Page 16 of The Hockey Grump Saves Christmas

“No one. It happened in the middle of the night.”

“Oh, that’s not so bad then.” There’s a beep from the coffee maker behind us and he turns to attend to it.

Someone like him will never understand how important this is to the kids, and therefore to me.

“Hopefully someone can fix that up fairly quickly in the new year. Sit and rest your ankle. Maybe by the time you’ve drunk your coffee the road will be cleared and you can go.”

Does he not think I want to be out of here just as much as he wants me gone?

For God’s sake, I’m not making cookies because I want to hang out. I’m only doing it to distract myself from feeling so damned awkward. And also because I can’t stop myself from trying to do something to thank him for putting me up for the night even though he had no choice.

My ankle doesn’t think all that activity and the standing at the kitchen counter were great ideas though.

“The repairs to the theater can’t wait till the new year.” I limp around the island and perch on a stool.

“Cream?” He opens the fridge door.

“Please.” I rest my bad ankle on the opposite thigh and give it a rub. “And a teaspoon of honey if you have it.”

He pulls his head back, managing to look puzzled even from behind. “Honey in coffee is weird.”

I’m so tired of hearing that through the years that I don’t bother to respond.

“And I have no idea what I have,” he adds, scanning the fridge before closing the door.

“Fixing the theater can’t wait because we need it for the kids’ play.” I have no idea why I’m bothering to explain. He won’t give a damn. He doesn’t like Christmas, doesn’t like me, and probably doesn’t even like kids.

He opens a couple of cabinets. There’s anah-haon the third one, and he pulls out a jar of honey with a classy label.

“We put on a play on Christmas Eve every year,” I add, even though he doesn’t seem to be listening.

He pours some cream into the coffee, then turns and reaches over the assorted baking debris to plant the mug in front of me along with the jar of honey and a teaspoon.

“I don’t want the responsibility of the honey,” he says, as if adding it would be an operation as rife with danger as knowing which wire to cut on a ticking bomb.

Then he leans his hips forward against the island, the edge of the counter cutting across his sweatpants just below the drawstring, and rests his hands on the edge with his arms out at full stretch.

The definition in the lines and twists of his muscles from his forearms up to his biceps and under the edge of the T-shirt sleeves might have made me a bit woozy if I didn’t have the theater to think about. And if I thought he was a nice person. Which I don’t. Despite icing my ankle, lending me a T-shirt, and making me coffee. Oh, and how nice he was to Aunt Lou last night.

Yeah, he’s awful.

“There must be somewhere else you can stage the play.” He looks at me for a moment, tips his head to one side like he’s trying to will me to come up with something.

Then he turns back to the coffee maker and inserts another pod. The back of him is just as impressive as the front. Are all hockey players built like this? Like wide, solid, rippling mounds of masculinity the likes of which I’ve never seen walking around in real life, let alone making coffee wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants—shame the pants are black, not gray.

He peers at me over his shoulder. “Is there not a community center or school gym or something?”

I drag my eyes from the hulking mass of moodiness and pick up the honey jar. Goddamn it if the lid isn’t too tight.

He turns to face me and holds out a shovel-sized hand.

Pride will not allow me to pass it to him. “I can manage.”

The edges of the lid cut into my fingers as I try with all my might to shift it.

“Sure,” he says. “That’s why your face is red and all the blood vessels in your eyes are about to pop.”

Why did I have to ask for honey?

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