Chapter 31
PERRY
“It’s tricky,” Robbie said, standing next to me as we waited for Alan to pick my shot.
I pulled my attention away from the stands where Evan was sitting, and onto the ice, where it should be. “Yeah. No one ever said they weren’t good curlers.” I pulled in a deep breath and watched. “He’s going to say guard our stone. If we keep them to one point, we still win.”
Robbie nodded. “It’s what I would call.”
“I can take out their shot rock.”
“That’s an outside curl.”
I peered at him.
“Yeah, okay. I know you’re good at those. But you run a real risk of taking ours out, too, and that’ll leave them scoring three, and those stones are so far apart, we might not be able to keep them under three points with the stones we have left.”
“It’s a risk but if I do it right, I don’t take ours out, I curl my shot behind it, and we have two points on the board. Best they can do is a raise, which still leaves us with shot that we can then guard.”
“If you do it right, and if none of our guard shots go wrong.”
“When has Alan ever delivered a guard wrong?”
“Based.”
“I can see the line.”
“Seeing the line and making the shot though…”
“I know. I miss and I take out our insurance, or leave them with an easy double.” I looked at him. “I won’t miss.”
He sighed and shrugged. “I’ll go tell him. See what he says.”
I studied the lines, clear as if someone had drawn them on the ice for me, though obviously they weren’t really there and the guys had only my word that I could see what I told them I could see.
I could definitely do it. One hundred per cent, this was a shot I could make.
I looked up at the sound of my name to see Alan waving me over. I glanced at the game clock and decided we had time so I went down to hear what he had to say.
“You sure?” he asked me.
I nodded.
“I don’t see it. If you do, you have to call it.” He looked at Robbie and Carol. “You guys can listen to his call?”
“Bien s?r,” Carol said.
“Sure,” Robbie agreed with a negligent shrug.
I said to Alan, “You’re Skip. I’ll take the shot you say.”
He smiled at me and it was more than just a Skip’s reassuring smile, which was obvious to everyone when Robbie groaned under his breath, and there was a rustle of “aws” and “oh” from the stands.
“Take the shot you see,” Alan said. “I trust you.”
“No pressure though,” Robbie said quickly, as if he was worried I’d buckle under Alan’s confidence in me.
“I got this.” I took a steadying breath, let it out, and nodded. “I got this.”
“Of course you do.” Alan’s pat to my shoulder lingered just a breath longer than necessary. “Tell me where to put my broom for your aim and let’s finish this. We are literally four stones away from the Olympics.”
Which was when it hit me. It didn’t matter if I made the shot or screwed it up. We still had three stones, and the hammer, and even if we somehow lost this game, there was another one tomorrow.
We were going to the Olympics. There was no chance Jason Darren was taking that away from my boyfriends, my friends, or me.
The pressure fell away completely as I pointed to a spot on the ice. “About there, I think. I’ll let you know when I get back down there.”
I slid away, as calm as I’d ever been, despite the importance of the Trials, this game, and this shot specifically. It was one more stone in a million I would shoot in my life. Just a shot.
Once in the hack, I waved for Alan to move his broom a few inches to the left to better aim my delivery, then let it go.
The weight was right. The curl was not. “Hurry, Robbie! Curl!” I called. “Curl! Curl! Hurry!”
He dug in, with Carol sweeping ahead of him, making sure the path was clear.
“There!” I shouted. “That’s it! Clean!” It was on the right trajectory now. It had to keep its momentum. “Clean!”
They both broomed hard enough I could hear them grunting over the mics, their heavy breathing loud in my earpiece.
“Steady. Off! It’s there! Get off!”
The hard clack-crack of the stone hitting their shot rock echoed down the ice. Alan was on their rock in an instant, brooming it on its way clear out of the house.
Ours hit and stuck, in a line with our guard, no room for them to slip past the first guard on the inside to take it out, too deep to curl around the guard, and no one on their team as good as I was at the outside shot I’d taken.
The stands erupted with loud cheers, and I still would have sworn I could hear Evan and Jacob and Shaw over the rest, booming out their enthusiastic approval.
As I slid to the edge of the ice to clear the way for the opposing team, the Vice-skip from Pickering nodded to me. “Excellent shot,” he said. “Really well done.”
I blinked at him. “Thanks?”
He chuckled and it sounded a bit sad. “You know that was an amazing shot. We all do. For what it’s worth, and I’m not going to throw the game or anything, but I hope you guys win. We could do a lot worse for representation in Milano than you guys. True class.”
“I—” I gulped. “Thank you.” I paused, then turned around. “And do not throw the game.”
His chuckle held genuine amusement. “Obviously.”
I grinned. “Obviously.” I waved down the ice. “Do your worst.”
His worst was to replace my stone with his, but not as cleanly. He took out one of his own in the process and curled too far, leaving what had been our guard rock as the shot rock.
My next shot was an easy call. Guard our shot rock.
After that, it was a done deal. There was little they could do to keep us off the button, and Alan’s last stone glided neatly over the tiny metal disc and spun to a stop.
We ended the game seven points to two. Our road to the Olympics was clear. We were going to Milano Cortina in less than three months.