Chapter 10 #2
"Well," Moose says finally, "that wasn't as bad as it could've been."
“I was ready for him to announce that we’re all going to do a cowboy-themed calendar,” Jett jokes.
“Yeah, that or pay cuts. He’d call it restructuring or something,” Moose gripes.
“Hey, hey.” I cast a gaze around the room. “Jimbo is a good team owner. He just has different priorities than we do. We’re here to win and be good guys that kids can look up to. But Jimbo has to look at the bigger picture.”
Beck sighs. “He’s looking at it from the standpoint of our place in the league.”
“And if being a cowboy gets it done, then so be it,” Connor jokes. “He’s ready for a brawl.”
I roll my eyes. “Just wait till you’re pushing 70. Then we can talk.”
The locker room empties after that, leaving Beck and I last. He rubs his chin, looking worried. “So Grayson’s out.”
Grayson Reed is twenty-six years old. He's cheaper and younger, and they moved him without blinking. I've been telling myself for weeks that the trade talk is just noise, just the usual summer speculation. It's not noise anymore.
“I know. Reed had a so-so season this year, but I don’t think any of us realized that a trade was in the mix.”
“No.” He frowns. “You worried?”
I nod. “Pretty much always.”
“We should have a beer and talk more.” He glances at his watch. “I have to go get Rosie from the babysitter, though.”
“Later, man.” We fist tap and he strolls out of the locker room.
I follow a half minute later, feeling like I’ve run a gauntlet. Mollie is waiting in the corridor when I come out, leaning against the wall with her bag over her shoulder. She reads my face immediately.
"How bad?" she asks.
"Grayson's gone. Traded to Denver."
She goes still. "Grayson Reed?"
"Yeah."
"Thorne." She straightens up and her knee almost bumps mine with how close she's standing. "They're not trading you. You're the heart of this team, and everyone in that building knows it. No trade makes sense. You're untradeable."
She says it the way she'd say the sky is blue. As though she's mildly irritated that she even has to point it out.
My heart twinges in a way I'm not prepared for. My dad talks about my career like it's a portfolio to be managed. My agent talks about it in terms of market value. Beck talks about it by not talking about it at all. Nobody just says it like it's an obvious fact and then waits for me to catch up.
I don't know what to do with it, so I do what I always do. I deflect.
"You don't know that," I say.
She gives me a look. "Argue with me if you want. You're wrong." She turns and heads for the exit. "Come on. I need to get home."
I follow her. What else am I going to do?
The drive back is fine at first. She's got her window down a little, her hair moving, scrolling through her phone with the relaxed energy of someone who got a full night's sleep and didn't spend it standing on a chair with their ear against a vent.
I keep both hands on the wheel, and keep my eyes on the road, and I think about what Jimbo said and what he didn't say and I tell myself very firmly to build those walls twice as thick.
She says something about the footage from the Sammy interaction, how she wants to cut it a specific way, and I say "mmm" because I'm only half listening.
"Did you hear me?" she asks.
"Yeah. Sounds good."
"I said I want to post it tomorrow morning during peak engagement hours. Is that okay with you, or do you want to review it first?"
"Do whatever you want, Mollie." It comes out flatter than I mean it to. More dismissive.
She goes quiet. I can feel her looking at me.
"Okay," she says carefully. "What about the scheduling for next week? I was thinking—"
"Can we not do this right now?"
Another silence. Longer this time.
"Sure," she says. Her voice has gone very even. "We don't have to do anything."
Three blocks pass. I wait for the light change at an intersection, then pull through, and I tell myself I handled that fine. That she'll drop it, that we'll get home and order food and this will all reset by morning.
"What is going on with you?" she asks.
"Nothing."
"It's not nothing. You've been like this for weeks and I've been ignoring it but your series of dismissive grunts just now proves you’re off about something. Is it the Grayson thing? Because if you're scared about the trade rumors, that's valid. But taking it out on me isn't."
"I'm not taking anything out on you."
"You just told me to do whatever I want, like I was bothering you."
"You were bothering me."
She makes a sound that's somewhere between a laugh and something less amused. "Got it." She turns back to her window. "Fine. I’m looking for new apartments. If having me around is this much of a problem, I'll just—"
"You're not moving out."
"Of course I am." She looks at me like I’m speaking gibberish.
"Mollie." I pull up to a red light and I turn and look at her and she looks back at me, chin up, eyes steady, doing that thing she does where she holds her ground even when the other person is bigger, louder, and has a better argument. "You're not moving out."
"What?” Her eyes bug out slightly. “You’re crazy. Why would our arrangement change suddenly? This is supposed to be a temporary arrangement."
She says it like she’s the temporary arrangement, and it drives me crazy. The truth is that I love having her in my space, more than I ever thought I would. And hearing her talk about her plans to move pokes me in a soft spot that I can’t bear right now.
Not today. Not with sudden uncertainty over the team’s roster.
I need one good, stable thing. And I need it to be Mollie.
"Because I don't want you to." The light turns green. I face forward. "I've been a dick. I know I've been a dick. It has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with me, and I'll stop. But I need you to stay. Just for a little while."
She doesn't say anything for long enough that I glance over. She's watching me with an expression I can't fully read.
"You actually want me around?" she asks.
"I always do. I'm just bad at showing it."
Another beat. Then she turns back to her window, tucks her hair behind her ear, and says, "Okay. Then stop being weird."
"I'll try."
"Don't try. Just do it."
"You're kind of a lot, you know that?"
"You like it," she says, and she's not wrong, and we both know it, and neither of us says another word for the rest of the drive.
When we get back to the floating house, she kicks off her shoes at the door and collapses onto the couch. Gordie immediately materializes to put his massive head in her lap. I stand in the kitchen for a second, watching the two of them.
"You want to talk about something?" she asks without looking up from scratching Gordie's ears.
"What makes you say that?"
"You're hovering."
I pull out a barstool and sit on it. "Tell me about growing up."
She glances over. "That's vague."
"You and Beck. Vancouver. All of it."
She considers this for a second, then shrugs and settles back against the cushions.
"Outside Vancouver, actually. About forty-five minutes from the city.
My parents are great. They love us a lot.
" She pauses. "They also think I'm incapable of tying my own shoes, which is a thing I've been dealing with my whole life. "
"Beck's the same. Not with me, so much. But with the rookies? He is the definition of a micromanager."
"Beck learned it from my parents." She scratches Gordie’s side, and he groans with pleasure.
"I get it, I do. I was the younger one, I got injured, I gave them a reason to worry.
But there's a difference between worrying about someone, and treating them like they're perpetually about to fall apart.
" She looks down at Gordie. "I'm handling it.
I'm more than handling it. It would just be nice if someone noticed without me having to fight to be seen. "
"You're good at your job," I say. "Anyone paying attention can see that."
She looks up, seeming startled.
"Thanks," she says quietly.
"Your parents will figure it out."
"Probably. They're a little distracted by whatever your dad posts on Instagram." She gives me a side-eye. "Speaking of dads with Instagram problems."
"My dad is a different category of problem."
"The hall-of-famer."
"Douglas Thorne. Four Super Bowl rings, one Hall of Fame induction, and a very active social media presence.” I lean back. "He's coming to Seattle next month for some sports foundation banquet. Big press thing. His face is going to be on billboards."
"And you're going."
"I'm going." I study the ceiling for a second. "If you wanted to come, you could. Meet him yourself, make your own assessment. I could use someone in my corner when he inevitably tries to make the whole night about his legacy."
She's quiet for a moment. "As what?"
"As my date." I pause. "As my friend. Who accompanies me. To an event."
"Those are the same thing, Thorne."
"They're categorically different."
She gives me a look I can't fully decode, the same one she had in the car.
The tension is right there between us the way it always is lately, thick enough to choke on.
I don't do anything about it because I told her I'd stop being weird, and I intend to keep that promise for at least the next forty-eight hours.
"Think about it," I say.
"I'll think about it," she says, which is not a no.
We're quiet for a bit. Gordie relocates from her lap to the floor, and sprawls out like a small horse. The late afternoon light comes through the windows at a long angle.
"When are you going to skate again?" I ask. "Actually skate. Not just for content."
Her expression closes down a little, subtle, but there. "I skated today."
"Hey, that’s big. I’ve been wondering when you were going to make the leap."
“Oh?” She looks at the middle distance. "And here I thought you were going to try to force me to walk on the ice again."
I pull a face. “I’m sorry that you fell. But I’m not sorry for getting you back on the ice.”
"It's not as simple as that." She picks at the seam of a throw pillow. "My head is broken. When your body fails you like that, you stop trusting it. You stop trusting yourself. Skating stopped being mine at some point. It went from something I loved to something that happened to me."
She says it matter-of-factly, smoothed over and practiced, and I know she's told this version before. The cleaned-up version, where the ending is about her injury and her own head, and nothing else.
"When did that happen?" I ask. "After the fall?"
She doesn't answer right away. "After things got weird with Coach Savard, actually." She says it like it's an afterthought, already reaching for her phone on the cushion beside her. "The fall just made it easier to stop. Anyway, I was thinking we could—"
"Wait, wait. Who's Savard?"
"My old coach." She's scrolling now, eyes on the screen. "It doesn't matter. Ancient history." She looks up. "Do you want to order food? I could eat a wall."
I look at her. She looks back at me, her expression set, her thumb hovering over a delivery app.
"Yeah," I say. "Order whatever you want."
Things got weird with her coach.
She said it like it was nothing, a footnote.
People don't quit the thing they love most because something got weird.
They definitely don't say they did in that flat, practiced voice and then immediately change the subject if it was just weird.
Weird doesn't hollow a person out. And it doesn't make someone say skating stopped feeling like mine.
I order pizza, and keep my mouth shut, and I file the name Savard away somewhere deep and specific. I’m going to look him up when I’m alone.
Why don’t I know anything about the guy?
Whatever the reason is, that fact is about to change.