Page 35 of The Ex Puck Bunny
Sophia shakes her head faintly as if neither name rings a bell.
“My mother thought Beatrix was a more mature name and Briar sounded too prickly for a baby, so she started calling her Bunny.” I leave out the part about how she’d sleep in a little balland her rump looked like a bunny’s with a little cotton tail. It was so cute it made my mama-heart want to explode, so I let Mom carry on with the nickname.
“So unique,” Sophia says as if she just took a sip of bad kombucha.
“It kind of stuck. If she wants, she can go by Beatrix, Bea, or BB when she’s older. For now, she’s our little Bunny, snuggle muffin.”
“Mama, look! A unee-corn!” She shows me a unicorn that we also have at home. I lasso her into my arms and give her a kiss and a quick cuddle.
McAyla McKenzie looks at us like one of her toys just sprouted an extra head. Then she grabs the unicorn figure out of Bunny’s hands and throws it on the floor.
“No hurt the unee-corn!” Bunny says as if it was just accosted by a goblin.
Anticipating Sophia’s intervention, I blink a few times when it doesn’t come. I pick up the toy and return it to my daughter, telling her, “We don’t grab or throw toys.”
Bunny nods and smiles at me and resumes her play.
Sophia’s lips curl and she drums her fingers on her chair. “So the name Bunny? Ironic, all things considered.”
And here we go. I knew this was coming. She wants to talk to me about my ex.
“Ironic? I just explained the nickname.”
“But you were a puckbunny.”
When you move back to Hockey Town, it becomes your life even if you want to escape it. I get daily reminders of where I went wrong and don’t want to share that with Sophia, who is on a first-name basis with Mrs. Gormely, the town gossip. Granted, my mother is as well, but that’s just to fact-check before the gossip about our family goes out.
Clearing my throat, I say, “Puck bunnies are just female fans of hockey . . .” players. I leave out the last part.
Reliably, Sophia fills in the gap, “And hockey players.”
“I was also the social media manager and in-game entertainment liaison for the Los Angeles Lions.”
“Didn’t you take a trip to Las Vegas after they won the playoffs?”
This is where I stop the conversation in its tracks. I don’t want to leave too much room for her to speculate, nor am I going to gossip about myself.
“Sophia, I know where this is going. I’m not interested in having this conversation about my personal life. If you’d like to swap birth stories, teething struggles, or anything other than Bunny’s father and me, I’m game.”
Affronted, her cheeks take on a slightly red hue for two seconds before she smiles. “In that case, how about you make cupcakes for the Cobbiton Kid Corral? It’s a new weekly meetup where I open the playroom to other families and we moms hang out up there.” She points to a loft overhead I didn’t notice.
And risk her daughter breaking Bunny’s hand? Maybe she does need Derek to teach her how to throw a punch, after all.
“Cupcakes,” I repeat, neither agreeing nor declining.
Sophia’s expression turns lethal. “So you’re back in town along with Whitney Reid. Remember her? She had that whole angry, emo farm girl thing going on when we were at Clarkson.”
I tap the air, recalling my mother mentioning her cookie food truck. “She runs Milk Mustache, right?” I ask, preferring to detour this conversation toward something positive rather than gossip, which would be picking up where Sophia and I left off back in high school.
“Yeah. She lives in her grandparents’ oldshack.”
“Funny, I drove by there not long ago and the farmhouse looked lovely like they renovated. In fact, I recall my brother mentioning he did the landscaping and is under contract for hardscaping in the back for a pool deck.”
Sophia flips her hair. “Also, Margo failed to make it in New York City. Had to move back too.” Sophia snorts a laugh as if Margo Cabot had that coming to her.
“I haven’t seen her yet.”
“She thinks she’s so great because she married one of the Knights—they had a St. Patrick’s Day wedding. Can you imagine that?”
