past injuries. What injuries I need to keep an eye on for this season. What allergies you have. Stuff like that.”

He hums. “You got any personal notes in there?”

“Like what?” I ask absentmindedly.

“Like my favorite color or my favorite candy.”

Without thinking, I say, “Your favorite color is green if I had to guess, and I’ve seen you sneak M&M’s when you think no one is watching.” I realize then that it’s silent, which is odd considering their conversations had been my white noise for the last hour or so. I flick my gaze up again to find the guys all looking at me with deer-in-the-headlight eyes.

“What?”

Taz shakes himself before answering. “How do you know all that?”

Shrugging, I say, “I watch you guys practice on a daily basis, and I’ve picked up on things while I’ve spent hours a day observing you guys.” I point over to Ozzy with my pen. “He favors his left side when he hasn’t done enough stretching. Which is something we will be working on this week, by the way.”

He gives me a sheepish smile. “I wasn’t favoring my left side that much.”

I arch a brow. “If I noticed it, you were.”

“Well, you seem to know so much about us, but we know next to nothing about you,” Vicy points out.

Closing the notebook, I say, “Well, ask me whatever you want.”

Vicy taps his chin. “We should ask her something hard to answer. None of those easy questions.”

Surprisingly, It’s Lewi who speaks up. “How do you see yourself in life?”

Stunned by his question, it takes me a moment to form a reply. “How… how do I see myself?”

He nods like it’s a totally normal question. “Yeah. Are you where you want to be? Doing what you want to be doing? Do you still have dreams you want to strive for? That sort of thing.”

It takes me a moment to really think about my answer. Tapping the pen to my cheek, I say, “You guys know how waiting rooms work?”

They all nod as Lewi says, “Yeah.”

“So, it was like I’d been stuck in a waiting room. I was waiting and waiting for something to happen. You’re not sure if it’s going to be big or small, but you know something is going to happen. You’re just stuck waiting until it does.”

“You say, it was not is. Do you not feel that way now?” Oli asks from his seat on the loveseat behind me.

Looking down at the notebook on my lap, but not really seeing it, my brows furrow. “I feel like I’m no longer in the waiting room, instead I’m stuck behind a glass wall. I can see all these amazing things happening. One by one everyone’s dreams are coming true.”

“But your dream hasn’t come true, Roe Roe?” Taz asks.

I shrug. “I’m here as an athletic therapist for the NHL. It’s been a big dream of mine, and here I am. But…”

“But what?” Lewi pushes.

My eyes meet his as I say, “I’m still stuck behind the glass wall. I’m too afraid to let go of my past dream. As if it was never a dream at all. A forgotten dream, part of a forgotten past.” My eyes drop back down to my lap. “I don’t mind forgetting the past, it’s the dream I’m not ready to let go of.”

“Then don’t,” Oli says from behind me, as if it were that simple.

I meet his eyes and say, “But I’ll be stuck behind the glass wall. I’ll never be able to move forward.”

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