Chapter 4 #2
“What are you looking for?” Shiloh asks, sidling up to me, so close I can feel the heat of him against my side.
His size would suggest he was someone to overlook, but I get the sense that that would be a mistake.
I don’t quite know what it is about him, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t actually promise him any food, but I’m intrigued enough by him to feed him anyway.
“Nothing important,” I reply, closing the wallet and holding out my hand. “Keys?”
“What if I keep the penguin and give you the keys? It’s kind of cute.”
A bolt of panic flits through me and I frown, shaking my head. “No, he’s mine. I need my keys and my keychain.”
Shiloh tilts his head to the side, eyeing me carefully with a small smile on his lips. I glance down at the hoodie pocket as he slowly pulls the keys out and hands them over to me, penguin included.
“Thanks,” I breathe, fingering the edges of the soft plastic penguin. Huh. I guess it really is a habit after all.
“You’re very strange,” Shiloh mumbles under his breath, still staring at me like I’m some kind of puzzle he can’t quite figure out.
I offer a shrug, hoping he stops with the intense eye contact. “Goalies. We’re all weirdos. It’s a special kind of odd to willingly place yourself in the way of a speeding puck.”
“If you say so,” Shiloh comments. “Where are we going for food? That place with the donuts?”
“Yeah,” I reply. “I’ll drive. It’s a fair walk from here, but I have my Jeep. I’m choked I didn’t get my donuts last night, by the way. I’ve been craving one since someone ditched me in an alleyway without my keys or my wallet.”
I take off down the concrete walkway, trusting Shiloh to follow.
He catches up to me quickly, which is amazing since I’m moving fast and my strides are long.
I note that he’s practically running to keep up, and force myself to slow down.
He catches my eye and offers me a small smile that almost looks like a thank you before he scowls.
“Like I said, I didn’t take anything. I went back to see if you were still there and I found it in the grass in that weird yard you were in.”
“Why did you leave?” I ask as I lead us into the parking lot and over to my white Jeep.
“Why do you have a roof rack?” Shiloh asks, completely bypassing my question. “Do you camp? Fish? Hunt?”
“It came with the vehicle. That doesn’t answer my question. Why did you leave last night?”
He doesn’t respond with anything but a slight shrug of his shoulders that I can barely make out beneath the giant hoodie he’s still wearing. Dammit. I should have asked for that back too while I was on a roll.
“Take me to donuts?” he asks, opening the passenger door as I push the button that unlocks them.
“First things first,” I comment, hopping into the driver’s seat and starting the engine as we both buckle up our seatbelts. “I’m gonna need you to reach into the glove box and grab me a stack of cards and one of the sharpies in there.”
As I pull the vehicle out of the stall, Shiloh does what he’s asked, and I get him to place them on the center console of the vehicle.
Ahead, I can already see them outside the gate to the parking lot, the small group of fans that gather here for autographs after every practice.
There are not many today, only a few younger kids with their parents and a couple of older, perhaps teenage, girls.
It shouldn’t take too long to get through some autographs, and now that I have my stuff back, I have nothing but time on my hands.
I figure Shiloh must have time too, given that he waited this long for me after practice.
“You have one chance to hide,” I say, glancing his way with a smile. “You can hop into the back seat and pretend you’re not here, if you’d like to.”
“What are you talking about?” Shiloh asks, as I pull my vehicle to the weight activated gate.
“Autographs.”
“Autographs,” he repeats, like he isn’t sure what that word means.
I grin and slide down my window the moment we pass through the gate to the parking lot. One of the children, a young boy, stands on his tippy toes to peer into my window and grins so wide I could probably count all his teeth if I tried.
“Forty-three!” he shouts, nailing my jersey number.
“Donovan Myers, goalie,” the woman behind him offers, offering me an apologetic smile. “We’ve been learning names instead of numbers. It’s a process.”
“Forty-three isn’t a bad thing to be called. I’ve heard worse.” She laughs and I turn back to the young boy. “Want an autograph, buddy?”
“I have paper,” he says, holding up a team roster sheet that looks like it’s seen better days.
“I’ll sign that for sure, but I have something cool just for you,” I comment, turning toward Shiloh for the first time since I stopped the Jeep.
His eyes are a bit wide as he meets mine, his head tilted to the side again like I’ve either amused him or done something offensive.
I’m gonna guess it’s amusement. I offer a smile, then grab a card off the pile, uncapping the black sharpie to scribble my signature complete with the number forty-three on it.
Shiloh watches me carefully, and again I feel like I’m being weighed and measured though I don’t quite know why.
“For you,” I say, turning back to the young boy and his mom. He takes the card with a delighted shout, holding it up for everyone else behind him to see.
“You got cards?” someone else yells out, and I nod.
I stocked up on my rookie cards after I learned early on that being so new here meant I was signing things like old ticket stubs and paper scraps torn from notebooks.
I’m an unproven commodity in this city, and while I can’t fault anyone for not having a jersey with my name and number on it for me to sign yet, that doesn’t mean the kids don’t deserve to have my signature captured somewhere cool.
I finish scribbling signatures on cards for the rest of the fans lined up at the sidewalk, answering questions about my career and taking surprising compliments for some of the saves I made last night in that shitty loss.
One of the teenage girls asks for a selfie with me, and I agree, feeling Shiloh practically melt into the seat beside me to avoid the camera’s lens.
Finally, I roll up my window, and with a wave, pull out of the road that leads to the secured parking lot and head down the street, making my way toward Sal’s Place.
“Sorry about that,” I offer. “I can’t say no to the kids.
Driving by them would be so rude after they waited in the cold like that.
” Shiloh doesn’t say anything in response, but when I glance over his way, he’s leaned forward in the passenger seat, eyeing me carefully again.
“It’s just part of my job, I figure. Signing autographs.
Taking pictures. Sorry if it was weird?”
I’m running out of things to say, because I can recognize that it’s part of my job and weird as hell at the same time. Finally Shiloh speaks and breaks the awkward silence with a question I had not expected.
“You’re a big deal around here, huh?”
“Kind of? I guess?”
“People know your face,” he points out.
“Comes with the territory,” I offer with a shrug.
Shiloh hums softly under his breath like he’s deep in thought as he leans back into the seat again and peers out the windshield.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him grab the stack of cards and the sharpie from the center console.
After a few seconds, I glance back as he opens the glove box and deposits them back inside, save for one card.
That card he tucks into his pocket before leaning back into his chair, humming thoughtfully under his breath again.