12. Re
CHAPTER 12
REUNION
BAY
“ S ignorina Bay, che piacere vederla. Diventa ogni giorno più bella, se posso permettermi. (Miss Bay, what a pleasure to see you. You get more beautiful with every passing day, if I may say so.)”
Luigi pulls me into a fatherly hug as he picks me up outside the Gamma house to drive me to Bridgeport.
“Aww Luigi, it’s so nice to see you.” I beam. “You didn’t have to come all the way here to pick me up though. I told Lake I could get the train or carpool with one of the Zetas who are coming to watch the game.”
I’m not surprised when Luigi shakes his head. “ Assolutamente no (nonsense). His Royal Highness would have never allowed his sister-in-law to carpool or use public transportation .”
He utters the last two words with a visible shudder, as if taking the train was unthinkable.
I’m not going to lie, while I definitely didn’t need to ride in a limo, it’s not exactly a travesty to travel in style.
Especially since I have a lot on my mind right now. I look at the email I received this morning from the insurance company that should pay out the sum we need to rebuild the Zeta house—or at least most of it—and tighten my grip on my phone.
My knuckles turn white but reading the email for the tenth time since this morning doesn’t change its content.
The insurance company has concluded their investigation and they aren’t going to pay us a cent. They deemed the fire intentional. Arson is the word they used. They attached a photo of the hair curler that caused the fire as proof.
On one hand, I should feel better that the hair curler with my name on it didn’t malfunction. On the other hand, the fact that the on-off switch was jammed so it would be impossible for it to turn itself off opens an entirely new can of worms.
Who could have done something like that?
Bianca hates me .
It’s my first thought. But it takes more than my suspicions to find the culprit. I have absolutely no proof that Bianca has anything to do with the fire. To be honest, the fraught relationship between us is the only thing that makes me think she could be responsible. If I look at things as objectively as possible, Bianca would be the last person who would have a reason to burn down our house.
There’s the fact that her attempt to take my presidency was unsuccessful, but she’s our master of ceremonies. That gives her a seat on the Greek Council and I’m a senior. It’s only a matter of time before Bianca could have the presidency. I doubt she’d have done anything to ruin her dream of occupying the presidential suite next year.
If I’m right however, that means that someone else hates me enough to do something extreme. I’ve always thought every Zeta sister loved the way I lead our sorority. I rack my brain thinking about who could have been harboring so much resentment toward me. I come up empty but maybe I should look at the sisters who voted against me during the no confidence vote. They’re obviously unhappy enough with my leadership to want me replaced. The question is if that’s enough to push anyone to risk hurting every Zeta in more ways than one?
I close my eyes, resting my head on the supple leather of the limo seat. I’m sure there’s going to be a criminal investigation and I should let the police figure out that part.
The part that’s for me to figure out is how do we rebuild the house without the insurance money?
The Dean was clear that without a house on campus, our chapter will be closed down permanently.
I can’t let that happen. I can’t let a tradition that started when our college was founded to end like this. Not only for the past and current sisters, but for the future Zetas. For girls like Talia, who dream of pledging Zeta Theta Beta and continuing our legacy.
When we get to the Bridgeport U arena, Luigi insists on escorting me inside.
While they aren’t alumni, Luca, Blaze and Cash were able to get seats in the VIP box for all of us. The town’s pro team is affiliated with their Division One college counterpart. There’s even a mentorship program where the Bridgeport Warriors personally help cultivate the talents of the town’s college team.
“Luigi, are you sure you could park right by the entrance?” I ask, worried that Luca’s limo might get towed or something.
“Positive, signorina .” He chuckles. “Not to sound arrogant, but the Warriors players are royalty around here.”
I laugh at his pun and follow him inside the arena.
“Bay!” Lakyn runs out of the VIP box and literally runs me over. “I missed you so much.”
“I can feel that,” I tease her, hugging her just as tight as she’s holding me. “Have you been working out? You’re cutting off my oxygen supply.”
She doesn’t let me go. “Shut up and promise me that we’ll never go almost six months without seeing each other in person.”
Guilt expands in my chest. “I’m sorry, Lakey. I shouldn’t have run away the way I did.”
She grabs my chin with gentle fingers, forcing me to look at her. “Hey, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. I just missed my big sister.”
I can’t help the smile her words cause. “Are you buttering me up? You hate it when I call myself your big sister.”
Lakyn shrugs. “Only when you make those seven minutes sound like seven years. But seriously, I’m so excited to see you.”
Blaze pulls me out of Lakyn’s oxygen cutting hug. “Bay, how are you? You look amazing.”
Cash gives me one of his famous bear hugs. “It’s so nice to see you. I swear Lakyn has been so excited to see you, she hasn’t been sleeping all week.”
“I doubt the excitement about my visit is what kept her up all night,” I snort.
Luca comes to offer me a flute of champagne. “You aren’t wrong,” he chuckles, confirming my hunch that they spend their nights doing a lot more than sleeping. “But we’ve all been looking forward to seeing you. You’re staying with us tonight, right? I had the royal shopper fly in tomorrow morning with a selection of bridesmaids dresses for you to try on.”
Excitement courses through me. “That sounds awesome. And I wouldn’t dream of staying anywhere else.”
Luca’s smile widens. “Good. My mom is in full wedding planning mode. It doesn’t matter that she has a dozen Royal staff doing the actual planning, she’s directing operations with the excuse that she’s so happy to see me getting married. She keeps saying that she thought I would be a bachelor forever. Whatever that means.”
Luca had a player reputation when he came to Star Cove, but I immediately realized that he was a great guy. “Nah,” I say honestly. “You just hadn’t met the right woman.”
He wraps his arm around my shoulders, placing a brotherly kiss on my temple. “That’s true. I was just exploring my options until love found me. And I owe it to you that it did. If you hadn’t bought me for Lake at that auction, I would still be caught up in one meaningless hookup after the other.”
His words make me think about Jagger and my heart clenches painfully in my chest.
For a second there, I thought I would be the one who changed Jagger’s life the way Lakyn did with Luca. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Talking about hookups,” my sister’s voice pulls me out of my reveries. “Is there something we should know?”
I pretend not to know what she’s talking about. “No, why?”
Lakyn walks behind me. “Moore, number fifty-eight. You’re wearing Ryker Moore’s jersey.”
I swear hockey players are the nosiest creatures on Earth. Lakyn’s fiancés fire ten questions per second on my relationship with the Cove Knights’ new center forward.
“I’ve heard great things about Moore,” Blaze says seriously.
“Me too,” Cash agrees. “I hope he’s treating you right, Bay.”
I smile. “We had a bit of a bumpy start,” I explain how at first Ryker and I couldn’t help but antagonize each other. “But he’s a great guy. He treats me better than Topher ever did.”
“Duh,” Lakyn snorts. “Forgive me for being obvious, but it doesn’t take much to be better than Topher.”
I know I owe my ex absolutely nothing, especially after things ended between us. “To be fair, at the beginning Topher was really good to me. He just changed last year.”
Lakyn rolls her eyes. “Whatever. You know what I think about that. He was extra nice to you so you wouldn’t see how shitty he was to everyone else.”
“You’re probably right,” I concede. “But Ryker is nothing like Topher. I promise.”
Luca crosses his arms over his ripped chest. “He better not be. We’ll make sure we get to know him tonight.”
“Tonight?” I ask confused.
“Yeah at the party.” Blaze offers.
“Party? Guys, what are you talking about?”
Cash shakes his head. “See? I told you to ask her first. Maybe Bay just wanted to Netflix and chill.”
That was exactly how I pictured my reunion with Lakyn and her guys.
“It’s my fault,” Blaze rubs the back of his neck. “I thought it would be fun to see our former teammates and we invited the team to our house after the game and emailed an invitation to Liv and Viv and all the girls who were Zetas last year.”
“You did what?” I groan.
“Except Bianca and Kylie,” Lakyn reassures me. “And Topher. The emails made it clear that they aren’t welcome in our home.”
That tidbit of information helps put my nerves at ease as I settle in my seat with a glass of champagne in hand and my twin sister by my side.
The way her men dote on her warms my heart. It’s almost funny seeing three hot, famous professional hockey players turn into eager golden retrievers in front of their woman.
They make sure that Lakyn—and by extension I—always has a drink in hand and they keep bringing us plates with offerings from the sumptuous buffet available in the VIP box.
My heart overflows seeing how loved Lakyn is. She deserves to be put on a pedestal.
Of course I take all the credit for knowing what kind of man—or men in her case—she needed even before she realized it.
With the refreshments taken care of, all we have to do is enjoy the game between the Star Cove Knights and Bridgeport U.
JAGGER
We lose. Again.
This time to be honest it isn’t our fault. Despite the obvious tension between us after the fight Coach had to end during last week’s ill-fated practice, we played pretty well.
What made the difference between the single puck Bridgeport sneaked past Tucker’s goal and our scoreless game is sheer luck.
Every pass, every block, every breakaway our team put forward tonight was on point.
But luck wasn’t on our side. Every single time we shot that puck into our adversaries’ goal we were either blocked by their goalie or we narrowly missed our target.
So Bridgeport U ended the game with a shutout and the only reason the score isn’t even worse, is that Cole and I gave everything we had tonight.
“We’re fucking cursed.” Tucker groans, throwing his helmet on the floor of the guest team’s locker room. “We played well tonight, but we still fucking lost. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about that goal, guys. That puck came literally out of nowhere.”
Cole, our team captain, claps Tucker’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault, man. You had an amazing game. If it wasn’t for you, we would have lost by more than just one goal.”
Tucker doesn’t look appeased by Cole’s absolution of his performance. “I don’t get it, man. I blocked so many shots tonight, but you and Jagger also played well. Our second line was on point too. It’s like fucking Murphy’s Law. Everything that could go wrong, just did and all Bridgeport had to do was to capitalize on our fucking rotten luck.”
I don’t disagree with his assessment of our performance.
“Maybe we need to change something in our rituals? Do you think I should wash my lucky game underwear?”
A debate begins about it. The consensus is that while Tucker’s “lucky underwear” are a legit biohazard after over eighteen months of being worn during every single game without knowing soap or water, they’re not to be washed.
The conversation turns into an evaluation of every single good luck ritual we have in place.
“Maybe Jagger should get a bj even before away games.” Tucker suggests when it becomes clear that everyone is doing their part to ensure a favorable fate on game day.
Last year, I would have jumped at the opportunity to get head before away games. The only reason I never suggested it is that it can be tricky sneaking a puck bunny into an arena we don’t know as well as our home turf.
There’s also the fact that we don’t always have a lot of loyal fans following us to away games. It really depends on how far away we have to travel and the time of the year.
“That would be a little too complicated,” I say, ignoring the guilt that twists my insides.
I hide behind the difficulties of finding a willing girl and sneaking her into ‘enemy territory.’ But in reality I’m full of shit.
If we have to believe in good luck rituals—and all my teammates do, myself included—then I’m the reason why we keep losing.
The proof is in the fact that we’re playing well despite what the scoreboard says. Further proof is that the only time I got that lucky bj, we obliterated our opponents.
The debate goes on for a while and I’m grateful to Cole and Ryker for not throwing me under the bus.
I know they’re both mad at me for how I handled the situation with Bay, so I appreciate that they save my ass from what could be a really difficult predicament.
“We need to keep playing the way we are,” Cole concludes. “It’s all we can do until we win a game and maybe we can spot something new that will tip the scales in our favor.”
Everyone agrees with our captain. This is how good luck rituals are born. You feel frisky and sneak someone in the locker room to blow you and score a hat trick? Instant keeper.
You forget to bring clean underwear with you and wear an old, smelly pair you left in your locker and get a shutout? You stink the whole team to death by never washing your boxers again.
Hockey players are the most superstitious creatures in existence.
“If we ever win again,” Corey sighs.
“Shut up,” Tucker reacts. “Don’t even think about us losing every game this season. We need to manifest that our luck will change until we get more lucky shit to boost it.”
Corey hangs his head. “You’re right, Tuck. I’m sorry. It’s just… I wish Coach had some suggestions on what we’re doing wrong. If you had told me two months ago that I would want him to come and yell at us after a defeat, I would have laughed. But him not being here somehow is even worse.”
There’s another chorus of agreement on that sentiment.
“He’s punishing us.” Cole says. “He’s still furious about that stupid fight we had last week and he’s giving us the silent treatment.”
Come to think of it, I think Cole is right. “Yeah. If you guys noticed, Coach didn’t say a word to any of us all week.”
“Aww fuck,” Corey groans. “Call me crazy, but I preferred it when he made us bag skate. At least then we knew where we stood. Do we need to win again to get him to forgive us?”
I know the answer to that, and it’s kind of ironic. “Winning or losing doesn’t matter. I think Coach will forgive us when we show him that we’re still a team.”
“But how do we do that if he barely acknowledges our existence?” Tucker asks.
“When we act like a cohesive group, rather than a bunch of toddlers who are aggressive to each other at the smallest problem.” Ryker’s words have an edge. They’re clearly directed to me and Cole.
I’m a fucking coward—I know that by now—and look away from his intense gaze.
Cole chooses deflection instead. “We can start by showering and going to meet up with our old teammates. Cash just texted me that they booked a bunch of taxis to take us all to their house, just outside of Bridgeport.”
Tucker rubs his hands with glee in his eyes. “Awesome. Maybe we can ask them for some tips. I’m also curious to see how pro hockey players live. That could be some of us next year.”
I’m looking forward to catching up with Cash, Blaze and Luca, but a part of me envies them.
Their lives look perfect to me. They got the woman they love, they got their dream of playing pro hockey.
Neither of those things is in the cards for me.
I fucked things up with Bay and Topher has me under his thumb. And going pro will remain a dream. My family has made it clear that they expect me to follow in my father’s and grandfather’s footsteps and work for the family company.