Page 28 of A Loser by Christmas
9
Days and daysafter sharing burnt bruschetta and striking a deal under green leaves and white berries, I’m still not done with Calum.
Reviewing each day’s footage ramps up my fascination. And my frustration. Apart from rink visits, where his focus is on kids instead of my camera, his busy schedule keeps him at arm’s length. All I get are too-small slivers of his time, and none of it is spent getting horizontal.
That’s disappointing.
However, it does give me long mornings and even longer evenings to stare at him on my laptop while much better salesmen than me prowl the marina for moneymakers.
It’s Calum’s contradictions that keep catching my eye, I think. All his ice-chip cool yet cosily warm contrasts that I’ve recorded each afternoon at hockey camps across London. Those differences are why I can’t stop rewinding and replaying my new content. He’s a puzzle for sure, and I’m as much a sucker for those now as when Père Noël would deliver one to the only little boy he said ever made it to the top of his nice list.
Those Christmas Eves were special, and not only because the jigsaws Dad would bring were handmade by him just for me. What made those late December nights worth waiting all year for was that Dad would stay for long enough to complete each of those puzzles with me.
I’d almost forgotten what that felt like. Had blanked out wishing he’d stay instead of leaving with the next tide to join the boat-show circuit.
Now I get the same feeling after each ice-rink visit that ends with Calum running a finger over his lips to tell me his next commitment is off-limits.
I can’t help wanting longer. Won’t stop wishing for more hours in each day where he’ll allow me to be his camera-toting shadow. And not only to score more contest content, or to find a way to free him from his contract. I want more time to figure out what’s missing from this picture of a star at the top of his game who needs an escape route.
Calum gives me the same urge to turn over all his pieces, so you better believe I make the most of every minute I do get to point my camera at him. I start that process each day by stalking the shore of the Thames, looking out for glints of dark gold on the far shore. It doesn’t take long to learn which building he’ll leave, and by which exit. His route never varies, predictable enough that I can even count the minutes he takes to pause on Tower Bridge to soak up the view like a tourist. Days after our deal started, each of our afternoon sessions together begin the same way.
“Where to, Loser?”
Calum always gives the same directions.
“Kensington for lunch.”
He really isn’t done with that awful restaurant, but Penny covering her heart with her hand every single time he holdsout a chair for me at a table in the window almost makes my indigestion worth it.
For five lunchtimes running, he talks and I listen, my camera propped against a candlestick between us. Calum shakes off his grey-making morning and gets chatty. I hear all about him getting scouted when he was younger, but I already read about that lucky break. And I’ve watched even more videos beside Dad in his sales booth, both of us following the story of an unconventional pathway some commentators call a fluke. Others describe it as predestined, like Calum is some kind of hockey Messiah.
“More like a hockey savant,” he admits after forcing down a mouthful of subpar pasta. “Sport was always my thing. Competitively, I mean. My younger brother?—”
“Patrick?”
“Yeah. Pat’s kind of gifted with people, like Reece is gifted at everything he does. Double degrees in international relations and psych. A doctorate that set him up for counselling traumatised kids, which he does when he isn’t on lifeboat duty. All that, but he’s never been big-headed about being the smartest of us.”
He turns a ring on his finger. It’s new to me, the first time I’ve seen him wear something this ostentatious.
“I promised to show it to the kids.” He twists a gleaming white-gold band, wintry sunlight catching so many sparkling diamonds around the club emblem on his finger. “Not too many Brits have a cup ring.” His confession makes him sound about as big-headed as his older brother. “First one since 1928,” he says quietly, but I’m close enough to see that he’s pretty pleased about it. I hear it too as soon as he adds, “Really want to bring another one back to Cornwall.”
“So you definitely don’t want to quit playing, full stop?”
“No. Never. Hockey is life. My second home and family. But my first home is life too. Had to leave it behind to find that out for myself.”
None of this makes him look or sound like a loser. I’m tempted to stop wasting my camera battery—to turn it off and give up—only there are still pieces of him left to turn over and examine. “Tell me about home.”
“In Cornwall?” He shrugs. “Not much to tell.” He does anyway while eating his lunch, and most of mine so I don’t have to, and what he describes is familiar. “Porthperrin is on the coast. A fishing village turned holiday destination. Gets crazy busy with tourists every summer. The roads get so jammed it takes Mum and Dad hours just to go shopping at the nearest Tesco.”
I push the last of my pasta around my plate instead of eating. “It was the same around La Rochelle every summer. Think that’s why my grand-mère kept her boat running. Meant she could avoid the traffic by sailing straight to the old-town markets.” I inhale deeply through my nose, which is a mistake. Instead of the scent of market stalls loaded with everything delicious, I get a lungful of disappointment wafting from Penny’s kitchen. “She let me steerla Sylvieon the way home.”
“Your boat was hers first?” This gentleness shouldn’t fit his big, bad puzzle. “And now she belongs to you.” He guesses why correctly. “Sorry, mate. You must miss her if you spent all your summers together.”
“Not only the summers. I lived with her year-round until I was eight.” I push my pasta around my plate in the other direction, speaking with more gusto than I mean to—the candle between us flickers out completely. “She couldreallycook. Especially on Christmas Eve. We always had a feast after Père Noël arrived. I miss that. Miss her.”
Meeting his gaze is tough. I make myself do it the same way I make myself get back to being professional. “Tell me more about Cornwall.” Maybe that location is the key to why he wants to escape his contract. Fuck knows I wanted to sail straight home the day I realised I must have lost my place on Santa’s nice list. I must have been bad to end up in a country where hardly anyone spoke my language.
Calum doesn’t have similar childhood disappointments to weave into a contract-breaking story. “There isn’t much to tell. I spent most of my time outdoors. At the village Sealife School when I was a nipper. At sports clubs and lifeboat training. And I surfed when I was older.”
