12. Chapter 12
Chapter 12
Nate
I ’m surprised at how slow the time ticks by between Friday night when I saw Adalie last and Tuesday night when I get to see her again. She’s already waiting for me when I arrive at the rink, standing outside in yoga pants and a tight long-sleeved t-shirt.
“Am I dressed okay?” she asks as I get closer.
“You look perfect,” I tell her, watching as her cheeks turn pink at my compliment. I want to compliment her again so her cheeks will stay that colour.
She turns to enter the building. Her hair is pulled into a thick ponytail, held back with a pink scrunchie with purple hearts. And the way her yoga pants mold to her ass has my fingers twitching with the desire to grab it. Thankfully, I have the hockey gear in my other hand, so I concentrate on that instead.
“We’ll have to rent you some skates,” I say. “But I have other things for you.”
“Whose things are these?” she asks over her shoulder. “Taylor’s again?”
“Yeah. You need gloves, a stick, and a helmet for this. The Tuesday night Stick and Puck tends to be a little less crowded than the Saturday one, so we should have plenty of space.”
We get the skates and head out onto the ice. Adalie holds tight to the boards.
“I don’t know if this was a good idea,” she says. “I’m going to fall on my ass.”
There are only a few other people out today, so I lean my sticks against the boards and take Adalie’s hands. Of course, we’re both wearing bulky hockey gloves and I can’t help but wish we weren’t.
“Come on,” I say, pulling her out onto the ice. “We’ll take a couple laps, get you used to being on skates.”
She moves her feet, gliding over the surface, a lot more sure now that she has my hand.
“Okay,” she says. “This isn’t so bad. I think I can do it without holding on.”
She lets go of my hand and I catch myself before I snatch it back. She’s more confident as we make our way around the rink.
“Who’s watching the taproom tonight?” Adalie asks as we skate behind the two nets set up on one end.
“Taylor. He said I would owe him one, but I’m not worried.”
We continue along the long side and behind the nets set up on the opposite end.
“You’re doing a lot better,” I say.
She grins up at me. “I just needed to remember the movement. When I was a kid, my uncle used to take me and my brother skating every week in the winter. We did it for about two years until he moved to Alberta.”
“Calista never got to go?”
Adalie shakes her head. “She was too little. He probably would have taken her the next year if he hadn’t moved.”
“Let’s grab the sticks,” I say as we return to where I’d left them. “We’ll start with moving the puck down the ice.”
She takes to the movements like a natural, pushing the puck in front of her as we skate from one end of the rink to the other.
“Have you done this before?” I ask after the third trip back up the ice.
She smiles again, her eyes alight with happiness. “I played floor hockey a few times in high school. I remember, it was my favourite unit in gym class. I liked playing offence and shooting the puck. I was pretty terrible at most sports, but hockey I wasn’t bad.”
I chuckle. “So you have done this before.”
I stop us in the middle of the rink. Most people are at one end or the other, practicing shooting, so I figure we can stay here to practice some passing.
“Not on ice,” she says, pushing back a stray curl that’s come loose with her wrist. “What’s next?”
Before I can tell her, I hear someone call my name, and any happiness I was feeling drains away. A man, about my age and a lot smaller than me, skates over.
“I thought that was you. You playing in the game tomorrow night?”
“Tim,” I say with a nod. “I was planning to.”
He turns to Adalie and I want to punch his teeth in with the way he looks at her. She smiles at him, tugs off her glove, and holds out her hand.
“Hi. I’m Adalie. Do you play with Nate?”
He shakes her hand. “No. Nate’s team is playing mine. I’m the lead centre for the Frozen Fury. So, Nate’s teaching you to play? Are you going to join a team?”
She laughs. “I don’t think so. I’m just having some fun. In fact,” she glances up at me, “we should get back to it, right?”
I nod again.
Tim chuckles, lifting a hand to wave. “See you tomorrow, Nate. I’ll be the one scoring on your goalie.”
“I’ll be the one shoving you into the boards,” I respond.
Tim skates away and I watch him go until Adalie places her hand on my arm. She hasn’t put her glove back on. I look down at her.
“You don’t like him,” she says. It’s not a question.
I shake my head. “He’s a dick. His whole team is made up of assholes. One of their players transferred to our team in the middle of the season. He said they kept making fun of him for getting things wrong but never helped him fix any of his issues. He was pretty new to playing and didn’t know all the rules.”
“Does he still play with you?”
“Yeah. He’s one of our better players now. A few of us brought him out to one of these and helped him get the hang of a few of the plays he wasn’t getting. Like being offside and icing the puck.”
“You helped him?”
She still has her hand on my arm.
I swallow. “Me, Taylor, a couple of others.”
She’s looking at me like I’m some kind of fucking hero, and it takes everything in me not to kiss her again. Then she skates a little away from me so I can’t act on the impulse.
“All right,” she says, rolling her shoulders and tapping her stick on the ice. “Pass me the puck.”
We pass back and forth for a while before we head to one of the nets and she practices shooting. It takes a couple tries, but eventually she gets the puck in the net time after time. I stay off to the side so I can pass it back to her.
When the hour is up, we get off the ice so the next event can start. It’s a women’s team game.
“Do you want to get out of here?” I ask. “Or do you want to stay and watch for a bit?”
She hobbles to a bench and sits. “We can stay for a bit and watch. I’d like to see a game.” She groans as the skates come off. “Oh my god. My feet are not used to skates.”
I chuckle as I sit and take mine off. “If you’re going to come out more often, I’d recommend getting your own. Rentals aren’t great.”
“That shouldn’t be necessary. I’ll probably stick to cardio and yoga.”
She lifts one foot onto her knee and rubs the top and the sole, giving herself a massage. I swallow as the urge to do it for her swamps me. But she puts her shoes on and returns the skates, then we sit on the benches watching as the women do a warmup before the game.
“Who got you into hockey?” Adalie asks, her eyes on the ice.
It feels like a stone drops into my stomach. I clear my throat before I answer. “My dad. He also got me into brewing.”
She smiles, glancing at me. “And riding. Are you guys close?”
“We were.”
Her smile fades. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
I shake my head. “It was a while ago. He had a heart attack about thirteen years ago. Shortly after that, Mom decided she wanted to travel.”
“You and Taylor were left on your own?” she asks softly, but I hear the distress in her voice.
“We were both adults. It wasn’t like she abandoned us. She just realized how short life can be and wanted to…” I shrug. “Anyway, she comes back sometimes. I’ve got a spare bedroom where she stays.”
Adalie places her small hand over mine, offering simple comfort.
“So you play tomorrow night?” she asks, changing the subject, but not removing her hand.
I’m grateful for the change. I don’t like talking about losing my dad or my mom leaving right after.
“Yeah. It’s our last game of the winter season. Some players will join another team for the summer season, but Taylor and I and a few others prefer to leave our summers open for riding our bikes.”
“What’s your team name?”
“Puckin’ Aces.”
She laughs and I turn toward her, an answering smile forming on my face.
“That’s an awesome name,” she says. “Way better than Frozen Fury.”
“I can’t take any credit for it. Taylor came up with it, actually. Along with our buddy Zach.”
“What position do you play?”
“Taylor and I are defencemen. We’re usually on the same line.”
She nudges me with her shoulder. “And you guys protect your team.”
I nod, searching her face, wondering how she can understand that so easily.
“Tell me about them?” she asks.
So I do. I tell her how I’ve been playing with the same core group of ten guys for the last seven years. Of those ten, eight of us also ride motorcycles and like to get together on weekends in the summer to go on rides up the Sea-to-Sky, a winding highway that stretches from Vancouver to Whistler along the coast of the Georgia Strait. The rest of our team is made up of ten to fifteen other guys, depending on the year, who are more casual about when they can make it to games. We play on Wednesday nights each week and have a pretty good record this year of 19-3-5, which I then have to explain are our number of wins, losses, and overtime losses, respectively.
It’s so easy to talk to her, something I’m not used to. I’m not only thinking of other women I’ve hung out with, but everyone. They take my usual quietness and have a conversation around me. If I ever want to contribute, they listen, but mostly they just let me not speak. Adalie doesn’t. She asks me questions then waits for an answer. She did the same at the brewery a couple weeks ago, drawing me into the conversation even though Taylor was happy to keep it going. Like she wants my opinion, and my answers.
We don’t stay for the whole game, leaving after about an hour.
We’re walking to the car when she gets a text message.
“Hm,” she says.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” She types out a quick response and turns to me again. “It’s my friends. Spencer and Vic called an emergency owners’ meeting tomorrow morning.”
“Nothing wrong, I hope.”
She shakes her head. “I doubt it. We’ve been talking about expansion, so it’s probably something to do with that.” Then she smiles, the confusion melting away. “So, can I come to your game tomorrow night?”
I chuckle. “I don’t think you’ll be that interested.”
“I want to see you play. If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t,” I say. If I’m being honest, I want her to come, if only so I can spend more time with her. “If you really want to come, it’ll be here at six.”
“I’ll be here. Thanks for tonight, Nate. I had a lot of fun. And it was definitely something I wouldn’t normally choose to do.”
She holds my shoulder, rising onto her toes to place a quick kiss on my cheek.
“Glad I could help,” I tell her, then watch as she gets into her cute little car and drives away, waving to me before she pulls out of the parking lot, leaving me wishing that kiss had been on my lips instead.