Page 6 of Waiting Game

“Marty Charles,” I repeat, then, because of the context, my eyes bug. “TheMarty Charles? CHUCK?”

Her smile is sheepish as my holler echoes in the barn. “My great-granddaddy as well as my uncle’s namesake.”

“No fucking way.” Even if baseball wasn’t my shit, I’d know that I was talking to the great-granddaughter of a legend here. “He and Yogi Berra are likeeverything. Didn’t they both get ten World Series rings?”

“They did. Chuck used to say that Marty and he were best friends until Yogi caught up to ten.

“I hate baseball so don’t expect me to know his stats.”

“Ah, that sucks.”

“For who? My baseball-obsessed dad and uncle, you, or me?”

“All of the above.” I grin at her. “So, I’m guessing the eponymous ‘Chuck’s’ is a baseball-themed bar?”

“Uh-huh. No one knows that about the Marty Charles connection though. Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because my uncle’s an idiot.” Mia gulps. “Wasan idiot.”

“It’s okay,” I attempt to soothe.

“It’s not. It won’t be for a while.” She sucks down some air like she’s been holding her breath for ten minutes. “And that’s fine. I got over losing my mom and my dad. I can deal with losing Chuck too.” The words are hard, but how she clenches her eyes tells me she’s two seconds away from sobbing again. Still, her grit shows through because she grinds out, “He wanted to do it on his own. Wanted to make Chuck’s famous for its wings. He got it into his head in the 90s that that was the way forward. Instead, the bar’s about five heartbeats from outright croaking.”

“You can save it, though, right? Reconnect it with the legacy?” Then, a thought occurs to me. “Are you going to stop coaching?”

“Chuck’s is a money pit,” she counters with a swift head shake. “I’m going to have to burn the candle at both ends to keep it going, but that’s fine.”

She says that a lot but nothing she’s saying is, in fact,fine.

“Anyway, enough about me. You were right earlier when you said we never got to talk about your goals for our training sessions.”

My answer’s immediate: “I want to do a spin without falling over.”

“That’s oddly specific. Surely you can do that anyway?”

“I want to improve my edge workanddo fancy shit. I’m a powerful skater, but I need to carve out some finesse on the ice.”

Mia snorts. “Just so you know... spins aren’t fancy. Was that really your only goal for these classes?”

“I admit this is a whim.”

“An expensive whim. My rates are high.”

“They’re market value. I checked.” I’m not cheap but I was raised on a ranch. Wealthy or not, you nickel and dime like pros when you’re a rancher because the profit margins are shitty if you’re not smart about it. Every ranch is three crappy years from falling into the red. “There’s a player who came onto my radarrecently and I realized how tight his turns are. How he skates like… huh.You.”

“Me?”

“Ya know, like a fairy.”

“A fairy?” She chuckles. It might be watery, but it’s better than her earlier tears. “I’ve been called worse things in my time.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, a judge called me a skating elephant once.”

“No fucking way. You’re Tinkerbell on ice!”

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