Page 20 of Skating and Fake Dating
Giving a nonchalant shrug, I say, “A fake dating scenario would be easier.”
“Would it? We’d have to act like a couple.”
“Like hold hands?” Carson follows the signs for the detour over a bridge and past a plaza of a mid-sized logging town with a laundromat and liquor store circa the 1980s.
I nod. “You’d have to put your arm around me with affection.”
“That’s so specific.”
“You’d have to look at me like ...”
“Like what?” His voice drops lower.
“Like you can’t imagine being with anyone else. That I’m the center of your world.” My heart races, betraying me with all the things I’ve longed for or maybe I’m just riding the double specialty latte roller coaster.
He stares dead ahead, maybe thinking about his ex, perhaps questioning his strong stance on love, or it could be that he thinks I’m nuts and is just playing along until he can leave me safely on the side of the road.
He clears his throat. “So, hypothetically speaking, if we did this ...”
“Which we shouldn’t,” I interject quickly for the sake of argument.
“Right, but if we did, we’d need to stick to the rules and boundaries.”
Too quickly, I say, “Of course. Nothing that would result in us landing in the penalty box. So we’re really considering this?”
“I’m not saying yes. I’m just saying that it solves both our problems, but then what?”
“Then we’d go back to normal,” I say, though something in me already doubts that’s possible.
“Normal,” he repeats slowly. “Right.”
“Plus, my job will take me to another team after a few months, so we could kind of string things along and then have a plausible reason to go our separate ways.”
“It’s something to think about,” he says as he follows the detour signs onto a state route.
Yes, something to think about while caught in this little fantasy cloud before reality steps back in with a boot to my baby toe.
All the same, my stomach swoops, but I’m not sure that it’s because of the twisty turns of this winding back road.
CHAPTER 10
CARSON
I’d like to say I’m off-kilter from all the traveling, but it probably has more to do with discussing so much personal stuff with Bailey. She’s easy to talk to and our conversation flows as we hit construction.
She confesses that she’s a bit reluctant to return to her hometown, right back where she started, without her name in the proverbial lights.
I tell her I got the nickname “Bama” because you don’t see too many hockey players come from the Southern states. As Gabe has said, I’m a veritable hockey-playing cowboy.Yeehaw-key!
“Do you miss home?”
“No,” I answer simply, signaling I don’t want to talk about it.
The truth is, I miss the “me” I was back then. I had an easy laugh, a ‘No worries’ approach to life. I’d take spontaneous road trips to the coast, play the guitar on the beach, and still be the first one at hockey practice the next morning.
I thought I could take all that with me when I turned pro. Yes, I’ve been busy, but Charlene said she’d wait for me. When I finally proposed last spring, she cited my “lack of seriousness about the future” as one reason for turning me down.
Then what had I been doing all that time, building my career to a stable point where I could comfortably support her and a family? I’d been using some of my resources to help my mother after she gave everything for me to play hockey when I was a kid, but I was also preparing for a future with my high school sweetheart. The one who promised she’d wait for me, through thick or thin ice. Yeah, right.
