Page 3 of Your Pucking Mom

A piece of my heart had escaped, and an immense surge of both pride and disappointment flooded my chest. My foot was glued to the pavement by what was hopefully a piece of gum, but I didn’t care. I buried my head in my hands and wept. This was worse than leaving him with my mother to go to work when he was a toddler.

For most of my life, everything I did was for him, and suddenly, I was on my own. I was a little like a fish out of water, flailing and desperate to get thrown back in, but no one was there to help me.

“Whoa.” A deep voice broke through my ugly crying moment. “Are you okay?”

When I looked up, my hood covered my eyes. I adjusted my jacket, leaving the hood up to protect my curls from the humidity and avoid having to take another hour-long shower to get them right.

“Oh.” I sniffled, swiping at my under-eyes, hoping I didn’t have mascara everywhere. “This is embarrassing.”

I fumbled to get up from the deep squat I was in, but tears clouded my vision, and my hood got in the way again, so I tripped and fell right onto my ass, and my hands landed on the filthy sidewalk.

“Oh, shit,” the dark voice said as a large hand reached for me. I stared at the massive, calloused fingers outstretched in my direction. I’d gone from looking like a sad idiot to a sad, dumbfounded one in seconds. Why would anyone offer to help me?

“Do I need to call an ambulance? I can lift you if you can’t get up.”

“No.” I brushed my hand along my jacket. “Sorry. Yes, I’m okay,” I mumbled as I pushed myself up, dusting the dirt off my jeans.

“Were you…crying?” asked the stranger, and I turned on my heels to get a better look at the face behind the gigantic hands.

I was suddenly in one of those slow-motion moments. I’d had maybe three of them before today. The first time was when I found out I was pregnant. The second time was when they told me I’d had a boy after being in labor for seventeen hours all alone in a hospital room. The third was when Austin found out he would be in the NHL and was the number one draft pick on the biggest team in Chicago.

This moment marked number four. I literally almost fell back on my ass from the man standing—no, towering—over me. Austin was six-foot-one, and I was much shorter, but this man trumped Austin in height. He was in an oversized Carhartt jacket, and his hair was long and fell over his forehead in a mess. Besides his beard, I couldn’t make out his individual features because his hood covered most of his face. However, the intensity radiating from him was…primal.

“I’m okay,” I repeated once I realized I was gawking. “Thank you for stopping.”

I let out an anxious giggle. “I, uh, am going to go now.”

I bit my lower lip a few times before committing his build to memory one last time.

One day.

I could only imagine what his gigantic hands could do…but, alas, my life had always been about sacrificing for Austin. It had been about my child since I was a kid myself, but maybe one day I’d be able to make it about me.

Not today, but one day.

2

ledger cole

I was already in a shit mood before Coach called me to tell me the first family dinner of the preseason would be at my apartment. It was worse because I’d intended to bingeVikingson TV and relish in the last quiet night I would have before my final season in the NHL.

I may not be considered old by societal standards, but in the world of hockey, I was aging out of the game. Straight out of college, I was hailed as one of the League’s top players, and I’d consistently performed well over the past decade. However, an injury to my knee last season sidelined me for ten weeks, preventing me from stepping onto the ice until I’d fully recovered.

Despite the coach’s optimism that I would bounce back this season and extend my career by a few more years, I wasn’t so sure. I was approaching the twilight of my time in a sport that had been my passion and dedication throughout my entire adulthood. Unsure of my path after hockey, I decided to keep to myself, indulging in ice cream and binge-worthy TV shows rather than try to better myself for the preseason.

So, when Coach called and demanded I host the team dinner to start off the season, I rolled my eyes. When he told me it would be tonight, I protested. I’d moved away from my parents when I was eighteen to focus on hockey, so all this team bonding stuff drove me nuts, but what Coach McNulty wanted, he got. So I was off to find a way to feed an entire hockey team.

As I was about to head to the store, I noticed a tiny…someone huddled on the sidewalk right outside the building. I lived in Chicago, and weird shit happened all the time, but this struck me because the person was curled in a fetal position, and their back was shaking from sobbing.

She had her hood up, but when I finally got a response from her, her bright-blue eyes struck a chord within me, making all the air leave my lungs. I was not surprised often in my life. Most guys on the team would call me chill because little bothered me. I was rarely the hotheaded one on the ice with my gloves off, taking swings, but with this sad woman in front of me, I had an urge to fix her problems so she wouldn’t have to cry again.

I didn’t know her, but sadness reflected in her irises. I stared at her, trying to memorize her. Her curvy frame and petite height added an intriguing contrast to her demeanor. Yet she quickly wiped away her tears and turned like nothing had happened. As she walked away, disappearing into the bustling crowd, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had missed an opportunity. In my eagerness to offer help, I had forgotten the basics. I never exchanged phone numbers, and her name remained a mystery, leaving me with an unexpected yearning.

“Ah, fuck it,” I said, shoving my hands into my pockets. “Just another girl you bumped into on the street.”

I sighed, continuing the trek to the store to figure out what the heck I would feed a hockey team of hungry men.

* * *

---