Andrew #2
“I always wanted to be this person who everyone looked at and went ‘wow, she has it all’,” she says, “it’s probably part of how I was raised. ”
She pauses again, taking a breath before continuing.
“My parents were pretty cut-throat when it came to making sure I got everything that I wanted, and more. When you live your whole life following the example of others, there’s a lot of unlearning you have to do.
By the time you figure it out, you’ve burnt a lot of bridges and hurt a lot of people in the process. ”
“Well, consider this your first step at healing,” Andrew says, parking his truck in JT’s driveway. “It’s going to be fine.”
He jumps out and runs to the other side of the truck, grabbing her door before she can even get her seatbelt off, and she sends him a shy smile as she jumps down.
“I always forget how unnecessarily massive this house is,” she says with a huff as they head around the side of the house to the backyard.
Sokka and Roscoe come charging toward them from the fire pit, barking like they’ve never seen Andrew before.
When they reach him, they jump around him in a circle before taking off again.
Danielle walks slightly behind Andrew, as if he’ll be able to keep her hidden, and he leads her deeper into the back yard .
JT and Ainsley are already outside, Ainsley in JT’s lap as the fire dances in front of them. They’re talking about something quietly, Ainsley throwing her head back in laughter at something JT says.
She catches Andrew’s eye and he offers a small wave. Ainsley waves back, and JT looks at them over his shoulder.
“Took long enough,” he says, rolling his eyes.
Andrew lets Danielle step around him, feet crunching through the gravel around the fire, and she takes a seat in one of the empty camping chairs that they’ve set out. She takes the one furthest away, and it doesn’t escape Andrew’s notice that she also folds in on herself as she does.
“Last time I checked, Danielle only lived ten minutes away,” Ainsley says, raising a brow.
“I got lost, okay?” Andrew says, taking the seat next to Danielle. “I took a wrong turn.”
He didn’t take a wrong turn.
He’s always been uncannily good at directions. He just wanted more time with Danielle, so he’d taken a different route back up the mountain .
In his personal experience, what he called “Truck Time” was the best time to bond, and to have conversations. No matter what, the other person couldn’t leave. He’d solved many conflicts with friends by just… taking a drive.
“I don’t believe you,” JT says, raising a brow and looking back and forth between he and Danielle. Ainsley shakes her head, and Andrew takes the chair next to Danielle, wanting more than anything for her to feel comfortable.
“You don’t have to.”
He grabs the leg of her chair, and drags her as close to him as he can. She startles, and he rests a hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll take you home whenever you feel like you need to leave,” he says in a low voice. She nods gratefully, and then lets her eyes drift over to JT and Ainsley. They’re watching both of them, curious.
“I never thought I’d see the day where you’re at my house,” Ainsley says, directing her gaze at Danielle. “Not after Jamie and I got married, at least.”
“I never did, either,” Danielle says, “but I wanted to try. To see what it’s like. ”
“What living here is like?” Ainsley asks, raising a brow.
“Ains,” JT warns, voice low as he spears a marshmallow and puts it over the flames.
“No,” Danielle shakes her head. “What it’s like having you guys as friends.”
“We aren’t friends,” Ainsley says, voice sharp. “I don’t know what you think this is, but a truce is all I can give you. And even that is TBD.”
“I know that, and I deserve it,” Danielle says, but she doesn’t elaborate.
“The fact that you’re even here is more than you do,” Ainsley says.
“Ainsley, can you relax?” Andrew says, running a hand over his face. “You said you were going to be civil.”
“You did say that, hot shot,” JT says, lacing his fingers with Ainsley’s.
“I said it but that doesn’t mean it’s easy,” Ainsley says, “when there’s been nothing but open hostility for half our lives.”
“I’m not expecting you to forget it,” Danielle says, “I just want to try something different, now. Life has a funny way of showing you what’s worth the effort, and what’s not. ”
“Are you doing okay?” JT asks. “I know the last few weeks have been really rough on you.”
“We’re managing,” Danielle says, “Harper is being really brave.”
“So are you,” Andrew says softly, setting his hand on top of hers where it rests on her chair. She shrugs, but doesn’t break the contact. Inwardly, his heart might beat out of his chest. Outwardly, he’s cool as a cucumber. At least, he thinks he is.
“I didn’t lose my mom at six,” she says, brushing over it like her experience doesn’t matter. Like what she’s going through doesn’t matter.
She leans her head on Andrew’s shoulder and closes her eyes, and he feels his heart slam against his ribs. There’s no reason for her to be acting like this, but he can’t say he doesn’t like it.
She goes quiet, releasing a sigh, and he smiles to himself.
“Jamie, your marshmallow is on fire,” Ainsley says.
“Shit!” he says, pulling the marshmallow out of the fire, he blows on it to extinguish the flames and looks over at Andrew. “Good thing you like them crispy. ”
“I have never, not once, eaten a burned marshmallow, JT,” Andy says, shaking his head gently so he doesn’t stir Danielle. “Get rid of that.”
“Wuss.”
“I don’t like chocolate flavored charcoal.”
“You ate a lot of worse things when we were in Albany,” Andrew says, raising a brow, “remember the hot dog soaked in vinegar?”
“Why would you ever mention that again?” JT groans, “I was in bed for a week . I missed three games.”
“Yeah, I know,” Andrew says, “I’ve never seen a coach so pissed at a player’s stupidity, and we got up to a lot in Raleigh.”
“Like what?” Danielle asks, not moving her head from his shoulder.
“The dumbest stuff,” Andrew says, cutting his eyes to JT. “We were unsupervised, grown men with millions of dollars. You can imagine what that’s like.”
“Like that time, we both got arrested because we were drunk and dressed as Disney characters, running around Downtown at two in the morning,” JT says, eyes flashing with mirth. “Were you Daisy Duck or Minnie Mouse? ”
“I was Goofy, you moron,” Andrew says, “Petrov was Minnie, and you were Daisy. And the reason we got caught was because you two wouldn’t stop singing Party in the USA. ”
“Listen, when you’re dressed like a Disney character, you have to sing like a Disney star. Them’s the rules. I’m not the one who got pulled over for speeding on a golf cart when we were in Tampa.”
“I didn’t know you could speed on a golf cart,” Ainsley says, laughing.
“It was one of the ones that can go thirty-five,” Andrew says, grinning, “and I was in a twenty-five. The cops didn’t like that one, so I said ‘Do you even know who I am?’ It did not go well.”
“Then you tried to tell them you were me,” JT says.
“I thought it would work that time.” Andrew says, grinning. Danielle smiles from her spot on his shoulder, moving her hand back to her lap as she sits up. Andrew feels the loss of contact immediately, but she hooks an arm around his .
She’s never been clingy before, granted they hadn’t been in a situation where it was just the two of them casually.
It’s confusing, and he’s trying to just let it happen and not read into it, but he can’t help himself and he wants to yell ‘will you date me’ at the top of his lungs because he’s so gone for her and –
In for seven, out for seven.
He breathes deeply, releases it. Roscoe comes up to the side of his chair and tilts his head, looking up at him. Andrew laughs, breathing slow helping his heart rate go down.
He has a feeling he’s going to be doing this a lot with this girl. He just hopes Roscoe doesn’t continuously think his heart speeding up means he’s about to have a panic attack.
“What do you mean ‘that time’?” Danielle asks.
“The first time was we were playing in Albany on the Farm Team,” JT says, “Andy got pulled over for going seventy in a thirty-five.”
“Listen, Griff let me borrow his Ferrari, there was no way that wasn’t going to happen.”
“He told the officer that pulled him over that he was me,” JT says, “and guess who the cop was? ”
“How would we know a cop in Albany?” Danielle says, raising a brow. She’s grinning though.
“It was one of the O’Ryans .”
Danielle and Ainsley explode with laughter.
“There’s no way!” Ainsley says.
“I thought they were in Syracuse!” Danielle says. “But you got pulled over by one of them in Albany?”
“Leave it to me to get pulled over by someone that y’all went to high school with,” Andrew says, rolling his eyes. “Lucky I didn’t go to prison.”
“Lucky he was a fan and let you go after signing an autograph.”
He takes Danielle home after she starts falls asleep on his shoulder at around eleven, and he thinks that it’s just the beginning.
“Level with me, Andy,” Harper says the three days later, staring at him over her bowl of blue-goo ice cream with rainbow sprinkles.
Blue-goo ice cream was not a thing in Raleigh, he hadn’t even known what it was when she ordered it.
He chalked it up to being a northern thing, and watched her shovel the vanilla ice cream with blue-raspberry flavoring into her mouth .
If her lips weren’t blue and she wasn’t six, Andy’s pretty sure he’d be shitting himself with how seriously she’s staring at him. Roscoe is at his feet, eating a bowl of custard. Andrew is crunching on a waffle cone filled with chocolate peanut butter.
They’re sitting at a table outside the ice cream shop, Harper’s legs swinging back and forth as he reaches for a napkin to wipe her mouth a little bit so she doesn’t get too sticky.
“Alright, I’ll level with you,” he says, grinning as he reaches across the distance to get the corners of her mouth with his own napkin. “What is it you want to know?”
He takes a bite of his ice cream, watching her think through the question she’s asking.
“You like my Aunt D, don’t you?” she says, finally. “You like her , like her.”
Andrew nearly chokes on his ice cream, coughing as he swallows. He glances over at Harper, only to see what the six-year-old version of a smirk looks like.
“What do you mean I like her , like her?” he asks, after he’s recovered.
“I don’t know,” Harper says with a shrug, “like, you want to hold hands with her and kiss her and stuff. One of the boys in my class told me that’s what grown-ups do when they like each other. That’s what my mom and dad used to do.”
Her lower lip wobbles when she mentions her parents, and Andrew holds his arms out for her. She climbs into his lap easily, and tucks her face into his shirt. He doesn’t even care that she’s getting it all blue from her mouth.
She’s probably the bravest person he’s met, besides Danielle.
Navigating six-year-old life after losing both of her parents, being stronger than she has to be for her age.
He wishes he could dive into her brain and figure out how she’s staying afloat.
She can’t not understand that her parents are gone, not with the way she’s talking to him like she’s a tiny adult, but she also can’t know how to grieve when she’s this little.
He feels her sniffle against his neck and he hugs her a little tighter.
“You’re alright, bug,” he says softly. “I’ve got you.”
It only lasts a minute before she’s pulling back from him and turning back to her ice cream. She doesn’t leave his lap, just takes another bite .
“You didn’t answer my question,” she says, looking over at him, her eyes still a little red and watery. He wipes under her eyes as another tear tries to escape.
“I need you to smile, first,” he says, “you can’t be sad eating ice cream, it’s against the rules.”
“What rules?”
“The rules of life and America,” he says, raising a brow. “The President just called me and said that it’s not allowed anymore.”
“The President didn’t call you,” Harper says, but a smile is starting to crack through the surface, “your phone didn’t ring.”
“How do you know I didn’t get the call on my way to pick you up?” he asks, “The President has secret ways of communicating.”
“Why would he call you?” she asks, “You’re not famous.”
“Want to know a secret about me that only five people know?” he asks. Harper’s eyes widen and she nods. He gestures for her to lean in, and he drops his voice to a whisper. “I am famous.”
“No way!” she says, shaking her head, a full giggle escaping her. “You’re just Andy. ”
His heart has never felt as light as when he hears that, even though he knows she doesn’t know who he is.
Even though, someday, this will become a conversation they have to have.
He feels tension seep out of his shoulders as she laughs at him, not a care in the world other than he’s Andy and he’s in the secret Dukes of Hazard club with her and they’re eating ice cream on a sticky July afternoon.
She smiles, a big blue-toothed smile, and he grins.
“Would you be okay if I like like , your Aunt D?” he asks her.
Harper just shrugs. “I’m okay with it. She needs some fun in her life.”
Andrew grins, ruffles her hair, and takes a bite of ice cream, watching Harper as she finishes hers. His heart is doing something weird in his chest. It’s softer, mushy even, and he thinks that he might not just like Danielle, he might like Harper too.
She’s brave, and smart, and so easy to love that he can practically pretend she’s his own. He can imagine both she and Danielle fitting into his life seamlessly, and he wants that. Desperately .
He never thought that he’d want to be a dad, had always assumed that his life would be hockey until he was near forty and ready to retire. Then, if he felt the pull to, he could settle down with someone, no matter how hard it might be to find a girl that would want him as he was.
It’s been something he’d been insecure about, but coped with, in his own way. He’d always been too busy, especially once he’d gone to the NHL, to even consider something permanent.
And yet, here he was, kid sitting in his lap, and making him dream something that had never been a possibility in his mind. Something he rarely let cross it to begin with, especially with his past dating history.
“You’ll have to make sure you tell her that.”
“I will,” she says with a shrug, and with that, the conversation is closed and Andrew tries to wipe more of the blue-goo sticky mess off of her hands before helping her into his truck.