Page 11 of The Hockey Grump Saves Christmas

“Put him on,” Aunt Lou says.

“What? No. I can’t, that would be embarra—” Actually, it might be hilarious. “Sure.”

I hold my phone out to Gabe.

“What?” He looks from the phone to me.

“Aunt Lou wants to talk to you.”

“Lou?”

“Louise. When I was little, I called her Loulou and Aunt Lou stuck. Would you please talk to her?”

“Why?”

“So she thinks there’s some hope of me returning home alive tomorrow.”

He opens his mouth, presumably to say something smart-assy, but pauses, then releases a sigh. “Put your hand here first.” He scrunches the ice-filled towel he’s holding against my ankle.

My fingers graze the back of his hand as he lets go. It’s rough, a little hairy and generally oozes testosterone.

“Hello, Aunt Lou,” he says into my phone.

There’s silence for a moment, and I wonder what on earth she’s saying that’s made his thick eyebrows rise like that.

“Yes,” he says. “I’m sure she is a delightful young woman. It was just a little tricky to know that when she was swinging from my shoulders in a bunny suit.”

Silence again.

He gets up off the sofa and strides across the room toward the large empty open fireplace that now has a giant TV hung above it where family photos of the Sullivans used to be. Damn, look at that ass. It’s so round and solid that it looks like he’s had a butt job.

“It’s not that bad,” he says into my phone. “I have her icing it for the moment. I imagine it’ll still be sore in the morning, but she’ll be able to walk on it as long as she’s careful.”

As he listens to Aunt Lou he turns around, thankfully slowly enough for me to quickly lift my eyes from butt level before he looks hard into them. “No, ma’am. No, Iam not a doctor.”

Ma’am. He called Aunt Louma’am. Like he’s some sort of Southern gentleman.

“I’m a hockey player.”

More listening.

“Well, it does mean I know something about injuries.” Ooo, that was a little snippy.

I gesture for him to give me back the phone before he makes things worse. But he takes a step back, like he’s starting to enjoy bickering on the phone with a sixty-year-old woman he’s never met and wants to taunt me with it.

“Give it back,” I whisper-shout, stuck on the couch with only one fully functioning leg.

“The Apollos,” he says.

Oh, no. I shake my head at him with a rueful smile. That’ll teach him. Now he’ll never get off the phone.

“Gabe. Gabe Woods.”

I can hear Aunt Lou’s shriek from here. It’s followed by rapid chatter I can’t make out. He must be one of her favorites. Although, to be honest, they’re all her favorites.

I wouldn’t know a hockey player—or a hockey stick for that matter—if he hit me in the head. Or tossed me into the snow and sat on me, obviously.

But Aunt Lou is an Apollos fan, raised that way by her dad from when she was a little kid. While my mom played with clothes and makeup, Aunt Lou watched hockey with Grandpa.

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