Page 39 of Breakaway Heart
Drool’s driving us. Pick you up at three.
Okay, Lucy. Get it together. All you’ve got to do is show up, see him one last time, then tell your brain to forget him forever. I claimed a coconut water from the fridge and put it up against my head, pleased at the momentary soothing sensation.
“I love you coconut water,” I cooed.
It was ten past three when my doorbell rang. I trudged to the door to open it, finding Hannah looking back at me through dark glasses, a cup of coffee in a dripping paper cup in her hand. Next to her stood the grinning Doctor Drew.
“Are you ready for some… Hock-ey!” Hannah tried to say with fervor, but it fell flat.
“I think I’m still hungover, Han. This feels like a really bad idea.”
“Same. You think they’ll open the bar for this? I could really use something to take the edge off the throbbing hell that is inside me.”
“I highly doubt it, Han.”
“Well, I bought some seltzers just in case.”
“Hi Drool,” I said as cheerfully as I could muster.
“Oh, hi there.” He raised his hand in recognition, ignoring that I’d gotten his name wrong. “You can call me Doug. It’s Lucy, right?”
‘Dog drool’ was the first thing that came into my head, and I tried to hide a smile as I nodded and we headed to the car.
The practice rink was a smaller space next to the main arena, perhaps a few hundred seats surrounding the ice. As we stepped inside, the soft chill from the ice felt pleasingly soothing on my sore head. For a moment, I closed my eyes, letting it tingle my skin, feeling certain it could heal me. Then a puck slammed into the plexiglass right next to my face, making me jump and screech.
The sound of sharp steel scratching across the ice, the clack of wood on vulcanized rubber pucks, the shouts and shots rattling off the plexiglass, none of it was lost under the swell of the crowd here. The sounds echoed out and felt more real than I’d ever heard at any game. It was raw and unfiltered, harsh-sounding in the air. As if all the music had been stripped away and there was just a bass line and a clunking rhythm guitar left.
All the other people there, maybe twenty or thirty in total, were scattered in a stand to one side, and we went tojoin them. As we did so, a group of women, some adorned in Ice-Hawks shirts or caps, immediately gave us suspicious looks, wondering who the outsiders were.
We took our seats and watched the rush of movement below. The players seemed huge up close and padded up, giant man mountains rushing about with a mix of exquisite balletic skill and raw violence. Each drill was so quick and intense. Shots ricocheted, ice sprayed, and there, right in the middle of it all, was Randall Jackson.
I honestly don’t know what I expected to feel when I saw him again. On the surface, he looked like the same man I’d briefly known that past summer. But in this setting, it was odd to see none of his cockiness or cheekiness on display. Just a man playing a game of hockey with ice-cold focus.
The coach called the players into a sudden skating drill, sprinting from line to line on the ice. A couple of the players rolled their eyes, but Randy didn’t hesitate. He gave everything to get to the line first each time. His chest billowed and burst with exertion, but still he pushed harder and harder.
Before we arrived, I’d wondered what would happen when he saw me. But now, I knew that he wouldn’t see me at all. While some of the other players occasionally waved a glove at people in the seats by us, Randy just chased puck after puck, panting, sweating, working. And hewasworking. Like his life depended on it.
I overheard one of the women behind me talking, “What’s gotten into Randy? He’s always taking it too seriously. He used to be kind of funny.” Then she stood up and hollered, “Get ‘em, Dan!”
My intrigue made me look over and follow the voice, and my eyes locked with those of a woman in lipstick-red sunglasses and a matching loud dress with huge shoulderpads that both looked like they could have been props from an 80s movie.
She grinned back at me, then pointed over my shoulder to the ice, saying proudly, “That one’s mine, the juicy one.”
As my eyes returned to the ice, the goaltender lifted his stick back at her. Behind him, a player rattled a shot into the roof of the net while he was distracted.
“Janek, what the hell!” The coach screamed. “Blue lines now! Go!”
Janek dropped both his head and his stick and started skating to the lines, while another goaltender seamlessly slotted in to his position for the shooting drill.
“Booo!” The woman called out toward the coach, her hands shaped into a makeshift megaphone. She gave the coach a thumbs down, and he shook his head in disbelief at her, before she turned her attention back to me.
“You’re new. Are you with one of these guys?”
“Oh. No. Not really.”
She squinted her eyes at me, unconvinced. “Hmm, Reese? No? Jake then!”
“Leave her alone, Kensy,” the woman next to her said, laughing.
