Chapter 10
Eleanor starts socializing more regularly after the potluck, despite her initial reservations.
She goes to trivia nights and get-togethers. She takes to stopping by the bar on most days, even if she has no intention of drinking, and even when Dani isn’t there, she often stays for an hour or two anyway.
She also starts to occupy Dani’s lunch hours. The picnic bench where they first had ice cream together becomes their regular haunt. They order their way through the menu at the town’s only restaurant, eating from cardboard containers in the sun and enjoying each other’s company.
This level of comfort is something Eleanor has never experienced before in a friendship, and she treasures it while her survey and proposal again fall by the wayside. Eleanor starts to go days without even glancing at it, spending longer and longer stretches in idle unproductivity, and with each day, this fact bothers her slightly less.
On one such day, after they’ve finished their lunch and have started the short walk back to the shop, Dani drops another opportunity for quality time.
“Is everyone going to the River Run tonight?” Eleanor asks. To her surprise, Dani shakes her head.
“Nah, we have a pickup game going at six.” Dani kicks idly at a pebble on the sidewalk with her boot, and Eleanor frowns.
“Pickup game? For what?”
“Hockey!”
Eleanor’s confusion only increases. “It’s summertime.”
“Ball hockey,” Dani says, sticking her hands into her pockets before stopping dead on the sidewalk and turning toward Eleanor with a gasp. “Hey, you should come play!”
Eleanor snorts. The idea of her playing a sport is ludicrous, let alone hockey, but at Dani’s confused and slightly wounded look, she quickly amends. “Dani, I’ve never touched a hockey stick in my life.”
The look on Dani’s face is comical. It’s as if Eleanor has just declared a plan for world domination. It’s like she thinks never having played ball hockey is absolutely unthinkable.
“Not even in school?”
“My father paid to let me skip gym class for advanced math tutoring. He didn’t want me wasting my time.”
“Sports aren’t a waste of time! Come on, you have to play at least once,” Dani insists, but Eleanor shakes her head as they approach the shop door.
“Believe me when I say there’s nothing I’d rather do less.”
“Do you want to come and watch? Maybe you’ll be inspired,” Dani suggests.
Eleanor really should say no. The last thing she needs is to turn into the airheaded idiot she becomes whenever she sees Dani in a state of exertion. Especially in public. “I’ll think about it,” she says.
So Eleanor thinks about it.
She thinks about it on the way home. She thinks about it as she listlessly types and retypes the same sentence of her unfinished survey report. She thinks about it as she’s driving to the game only a few hours later.
Dani’s hockey game is not at the well-maintained indoor rink in town—it’s instead at a small outdoor one at the edge of the woods, which amounts to a wooden fence encircling a large rectangle of cement. Eleanor finds Dani in the packed- dirt parking lot wearing nothing but basketball shorts, her blue ballcap, and a grey sports bra.
Faced with the full breadth of Dani’s muscular back, the elastic waist of her shorts digging into the soft parts of her hips, Eleanor considers leaving before anyone sees her. It’s tempting to hide away in the sweet darkness of her room and fantasize vigorously instead of experiencing whatever is going to happen here.
She’s spotted before she can bolt.
“Nora, over here!”
Sarah—who is wearing an actual shirt (thank you very much; goddamn Danielle Cooper and her decision to play sports naked) —waves Eleanor over to where the group is scattered around some makeshift benches. Owen is there doing some light stretches, and Mila is wrapping black tape around the handle of her extra wide hockey stick. Eleanor even recognizes a few people on the opposing team: Jenny the bartender is leaning against the fence, her blue-streaked hair now featuring strands of pink, and so is Matthew. He’s sporting a bruised face and a much better attitude.
“Surprised to see you here,” Sarah says as Eleanor sits gingerly on a splintery bench.
Eleanor purses her lips. “I’ve never seen a hockey game before.”
Ryan laughs, but when Eleanor arches a brow, he looks just as disbelieving as Dani did.
“Wait…you mean a live game, right?” Ryan says.
All the attention in the group suddenly zeroes in on Eleanor. Her spine straightens under the scrutiny.
“I’ve never seen one, period.”
“Are you even Canadian?” Owen asks.
Eleanor actually laughs at that. “I didn’t realize citizenship had a winter-sport requirement?”
“Just for the world’s greatest sport,” Owen says.
Ryan makes a squeaky noise of dissent. When Owen pouts, he sighs affectionately. “Right. The world’s greatest sport.” He pats Owen on the shoulder consolingly, but as soon as Owen turns away to talk to Sarah, Ryan shakes his head.
Eleanor hides her grin behind her hand.
When Dani and Owen leave to set up the nets and talk to the other team, Mila plops down in the vacant spot next to Eleanor. She’s slipping a large glove onto her right hand.
“I wouldn’t have guessed that you played hockey,” Eleanor says.
Mila shoves a slightly oversized helmet onto her head. “I’m the goalie!”
Eleanor frowns, looking between Mila’s thin frame and the large net that Dani is dragging into place nearby. “How?”
Everyone laughs like it’s some kind of inside joke. It’s Sarah who takes pity on Eleanor with an explanation.
“She’s skinny, but Mila’s the fastest catcher I’ve ever seen. She could grab a ball at the speed of light in that mitt.”
Mila shrugs, pulling her helmet’s face guard down. “People underestimate me. It makes it even funnier when I cream them,” she says cheerfully. With that, she stands up and skips happily onto the rink.
Once the game starts, Eleanor sits between Naomi—who claims to be here to support her brother but seems to cheer an awful lot when Sarah scores goals—and Ryan, who spends most of the game sighing dreamily every time Owen so much as touches the ball.
It makes Eleanor keenly aware of what position she’s in here. She’s one of the cheerleaders.
It’s hard not to have fun, even with that knowledge. Dani is a great player—not the best of the bunch, but consistent and gutsy, and she’s entertaining to watch. She does chest bumps with Owen, lifts Mila up when she makes spectacular saves, and seems to do everything she can do to show off her strength and endurance while Eleanor watches with her legs tightly crossed.
It’s somehow both better and worse than watching Dani fight.
Because Eleanor doesn’t have to worry so much about Dani’s safety this time, she can pay more attention to the details. Details like the way Dani’s shorts ride low to reveal the bare space between her hip bones, which Eleanor wants to follow with her mouth. Or how the sweat seems to bring the angles of her body into sharper definition. How her charming, magnetic smile lights up everyone around her.
Luckily for Eleanor’s sanity it’s a short game. Dani’s team wins by two goals thanks to Sarah’s aggressive offense and Mila’s goalkeeping, and Matthew even gives Dani a respectful nod—tinged with a bit of fear, Eleanor notes—as he heads back to the opposite benches.
When Naomi rises to join Sarah and Owen on the rink, Dani plops down in her empty spot, catching a towel that Mila throws her way and mopping her face and neck with it.
“So, what did you think of your first hockey experience?” Dani asks, taking a long drink from her Space Jam -branded water bottle. Her throat strains and flexes.
Eleanor looks away abruptly.
“It was exhilarating,” Eleanor says drily, hoping that Dani did not at any point during the game look over and see just how closely Eleanor was watching. Dani just laughs, throwing the towel over her shoulder.
“We’ll make a fan of you yet.”
Eleanor means to fire back—a half-formed quip about Dani needing to score more goals first—but they’re interrupted by a short, sweaty man from the opposing team.
He’s immediately a deeply unwelcome presence, with an uneven tan on his pale chest and a plastic bottle full of murky, brown liquid in his hand. He stands in front of Dani’s seated form, his waist far too close for comfort, and looks down at her with a grin half concealed by a mysteriously huge bump under his bottom lip.
The source of the lump reveals itself when he spits into the bottle, the saliva coming out a revolting brown. Chewing tobacco.
Dani seems just as put off by him as Eleanor is—she sighs, leaning back so as to be further from his belt buckle, and purses her lips. “Shaun.”
Eleanor remembers that name, vaguely. The driver of the truck with the obnoxious wheels. He certainly fits Dani’s description: His hair is slicked back from his face, and his beard is patchy, like he’s trying too hard to grow one on a face it doesn’t suit. Eleanor hadn’t gotten a good look at him when he roared past them that night, but she does remember that he did some pretty shoddy defense during the hockey game.
It’s clear when he opens his mouth that his personality matches the compensatory nature of his truck.
“Heard you kicked Matty’s ass,” Shaun says appraisingly, spitting into the pop bottle again and grinning in a way that comes out clownish with the tobacco in his lip. “You know, I like girls who can take a tumble.”
“Fuck off, Shaun,” Dani says clearly, averting her eyes from the show Shaun is trying to put on. “Go take a shower.”
“When are you finally gonna go out with me, Cooper?”
“Last time I checked, I’m still a lesbian.” Dani stands up to her full height. She’s about an inch taller than he is, but he continues to grin at her as if her ire somehow makes him happy.
“Gimme a chance, and I could change that.”
Anger swells in Eleanor’s chest like a sleeping dragon awakened by Dani’s visible discomfort.
“Fuck off ,” Dani snaps again, pushing at his chest. He sways a bit, and now that he’s closer, Eleanor can detect a whiff of beer. “Have a dart and sober up, if you ever want to see our team here again.”
Rather than acknowledging that, Shaun turns his attention instead to Eleanor.
“How’s about you, city girl? You a lesbo like the Coopers, or do you want a little country in you?” Shaun says lecherously, grabbing at the fork of his jeans.
“Say one more word to her, Shaun. See how it goes for you,” Dani says lowly. She looks like she’s about to explode as Shaun turns to look back at his friends, who all watch the interaction in either suspense or mild discomfort. Dani’s fists are clenched, her jaw tight with rage. But Eleanor is angrier on Dani’s behalf than on her own.
Standing up to match Dani, Eleanor crosses her arms with deliberate slowness, slipping into the corporate persona she hasn’t worn since she arrived here.
“A little country?” Eleanor says, quirking a brow and glancing down at Shaun’s belt buckle. “No, thank you. Though it’s brave of you to make it obvious just how little.”
Dani’s friends erupt into laughter; Shaun’s neck and ears glow crimson. He spits into his bottle more harshly than before.
“Think you’re smart, eh?” Shaun sneers. “I don’t usually go for women with sticks up their asses, but I bet I could replace it with something better.”
“What the fuck did you just say?” Dani snaps, pushing again on Shaun’s chest until he takes a step back.
Eleanor touches her shoulder lightly.
“It’s fine, Dani. I don’t take offense to half-baked insults thrown at me by a knuckle-dragging neanderthal who wouldn’t understand the word no if it grabbed him by his undescended testicles,” Eleanor says coolly.
It takes Shaun a solid couple of seconds to fully process what she’s said. When it hits him, his whole demeanour shifts.
“Listen, you prissy little bitch.” Shaun’s cockiness is rapidly shifting to genuine rage, “I’m not gonna stand here and take shit from some fuckin’ tourist just ’cause Cooper brought you around.”
“And I’m not going to stand here to be sexually harassed by someone with a third-grade reading level,” Eleanor says.
Shaun pushes back against Dani, his intent clearly toward Eleanor. Two more sets of hands grab his shoulders; Sarah is calling for everyone to calm down while Shaun shouts obscenities in Eleanor’s direction.
“Touch me,” Eleanor says calmly, cutting through the growing chaos, “and I will bury you in assault litigation so deep you’ll be paying your lawyer’s fees until you retire.”
Shaun pays her no mind, throwing increasingly distasteful insults at everyone in the vicinity. Dani is trying to intervene, a hand planted in the middle of Shaun’s chest to keep him from lunging at anyone, but clearly he doesn’t respond to more cerebral threats the way Eleanor is used to.
She could let Dani and her friends take care of it. Even Shaun’s posse are starting to get involved, encouraging him to back away, but the last thing Eleanor wants to be is a damsel.
Maybe she needs to take a leaf out of Dani’s book. This seems to be a town where physical altercations can get the job done, if Dani’s performance the other night is any indication. When in Rome, and all that.
When Shaun manages to shake free, winding a fist back in a clear trajectory toward Dani’s face, Eleanor moves her hand at lightning speed to seize at the body part he so recently tried to thrust in her face and squeezes it with devastating precision.
Shaun buckles. His knees fold, and he doubles over in pain until he’s at Eleanor’s eye level, a vague wheezing sound the only noise he’s capable of making as Eleanor digs her short nails into his groin.
“I think that was a bad decision, Shaun,” Eleanor says in a light, airy tone as his friends all yell in sympathetic pain behind him.
Shaun makes a garbled noise. His knees clearly want to collapse fully, but he’s unable to hit the ground with Eleanor’s grasp keeping him up.
“I also think you owe us an apology. What do you think, Dani?”
Dani, watching the proceedings with her mouth agape and a delighted expression, nods. “I’d love that, actually.”
Eleanor puts on her best boardroom smile. Every man she knows besides Ash hates it with a burning passion, hence her struggles with the board at CromTech, but never before has she met one who was so willing to indulge that anger.
“You heard her,” Eleanor says.
Shaun grunts, but as if he can sense that Eleanor is about to squeeze again, he manages to rasp out a few words. “Let me go.”
“I’d like an apology first.”
“Cooper, make her let me go?”
Dani ignores his plea. Shaun appeals to his friends instead, though they don’t seem interested in stepping in.
“Matt?” Shaun whines. “Jenny, come on. Punch her in the tits or something!”
Jenny snorts, folding her arms and leaning against the boards. “This is your fuck-up, man. Take your knocks.”
Even though Eleanor is hardly holding on at this point, the threat of her hand’s position is enough. It takes only a few more seconds for Shaun to crumble.
“Fine. I’m sorry, okay?” he mutters, his bravado utterly deflated.
“Good enough,” Eleanor says. She releases him abruptly, and Shaun falls into a heap at her feet. When she taps his shoulder with the toe of her shoe, he groans again, sounding like an injured puppy.
“Oh, you’re fine,” Eleanor says, rolling her eyes. “Sit on an ice pack and you’ll be good as new. Dani?”
Dani nods rapidly, offering Eleanor her arm. Together they step over Shaun’s body, heading toward the parking lot with the rest of the team.
By the time they get there, Sarah is laughing so hard that she’s bent double, wheezing and leaning on a giggly Mila. Owen is giving them a reverent slow clap. Ryan cups a nervous hand over his own genitals.
“I’ve been trying to get him to leave me alone since we were in high school,” Sarah says, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. “I had no idea all it took was plucking his grapes.”
Eleanor shrugs. “When you can’t threaten them with legal repercussions, sometimes you need to get physical.”
“Damn, Nora,” Dani says. She’s grinning from ear to ear as she pulls her into a side hug. “Next time Matty wants to tussle, I should just let you at him!”
The group dissolves into laughter again. Dani keeps one sweaty arm around her shoulders, and, as a unit, everyone grabs their gear to head to the bar for after-game drinks.
In that moment, she doesn’t feel like Eleanor Cromwell. She feels like Nora . For the first time in as long as she can remember, she doesn’t feel out of place.