Page 48 of Passing the Red Line
Even though it’s been a long day, and all I want to do is shut my computer and never see it again, I did think of a few things that would be more efficient. Things that I can hopefully implement with the Knights when the season starts in a few weeks and would make the job a whole lot easier for everyone involved.
I honestly don’t know how the start of hockey season is almost here. It feels like I just signed my contract with the team only last month, and then it turned into June and then all of a sudden September starts next week.
My plan was to finish up August with the Quakes before handing the job to someone else and heading to Chicago sometime around the first of the month to get situated. In said plan, I was going to hold in my feelings and stay with my dad for a week while I looked for a place to live for the season. No way would I survive living in a hotel or even with my dad. I thought by now I would have a list of places to check out, but I have nothing. I haven’t talked to my dad about me staying at his house for a few days.
Then there is the whole Christian of it all.
Are we going to be together during the season? Are we not?
If we make it official like we talked about this morning, would we have to tell my dad and the team or would we keep it a secret?
If we don’t make it official, do we go back to hating each other all the while throwing sex eyes at each other whenever we see them?
So many questions to figure out the answer to.
One thing I know for sure, my assignment with the Quakes ends in three days, after that I will have more time to think about life in Chicago and everything that comes with it.
I spend the next half out finishing up editing the pictures I took tonight and some time after eleven I call it a night.
There are still a few people still in the team offices as I grab my stuff and start heading out. I wave bye to a few of them and head to my car debating if I should just head to my rental or to Christian’s.
As much as I love the beach house, my rental is my best bet. I don’t want to go down the mountain when I’m tired. That road has too many curves as it is, I don’t need to be half asleep going down it.
I’ll just text Christian to head to the rental when he arrives in San Francisco. He’ll probably be too tired to drive all the way home.
God if someone would have told me at the start of the summer that I was going to be this involved with a hockey player, I would have laughed in their face. Yet here I am, very involved with one and thinking about being more involved.
The world's cruel way of telling me that I was wrong to put all hockey players in the same bubble. Because one bad seed doesn’t make them all the same.
I’m about to get into my car when my phone starts to ring. Given how late it is it has to be Christian. His flight probably got in early and he’s calling to see if I decided to go stay at his house or not.
I fish my phone out of my bag and answer it without looking.
“Hey, I was about to text you. I’m just leaving the arena and I’m too tired to head down to your house, want to use my rental for once?” I ask, throwing my gear into the back seat, feeling dead on my feet.
“About to text me, huh? And here I thought you would never speak to me again,” a male voice that is very much not Christian says from the other side.
It takes me a second, but I recognize the voice. I haven’t heard it in ten years, but I still know who that voice belongs to.
I pull the phone back from my ear and check the phone number. It’s a British Columbia number. I should have checked before answering.
“How did you get my number?” I ask my high school boyfriend, a severe bite to my tone.
When he first started contacted me a few months ago, I responded to a few messages and then told him to fuck off.
The messages I had sent before I sent him a middle finger emoji weren’t anything special. Just me asking what he wanted and why he was contacting me. When he didn’t give me a clear answer, I stopped it and blocked him.
In none of those messages did I give him my number.
“I have my ways,” he answers, and I know if I was standing in front of him right now, he would be shrugging.
“And what ways are those? My number isn’t public knowledge, Kalen. So, either someone I know gave you my number or you paid someone to get it. So which one is it?”
“When did you turn into a hard ass? You were never this pressed when we were kids,” Kalen complains.
“Yeah, well, a lot has happened since we were kids,” I say, rolling my eyes at the almost empty parking lot. “Now answer the question. How did you get this number?”
Kalen sighs but finally answers me. “I saw that you were working for the Quake, so I called their front office and told them that I was trying to get in contact with you to get an interview. They handed it over.”
