Page 13 of Taking It To Overtime
I’m probably just reading too much into everything, including the conversation about Vera. Of course Mom and Dad loved her, thought of her as a daughter for years, probably designed our wedding invitations. I remember their surprise when I told them we’d called it quits.
“Pssssssst.” Spags is just getting louder, and he looks like he might be dancing over there. Could he not find the bathroom? It’s hard to miss, especially with the floral wallpaper and the “shit happens here” sign my mother hung up on the door.
I spare a glance at my mom, wrapped up in her own phone call, and make my way to the rookie.
“You need to see this,” he says as I step up next to him in the hallway. He looks nervous, sweat beading on his upper lip and his eyes wild. He’s waving his phone enough that I can’t get a good look, but something about it is bothering him.
“Hey,” I tell him, clapping my hand on his shoulder, trying to be reassuring or some shit. “Whatever it is, we can fix it.” Idig my fingertips into the curve of his deltoid, trying to slow the rapid breaths he’s taking. “Breathe Jack.”
“I swear I didn’t mean for this to happen.” He’s babbling words at me. “I swear.”
I move my hand from this shoulder to his wrist and slow the waving. He has a social media post pulled up, but I can’t see the details as he jerks the phone around.
“I mean, it wasn’t me, but it kind of was and I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know how to fix it, but I will. I’ll call Tristan and—shit. She’ll think it’s my fault too. Because it is. And Cap is going to cut my balls off and feed them to his demon cat. And—”
I’m not sure how to stop the stream of words tumbling from his mouth. I also have no idea what’s happening if he won’t show me the damn phone. I try to catch his eyes, but the kid is still babbling, anxious, and clammy, and I’m not exactly the guy with tact. It’s easier to take the phone out of his hands and look for myself.
“Passcode,” I say to him, my demand harsher than necessary.
He rattles off six numbers and I punch them into his phone, watching the dark screen fade out to see a kid who looks way too young to be on social media grinning into a camera as she talks a mile a minute.
“What am I looking at here?”
“Just give her a minute, she’ll start over,” Jack says. He actually seems a little less frantic now that I have his phone in my own hands.
“Who is she?” She looks like a kid. Should that worry me?
“Just some girl online.”
“She’s a child.” I glare at him. “Why are you following children? Haven’t you learned—”
“She’s two years older than me,” Spags says, and dammit, I feel old and tired again.
“Never did I ever think a stupid layover in the middle of nowhere would be the best thing to like ever happen to me. Like ever. Like ohmygod,”she says that as all one word, I swear. “Everyone knows Robbie Oakes is a full meal, the little kiss and point he does before every game? Like RIP me. Am I right? But to see him in person? With Vera freaking Novak? I’m in heaven. I had no idea they were from the same town, but I ship them so hard. Pictures are linked in my profile!”
There’s a lag and then she starts again. Her hands clapped over her mouth as she jumps and dances around what looks like a bedroom, apparently because of me. And Vera. There is an alarmingly high number of likes and comments. The numbers keep increasing as I watch.
“Get me to the pictures.” I thrust the phone back at Jack and watch as he navigates through a series of menus I’d have taken hours to figure out. He taps the profile image of the girl and the screen fills with a selfie. The girl is grinning, curls wild, and behind her, silhouetted against the glass windows of the Genosa International Airport, are three grainy figures.
The blond in the dark suit has a phone pointed at a couple that doesn’t even notice him. The other man has a damning Arctic sweatshirt on, the number sixteen visible on the sleeve. He has an arm looped low around the slim waist of a tall woman with deep red hair. Despite the picture quality, I can see the freckles that paint her from top to toe. I can also see the soft smile and closed eyes as she leans into the press of my lips.
Some new pop song blares from Spags’ phone and I watch the screen switch to a photo of just the two of us. Smiling at each other. Like no one else exists. Bold white letters scroll along the bottom of the image.
Fuck. Me
“I don’t know about this,” she said, her voice weighed down with skepticism, even as he gripped her hand tighter so she couldn’t pull back.
“It won’t be that bad. Promise. I’ll play whatever you want after. Please?” He was awful at asking for things. He never had to, but this was important. Vera was the only one who could help once Tommy moved two towns over. They needed even teams if they wanted to play. There was no way around it.
“I’m pretty sure I told you no hockey when I agreed to be friends with you.” She sniffed, her green eyes narrowing at him, and he couldn’t help but grin back. She made it sound like he begged her to be his friend. He didn’t. If anything, she wouldn’t leave him alone. Not that he minded. She was cute, and fun to be around, even if she was a girl, and her hands were always dry and the perfect temperature, so he didn’t mind holding them when they walked together.
He didn’t see her much at school, but they waited for the bus together, along with Vic and Erik. They’d been sitting together on the bus too, since Tommy was gone. Jockeying seating for four was always easier than figuring out three. Especially when the twins always sat together, and it was him by himself. Before Vera.
“It’s just one game,” he said, aware that he was going to do his best to make this a regular occurrence. He just had to show her how awesome hockey was first.
“I don’t know how to skate.”
The protesting was all for show. She was walking with him willingly, smiling up at him from under the fringe of hair she called bangs. Her grownup teeth were a little overlapped in the front, and a little too big for her face, but he didn’t mind. He’d heard his mom telling her mom that she’d grow into them and his mom would know. She worked with Dr. Bill, the dentist. And that’s exactly what he’d told Suzanne Wallace when she tried to make fun of his friend.
