Page 10 of The Fall

A smile tugs at my lips. “I’m bringing some sticks and pucks next time so we can play hockey in the hallways here. I’ll show you a winning record.”

“My left hip hasn’t been broken yet. That should do it.”

We start a new game of chess and this time, I play the way Arthur taught me. Before meeting him at Pine Haven a year ago, I’d never played a game of chess. Now I can beat six of the seven teammates who play against me when we’re on the road. I’ll never beat Sergei. His Russian grandfather was a professional chess player, and he taught Sergei well.

“How’s the knee holding up?” Arthur asks.

“It’s good.”

I tweaked my knee during training camp and Arthur worries I’m playing with an injury. Even though our team doctor and team trainer have checked me out and cleared me to play, Arthur still asks me about it pretty much every time I visit.

He lost his only son to cancer nineteen years ago, and he has no other surviving family. I’m an only child and my parents have both been gone for more than a decade. We both know what it’s like to feel alone.

I take my hand off my bishop after moving it and Arthur howls in annoyance. “Of all the boneheaded moves...You’ve got shit for brains, you know that?”

I grin. “Watch your blood pressure, old man. I don’t want to have to shock you back to life with that defibrillator on the wall.”

He grunts. “You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you?”

“I wouldn’tnotenjoy it. Looks fun when I see people doing it on TV.”

“Still no TV here at the Haven.” He scowls as he speaks. “Cable’s been out for more than two weeks now.”

“You want to use my laptop? I’ve got all the streaming apps on it.”

He wrinkles his face in disgust. “I wouldn’t know an app if it bit me in the ass.”

“I can show you how to use it. It’s easy.”

“Nothing’s easy when you’re as old as I am. Takes me half a damn hour to walk down to the dining room.”

“But then you’re a ray of sunshine to everyone in there, aren’t you? Especially Clara.”

He gives me a scolding look. “Don’t mention her. The nurses will hear you.”

Arthur has a thing for another resident at the nursing home. I noticed him watching her every time I was here and she was in the room, but he denied it for the first six months. Now he’ll only admit he thinks she’s good company.

“You should ask her out,” I suggest.

He scoffs. “And take her where? To the dining hall? So we can sit at a table full of people with their dentures sitting on napkins who can’t hear a damn thing?”

When he puts it that way...yeah, it doesn’t sound very romantic.

“It doesn’t have to be elaborate to make her feel special. Get her some flowers. Put on a nice jacket. Comb down your two hairs.”

He grunts. “I don’t need dating advice from a guy whose balls just recently dropped.”

I arch my brows. “You’ve had zero dates in the year I’ve known you, so...I think you do.”

Arthur looks like a kindly old man, but he could hold his own chirping with the guys in my team’s locker room. I know he enjoys our banter, even if he pretends it annoys him.

“When was your last date?” he asks in a smug tone.

“Last one? I don’t know, a few months ago. I actually have a date Thursday night.”

He studies me over the rim of his glasses, his lips turned down in the frown he wears when he’s thinking. “Well? What’s her name? You taking her somewhere nicer than a nursing home dining hall?”

“I made a reservation at a good Italian place. And her name’s Cam. She’s my best friend’s girlfriend’s sister.”

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