From Fling to Ring: A Hockey Romance (The San Francisco Aftershocks)

Chapter 6

TYLER

“Lucy, nice to see you again,”I say, standing while she takes the seat opposite me in my neighborhood coffee shop.

She glances up from rooting around in her backpack. “Yeah. Good to see you again too.”

Ouch.

I try again.

“I’m glad I could help you with this interview. I wasn’t sure I was going to get permission to do it. Anytime we speak to the press, we go through our PR guy.”

Is SF Freekly really considered ‘the press’? I decide not to ask.

“Uh-huh,” she says, pulling a pad of paper out of the depths of her bag and finally looking up at me.

Her disinterest aside, she really is quite lovely with short, bouncy blonde hair and big brown eyes. She’s a little thing, I remember from the team party, and even sitting down, she still has to look up to me.

So I slouch a bit.

I’m not above working this shit.

“Lucy, I understand you’re from San Francisco. I don’t meet many natives. Seems like everyone here has come from someplace else. Like me.”

Looking at me for a moment, she nods and sets her pad down.

Okay. Conversation underway.

I’m not the best small-talker, not by a long shot, but this woman isn’t winning any awards for her chatting skills either.

“I did grow up here, with Petal and our other friend Gilly.”

“How’d you meet? In school?” I ask.

“We went to kindergarten together. But after that, we all went to different schools.”

“How’d you guys remain friends if you weren’t at the same school? Were you neighbors or something?”

Fuck, that’s a boring question. I need to step it up before I put this woman to sleep.

Lucy scoffs. “You’ve seen Petal’s family home, right?”

I nod. I was at that party she and Rake threw once they decided they were real-married instead of fake-married. The house was banging nice.

“Yeah, well, I did not grow up in that neighborhood,” she says. “We just… stayed friends after kindergarten through activities. Stuff like that.”

She flips a page on her notepad, our small talk apparently over. This leaves me feeling not-so-great about my bet with the guys. Is there going to be a pink tutu in my future after all? This woman is hard-core, and she does not give a flying fuck about me.

“Okay, Tyler. Can you tell me about your volunteer work with the kids? You know, how you got into it and all that?”

She looks at me expectantly, pen poised, all business. It’s familiar to me, this sort of conversation. I’ve been interviewed enough times to recognize a journalist’s cover—the fake empathy, the sincerity. They have their poker faces, but they’re transparent as hell.

They waver between showing interest and impartiality, trying to straddle a line where they appear professional yet chummy enough that someone might slip and reveal something juicy.

They want the scoop, the story no one else has. They poke for cracks in the armor, hoping something big drops—some gritty detail of locker room drama or a snippet about life off the rink. If they can unearth a good one, it’s a win for them, a chance to savor the glow of exclusivity, to pat themselves on the back for their skillful digging.

Lucy dives into her questions, and in my head, I’m two steps ahead, anticipating where she’s going, ready to steer the conversation away from any landmines, not that there are many when it comes to talking about volunteer work. If she’s going to be all professional and shit, then so am I.

I may have an ulterior motive for being here today, but she’s after something, too.

Anyway, there’s nothing easier than talking about yourself. Which is what makes blowhards so tedious. But I am here to talk about my volunteering—it doesn’t get more innocuous than that— so I start flapping my gums.

“Well, when I got to be like seven or eight, I was totally hyper. No amount of ADHD medication helped. My father put me in a series of sports, and when he realized how strenuous hockey was, and how likely it would be to tire me out faster than anything else, he had me on teams as soon as I mastered the Learn to Skate program at our local rink.”

She nods, looking bored out of her skull.

Jesus Christ, I do not need this shit. I have half a mind to just get up and leave and, if it were anyone else, I might do just that. But because Lucy is Petal’s friend, there’s more at stake here than just a boring-ass interview. If I piss off Lucy, she’ll tell Petal, who will in turn tell Rake, who will undoubtedly give me massive shit for not being nicer to his wife’s best friend.

And to think I am supposed to date this woman. Well, for ninety days, anyway.

I picture myself in a skating dress and decide to keep trying.

“Mmmm hmmm,” she says, waiting.

“Right, so uh, when I got out of the junior leagues and went pro, I was approached by a local volunteer group that teaches hockey. I thought it sounded like fun, so I joined up. I don’t have much time for it during the season, but over the summer, when I am in town, I go and run drills with the kids. You should come watch sometime.”

Like that would ever happen.

She scribbles something in her notebook. “Do you enjoy it?”

“I love it. In fact, I miss it during the season. I see a lot of kids like myself who, if their parents hadn’t gotten them into sports, would be wasting their energy in much less constructive ways.”

Something in her face changes, and I hope like hell she’s seeing me as a human, finally.

“Are you saying you might have ended up on the wrong path if not for hockey?”

Hmmm. This is something I don’t talk about much, having had it drilled into my head to keep my life challenges to myself to ensure the team keeps its image squeaky clean at all times.

But what the hell.

“Yeah. Some of the kids I grew up with, well, let’s just say they’ve not become productive citizens. It’s so easy for people to give up on a hyper kid. It happens all the time. Parents, teachers, whoever, don’t know what to do with a kid, so they throw in the towel and leave him—or her—to their own devices. That’s never the best way to go. In my opinion.”

She slowly nods her head, no longer looking down at her pad and instead looking at me. “Totally. I remember a kid I grew up with, I think his name was David, bouncing off the walls at school. He didn’t do anything horrible, he was just mischievous, getting into low-level trouble. I liked him, thought he was a lot of fun, but one day he just didn’t come to school. We asked what happened and the teacher said he’s not allowed here anymore. It was so scary and final, and I think we all sat there thinking, well, they could get rid of me, too, if they wanted.”

I look down at my coffee. Good grief. We’re supposed to be talking about hockey or something like it, and we’re talking about this stuff instead.

“Anyway, that’s a long way of explaining how I ended up where I am today. Pretty boring, huh?” I chuckle.

She frowns. “No. Not at all. It makes you more… human.”

Okay. She thinks I’m human. Sad as that is, I’m pretty sure it’s meant as a compliment.

“Geez. I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” I say. Please, let this woman crack a smile. Or something.

And she does. “Hey, it wasn’t meant as a put-down. Chill out, okay?”

Really?

She’s telling me to chill out? She, who has an icicle shoved so far up her ass her lips are blue?

I lean over the table between us, pushing our coffees out of the way. “You’re telling me to chill? You’re acting like I have some deadly communicable disease and you can’t get the hell out of here fast enough.”

Her mouth drops open. Apparently, she didn’t plan on being called out, at least not by me. And I don’t care. This woman needs an attitude adjustment and if I have to be the one to give it to her, so be it.

It sounds completely cliché, but I know Lucy’s type, just like she thinks she knows mine. And she doesn’t like guys like me. Not because we’re horrible people or anything like that. No, she’d never put forth enough effort to determine whether that’s the case or not. She dislikes my ‘type’ because we represent something that rubs her the wrong way.

Maybe she saw the jock in school who got passing grades when he didn’t deserve them because the teacher had a soft spot for athletes.

Or the asshole big-man-on-campus college jock who acted like she wasn’t even there. That when she passed him in the quad, he might have looked her way, but his gaze went right through her like she was invisible.

She could very well resent the obscene amounts of money pro athletes get paid, and be steadfast in her belief that we aren’t deserving of it. She kind of has a point with that one.

Hell, I could take a bullet for this woman and she’d still think I’m a douchebag.

The not-so-hilarious thing about all this is that Rake and Jonas saw her coming from a mile away. I thought I could charm her, make her like me, and they knew all along that would be a snowball’s chance in hell.

Those assholes set me up and now I’m headed for a fitting with a pretty pink dress.

Lucy snaps her jaw closed and straightens up in her seat. “I’m sorry if I came off that way. I didn’t mean to be rude.”

Holy shit. She’s blushing. Not a lot, but still, there’s a light pink on her pretty face.

“Do you mean to say you aren’t worried I have a communicable disease, or at least one that’s deadly? And you’re cool with that?”

She presses her lips together and, in spite of herself, one corner of her mouth crooks up, followed by the other. Pretty soon she’s sporting a full-on teeth-baring smile, which is, by the way, quite pretty.

She nods, as if conceding I won the round.

We both know it’s not the last.

“Well, now. That smile makes you more… human,” I say slowly.

She covers her mouth with her fingers like she’s trying to hide her smile and stares out the window at the passersby in order to avoid looking at me.

While a woman ducking my gaze is not usually a good sign, right now I’m taking it as one. She knows she’s just been called out by someone who’s nothing like she assumed I’d be.

So, I take my chance.

“Hey, you want to go out next week?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”