Chapter 21
THE ROAD TRIP
Because the world is cruel, after our night of This Means Nothing Sex (multiple times, all of which ending with cuddling, all of which still meaning nothing), I had to work.
Barry insisted on driving me to the practice facility, muttering about it being too cold for the bus, not good for me or the baby.
He did a light workout while I cleaned, coming to find me every thirty minutes or so to follow me around and talk about anything and nothing.
This had become a routine when he wasn’t traveling, bringing me to work even when I swore I was fine to make it there on my own, and hanging out while I cleaned.
Sometimes he came inside and slept on the couch in the lounge, his long body folded up with his hood over his head. Other times he’d go back home to sleep a few more hours, always back to pick me up either with breakfast in hand or to take me to the diner.
I could admit that I was grateful I didn’t have to take the early bus and felt less bad for his early mornings after how many times he insisted that he really wanted to do it.
At the end of my shift, I looked around for him, not finding him in the lounge of the gym.
Tara, the woman who came to clean and do maintenance on the pool and hot tubs a few days a week, found me looking for him and nodded in the direction of the ice.
I walked—okay it was more of a waddle these days—to the large window looking out at the ice and saw Barry with a stick and a bucket of pucks that he shot intermittently into the net as he skated around.
“That boy has it bad for you,” Tara said at my side, both of us watching him skate an easy lap in sweatpants and a hoodie.
“He does not,” I denied, but I could see it too. It scared me more than the baby coming in less than two months—his surety that he would still want me after she came.
There’s a whole lot of after ahead of us.
“He’ll be a good dad to that baby,” Tara said. A smile tugged up my lips and I nodded. That I had no doubt of. “And he could be a good Daddy to you if you let him.”
“Tara!”
Tara backed away, laughing at her own joke and my indignation.
“Let him treat you right, Hannah Banana. He’s begging to.”
“Bye, Tara,” I said, sounding more annoyed than my face betrayed me to be.
With one last wink, she was off down the hall, and I pushed open one of the doors to the chilly rink.
I watched Barry a little longer from the bench until he noticed me with a start.
A warm smile took over his face and he skated toward me.
He hadn’t turned on all the lights, leaving the spaces outside the rink mostly in shadow. From the large windows overhead, I saw that the sky was just beginning to lighten in earnest.
“How’d it go today?” he asked, leaning on the wall in front of me.
“Someone left a mess on one of the lounge tables, so that was a little exciting.”
“Thrilling,” he mused, but his eyes were on my mouth. I bit my lower lip to keep from grinning. This was going to be a problem, wasn’t it? “I have to go to Nashville today.”
“I saw.” Both on the calendar in our kitchen and the bigger version up in the locker room.
“Only till Thursday.” Barry sighed and kept staring at me, eyes all soft.
“Not even long enough to get through all the chia pudding you made yesterday. Unless Jeremy comes over, then it’s anyone’s guess how long anything in that fridge lasts.”
Barry reached in his pocket and withdrew his keys, which held a Columbus keychain, his car keys, and my extra house key, the one I gave him with Hello Kitty and pink rhinestones. He dangled them in front of him until I tentatively swiped them from his fingers.
“Please use my car when I’m gone,” he said. “Please. No bus.”
“No bus,” I echoed. “Fine.”
Worry crossed his face, darkening that light in his eyes. He looked a little sick about the trip, even though, as he said, it was less than a week. He’d be back before the weekend.
“Worried I’ll crash it while you’re gone?” I asked, trying to lighten his now cloudy mood.
Barry closed his eyes and gave something like a laugh, then took a heavy breath.
“I just get worried,” he said. “In general. I don’t like to leave you alone.”
“Good thing I have fifty annoying family members that are always buzzing around, then.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. He seemed to shake himself, pushing off the wall and skating in a circle. “You’re right.”
He gathered the pucks into the bucket, then met me on the bench to change out of his skates.
He took my purse and slung it over his shoulder before leading me to the car, holding my hand as we walked.
He shouldn’t, really, really shouldn’t, and I shouldn’t let him, but I kept thinking of the haunted sort of look he got thinking about what could happen to me if he left me alone.
I’d let him hold my hand, squeezing my fingers intermittently like he wanted to make sure I was still there, just for now.
I’d worry about the rest of it later.
Jeremy showed up unannounced around dinnertime to scoop Junior’s litter box.
“What compelled you to be so generous with your evening?” I asked as he scooped clumps of litter into the receptacle.
“Barry paid me to do this. To be clear, I would not have volunteered.”
Ah, of course he did. Kate had been scooping it when she came over since I got pregnant, or Barry since he moved in, but I figured there were lots of single mothers with cats, so sometimes I did it and just really washed my hands after.
“Reddit tells me it’s dangerous,” I said, leaning on the door frame.
“Yeah, I looked it up after Barry called me just to see if he was full of it.” My little brother washed his hands before he scooted past me in the doorway and beelined for the kitchen.
“How much is he paying you?” I asked.
Jeremy ignored me, face already in my fridge. “Can I have one of these meals?”
I sighed and picked up Junior, my belly big enough for him to be propped atop it. He purred and nuzzled into my neck.
“Not the lasagna.”
“But that shit looks fire,” Jeremy whined.
“It is. Put it down.”
He clicked his tongue against his teeth but opted for one of the salmon and quinoa meals instead, also grabbing one of the probiotic sodas and a protein drink. The back door opened, letting in Kate and Greg, his leash dragging behind him.
“What did he pay you to do?” Jeremy asked our oldest sister.
“Who?” Kate asked, hanging her old corduroy Harvey Janitorial coat on a hook.
“Barry,” I said and retrieved one of the lasagna containers for me.
“He’s paying people to hang out with you? And I’m here for free?” Kate asked, earning a flat look from me and a snicker from Jeremy. The microwave beeped.
“He’s paying him to scoop litter.”
“Surprised he hasn’t gotten one of the expensive litter machines yet,” Kate said and made her way to the fridge. “Can I have a lasagna?”
“No,” Jeremy and I said at the same time. Kate muttered something and grabbed another salmon dish.
“Your fridge is fucking stacked, dude. Does he have a chef do this for him?” Jeremy took a bite of food, then breathed with his mouth open to cool it down.
“No, I think he just likes cooking.” I put my lasagna plate in the microwave and set it to cook, opening a sparkling water.
“If I was rich, I would not cook again,” Jeremy said dreamily.
“You don’t cook now,” Kate pointed out.
“Okay, hater, not true,” Jeremy defended, though it was totally true.
With our warmed-up meals courtesy of Barry, we moseyed into the living room where we watched three episodes of Gossip Girl, which Jeremy didn’t even pretend to dislike anymore.
He was completely invested, as into it as Kate and I were, even on our third watch through.
At some point after the first episode, Jeremy took the liberty to blow up Barry’s air mattress, and without his bony-ass legs kicking me on the couch, I fell asleep.
It was a true Harvey slumber party, Kate sleeping with me in my bed and Jeremy remaining on Barry’s air mattress until morning. When morning came, though, I found a sort of ache in my chest, wishing Barry was here instead.
The team won the first away game the next afternoon, a kind of brutal trampling of Dallas, a goal and two assists coming from Barry. If anyone had been unsure about his trade before, they weren’t anymore. Barry had quickly secured team sweetheart status for most fans.
Jeremy didn’t stay for a movie after scooping Junior’s litter the next night, and I was half asleep when my phone rang with an incoming FaceTime from the man I was pretending not to be thinking about.
There was no amount of fast primping I could do that would make me look less like I was in my pajamas ready to go to bed, so I just swiped the screen to answer and hoped he wasn’t, I don’t know, at a bar with the hockey team or something.
“Hi,” I said when his face appeared on screen. Not in a bar, thank God, but instead in a hotel room, shirtless and propped up against a headboard. So. Stupidly. Fucking. Hot.
“Hi,” he said back, a little smile on his face.
“Congrats on the win.”
“Thank you.”
“Shouldn’t you be celebrating?”
“I went out for dinner with the guys, but we have another flight tomorrow, so I thought I’d get my beauty sleep.”
“Ah. Beauty sleep,” I echoed. Probably hearing Barry’s voice, Junior meowed and jumped onto the bed, walking up my side and lying on my shoulder. “Junior misses you, obviously.”
“Well, that’s who I was calling to talk to, so how convenient.”
It was so easy to laugh with him, almost embarrassingly so. I turned the camera so it had more of Junior’s face in frame.
“Hey buddy, how was the can of fish tonight?”
Junior, predictably, said nothing, though did look at Barry on my phone’s screen.
“If he tells you I didn’t feed him, he’s lying.”
“Shhh, I’m talking to Junior,” Barry said, then lowered his voice. “Is she telling the truth, Junior? Did she leave you starving?”
“He’s purring in response, so take that as you will.”
“Okay, buddy, put your little sister on the phone. I don’t want her forgetting what her dad sounds like when he’s out of town,” Barry said. I was glad he couldn’t see the cheesy grin spread on my face as I moved the phone to point at my belly.
I hoped he wouldn’t mention that I was wearing one of his hoodies I pulled from his stuff.
“I can’t see her,” Barry whispered. I laughed loud enough that Junior shuffled off my side and to the foot of the bed before I pulled the sweater up to reveal some of my stomach. “There she is, hi little baby.”
The baby, predictably, said nothing, but Barry went on anyway, telling her he bet she was growing strong and smart—like her mom—and that he thought she was his good luck charm because he won the hockey game thinking about her.
“Okay, I love you, now put your mom back on,” Barry concluded, and I pretended that my heart wasn’t literally in a gooey puddle at all of this. I blamed the hormones.
I threw my leg over the pregnancy pillow and positioned the phone back in front of my face. “What can I do for you, Mr. Wright?”
“Please, Mr. Wright is my father. And all my brothers.”
“Sometimes online your fans call you BW33 but that doesn’t roll off the tongue, does it?”
“My fans,” Barry mused, and I rolled my eyes. “You been looking me up?”
“Jeremy sends me everything even tangentially related to you, so it’s against my will.”
“Right, right.” Barry smiled fondly through the screen, and despite my best efforts, I’m sure I looked just the same.
“Are you nervous to play Columbus again?”
“A little. First game back at the stadium is a bit nerve-racking. You don’t know if the fans will cheer or boo or meet you with indifference.”
“No way,” I said. “Jeremy said that people were hosting vigils for you after your trade. They’re obsessed with you. They’ll cheer and probably try to kidnap you back to the team.”
“Maybe,” Barry said and sunk lower onto his bed. He rolled over, and it was almost like we were facing each other. “I’ll meet up with some old friends, which I’m excited about.”
“Do you miss them?” I asked, then clarified, “The team, and the friends. Were you sad to leave?”
He thought about it a long while, just his breaths getting picked up by the microphone.
“I was,” he said finally. “Everyone’s always saying like ‘it’s a business, it’s not personal,’ but when you work somewhere for so many years, of course you get attached and of course it feels a bit personal. I was sad to leave.”
“Jeremy said you were captain.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you miss it?”
He thought about this, too, and I waited. I watched him chew on the inside of his lower lip, his jaw slightly ticcing as he did. “It’s an honor to be captain, I loved it. The mentoring and leadership weren’t a burden to me, but I took it harder when we lost.”
“Jeremy wants them to make you captain here, but I think they should let O’Neil keep it.”
Barry laughed, and I could admit only to myself it was one of my new favorite sounds.
“I think so too, he’s pretty good, isn’t he?”
Junior resettled closer to my shins, his gentle purring rumbling through my blanket. I wondered if Barry would sleep in my bed again if he was here, wondered if he’d kiss me and let me pretend it meant nothing.
“Do you think they’ll trade you again?” I asked.
“Hope not,” he said. “I can get a no-trade clause in my next contract in a couple years. At that point I’ll be ancient in hockey years though. Suppose I could retire early if they moved me.”
“Where would you go if you didn’t have to play hockey?”
“Back to you,” he said, and didn’t seem mad I had to ask. “Wherever you and the baby are, I will be too. I’m not going anywhere.” He said it like a promise, his eyes serious with loaded meaning.
“Is that a threat?” I asked through a huge yawn.
“Promise,” he said, and held his pinky to the camera. Playing along, I held mine to my phone, too. My anti-nausea sleep aid was far past kicking in, and I couldn’t fight it anymore even if I wanted to. My eyes kept trying to sneak closed, despite my best efforts.
“You go to sleep, but let me stay on with you,” Barry said, voice low and sleepy, too. I was too tired to grumble about it, instead acquiescing easily.
“Do you know you’re famous enough to have, like, fancams?” I asked, my eyes closed. Barry laughed again, his exhale into the mic made me smile.
“My sister sends me them sometimes,” he admitted.
“Mine too. Told you that everyone’s obsessed with you.”
I drifted off, my breath evening as I listened to him through my phone, so warm in my hand from FaceTiming.
“Hannah?”
“Hm?”
“I think I miss you,” he said.
I fell asleep still smiling.