Chapter 35
You threatened to fine him?” Darcy cackles when I tell her about Moreau. “You should follow through!”
“I absolutely will!” I crow. “I’ll fine his smug ass the maximum! Just as soon as I figure out what that even means.” Except I’m a little drunk right now, so that’s probably a task for later.
“Take that, asshole,” Darcy says, raising her beer glass.
“Take that!” Our glasses clink together. We’re sitting in a booth at Highlights, and this is probably our tenth toast.
“Check your texts,” Darcy says. “Did Aiden send you the slo-mo?”
“I’ll look.” I unlock my phone and peek.
“Yeah, here we go. He liked your idea. ‘Very Sherlock Holmes,’ he says.” Darcy decided we needed video in slo-mo of the moment my skate blade fell off—to see who looked stunned and who just looked smug.
That’s above my video-editing pay grade, so I asked Aiden for help. “There’s a link.”
“Show me, show me,” she chants from the other side of the table.
“Patience! I have to respond first. Here—check my spelling.” I’m a little nervous about emailing anyone while drunk, so I hand her my phone.
“Zoe, all you wrote is ‘thanks.’”
“Can’t be too careful.” I shrug.
I hear the whooshing sound as she sends the message, and then she eagerly pokes the video link. “We’re going to catch this… what did the boss call him?”
“A gutless weasel.”
“Right.” She turns the phone around toward me.
But I hold up a hand to block the view. “You look. I don’t want to watch myself fall down again. It’s so humiliating.”
Darcy winces. “Your bully got exactly what he wanted—but only until we bust his ass. Okay—zooming in on the players’ faces. DeLuca looks appalled. O’Connell flinches like someone just punched him in the balls. Awww! Look at the rookie’s face.” She turns the phone around.
I see Weber, and he’s grabbing his chin, his mouth in a perfect O of shock and horror. “He’s a nice kid. It can’t be him.”
“Agreed. Okay, back row. We’ve got Dahlberg looking bored, but that’s standard. Dude has like zero expression. What about Jackson, though? Here.”
She hands me the phone again, and I squint at the D-man from Minnesota. “He just looks constipated. I don’t know if we’re going to find our smoking gun here.”
“Yeah, but… did you notice Chase’s face?”
My stomach wobbles like a skater on a shaky edge. “Why? It’s not him. God.”
“I agree,” she says cheerfully. “I want you to watch for a different reason.”
“Because he’s dreamy?” I sigh. “I already know.”
“This takes dreamy to a whole new level,” she insists.
“Right after you fall, he looks horrified.” I hear the sound of a screenshot.
“And then he gets murder eyes!” Another screen grab.
“Oh, I like this one. His fists are clenched. Like he’s going to choke whoever did this to you.
And—wait—oh my God. I think I know why Moreau apologized to you for laughing. Look.”
She turns my phone around again and shows me another still frame—of Chase grabbing Moreau by the jersey and getting up in his face.
“Oh shit,” I breathe.
“Maybe Moreau is your bully,” she says triumphantly. “And he only apologized because Chase ordered him to, and because it makes him look innocent.”
I take a fortifying gulp of beer. “It’s not him.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He’s the worst skater on the team,” I point out. “By far. And I’m thinking he has an ongoing chip on his shoulder about it. And Moreau has been traded to, like, three different teams who all probably tried to fix his skating.”
“So yeah,” Darcy says. “He’s our guy!”
I shake my head. “He avoids me, but I don’t think it’s personal.”
“You are too quick to assume the best of people,” Darcy says, pointing her beer glass at me. “You do it all the time. But somebody did this. Rivets don’t just fall out. I heard Bernie talking to the boss man. He said he was a hundred percent sure there was tampering.”
“Wait.” I put my head in my hands, mostly because I’ve had too much beer. “We should be looking to see who wasn’t there. A few players ditched.”
“Which ones?” She picks up my phone again and squints at the screen. “We need more footage. I can’t see everyone’s face in this clip.”
“Not sure,” I mumble. “We make a complete list from, like, the last three game rosters, and then watch the earlier part of the video to pick out faces.”
“I know an even simpler way to figure this out.” She taps my phone, and I hear her initiating a call.
“Who are you calling?”
Darcy ignores the question. “Hi, Chase!” she says a moment later. “This is actually Darcy with Zoe’s phone. But, wow. You picked that up fast.”
I sigh. “Darcy…”
“She’s fine! Well, mostly. We were just down at Highlights reviewing what happened today and trying to figure out who’s responsible…”
I hear Chase respond to her, but there’s a lot of noise in the bar, and I can’t get the words.
“Yeah, I know! So infuriating. We’ve got the video here, and we’re trying to figure out who looks guilty and who didn’t show up at all. There aren’t that many people Zoe can trust. So I thought you might pop down here and help us.”
“What?” I pick my head up. “Don’t ask him to come here! He’s probably entertaining supermodels at the Mojo Dojo Hockey House.”
Darcy frowns. “Unless you’re busy with any supermodels? No? Okay, awesome. We need your help, and Zoe is a little drunk.” She hangs up and slides the phone back across the table to me, looking smug.
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t. I’m just fulfilling my role as your best work friend.”
“You know what’s sad? You’re my best friend in the world.” I burp.
Darcy laughs at me. “You have a lot of shitty friends, apparently.”
“I’ve never had enough friends,” I clarify. “I had competitors. And a husband who… Ugh.” It’s too depressing to think about.
“Oh, honey. Well, listen to this…” Darcy tells me the story of her most recent online dating disaster as a way of cheering me up. But then someone slides into the booth beside me, and I inhale the scent of spice and leather, with top notes of rink ice.
Then I scoot a little closer and take another deep breath. For science. How can anyone smell so good?
“Say hi, Zoe,” Darcy says after a moment, and I realize I’m acting like a goober.
“Hi,” I say, rubbing my forehead. “My head is heavy. I’ve had a lot of beers.”
Chase frowns. “How many is a lot?”
“Three.” When the corners of his mouth twitch, I feel the need to defend myself. “I know, I’m still terrible at drinking. I never got the chance to develop a tolerance. My ex-husband always reminded me of the calorie count.”
“He sounds fun,” Darcy says.
“Right?” Chase says. “I said the same thing.”
He and Darcy high-five, and I groan. “I know, I know. I married him to get out from under my mother. But then I was just under him.” I frown. “That came out wrong, seeing as I wasn’t even under him very often. And then I found out later that other skaters were under him quite a lot.”
I look up at the matching flinches on Darcy’s and Chase’s faces, and I realize that I’m oversharing.
“When is the last time you ate?” Chase asks.
I shrug. “Not sure. Food is so spendy. It’s rent week.”
Chase slides out of the booth, and I’m super disappointed. But he returns a few minutes later with a soda for me, a beer for himself, and a giant basket of poutine.
I reach for it.
“Okay, here’s the deal.” Darcy unlocks my phone and shows Chase the video. “Do you see anyone looking suspicious? Or do you remember who wasn’t there?”
They chat about it for a few minutes. But just as I suspected, it’s hard to find a smoking gun. And I’m busy communing with these french fries smothered in gravy and cheese.
“Hey, friends.” When I look up, Harp, the friendly bartender, is standing at the end of our booth.
“Hi.” I hiccup.
“I see you two have switched roles tonight,” he says with a smile. “Last call for the kitchen, kids.”
Chase glances at me as I murder another fry. The basket is almost empty. “Another round of poutine?”
I shake my head. “Not unless you wanted some.”
He waves Harp off.
Darcy slides out of the booth. “I’m going to settle up our beer tab and head out. You got this, right?” she says to Chase.
“Got what?” I demand.
Chase gives Darcy a salute, and my so-called best friend leaves me alone, drunk, with the love of my life.
Beer makes me a little melodramatic.
Chase drains his drink. “Come on. Time to go home.”
I guess he’s right, so I put on my coat and follow him out of the bar. When we get to the corner, I expect him to head west. But he waits at the light with me instead. “I haven’t forgotten how to get home, Chase. I can take it from here.”
“I’m sure you could,” he says, his voice humoring me. “But I’m walking you home anyway. Don’t fight me on this. You’re not at a hundred percent. And someone tried to hurt you today.”
“No, they tried to humiliate me. And they did a fine job.”
His expression softens. Then he reaches over and cups my chin, and I go completely still, waiting for the kiss. Finally! My heart does a happy swizzle.
But then Chase runs his thumb gingerly over the sore spot on my jaw, and I realize he is only inspecting my boo-boo from when I fell today.
Disappointment crashes through me, as well as the realization that if I were, say, 40 percent drunker, this could have been very embarrassing.
The light changes. He drops his hand, and we cross Eighth Avenue.
“You’re an amusing drunk,” he says with a chuckle. “But you used to turn down the beer I offered you.”
“Like I said—calories. Plus, I’d never even had a beer, and I wasn’t sure I could fake it in front of the cool hockey player. I didn’t want you to know I was such a sheltered kid.”
“And yet I figured that out anyway.” He gives me a sideways glance and a smile.
I sigh. But the night air is bracing. I’m feeling more sober by the minute. “Thank you for feeding me. Again.”
“Like I always said, it’s one of my favorite things to do. There’s another reason I’m walking you home, by the way. Apart from chivalry.”
“There is?” I say hopefully.