Page 46 of Hockey Heart

Then, unexpectedly, Cara put her arms around me and hugged me. For once, it didn’t seem like a ploy, but an actual real human interaction. Not that you could tell either way with Cara.

She spoke softly into my chest, “Show Maiden what that is. What letting someone in can be like. It’s better than hiding him and you away in here. He needs to know Hayden. I can’t be his mother. I don’t have it in me, and you can’t know how much that hurts. Seeing you being all dad-like, and knowing I don’t have that in me. But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t deserve it.”

“You still need to leave Cara.”

“Tomorrow. After the ball.” She said, putting her head on my chest and tapping my shoulders as I sighed. “One last night and then I’m gone.”

27

CHANGING

Sarah

I skipped quiz night. I didn’t want to be out and around people. Not normal people, not kids, not mountain-sized hockey players, not the fancy crowd at that dumb Mayor’s Ball, none of them. Kensy, I could make an exception for. Also, she bought over wine, face and hair masks, and Ooey-Gooey ice cream, so I was happy to let her in.

We both sighed happily in our dressing gowns as we lay back, Say Anything playing on the TV.

I raised my glass. “Fuck men.”

“And …,” Kensy added, as we clinked glasses. “If we’re going to be girls in our dressing gowns, eating ice cream, drinking wine, smellingamazing, and watching rom-coms for the rest of our lives, then so be it. I’m good with that.

“Scrubbing men’s shirts, collecting their beer bottles, listening to their snoring, having to hear every sports game that’s ever played on the television at full blast, bearing their children… Love sucks!”

John Cusack was just about to hold up his boombox in the rain when a rapping came from the door.

“Pizza!” Kensy and I squealed at the same time.

I pulled the cucumber pieces off my eyes, but didn’t bother to remove the face mask. It was highly unlikely John Cusack worked as a delivery driver for Go-Go Pizza these days. Although I couldn’t be entirely sure about that, it was a risk I was willing to take.

Opening the door, I looked with confusion at the suited man in my doorway, who in turn paused with fright when he saw the masked, frazzle-haired woman before him.

“Hi. Erm, Sarah?”

I stared back blankly at him, looking down at his hands and wondering why he wasn’t holding two boxes full of oozing mozzarella-drenched pepperoni with extra banana peppers and the grease leaking through their cardboard containers. When I looked back up at him, he was still waiting for me to respond.

“Yes… Who are you?” I replied a bit snappily, starting to feel angry that my evening in was being disturbed by anything other than hot gushy pizza.

His eyes sparkled as he spoke. “I’m Jimmy. You ready to go to the ball tonight?”

Kensy yelled from the couch, “Make sure they didn’t forget the butter-garlic sauce this time!”

I stood bewildered, “The… Wait. What now?

“The Mayor’s Ball, you got an hour, and I got a dress in the car for you.”

“Sorry, who are you?”

“Jimmy. Hayden’s agent.”

I groaned in reply.

“Look. He didn’t send me. But, trust me, he wants youthere, even if he doesn’t know it. So, you’ll be my date for tonight if you’ll have me.”

Kensy came over to see what all the fuss was with the pizza man. Standing there in our ghoulish masks peering at the man, he turned and walked back to his car, opened the trunk, and came back holding a gown covered in a plastic protector.

“What’s going on Sarah? That doesn’t look like pizza,” she whispered to me.

“I don’t know exactly. But, apparently, this man is here to take me to the Mayor’s Ball.”

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