12. Goldie
TWELVE
GOLDIE
The city might have been starting to wake up, but inside the giant arena, it was silent. My footsteps echoed and Morton’s collar tag jangled as we rushed through the cavernous hallways to get to my dad’s office. I used a key fob to open his door and made sure Morton’s water dish was full. Dad had a nice fluffy bed for him behind his desk.
“You stay here, pal.” I ruffled his neck fur and kissed the top of his head. “As soon as I’m done with this player, we can go for a nice long…” I let my voice trail out before I said the w word. Morty cocked his head, but then settled on the thick memory foam and rested his head on his paws. “I’ll be back soon.” I checked my watch as I hurried to the gym. I’d come into the rink last night and set everything up, knowing that the morning was going to be rushed.
I hadn’t expected Ace to agree to such an early session, especially on a game day. Part of me hoped that he was going to refuse. If he was flirty, I would have to exclude him from the project. The fluorescent lights flickered and hummed as I stepped into the state-of-the-art facility. I plugged in my computer and made sure that the electrode cap was plugged in to my USB port.
In an effort to feel as professional as possible, I’d worn a white dress shirt and trouser-style pants. I’d buttoned the shirt right up to my throat, slicked my hair into a ponytail, and wore my glasses instead of my contact lenses. There was no denying I was attracted to Ace Bailey, and I was pretty sure the feeling was mutual. I hoped that my dowdy getup and face without makeup would dull some of those sparks.
Twisting my ring on my finger, I wondered if Ace was actually going to show up. His brother had been early, but most of the other players had either forgotten about the session completely, or been at least ten minutes late.
At the moment my watched clicked over to five thirty, a sharp rap sounded on the metal door.
As much as I didn’t want to, I glanced at my reflection in the screen of my laptop and smoothed my hair. Satisfied, I took a deep breath, let out a therapeutic exhale, and then shouted, “Come in.”
Ace Bailey’s hair was sticking up on one side, as though styled by his pillow. His eyes sparkled, even though there were dark circles beneath the crystal blue irises. “Good morning, Professor.”
“Mr. Bailey.” I nodded and gestured to the chair across the table from me. “Have a seat. You can put that cap on, just like a winter hat.”
Ace picked up the cap and gave me a crooked smile as he stretched it over his mop of hair. “How’s it look?” He brushed at the spikes of blond hair sticking out the front of the cap.
It was hard for me to hold in the smile. “It looks like it fits just fine.” I avoided eye contact. “I’m going to ask you a series of questions. The computer is going to record your brain activity. Do you understand?”
“Don’t you need someone to look at a paper with squiggly lines?” He leaned back in the chair, slinging his arm over the side.
“This isn’t a polygraph.” I shuffled my papers and woke up my computer.
Ace leaned forward and interlaced his fingers together. “Then how do you know if I’m telling the truth?”
I let out a slight laugh. “These aren’t the kind of questions that someone would lie about. If you did lie for some reason, all it would do is totally ruin my study.” I looked up at him, meeting his gaze. “Ready?” I pushed the red button on the digital recording device.
Transcript from Session One. Ace Bailey 27 years old. Male. Diagnosed Concussions: Two.
Interviewer: When was the last time you were knocked down on the ice?
Subject A. Bailey: Yesterday
Interviewer: Did your head have an impact?
Subject A. Bailey: No
Interviewer: When was the last time you were struck to the ice or into the boards and your head made contact with the surface?
Subject A. Bailey: Last year. I was cross-checked and fell backwards. My head hit the ice, but I was wearing my helmet.
Interviewer: Tell me about the hit and what happened directly afterwards.
Subject A. Bailey: I stood up and punched the shit out of the guy who did it to me. He dropped his gloves and punched me in the face. I slammed him against the boards and his helmet flew off and he hit his head. He was out for at least twenty seconds.
Interview Paused.
I pressed the button on the recorder. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Do you want this on the record?”
“It’s hockey.” Ace gave a shrug. “It happens.”
“I’m not sure punching the shit out of a guy at a game and then knocking him out is very sportsmanlike.”
Ace reached over and pressed record on the machine. “It wasn’t a game, it was practice, and it was my brother.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t stop myself from gasping. I knew that they didn’t get along. His brother had told me about the fight, but had left out the fact that the last major concussion he’d had was given to him by his little brother. “Let me get this straight. You fought your own teammate, in practice, who also happens to be your brother.”
Ace pointed at me and clicked his tongue in his mouth. “You got it, Doc.”
I shut off the recorder again. “Why did you do that?” My voice was a whisper.
“You shut off the thing again.” He pointed to the recorder.
“This isn’t part of my study.” I folded my hands on the table in front of me. “But I’d like it if you could tell me more about this incident. It will be useful for our future sessions.”
“I don’t want to talk about that. Like you said, it’s not part of the study.”
His demeanor changed. He crossed his arms over his chest, and his shoulders slumped ever so slightly.
I was out of line. I had to ask each player exactly the same questions, but part of me wanted to help my dad, to figure out why his two best players hated each other, to figure out the source of the animosity so that they could all start working together, and winning.
The screen on my computer went dark. “I think that the cord came out of the cap.”
Ace reached to the cap, his fingers searching for the plug.
“I’ll get it.” I stood and went around the table. The cord had come loose, likely when Ace recoiled from my line of questioning. Ace stiffened as I touched the edge of the cap and reinserted the cord, but I couldn’t get it to click. “Is it all right if I touch you?” I asked.
I was ready for a dirty reply, but it didn’t come. “That’s fine.” Ace stared straight ahead. I rested my hand on his shoulder to hold the cord taut and was able to apply some force to the connection.
It happened in a literal blink of an eye. I saw Ace skating down the ice, the left side, the opposite to his typical position. The team was shorthanded and he was on a breakaway. He faked the shot like he was going to go low, and then flicked his stick, the puck ricocheting off the bar and down behind the back of the goalie, the Las Vegas goalie.
I stepped back and stared at my hand. It felt like I’d been given an electric shock.
“Did you feel that?” I asked.
“Feel what?” Ace remained still, staring straight ahead of him.
As I opened and closed my hand, the feeling started to dissipate. “I’m going to take this cap off. I think it’s malfunctioning.” I slipped the cap from Ace’s head and he reached to smooth down his hair.
“Are you prepared for the game tonight?” I asked while I turned the electrode device around in my hand, looking for possible faults in the wiring.
Ace slung his arm over the back of the chair. “Sure. Although, it doesn’t look good for us.”
“What do you mean?” I set the cap on the table between us and took a seat across from the player.
He ran his hand through his hair, but it didn’t seem to help—the quirky cowlick came back the second he was done. The shrug was subtle, and as I studied his face, it wasn’t hard to see that Ace wasn’t impressed about something. Maybe this wouldn’t be the interview I’d need for my study, but maybe there would be some gems in this conversation to pass on to my dad. “Las Vegas is the best team in the league. Their goalie—”
“Bellamy,” I interjected.
A wry smile crept across his face. “Yes, Bellamy, he’s practically a wall. And our best player has been benched.”
“Who is that?” I knew exactly who he was talking about. Gideon Bailey was the top player for the Tigers, but I wanted to hear it from Ace. Maybe there was another player that he thought was better.
“You didn’t hear?” His brow furrowed. “I’m surprised my brother didn’t tell you about it in your session.” He reached for the water jug in the middle of the table, a Toronto Tigers logo etched into the side, and poured a glass of water. Without asking, he slid it across the table to me and then poured another for himself.
“We went through the session with the standard questions, but he didn’t really offer up any other information.” It was true, but I wanted Ace to know that I hadn’t had a heart-to-heart with his older, colder brother.
Ace’s smile was back. “That sounds like him. No small talk.”
I smiled. “Why did your coach bench him?” It was weird talking about my father in such a detached way.
“Long story.” Ace finished his glass of water and poured himself another. “But we need him on the ice if we want to have a chance at beating Las Vegas.”
I bit my lip and squeezed my eyes tightly as I replayed the vision. “What do you know about Bellamy?”
Ace seemed to ease into his chair. “Is this part of the study?”
“No. I’ll have to fix this thing”—I nudged the cap on the table—“before our next session.”
Ace pointed to the jug on the table. “He’s like that pitcher there. Huge. His nickname is The Wall and it’s impossible to get anything past him.”
I set the glass of water on the table. “Well, if that were true, nobody would ever have scored on him. Is that the case?”
I hated that I liked his smile so much. His eyes lit up and even though it was crooked, his smile was bright and wide, and infectious—I felt my own lips mirroring his. “The only way people have scored on him is low. His catching hand is like a fucking sniper.”
He clapped his hand to his mouth. “Sorry, I meant—”
“It’s okay. I’m not your teacher. You can swear in here.”
As he looked up at me through his eyelashes, a thrum of warmth rushed between my legs. “You could’ve fooled me. These are teacher glasses.” He reached across the table and touched his index finger to the arm of my glasses.
The glasses, bun, and suit were intended to come off as serious, and hopefully a little bit dowdy. It appeared that the getup was having the opposite effect.
“Ace,” I whispered. “I have to keep this professional.”
“Right.” He held up his hands like he’d been in a stick-up. “Back to Las Vegas. The odds are forty to one for us to win tonight.”
My lips pressed together as I nodded. “That’s not good.”
“No,” he agreed. “It’s not.”
“If you could, what advice would you give your coach?” I finished my glass of water and the second I put it on the table Ace refilled it.
“That he needs to put Gideon back in the game. And not to run the plays where we’re on the ice together. The two of us on the sheet together, it just doesn’t work. If he really wanted to win, he should’ve benched me instead of Gideon.” He ran both of his hands through his hair again. “I don’t know why they traded both of us to this team.”
Ace agreed with my father’s assessment; their estrangement was negatively impacting the team. I bit my lip. All I wanted to do was ask why they hated each other so much. He wasn’t likely to tell me and I didn’t want him to think I was prying into his private life. I also needed to remember that he was one of my subjects. Discussing hockey, players, and goalies built like brick shit houses was okay, but asking personal questions about family issues—was not. At least not at this stage of the study.
I folded my hands in front of me, rubbing my thumbs together. The vision I’d had seemed so real. I smelled the popcorn, and felt the building shake as the crowd screamed after Ace Bailey scored the winning goal. “I’m sure there was a reason that the two of you were traded together. The coach is the best in the league, and—”
Ace laughed and held up his hands. “Best might be a stretch.”
Heat flooded my cheeks. Of course I was biased, but Swanson was often referred to as the top coach in the league. “One of the best?” I opened my hands.
His hands reached across the table to hold mine. “W-w-w-what are you doing?” I didn’t pull away. The heaviness of his hands on mine were like a weighted blanket, warm and solid.
“Tell me why you said no when I asked you out.”
If my cheeks were hot before, they were now an inferno. Instead of answering, I squeezed his hands and blinked purposefully. The flash of the red goal light swirled behind my eyelids and Ace’s arms were in the air, his stick held high in one, the other pumping. In my earlier vision about the guys in the room, Ace’s shoes had been the wrong color. I couldn’t be sure what I was seeing was one hundred percent accurate, would it be wrong to tell him? He didn’t speak and I closed my eyes again. The scene played like it was on a loop. It was vivid. I could smell the rink, hear the skates grinding on the ice, and I could feel Ace’s joy at scoring the goal. I could be wrong, but what if I was right? “I’ll tell you, but first I want to tell you something else.”
“Oh?” He cocked his eyebrow. I glanced at the recorder to ensure that I hadn’t accidentally left it running. “That you’re kicking me out of the study because I’m too dashingly handsome to resist?”
He knew how to break the tension in a room and I tried to hold in my smile. The man was entertaining. “I’ve been studying game tapes.”
His brow knitted. “Really?”
“In preparation for this study,” I added, hoping that I wasn’t coming across as a stalker. Ace had no idea that I had grown up watching games and was well versed in the minutiae of the game.
“Sure.” He winked. He took his hands from mine and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he chugged another glass of water. The man sure knew how to hydrate.
I shook my head and tried to stop the blush from traveling hard and fast down my throat and to my chest underneath the fully buttoned-up blouse. “Tonight. In the third period of the game… If you’re on the left side of the net and number four passes you the puck, I think that you should fake a low shot and then go over his left shoulder.”
Ace clapped his hand to his mouth, but not before he spat the water onto the polished floor of the conference room. “That’s not what I was expecting.”
The heat from our flirtation was replaced with a different kind—embarrassment. I shouldn’t have said anything. Who the hell was I to tell Ace Bailey what to do with the puck? “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. That’s what I would tell you, if I were the coach though.”
“You need to watch a few more tapes, Professor.” He wiped his hands on his pants. “I play right wing, and number four and I are never on the ice together.”
“It was just a thought,” I mumbled. I pulled my hands off the table and squeezed them into fists beneath its surface.
The smile never left his face. “I like your enthusiasm though. If I find myself on the wrong side of the ice, on the wrong line, I will fake low and aim for the shoulder on a guy who only let pucks through the five hole.”
When he said it out loud, I realized how ludicrous it was. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Ace leaned back in his chair, the front legs lifting off the ground. “You were trying to distract me from the real question.”
The legs clunked on the ground as he dropped forward, his eyes glued to mine. “We’ve got something here.” He pointed to me and then to him. “So why did you say no?”
Relieved to be onto a new, but equally uncomfortable subject, I crossed my arms. “I already told you. I don’t date hockey players. And now, you’re a subject in my study. I don’t date my hockey-playing subjects.”