Page 23 of Love You Too

It doesn’t help that I’m having trouble focusing since thoughts of Trix naked on my bed keep pushing out more productive team strategies. It helps even less that I’ve been in communication with her daily about Truman, which is entirely my fault because I can’t resist texting and flirting with her. While I was with my mom in Vermont, she turned dog-sitting into a three-day vacation for my dog, complete with a video diary of each day.

I could never see much of her in the videos—generally shoes or her shadow on the ground—but that just added to my fixation on trying to see more. The only slight insight into her life was a pair of Oscar the Grouch slippers.

I’d hoped to run into her once I moved to the area, but after one afternoon with her, I’m haunted by feelings I’ve tried my best to bury. I know our night together was a one-time way to get her out of a no-sex rut, so I shouldn’t have any grand ideas about it happening again. But if it happened again…yeah, I’m getting ahead of myself.

It means that even though I’m focused on the team’s problems and how we can get our mojo back, a part of my brain is preoccupied thinking about seeing Beatrix again. Thinking about how it felt to have her naked body wrapped around mine, specifically. It’s unhelpful when I need my full focus on the team. This is whyI don’t get involved with women in general. But this isn’t just any woman, and my brain knows it.

So basically, I’m fucked.

Relationships and hockey have not mixed well for me, which is why I avoid them. I’m a one-trick pony, and in order to stay focused on the sport, I can’t have any outside distractions.

The idea that I could actually renovate the Napa place during the off-season is laughable, now that I’ve gotten started thinking about it. And adding Beatrix Corbett into the mix brings back memories of how I almost jeopardized my chance at a pro career because I was so besotted with her. I can’t focus on more than one thing at a time, at least not well. It’s something I’ve known since I was a kid, instilled in me by my mom back when I was a wild child with too much energy to burn—I need to stay focused.

She was a single mom doing the best she could to work and raise me. And I was a handful, distracted and energetic—Hurricane Renaldi, she called me, right up until I found my way to a junior hockey league and spent hours every day practicing and expending all the energy I didn’t know what to do with.

Hockey was my refuge, and I was good. I kept my focus on the ice and said no to anything that could derail my future as an athlete. By senior year of college, with pro offers all but guaranteed, I let myself slip a little bit. Let myself fall for a certain blue-eyed woman and lost myself in her. She was nearly my downfall, and a part of me would have sacrificed my future Stanley Cup wins to have her. That’s how dangerous she was for me.

So maybe it’s a good thing now that Beatrix made it abundantly clear that her interest in me is one and done. She’s a temptation I’m not sure I could leave for a second time.

Case in point, I can’t stop thinking about her and sending flirty texts. I know I should stay away from her, but my heart seems to be steering the ship. For the first time in my life, I want to see where it leads me.

“Renaldi, you with us?” The deep rasp of Coach Barrington’svoice shocks me out of my reverie, and I refocus on the drill we’re in the middle of. The puck sits at my feet, and I’ve been daydreaming and not doing my job. Shit. This is why I don’t get into things with women. Any distraction is kryptonite to my performance out here, and the team needs all my focus.

“Yup. Sorry. Just missed a beat there.”

I tap the puck with my stick and take it out on the ice, passing easily to Ludovic Bruner, who passes it back to me before I take a shot on goal. It misses by inches, and my teammates whoop and give me shit for my lousy aim. I take the beating because they’re right and because it’s a rarity for me to shoot left of goal, especially when there’s no one on defense. This is the most basic drill there is, a warmup we do every single day. And five minutes into practice, my attention is drifting to Beatrix. Again.

I shake my head and feel the rattle of my helmet. Gotta knock some sense back into myself. No daydreaming. There’s way too much at stake for me to spend a single extra second thinking about Trix and how explosive we are together, even if I’ve spent the past ten years thinking about her constantly.

One and done.

The next time the puck lands at my feet, I go harder, hustling up the ice so fast that Ludo can barely keep up. He slaps the puck back to me, and I aim for the corner of the goal. Our goalie’s hands go down, but he’s too late. The puck hits the back of the net. The way it should be. The way it needs to be every time.

The rest of the afternoon training goes well, and I keep myself laser focused on the team and the drills we need to hammer over and over again. The more shots we take on goal, the better. It’s muscle memory, even when the circumstances are different in each game—different defender in a different spot, different puck speed, different arena with slicker ice or sticky spots. We need to roll with all of those tiny changes, so the areas of consistency become even more important.

The feeling of my stick slapping the puck into a corner of thegoal will always be better than any other feeling. I know my teammates agree, and as captain, I need to capitalize on the slightly better mood I can feel coming off the guys as we head to the locker rooms.

A couple hours later, the team sits at a long table in the training center, and the mood is light. There’s a buzz of relief that we trained well today, at least in terms of fitness. Team unity and morale will come. I make a little speech about how each opportunity on the ice is a new beginning, and all the work we do in training is money in the bank for future games. But we need to work as a team and that means swallowing down our superstar egos sometimes.

“I’m as guilty of it as anyone, and I fully admit I need to do better. I want our team to succeed more than I want even a minute of glory on the ice.” There are some whistles and nods of agreement. “Everyone looked good today. All fuel for what we do tomorrow.”

Coach Barrington nods at me before taking over with a strategy talk and game tape. I’ve earned back his trust after my daydreaming moments earlier. Hopefully, I’ll build some camaraderie little by little, and we’ll all hit our groove well before the start of the season. That will take some heat off of me, and judging from the sheen of sweat on the back of my neck, I need it.

By the end of practice,I’m drained. The last thing I feel like doing is driving over an hour to Napa, but Beatrix has already had Truman for four days, and I don’t want to push my luck.

More than that, I want to see her.

The drive flies by, and I wait outside the door, wondering if we got our wires crossed because I’ve knocked twice and there’s no answer.

I’m about to knock for the third time when the door flies open and Beatrix appears, hair wet and twisted into a knot. She’s not wearing a stitch of makeup, which makes her pale eyes stand out even more against her pale skin and dark hair. Her raspberry ice cream lips curve into a smile when she sees me. It nearly knocks me on my ass to see her light up like that. And if I’d thought I could stop thinking about her, I can see that’s not going to be an option. No fucking way.

“Sorry. We were in the shower.” She shakes out a towel that was curled up in her hand. I catch a whiff of the jasmine scent of her shampoo.

My heart flutters for a moment before dropping to my stomach. I shouldn’t feel the prick of jealousy at the idea that she was showering with some other “one-and-done” guy who had the good fortune of soaping up her gorgeous body. I don’t need complications in my life. I just don’t want to see the guy traipsing up behind her in a towel. The glimmer of excitement I felt to see her evaporates on the stale breeze that shuffles past in the dry heat. Without intending to, I ball my hands into fists.

Then I see Truman. He crashes through the entryway, flies around the side of Beatrix, and rams into my shins. His fur is scraggly and wet, and his body looks about half the size it normally is. And I’m confused. She showered with some guyandmy dog?

“So…he’s wet…”

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