Chapter 23
Benson
I have been talking nonstop about hockey to a girl who has no clue about the sport.
I honestly don’t even think she cares. She’s giving me these fucking eyes that I can’t stop staring at.
I want to know what she’s thinking, but I can nearly feel it in my bones every time she smiles.
The tickle in my chest tells me that this is going in the right direction.
I look at her mouth.
I am going to have to stop doing that.
I look back at my plate.
The waitress comes by with the coffee pot.
“More coffee?”
“I’m good. Thanks, Donna.”
“Honey?”
“I’m good too. Thank you.” Lucy smiles kindly at her.
“You folks need anything else?”
I look at Lucy. She shakes her head, so I say, “I think we’re good.”
She sets the check on the table face down. I have my hand on it before Lucy can move.
“Benson—”
“No.”
“I can—”
I look at her. “Not on my watch, babe.”
She blushes a pretty shade of pink, so I smile and put my card on the check. Donna takes it.
“So,” I say, feeling a little nervous. “Want to take a walk?”
“A walk?” she asks.
I nod. “There’s a park nearby.”
She nods. “Okay.”
Fuck yeah.
Donna comes back with the receipt. I sign it and then hold out my hand for Lucy to grab. She looks at my hand for a moment, deciding what she’s going to do. Then she puts her hand in mine, I pull her up out of the booth, and I do not let go.
The light outside the diner is bright, and Lucy squints at it.
The park is a few blocks away with a pond and a few benches.
I hold her hand and start feeling like I’m sweating.
We’re silent, casually walking in the daylight for anyone to see.
If any of the guys see me right, I’m a dead man.
But I don’t care. Right now, I want to know everything about this girl.
It took a while to Camdenk the ice after the phone call with her mom, but I think I can finally start getting to know her. I have a million questions.
“What kind of music do you listen to?” I ask.
She thinks about it. “Anything, really. Classical mostly when I’m driving. Pop when I’m working out. Whatever’s on the radio. What about you?”
I wasn’t thinking about answering this question, so now that I’m put on the spot, I’m blanking.
“Let me guess,” she says, looking up at me. “Taylor Swift.”
“Ha-ha,” I say. “You got me.”
“Don’t tell me you know the lyrics to All Too Well, too?”
I smile down at her. “Of course, I do.” I start singing, “I remember it all too well.”
She laughs.
I pull her closer to me and say, “When I’m in the car, I like to listen to podcasts.”
“Podcasts,” she nods.
“Hockey mostly.”
She laughs. “That is so on-brand for you.”
We turn the corner of the sidewalk and reach the park. She points. “Look.”
It’s a heron, standing in the shallows on the far side of the pond. Long body, gray, one leg up. We walk up to the pond and watch it. The heron takes one slow step.
Lucy laughs softly. “Look at that thing. It’s so pretty.”
I look down at her. “Yeah.”
She tugs on my hand, and we keep walking.
“What are you reading?” I ask.
She thinks about it for a second too long. “I haven’t read for fun in two years.”
“So the only books you read are textbooks,” I joke.
She nods, smiling. “You know me.”
“What about TV?”
“I watch Love Island with Gianna.” She raises her eyebrows.
I roll my eyes. “She loves that stupid show.”
“She does,” she laughs. “I think it’s funny.”
“So much drama.”
“Yeah,” she says.
“What else do you like to do?” I ask.
She thinks for a moment. “This is fun.”
I look down at her lips. “Yeah.”
She pulls her bottom lip and nods.
“We could come here all the time if you’d like,” I offer. “I’m always down for a walk.”
“I would like that.”
“Okay. It’s a date.”
She laughs. “You’re persistent.”
“I know what I want.”
We keep walking, hand in hand. This is the most peace I’ve felt in weeks.
“What does Vancouver actually look like for you?” she asks out of nowhere. It feels like a few steps back from the simple conversations we’ve been having. I hope this doesn’t mean she’s thinking about the future.
I look at her, tightening my grip on her hand. “What do you mean?”
“Like what does the day-to-day of getting drafted look like. I don’t know how it works. I know you’re being drafted. I know it’s Vancouver and that it’s a big deal, but I don’t really know what it means.”
I release her hand, and then I tell her about the combine in May.
I mention my agent — Sam Mendoza out of Toronto, who took me on at the end of last season.
I explain how the actual draft works in late June, in a city that is not always the same city, with a crowd and a stage and a podium that I will, by the late afternoon of the first day, walk up to.
I tell her my agent has a meeting with Vancouver’s Eastern scout the day after the home opener.
And that, hopefully, by every reasonable projection at this stage, I am going first round to a Western Canadian team.
And that Vancouver is the most likely team.
She listens, nodding like she’s processing it all. It’s a lot. And confusing if you’re not in it. She doesn’t press with any more questions.
“That sounds like a lot to carry, Benson.”
I stop walking.
She stops, too. She turns to look at me. “What?”
“Nothing. Just — nobody’s said that to me before.”
“What do people usually say?”
“They say that’s amazing. Or they say I can’t believe I know someone who’ll go pro. Or they say your chances are slim. My dad tells me I’m a kid living the dream. Coach tells me to keep my head down and work. My mom tells me she’s proud of me. Everybody is proud of me.”
“Yeah.” She offers a smile. “It’s really amazing, Benson.”
“Well, you’re the first person to call it a weight.”
“Well, it’s a lot of pressure, isn’t it?”
I nod. “Yes. It’s a lot. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“After graduation. What are you doing?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Really?”
She nods. “Well, I have thought about going into a PhD program. I’m not sure I want to go straight through. I have been thinking about teaching for a year or two first.”
“Teaching what?”
“High school math.”
I raise my brows, imagining her as a high school math teacher.
“It feels embarrassing to say out loud. I went to Camden U on a scholarship. I feel like I’m supposed to have bigger ambitions.”
“Teaching high school math is not a smaller ambition than getting a PhD.”
“I know.”
“Do you? You’d be a hell of a high school math teacher, Lucy.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, actually. You are the only reason I am going to pass Markham’s class. I have watched you teach me. You’re really good, and honestly, you could replace Markham.”
She blushes. “Really?”
“You have a few more years, right?”
She nods, and I hate that it’s true because I won’t be here for them.
“You have time, but I could imagine you killing it. You’re so smart.”
She looks up at me. “Thank you.”
“It’s just the truth,” I mutter back.
She tells me, after a while, about what happened on the phone with her mom.
She tells me how Bear called her from a school bathroom this morning because her mom never paid for a field trip that Lucy sent her money for.
Then she tells me what her mom said to her on the phone, and it takes everything in me not to say something.
I don’t like hearing this. It’s hard to listen to.
Lucy doesn’t cry, so I think that’s a good start.
“I’m sorry you’re dealing with that.” And I mean it. She shouldn’t have to worry about her brother and deal with her neglectful mother.
“I’ve been dealing with it my whole life, so it’s okay. I think I know now that it’s not going to change.”
“I’m sorry.”
The path comes around the south side of the pond, and there’s a bench under a tree. We sit on it, and Lucy is pressed against me. I put an arm around her shoulders, and she lets me. The sun is starting to go down as the ducks glide across the surface. I gently let my fingertips rub her arm.
“Lucy,” I say nervously.
She looks up at me. “Yeah.”
Looking at this girl up close is going to be the end of me. “Come to the home opener tomorrow, and then the party.”
She turns away, looking at the pond. “Benson.”
“Don’t say no yet.” I want her to come. I want her to be there so fucking bad.
She says, “Gianna is going to find out.”
“What is she going to do?” I keep moving my fingers against her jacket. Silence fills between us, and I tell myself not to say it. Don’t fucking offer it as an option. You’re going to sound like an asshole. “Unless you want to keep this a secret.”
She looks at me for a long beat.
She shrugs.
I am going to remember this shrug for the rest of my life.
The shrug is a girl who has not decided what we are, but who is also not denying that we are something.
The shrug is a yes that she’s not admitting with her mouth yet.
The shrug is, by every reasonable interpretation a man can put on a shrug, the greenest light I have ever seen.
“So, you’ll come then?”
She sighs, looking torn.
“Come to the home opener. It’s for the public. I’ll get you a ticket.”
“You’ll get me a ticket?” she asks.
“And just come to the party after. I’m going to eat dinner with my family, and then I’ll be at the Hawthorne House afterward.”
She gives me a questionable look.
“You’re my sister’s best friend, so nobody is going to think anything of it. Plus, you’re tutoring me. Nothing has to look different from what it would have looked like a month ago. I want you there.”
“You forgot something,” she says, looking up at me through those long lashes.
“What?” I ask, genuinely clueless. I want to know what I’m missing.
She whispers, “Not too long ago, everyone saw you on one knee asking me out on a date and then kissing my crying face.”
When she says those words, I can’t help but smile. I did those things just to get her here. I’d fist bump myself if I could because it worked.
I lean in and let my Camdenth tickle her ear, “I would do it in front of the world if it meant I could spend time with you.”
She looks at my lips in a daze. Then she looks into my eyes. I brush a strand of her hair behind her ear.
“Tomorrow,” I whisper. “The game’s a big deal, and I want you there. And I want to see you after, Lucy.”
She nods. “Okay.”
I smile, feeling like I’m on top of the world. “Okay.”