“Yes. Have you?”
“So,” Sawyer said, clumsily grabbing noodles with his chopsticks, “I’ve been thinking.”
“A dangerous pastime,” Robbie said solemnly.
He felt so old when Sawyer didn’t get the Beauty and the Beast reference. “Har har. I’ve been thinking about your post-retirement life.”
“Oh?” Just because Robbie didn’t know what he wanted to do next, now that his hockey career was over, and was maybe in a bit of a funk about it, didn’t mean that he wanted his ersatz kid to worry about it. Or worse, plan it for him.
“Yes. Have you?”
Once upon a time, Robbie’s day-to-day life was not filled with teenage sass. Now that Robbie wasn’t country hopping a couple times a week, though, the available space in his life had been taken up by his nephew.
It could definitely be worse. Being alone, for example, would definitely be worse. That didn’t mean Robbie had to enjoy the sass.
“Of course not. I just stare at the wall all day while I wait for you to return home.”
“No one could blame you. I’m bussin’. But you need more in your life than just me, Uncle Robs.”
Robbie wasn’t actually sure if the kid was matching sass for sass, or if the sarcasm had just gone right over his head.
“At least watch some porn, jeez.”
Could you still sell children to wandering knights and the like? “Let me guess: you know exactly what I should be doing.”
“Well…,” Sawyer started. “No, not exactly, but come on! You can’t just do yoga all day. You could do color commentary.”
Robbie pulled a face. “No thanks.” He might have enjoyed his career in hockey, but he didn’t want to just jump right back in.
Actually, he didn’t want to jump into anything yet—not when the future felt so open, so nebulous, so…
undefined. If he took a job in hockey right now, it would be so easy not to think about the future and what he wanted.
Sawyer rolled his eyes. “Why not? You’d be so good at it! You have lots of opinions, and for some reason other people think you’ve got rizz.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You collect novelty magnets, tell dad jokes, and dress like you only shop at Goodwill.”
“You say that that like those are bad things!”
“Your last contract paid you more than eight million a year,” Sawyer said unhappily. “You could at least dress like it.”
“Ah, but then I wouldn’t have the funds to support your Minecraft habit.”
“Like my games have emptied your coffers.” He ate another noodle. Robbie hoped that his tragically short attention span had moved on to the next subject. “Though I have been thinking about the future.”
“And?” Here we go.
“Well, I plan to attend college for approximately twenty years, so you’re going to need a lot of money—”
No such luck on the subject change. “Kid, you can’t complain about my unused NHL salary in one breath and then tell me I need a second job to send you to college in the next.” Sawyer pouted. “Try again.”
Sawyer’s eyes narrowed, and Robbie instantly regretted those words. Where most people would hear a brush-off, Sawyer heard a challenge.
Robbie almost dropped his head to the kitchen table in defeat. Lord only knew what Sawyer would come up with next.
“I’ll remind you that you said that,” Sawyer said cheerfully.
Jesus Christ. That was definitely a threat.
Except that while Robbie might have a brain under his beautiful head of hair, he was still a jock at heart, and he forgot to be on his guard.
Or at least he forgot to be on his guard more than minding a fourteen-year-old megalomaniac usually required.
Two weeks later, when he received an email thanking him for his interest in being a contestant on Dance Your Ice Off and welcoming him to the team, he spent several moments blinking in confusion before it occurred to him that Sawyer had made good on his threat.
He had to hand it to the kid, though: apart from the whole thing where he apparently pretended to be Robbie’s agent and told these people Robbie would be “just thrilled” to be on their show, he’d represented Robbie well.
To twist the knife just a little, he’d selected the LGBT Youth Line as Robbie’s charity of choice, which would receive a $50,000 donation if Robbie won the competition, so that if Robbie told the truth or pretended to change his mind, he’d feel immense guilt for potentially depriving a deserving community of resources.
Robbie took a moment to Google what the competition entailed, which seemed to be hockey players of all genders pairing up with figure skaters to see who fell over in the least embarrassing way. He didn’t bother watching the videos; the thumbnail images made the contents clear enough.
For a second he wondered where Sawyer got the audacity, then decided he probably didn’t want to know and hit Reply.
If he also immediately invited Sawyer for dinner, that was hardly unusual.
There was a fine line between playing it casual and ratcheting up Sawyer’s sense of unease. Robbie walked it by making Sawyer’s third-favorite main dish with a vegetable he despised.
Then he waited until Sawyer was frowning at his plate in confusion to say, “So I got a weird email today.”
Warily, Sawyer looked up. “You did?”
“Mmm.” Robbie speared a brussel sprout and bit it in half.
He took his time chewing and swallowing.
Sawyer watched him the whole time. “Some reality show I’ve never heard of was letting me down gently.
They said I just wouldn’t fit in with their brand, or something.
But the thing is, I don’t even remember applying, so either I did it in my sleep or I need to go have a brain scan.
Or I guess someone maybe hacked my computer—”
“What do you mean you wouldn’t fit their brand?”
Got him. Robbie shrugged and shoved the second half of the brussels sprout into his cheek. “How should I know? I don’t even remember applying. Obviously the sales pitch of yours truly was pretty half-assed—”
“It was not half-assed!” Sawyer said indignantly.
Robbie raised his eyebrows.
Sawyer said, “Shit.”
“Forgery is a crime, you know. Or would it be impersonation? I’m not totally clear on the details. I’ll have to ask Eugene.”
Sawyer paled. “Robbie, wait—”
Finally Robbie took pity on him. “I said yes, kid.”
Sawyer’s mouth fell open. “You got cast? You said—”
“I said what you needed to hear to keep your ego in line, gremlin. The show sounds fun. It’s for a good cause.
” And Robbie didn’t have anything going on that summer anyway, apart from feeding Sawyer’s scrawny ass.
The show would at least make working out fun and different for a while.
Besides, Robbie could never resist the chance to be a ham.
He raised a finger before Sawyer could enjoy his success too much. “But.”
“But?” Sawyer repeated with a hopeful nod, wide-eyed.
“Try to stop breaking the law, okay? Any bail money I have to spend on you is coming out of your college fund.”