Chapter Four
CHAPTER FOUR
MAX
“You look like a dead man walking.”
I’ve been staring at the back of a plush bus seat for who knows how long when I hear Mason’s voice.
“I’m sitting,” I inform him, blinking up, unsmiling. I watch, still in a bit of a trance, as he shoves his bags on the double seats across the aisle from me.
“Whatever. What I meant was you look like shit, but you’re alive. So you must have run into Sabrina.”
“Yeah. I did.”
The bus begins to fill with my other teammates, and the quiet solitude I was previously enjoying vanishes. It’s a nice distraction from my thoughts as Sabrina’s voice is still circling in my head.
“You okay, Max Speed?” Sidney Crane, the team’s goalie, asks, his body hanging over the back of my seat. The absurdity of the man breaks my glum mood.
“He just had a run-in with a childhood friend who stopped talking to him when he signed with the NHL.”
“The fuck?” Sidney bellows like he’s been insulted.
“She didn’t stop talking to me because of the contract. It was because of the team I signed with.”
There’s only a moment’s pause before Sidney’s eyes light up with understanding. “Fucking Montreal.”
As a fellow Canadian and true Torontonian, he knows the deep-seated hate the majority of Toronto Nighthawks fans have for the Montreal Mounties and vice versa.
“Unreal that you signed with them,” Sidney continues, his hands drumming a beat on the headrest.
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime offer. No other team was going to pay me that much as a rookie, and I just wanted to play. I wanted to get my life started.”
“Urg, I don’t think I could ever bring myself to play for Montreal.” He makes a gagging sound. “My family would stop speaking to me for sure.”
“Well, it’s almost the same for Maxie boy here. This girl stopped talking to him after he signed and left,” Mason replies. I nudge him in the stomach for being a gossip.
“Thanks so much for repeating that over and over to me today, Mace. So helpful.”
“Anytime.”
“You look like you got kicked in the nuts because some chick isn’t speaking to you anymore?”
“Not just some chick ,” I interject loudly, not liking the way he’s referring to Sabrina. “My childhood best friend. And neighbor,” I tack on for some reason. I can feel both of them staring at me, waiting for more, but I’m not in the mood to dive into my complicated history with Sabrina. “Look, boys, I don’t really want to get into it right now. The summary of why she hates my guts will take longer than the bus ride to the airport. And I’m not in the mood to be the main source of entertainment for the team. I need some time to think and process what I learned today from Sabrina.”
“What did you learn?” Mason asks as he grabs his backpack and pulls out his headphones.
Damn it. I shouldn’t have said that. My friends are curious bastards.
“Wait. Sabrina? As in the sports reporter Sabrina Sutton?”
I freeze, giving Sidney a bewildered frown. “How the hell did you put that together?”
“You watch her interviews all the time. I always wondered why. It was weird.”
“We all watch sports interviews. Why is me watching them weird?”
“Because you were watching college basketball interviews. Not really a sport you’ve ever expressed interest in.”
He has me there. I did watch interviews I had no interest in just because Sabrina was doing them. There was a period of time last year when she was covering March Madness that I found hard to follow since I don’t know much about basketball. Hockey is the only sport I care about, on or off the ice.
“Back to the main point,” Mason saves me. Putting his hand over Sidney’s face and pushing him backward into his seat, Mason sits again and looks at me. “What did you learn today? I’m amazed she actually talked to you.”
“Trust me, I am too. I think I caught Bean at the perfect time.”
“Bean? Seriously? That’s the pet name you call her?”
“It’s not a pet name, moron. It’s a childhood nickname. She was such a tiny kid, and then one summer, she shot up like a beanstalk. The nickname took.”
“And I bet it has nothing to do with the fact that Bean also means smarty-pants.”
“Get out of here, Wordsworth,” Sidney nudges Mason. “As cute as the name is, I want to know what he learned,” Sidney probes, poking his head between the seats. His skin is pulled back so tight he looks like an alien. “So,” he draws the word out.
“So,” I stress. “She told me that she quit her job today. The Sphere promoted one of her junior male colleagues, and she decided she had enough. Even though she doesn’t have anything else lined up currently.”
“Who’d they promote over her?”
“Robert Chamberlain.”
“That fucking guy?” Sidney yells, anger in his voice.
“Crane! That’s one for the jar,” Coach Taylor calls out from the front of the bus.
“Fucking worth it,” Sidney whispers to us. “I’d happily fill up our team swear jar if it meant I could curse that jackass out.”
“I had the same reaction. The guy is a first-class moron.”
Both my friends agree, nodding.
“So what are you going to do?”
“ Do ? What do you mean? She didn’t say anything more to me than that.”
“How are you gonna help her? I know you like her, so you’ll definitely try and help her.”
“I like her as a friend ,” I punctuate, ignoring the look they share. “And I would like to help her, but I’m coming up blank with how.”
“Could you call the station and complain?”
“I’m not sure that would do anything.”
“Fair,” Sidney muses. “This is harder than I thought.”
“Forget it, boys. Sabrina will land on her feet. She’s talented, so another network will snatch her up.”
The words sound hollow, even to me. Sidney and Mason give me a pitying look but don’t say anything. They turn back in their seats, and we all reach for our distraction of choice as the bus starts up.
The thing is, I can’t forget about it. Sabrina’s words continue to swirl in my head the whole journey to the Montreal airport. I hate that I can’t think of a solution.
One thing is certain though. Now that I’ve got a chance to be a part of Sabrina’s life again, I’m not going to let her face this alone.