Page 45 of Keeper
“Nah, I’m just a little sore. I’ll be okay in a day or two. Probably a good idea to start Coops in net tonight, though.” I glanced at Cooper’s stall, which was still empty. It wasn’t like him to be late. “Where is he, anyway?”
The boys traded grave expressions with each other for what seemed like an eternity.
Dane broke the silence first. “You didn’t hear?”
“Hearwhat?” I replied.
“Coops is out,” Reavo said. “He pulled his groin today. Which is why we’re hoping yours is good to go.”
Hathaway’s eyes were wide with concern. “We’ve got an emergency goalie backing you up tonight.”
Fuck.
Emergency goalies aren’t pros. Most you couldn’t even call amateurs—they’re regular Joes with nine-to-five jobs and beer bellies. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a guy who maybe played a season or two in goal at a Division III college. An emergency goalie gets paid to watch the game from the club box, have a couple beers, and serve as an emergency fill-injust in casetwo goalies get so injured during the course of the game that neither can play—an event so rare, it’s only happened a handful of times.
We couldnothave an emergency goalie play an entire game between the pipes for an NHL team. He’d get killed. We’d lose by double digits.
Then again, we might lose by double digits with me and my blue balls in net, anyway.
“Seriously, Vaughnsy,” Dane demanded. “Are you good to go tonight? Or should we be freaking out right now?”
Don’t know how good I’ll be, but …
I started putting on my gear. “I can play through it.”
My nervous teammates quietly watched me gear up. The tension in that room was so thick, I could’ve cut it with the blade of my skate.
Dane clapped his hands to reset the mood. “Okay. Loosen up, boys. Look alive—we can still do this. We gotta show up for Vaughnsy tonight, because we cannotlet that emergency goalie see the ice.”
Twenty doubt-filled faces murmured their support:
“Yeah, boys, we got this.”
“Let’s get Vaughnsy the W and end the slump.”
16
Ainsley
I spent hours exploring, walking miles all over Dallas, trying to imagine this big but charming city as my home.
It wasn’t easy at first. When Marta first proposed her job offer to me, I had an almost morbid reaction to it. Wasn’t it one of those well-known facts of life that you shouldn’t mix friends with business? Could our working relationship somehow be more stable than our friendship? What if things between us got bad again? What if Ibecame the new ‘bitch roommate’?
But as I walked those worries off and consideredher offer from a perspective of pure opportunity, I have to admit, it became a lot more attractive.
Forty grand a year was respectable money. Hell, that wasadultmoney. Forget about making eight bucks an hour slinging coffee after graduating, while I struggled to pursue photography as a career in my free time. No, instead, I’d be making a decent salary doing what Iwantto be doing: taking photos and expanding my portfolio.
Yeah, dropping out of school was scary and sounded irresponsible. But Marta was absolutely right, I couldalwaysgo back to school. People took breaks all the time. And with the money I’d be making, I could actuallypayfor school instead of going into debt for it.
The fact that room and board was included would stretch that forty grand even further, and make the move to a new city that much easier. And hey, if living with Marta strained our working relationship, I could always get my own place. With the salary she offered, I could easily afford it.
But the real icing on the cake was the chance to start over in a new city where people didn’t know me.
In the small college town in Kansas where I live, everybody knows everyone else. It was one of the reasons why I had to get the hell out of there when my business was plastered all over the internet by that stupid jerk. The truth is, I’m absolutely dreading going back to school after this weekend’s over.
But what if I didn’thaveto go back there? What if I seriously moved to Dallas? No one here would know about my past. I could get a new phone number and all those creepy phone calls and text messages would stop. Heck, I could give people a fake surname if I was worried about people connecting me to the infamous Ainsley Carter on the internet.
Of course, there wasonething that made Marta’s offer extra appealing.
