Page 31 of Looks Real Good Now
It always felt like I’d read more books than I actually did because of those car journeys.
“How have you already finished two books when we’ve only been back four days?” Other than outside the bakery when she was waiting for me, I hadn’t seen her reading once.
“Other than the first night, you have gone to sleep much earlier than me. I wasn’t joking when I said that I was more of a one a.m. bedtime kind of girl, so while you’vebeen having fun communing with Morpheus from eleven p.m., I have been downstairs sipping a hot drink and getting lost in the pages of a book. Or two.”
I smiled at the Greek mythology reference. Where Lenny had books, I had Greek mythology. I’d downloaded so much information into her brain about the whole genre, she probably had just as much knowledge as I did. If not more because she retained information better than me, and once she knew something, she never forgot it.
“What have you been reading?” I asked. Her face lit up and she took a deep breath before launching into her spiel, her fingers lacing through mine still over her shoulder.
“Well, the first was a thriller that kept me up way later than I anticipated because I couldn’t stop reading, which I guess is what you want. It involved stolen identities and a mystery boss, and it ended up being the ultimate long con. I thought it was super obvious what all the plot points were going to be and the twists it was going to take, but it managed to keep me guessing. I was surprisingly happy with how it ended, and you know how much I resent endings sometimes.”
“You wonder why some people even bother with the rest of the book if they haven’t figured out how they are going to finish it properly,” I reeled off. It had been a recurring theme in our car discussions.
“Exactly. Anyway, the other one was a romance novel. Friends pretending to date to save a Christmas tree farm. It seemed suitably festive. I had no idea it was going to end up mirroring my life so closely when I decided to bring it homewith me.”
I noticed that she was still calling Westchester home. She’d lived in Michigan for over a decade and yet, she was still calling this place home. I still called it home as well, but that was because Ifeltat home here more than I ever did in the places hockey took me. Yes, my parents were still here, but my bones just felt at peace in Westchester. Although now that I was thinking about it, I had felt a sense of calm wash over me the moment I heard Alana’s name called out for a coffee and found her at the airport. A calm I hadn’t felt since she left. A calm I didn’t even know I was missing until it came back to me.
“The verdict on that one?” I asked, rather than dwell on thoughts of home.
“It was great. I loved it. I think I might make it one of those books that I always re-read when this time of year comes around. It feels like a delicious hot chocolate, a blanket, and a fire on a cold winter’s day.” She sounded so at peace, surrounded by all these people skating.
“Sounds perfect.”
“It was. Speaking of sounding perfect, I’m hungry and if I remember correctly, this rink is stacked with food and drink trucks so we must be able to find something decent to eat. Let’s get off the ice now while you’re still on two feet, number seventeen.”
She extracted herself from my side, leaving a coldness in her wake before she slipped out of the masses and skated to the exit. I waited for a gap in the crowd and followed her.
“I know you don’t know what the hell you want to do with your life now that you’ve retired, but I think you’d be a good coach. I mean, I wasn’t a total newbie, and I didn’t need to becoached in the ways of ice hockey, but you did make the whole skating thing a lot easier. I felt safe. I think that’s a good trait to have, being a calming presence or something,” she said as I joined her off the ice.
I hadn’t considered coaching yet. It didn’t feel like that was where my skill set lay. That and I wasn’t the best loser. I had no idea if I’d be capable of picking a team back up after a loss. I typically needed to fester in the disappointment for forty-eight hours and ever since college, I needed to do that in solitude.
But Lenny was being completely sincere right now and I thought maybe she was on to something. I had no idea how to even start getting into coaching, but I felt like I could do anything with her believing in me.
22
Alana
Maybe it was because going around in circles and trying not to disrupt the flow of skaters wasn’t very conducive to fangirling, but once we were on solid ground again, people would not leave Liam alone.
It was slow at first, like they were scared to approach, but then one brave teenager came up to him, told him he loved him, and the floodgates opened.
Men that were around our dads’ age came over and clapped him on the shoulder like they were proud parents and said variations of how he was the best thing to come out of Westchester. Teenagers who were at our old high school kept calling him a legend and letting him know that Coach Fitzpatrick was always saying how proud he was that he managed to produce both Liam Mulligan and Teddy Carter. I didn’t doubt that my dad was proud of them, but he was not the sort of person to keep bringing up his success stories. He’d had a lot over the course of his career, so I wondered who the bragging was really coming from.
As the dads and teenage boys gave way to a bunch of women,I stopped hanging around in the background like I was Liam’s shadow, took his skates bag, and wandered over to a food truck that served nothing but fries. Several concoctions caught my eye but, in the end, I went with fries covered in rosemary salt and doubled the portion just in case Liam managed to extract himself from the crowd before I’d eaten them all.
I was almost halfway through eating when I felt someone hanging out behind me. I think he was trying to sneak up on me, but it felt like the atoms in the air around me had changed, and the little ball of anxiety that had settled in my chest when the crowds started gathering eased, which could only mean that Liam was behind me.
“You done being the best thing since sliced bread?” I asked. The woman sitting next to me looked over at me with a look of fear in her eyes, like I’d started talking to myself after being silent for the last fifteen minutes. I ignored her.
“What do you think was the best thing before sliced bread?” Liam responded. The woman visibly sank in relief before perking up a little. I tried to keep ignoring her.
“Getting through the First World War.”
“Wait, do you know when sliced bread became a thing?” There was no free space at the table I was sitting on, so Liam squatted down next to me.
“1928,” I replied, swiping to the next page of the book I was reading on my phone, only to discover that it was the beginning of the next chapter. I locked my phone and looked at him. Only instead of looking at his face like I intended, I found my eyes were drawn to the way his thighs bulged in his jeans while he was in that position. I blinked slowly to try and erase the X-ratedimages that had taken residence in my brain and managed to look at his face. His cheeks were pink from the cold and the dusting of stubble on his face made him annoyingly more attractive. His eyes looked more grey than green, a colour I had never seen before.
“Huh, then yeah, you’re probably right. Any of these fries for me?” I slid the box over to him and looked back down at the table, my brain still trying to figure out why his eyes looked grey.
