Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Gabe Thatcher
The Bench Social Media Group
Ash Patel: Not to stir the pot, but has anyone noticed that Roe Monroe only gets quiet around Thatcher?
Riley Novak: Right? The man chirps like it’s a job, but next to Gabe he turns into a contemplative statue with biceps.
Patti Jensen: Meanwhile, Thatcher—who doesn’t look at anyone—is suddenly making eye contact like it won’t kill him.
The loud sound of my front door banging closed startles me. It shouldn’t, since I’m the one who closed it, but it knocks me momentarily out of whatever brain fog my head’s been in all day.
Three days since I dropped off Monroe, and I can’t get him out of my head.
Don’t mind me, I’m just standing in my foyer staring at the hook for my coat. The coat that’s hanging from my hands. Somehow, putting the two things together is too hard for my addled mind.
Distraction is not a good thing for working with sharp tools, so I did a rare thing and came home early. Far earlier than Jamie will be home from school.
I make my way out back to my woodshop, where I’ve been working on turning the extra hockey sticks from the Iceguard into a bench for the locker room.
Surely I can find something to do that requires minimal use of power tools but will keep my hands busy.
But once I’m sitting down at my workbench with time to work on it, my gaze keeps going to the hard-sided plastic container on the bottom shelf.
Finally, I just give up the pretense and go pull out the carry-on sized box, sawdust falling from it.
I find a towel on my bench and wipe off the lid.
Inside is the beginning of a mini wooden version of Fox River Falls.
I began working on these pieces when Jamie was just a toddler.
I thought it would be something Jamie and I could do together, that the project would grow with his skills.
I could create the pieces, and he could paint, eventually working up to creating his own additions.
But I’d stopped making them—not due to Jamie, but due to me.
I pull out the hand-sized hunk of wood that’s the beginning of The Keep.
I never finished it, because when I started it I just sort of froze, unable to continue.
Instead of asking Jamie if he wanted to help with the project, I’d abandoned it, telling myself he was too busy with hockey for something like this.
In truth, I’d worried that I’d be forcing something on him, the way my dad had forced hockey on me.
Now I doubt he even knows these pieces exist.
I pack the items back into the box, pausing on the unfinished Keep. Not making any decisions about completing the project, I leave that piece sitting on my workbench when I put the box back on its shelf.
I pull out the notebook that I use to sketch ideas, and flip away from the hockey-stick-bench drawings to find a clean page.
What I should be doing, instead of a vanity project with hockey sticks or a personal project, is developing ideas for The Freeze.
Every year I take part in the ice sculpting—ice isn’t all that different from wood, really.
The competition is fierce, and the tourists and locals love to watch the carving and wander through the finished works for weeks after.
Participation generates business and is good advertising too, as good as a job well done that wows someone who sees it, like the staircase at Marge’s Inn.
Given that sketching is the only thing my distracted brain is likely to be able to accomplish this afternoon, I start with sharp lines across the graph paper, letting my mind wander.
My thoughts turn to Monroe, and I don’t attempt to stop them. Let me overthink myself out of this obsession.
Monroe is good with Jamie; I can give him that. He’s patient and kind. Jamie and I still haven’t had the talk I promised, but I’m determined to do it before that hopeful gleam in Jamie’s eye dims to something else.
It’s harder than I thought, though, to carve myself open for my son. To let him in. I have a solid track record of not letting anyone in, but you can’t keep your kids out. Hell, he has a permanent place in my heart, always has, and the idea that I could keep him out is laughable.
But this is a secret room inside me, a place I never felt I needed to share, because by not being my dad, the room could stay closed. I huff a sigh.
Hockey and Jamie and my mixed feelings have always been there, and this moment was always coming. I need to be delicate with Jamie; I have to find the words to make him understand how I feel about hockey. It was almost too easy to explain to Monroe, though.
Monroe. Again.
Monroe is not what I expected. The media portrays him as a playboy of sorts, and I can see that side of him.
His smirk is sin itself, and I’m sure it’s not hard for him to get someone into his bed.
But it’s also a side that seems to belong to a much younger man than the one I’ve gotten to know.
Maybe it isn’t age. Maybe it’s maturity.
I sigh, shading in my sketch.
I like to think that at the end of the day, I’m honest with myself. And the honest truth I’m struggling with today is that I’m attracted to Monroe. I can cover that all I want with worries about Jamie slapped up like wallpaper over a bad paint job.
That’s not the problem, though. Attraction is easy enough. I see attractive people every day.
It’s that I wanted to kiss him that night by the truck. I wanted to taste his lips, to feel what his skin felt like against mine, under mine. I wanted to turn that smirk into surprise and that surprise into pleasure.
And that’s a problem.
I’m not oblivious to sex or desire. Over the years, the few nights of the year that Liz or her parents took Jamie overnight was plenty to scratch that itch.
Or when he was staying with a friend, now that he’s older.
Chicago is a short train ride away that’s made sex when I want it easy. Uncomplicated.
But Monroe is complicated. I’ve never done complicated. Never been attracted to complicated. Even if we put the hockey issues aside, although those aren’t small, Monroe would never be kept at arm’s length. Oh no. He’s a get to know you down to the marrow kind of guy.
I can’t imagine a world where the type of relationship I had with Liz would ever fly with Monroe.
Nah.
I think back to the times he’s been up in my space—not because he didn’t see the bubble I keep around me. His smirk is enough of a tell. Nope. Monroe wasn’t looking at the bubble. He was looking at me.
And the bubble be damned because he couldn’t care less.
I should run from a guy who can see me like that as far as the east is from the west.
Except.
Maybe I like it a little bit.
My body heats, all the way to my face, which flames so hard I can feel the burn in my cheeks.
Do I have a crush on Monroe?
I sigh, finally looking at my sketch.
It’s an arm, drawn to break out of the ice block we’re given to carve from at The Freeze. The bicep is strong and the hand wraps around a hockey stick held up in victory.
I stare at the shading, the tendons rendered in graphite. The long fingers. The scar over the knuckle of the ring finger.
That’s Monroe’s arm.
Shit.
***
“Dad?”
Later that night, Jamie is sitting across the kitchen table from me although dinner is long gone and cleaned up, leaving us to spread our work out. Homework for him and some bookkeeping for me.
“Yeah?” I ask, not quite looking up because I’m twitchy, trying not to see how close the Iceguard are to a puck drop.
I want to run to my room and watch the game, watch Monroe, where I can fixate without an audience. I’m a ridiculous dad with a crush. I’m too old for this. Too grumpy.
“I was hoping to watch the game. I’m done with this.” I look up and he’s not only done but all packed up as well.
“Oh, of course.”
“Are you okay, Dad?”
I blink at him. “Perfectly fine. Why?”
Jamie tilts his head like he’s really studying me. “I don’t know.”
“Go,” I tell him with a smile and a ruffle to his hair, standing up from the table and closing my own work. “I know you want to call Arch.” They’ll yell at the game together and gossip like my grandma did at the beauty parlor during any pauses in the action.
Jamie rolls his eyes. “It’s not a phone call, Dad. It’s just our gaming console. I explained to you how we talk over it.”
“Right.”
He takes off, but I hear him pause on his way up the stairs, as though maybe he was turning around to watch me.
My palms are damp and I have to remind myself I’m doing nothing wrong, nothing strange.
I often do work while the game is on. Since it’s the PHL, the game is streamed, so I set up like normal, which means plopping down on the couch that’s up in the second-story loft while Jamie sprawls on a six-foot beanbag I bought him last year.
It may look pretty standard for us—him chatting with his friend and me with my glasses on and computer open—but I don’t see a thing on my laptop.
My eyes fixate on Monroe. He’s having a good game and he’s sleek on the ice. Fast. Smart. He has the team working with him too. They are where they need to be on the ice more than they aren’t.
Monroe plays hockey the way God intended—all out, no pause, no give, just a fight for the puck and then the puck in the net. Repeat. I swear he doesn’t even see the other team, not as people, they’re just obstacles in his way. Something to overcome.
There’s a two-point lead into the third period, which means next to nothing. Hockey can turn on a dime and is so low scoring that it’s impossible to really relax. A two-point lead can be insurmountable or nothing at all. It all depends on the game that night.
Since it’s a stream, the polish of watching an NAPH team on ESPN or something isn’t there, which makes it more real somehow.
The camera follows Monroe as some guy is trash talking him as they come back to the ice after the first period.
Monroe’s smirk is visible as he just smiles and nods back at the guy, and he lifts the hem of his shirt to wipe his face.
Holy hell. Right there on television. The strip of skin I’d seen a hint of at my kitchen table morphs to display the rounded edge of an ab muscle, the hip bone of his sculpted V, and a tantalizing trail of dark hair that leads down to his pants.
Fuck.
I adjust how I’m sitting on the couch, not that it matters because I’m so hard it’s difficult to be comfortable. I keep my laptop strategically placed.
Jamie is ten feet in front of me, caught up in the game and discussing it with Arch in a voice that’s way too loud. I gulp my water . . . anything to get myself back under control.
I haven’t been affected by someone like this in years. Maybe never. But that trail of dark hair into sinfully tight hockey pants was the hottest thing I have ever seen.