Chapter 32 Carter Beckett’s Double Cream Pie Cara #3
Olivia gives him a look, all parts unimpressed.
It softens when her eyes drift over him, the baseball hat that says CARTER BECKETT’S #1 FAN, the crocheted vest Jaxon’s gran made for him with Carter’s number on the back and a patch that says HOCKEY’S FAVORITE GRANDPA.
She smiles, rolling her eyes. “Whatever. Do you know what I caught him searching last night? The night before the game, what could be the Stanley Cup Final, when the captain of the team should be hyperfocused, my husband was asking Google when Oscar nominees would be chosen and notified.” She looks at us with wide eyes, and I think it’s adorable she manages to still be surprised by him after all this time.
“I said, ‘Carter, baby, there are no Oscars for commercials.’ Do you know what he said? Do you?” She leans closer, as if saying these next words aloud is criminal.
“He looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘After they see this performance, there will be.’ ”
I don’t even attempt to swallow my snort, and neither does anyone else.
Hank shrugs, palms up. “He’s a natural, I’m telling you. It’s a cinematic masterpiece.”
“Hank is single-handedly fueling Carter’s chaos,” Lennon says as she snaps a picture of him holding up his Oreo packet.
“He’s his hype man,” Rosie offers.
“He’s enabling him,” Jennie corrects. “And one thing Carter does not need to be?”
“Enabled.” Olivia points at Jennie. “You always have my back. I married the wrong Beckett sibling.”
Before we can all confirm this, the players from both teams quietly file onto their benches, all except Carter.
Emmett catches my eye from behind the plexiglass, winking at me. He points at Abel. “Want me to score you a goal, big man?”
Abel grins. “But it’s okay if you don’t too. You can’t score every time. I will always love you, no matter what.”
I watch Emmett melt in real time, his smile all kinds of soft, like the gooey puddle of my heart. “I’ll always love you too. No matter what.”
Abel gives him two thumbs up. “Hey, Emmett, guess what?” he whisper-yells. He cups his hands around his mouth and presses himself into the glass. “I went poop all by myself!”
Emmett throws his arms in the air. “Ehhh! My man!”
The flash of a camera lights our bubble, and Lennon sniffles. “Who would’ve thought a conversation about poop could be such a magical moment?”
Suddenly, the lights in the arena dim. Spotlights swirl slowly over the ice, smoke billowing from the machines tucked in each corner of the rink. The crowd is reduced to silence, eerie and palpable, anticipation sizzling in the air like electricity.
The four-sided jumbotron that hangs over center ice continues counting down to the beginning of the third period, but as it crawls closer and closer to the five-minute mark, it appears to start short-circuiting, the power cutting in and out. Then, the timer hits five, and it stops.
“Oh, God,” Olivia mumbles.
“The drama,” I whisper.
“The fucking drama.”
Holly leans toward us. “He didn’t get it from me.” But I don’t need Maury Povich and a lie detector test to determine that that was a lie—the giddy excitement on her face says it all.
The speakers and screen fill with static, the picture cutting in and out. Suddenly, a video clip fills the jumbotron, one of those old home videos with the date in the corner. This one says it was filmed twenty-seven years ago. Which puts the little boy on the screen at four years old.
“Carter. Carter, look at Mama.”
The little boy sitting at the old wooden table looks up from what he’s doing. He grins at the camera, pulling in a set of deep, heart-stopping dimples that earn an aww from this massive crowd. “What, Mama? I’m twistin’ my Oreos.”
A young Holly Beckett snickers from behind the video camera, and the present-day mama chokes out a sob from my left. “It’s a special day today. You’re four years old.”
“I know,” he says simply. “And it’s Valentine’s Day. You’re my Valentine, right, Mama?”
“Always,” she says softly, and I am not fucking crying. Nobody is. That’s ridiculous. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
A deep laugh booms from off camera, and then a large man who looks strikingly like Carter today steps up behind the little boy and his cookies. He dips his mouth to Carter’s ear. “Your mama’s afraid you’re growing up too fast.”
“He is, Theo,” Holly cries.
“He is not.” Theo, Carter and Jennie’s late father, nabs one of Carter’s cookies. “He’s still learning how to twist his Oreos apart.”
Carter shakes his head, grabbing his cookie back. “Am not, Dada! I know how to twist my Oreos!” He smiles up at his mom. “And besides, that’s an easy question. I know what I wanna be when I get big.”
“Oh yeah?” Theo ruffles his hair. “What’s that, buddy?”
“The best big brother ever,” he says, and Jennie chokes out a laugh as the camera flips down to show Holly’s bump.
“And I wanna be kind. And brave. And I wanna… I wanna make people laugh. And, oh! A hockey player. Yeah, I’m gonna be a hockey player, and I’m gonna be so big, and so fast, and I’ll score more goals than Wayne Gretzky. ”
Holly laughs. “I think you could do all that if you set your mind to it. I think you can do anything.”
His eyes light, vibrant and green and full of mischief. “Anything?”
Holly nods. “Anything.”
He twists an Oreo apart, dunking the icing-free half in milk while he licks the icing on the other half, humming like he’s deep in thought. “If I can do anything… then I think, one day… I’ll make my own Oreo cookies.”
The video goes black, and I’m still not crying, and I can tell, easily, from the sounds around me, that everyone else is also definitely not crying.
A picture fills the screen next, a screenshot of a post from Carter’s Instagram, one of his Oreo creations and a simple plea for Oreo to sponsor him.
Another post comes next, then another, each one faster than the last, until the screen is filled with one grown man’s unhinged love for a simple cookie.
The feed cuts again, and I really have to hand it to Hank—or maybe Oreo’s marketing team—because he was right. The static really adds to the cinematic spectacle of it all.
A new video fills the screen, Carter soaring down the ice in the middle of a game, a voiceover from a sportscaster pouring out the speakers.
“Carter Beckett, Vancouver’s hometown hockey hero, making his NHL debut, hoping he can put one in the net tonight. I gotta say, he’s fast, he’s big, but does he have what it—oh, there he goes! Steals the puck with ease, and he shoots, he—”
“Scooores!” The video changes promptly to Carter, sitting at a kitchen table, a glass of milk and a stack of Oreos at his side as he drops an entire cookie in his mouth.
The arena erupts with laughter as the video switches back to footage of Carter on the ice.
“And here comes Beckett, flying out of the penalty box. Oh, did you see that! Hammered number nine into the boards, shakes it right off, and now he’s… yes, he’s on a breakaway. He’s got it, a clear path. He winds up, and where’s that puck going? Going, going…”
“Gone!” Another cookie disappears as Carter tosses his head back, chomping it out of midair, and then the video is right back to him on the ice, a game I remember, only a week before Emmett and I got married.
“He’s got his good luck charm in the audience tonight, folks.
Beckett is unstoppable with that woman of his in the stands, isn’t he?
If he can put one more in the net tonight, just one more…
okay, here we go. Here we go, folks. Is this history in the making?
If Beckett can do this, if he can sink this puck, then he’s bringing home the—”
“Stanley Cup!” Carter dunks an Oreo into the very real, very large Stanley Cup, the one sitting on the table in front of him, filled to the brim with milk.
Ireland is at his side now, wearing his jersey, inciting another aww from tonight’s crowd as the little lady herself jumps up and down, slapping the plexiglass.
“Dat me! Dat me and Daddy!”
“Like this, baby,” Carter tells her on the video, dunking another cookie before eating it, all while Ireland watches carefully.
“Like dis?” She dunks her cookie—and her entire fist, and up to her elbow—in the vat of milk, before shoving the sopping mess in her mouth.
Carter chuckles. “Just like that, baby. You’re a natural.”
The video flashes to Carter standing next to a giant Oreo, Ireland in his arms, and I’m sure the only time I’ve ever seen this man smile quite like this was the day Olivia said I do.
“My name is Carter Beckett—”
“And me is I-land Bucket—”
“And we’re Oreo’s biggest fans.”
The jumbotron goes black, the announcer’s request for everyone to get on their feet for the Vancouver Vipers captain lost to the chaos as the crowd goes wild, hollering for Carter.
Holly’s shrieking, whipping around one of the T-shirts with Carter’s face on it. “That’s my son! That’s my boy!”
“That’s my brother!” Jennie shouts as Carter glides onto the ice, stick in the air, proud grin plastered to his face as he takes his praise, knocking fists with his teammates and even the other team while they bang their sticks on the boards for him.
“Goddammit.” I sniffle, swatting at a stupid, stray tear. “That was…”
“A cinematic masterpiece,” Olivia breathes out, tears streaming down her face. She leaps to her feet, slapping her palms against the glass. “Somebody get my man an Oscar! You did it, baby!”
I choke out a laugh, my heart all kinds of warm as the boys embrace Carter, as he tells them, with all the gratitude in the world, thank you and I love you.
These boys are a rare breed. Nobody can convince me otherwise.
As the chaos winds down and the players take the ice, Emmett pauses and circles back to the boards, tapping the glass in front of Abel. He presses his gloved hand to his lips and blows him a kiss. “Put it in your pocket for later.”
Abel grins, catching the kiss and putting it in his pocket before he blows one right back. “Put it in your pocket for later.”