Page 27 of The Hockey Grump Saves Christmas

“Honestly, Gabe Woods.”

At her use of my name, I instinctively glance around the empty room in case there’s anyone in earshot who might have heard it.

“Every construction crew in town is wildly busy trying to complete their jobs before the holidays.” She sounds shocked that I couldn’t have figured that out for myself. “The McAllisters are finishing off a designer vacation home for some Wall Street family. Johnson’s Joinery is tied up with all the woodwork on the same thing. And Construction Suction is dealing with a nasty sewer issue at two apartment buildings. And anyway, no one could fix all this and get a safety inspection in under two weeks. But even if itwerepossible, you are missing the point—you cannot buy the care and love and memories that have been put into this theater over the years and into making these costumes and those trees.”

“Am I supposed to be upset that you don’t like me?”

“Not really. It’s not possible for someone lacking in typical human emotions to be upset.”

“Why would you think I lack typical human emotions?”

She holds up a hand and ticks off items on her fingers. “You hate Christmas. You’re hiding from your parents. In fact you’re lying to your parents, who seem to be your only friends. And you don’t have a compassionate pore on your entire”—she waves at me from head to toe—“big square giant being.”

“My parents are not my only friends.” But she better not ask me to name any or I won’t be able to come up with anyone outside of the team. “I have friends. I used to have a best friend, but we haven’t talked in a minute.”

“Sure, yeah. Some of the kids have imaginary friends too.”

“Gosh, your verbal sparring is so wounding.” I stab an imaginary knife into my heart and wilt a little. “Have you forgotten I do battle every week against half a dozen men, some of them bigger, all of them armed with large lethal weapons and blades on their feet? Compared to that, you telling me you don’t like me is like fighting with a…well, a bunny.”

My mind flashes back to her trying to stand up in the snow with those giant rabbit feet on, and I have to bite my bottom lip to stop myself from smirking. There’s no way I’m going to let her see any sign that I might be ever so slightly and totally unexpectedly enjoying myself.

If she’s got me pegged as some sortof permanently miserable, unfeeling, unthinking Neanderthal, that’s what she can have. That way, she might want me out of her sight sooner rather than later and I can get back to doing what I came here to do. Which is mainly anything but whatever the hell this is.

“You might think I don’t have a community-spirited bone in my body. But I bet you don’t have a competitive one in yours. I bet you roll over and do whatever anyone wants to make them happy.”

She gapes at me, eyes wide, cheeks flaming, fists clenching at her sides.

“That’s rich coming from a grown man who can’t even bring himself to tell his parents he doesn’t like Christmas. Apparently you can’t even be your real self around them. Clearly you’re happy to have a beatdown on the ice over…whatever it is you guys all fight about. But you won’t take any kind of a stand for things that really matter. Like being yourself around the people you love.”

Her words hit a nerve that sends me stepping around the charred trees toward her. “I do not have to take a character assassination from someone whose idea of fun is covering someone’s house in enough appalling Christmas decorations to embarrass even the Griswolds. Someone who’s twenty-whatever but lives at a retirement home. And someone who has quit a job she clearly loves to move south for some reason that isn’t because she wants to. Maybe because you don’t have enough backbone to stand up for being yourself.”

I’m so close that I can make out flecks of steely gray in her eyes. The frighteningly accurate assessment of me, from someone I met only yesterday, has clearly unfurled something that had been living tightly coiled inside me for some time.

I shove my hands into my pockets. “I certainly don’t think for a single second you’d have the balls to tell my parents I haven’t been totally honest with them. So I’m just going to go and leave you to it.”

Natalie leans back, like she’s in a wind tunnel of my words and I’m way too far up in her business. Which I might be. And that’s not great. Have I been on the rink for so long that I’ve forgotten that yelling in people’s faces isn’t appropriate?

“You think I don’t stand up for myself, Mr. I Sent My Parents On A Cruise To Get Out Of Christmas?” She straightens, thrusting back her shoulders. And the fire in those gray-blue eyes makes my dick reach for the sky.

“Okay then.” Why does this feel like the type of fight you have before you have screaming, throwing-each-other-around, makeup sex? “Bring it on. Show me what you got.”

“I’ll tell you tha?—”

She’s halted by the double doors at the top of the aisle flying open.

Our heads turn as a bunch of kids of various ages and sizes hurtles toward us.

Instinctively I turn away and pull my collar up and my hat down. As I move to the back of the stage, I catch Natalie in my peripheral vision, watching me and sucking in her lips. It only lasts for a fraction of a second, but it’s one of those expressions like someone’s trying to figure out very fast what to do orifthey should do it.

The kids are all talking at once, and their chatter and pounding feet get louder and louder, like rolling thunder, as they careen down the aisle toward us.

Time for me to make a swiftexit stage left.

“Hey, kids,” Natalie shouts above their din. “Hush a second. I have some news.”

“Is the play canceled?” one kid shouts out.

“Can’t we fix the theater?” asks the next.

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