Chapter 17
Seventeen
Brody
I slowly come to, dazed as I regain consciousness with each forceful blink. The fire alarm stings my ears like an unwelcome
alarm clock. Friction heats my back as baseboards pass by my line of vision. Am I being dragged through a doorway?
“Oh, no. No. No. No. What am I going to do? What am I going to do?” The voice in front of me whimpers. “Tori is so not going to believe this was an accident.”
Like a sled dog, Olivia pulls me down the hall by my good foot. We’re headed for the stairs. I prop up before I’m dragged
down five flights.
“Did I faint?” I ask, anchoring myself on the wall. Olivia lets go of my leg and it drops like a log.
“Brody! You’re alive!” she cries out, short of breath. She falls to her knees and leans over me, water from her hair dripping
on my face. A couple people evacuating the building step over us on their way out. I prop myself against the wall. Olivia
didn’t get too far with me; we’re a few feet from my apartment door. “I’m going to grab our jackets and shoes, but then we
should get out of here,” she adds.
Sirens cry in the distance as she helps me to my feet, but I’m able to get myself down the stairs and out of the building unassisted.
Outside, a fleet of emergency service vehicles pull up in front of the apartment building.
With my pant leg singed off and both of us soaked through like a pair of wet dogs, discretion has gone up in smoke.
The entire building’s residents reluctantly loiter around in the cold dark street, perturbed by the midnight disruption.
I duck my head. Olivia gives a dramatic and performative recap of the evening’s events to the firefighters.
“We don’t need to know about the striptease. The cause of the fire will suffice,” the firefighter says.
I apologize profusely for my fire-safety negligence, but he tells me it’s okay. “This is the number one cause of apartment
fires,” he says.
“Candles?” I ask.
“No, foreplay mishaps.”
Great, I’m a foreplay failure.
Once things are settled with my unhabitable apartment unit, a paramedic takes me to the back of an ambulance to examine the
sharp throbbing pain at my ankle. I avoid looking at the burn while I sit at the edge of the open ambulance’s back door. The
sight of my injury knocked me on my ass last time, and I don’t think I’ll get another chance at foreplay redemption if I pass
out into Olivia’s lap again.
As the medic takes a look at my ankle, I realize that tonight’s sequence of events is much more embarrassing than painful.
The medic says it’s a small second-degree burn and if bandaged properly with cream, I shouldn’t miss any hockey games.
No need for a trip to the ER. I look for myself; there’s nothing more than a tiny burn bubble the size of a silver dollar on the ankle.
My pants and socks bought me a lot of burn time and protected my skin from any serious wounds that would keep me off the ice.
Wrapped in foil emergency blankets like two burritos, Olivia and I walk across the intersection to the pharmacy to fill my
burn-cream prescription. Having the team doctor on speed dial is one of the many perks of being a professional athlete. She
was able to call in a prescription for me in minutes. Hopefully by the time it’s filled I’ll have figured out where I’m going
to live until my apartment dries out.
While we wait for the pharmacist to return with my cream, I pull my phone out of my back pocket along with my soggy disfigured
wallet. I text Chef and ignore the three missed call notifications from my dad, just as I did when they were incoming. As
I press Send on my late U up? text to my night-owl teammate, my mom is calling.
My stomach sinks. She only calls when it’s an emergency, which means an aging relative is ill, someone has died, or there’s
immediate Parker family drama. Either way I brace myself as I answer.
I’m not greeted by her soft voice. Instead, it’s my dad’s bark. Disappointment swallows me up, when I should be feeling a
rush of relief that nothing bad happened to a family member. I clear my throat. “Hey, Dad.” My voice is so calm that I almost
trick myself into believing everything is under control. If he could see me now, he’d have a lot to say. As if I weren’t feeling
guilty enough about tonight, now I feel flooded with it.
“So, you’ll answer Mom’s call but not mine? Why haven’t you been answering your phone or replying to my texts?” He shouts
when he’s been drinking. I turn down the volume on my phone, but it doesn’t do much to muffle his bellowing voice.
I look over at Olivia, who is staring up at the ceiling, doing her best to pretend she can’t hear us.
“I’m hanging out with Olivia.” I realize this puts me in a tricky situation.
Now she knows that I’ve talked about her to my dad, which makes things between us a bit more serious than I think they presently are.
On the other hand, if I don’t give him a good excuse as to why I’m dodging his calls, he’ll start reaming me out over tonight’s game.
“You’re always hanging out with Olivia.” I can hear his eyes roll through the phone.
Olivia is an arm’s distance away, pretending to read vitamin labels. Still, I cup my mouth to the phone and in a low voice
say, “Can I call you tomorrow?”
“No,” he cuts me off. “We need to talk about tonight’s game. There’s no reason a Parker should be fighting a fourth-line nobody.
I don’t care what excuse you have this time, I’m coming out there for Christmas break to keep an eye on you. I’m worried you’re
not taking this seriously.”
“I take hockey very seriously, which is why Christmas isn’t a good time for you to come visit.” My body tenses as if my muscles
could flex into human armor.
“You’re not taking my bid to get into the Hall of Fame seriously,” he huffs. “What is it now? Why isn’t Christmas a good time?”
“Why?” I repeat, stalling for an excuse.
Once I turned eighteen, I was drafted into the NHL and moved to Washington, DC, to play for the Federals. For a few years,
I came home for holidays, but who would want to spend their Christmas break watching game tape with a dad pointing out every
little thing they did wrong? Eventually, I made Dad come to me (and he did as often as he could). It was self-preservation—I
had to stop visiting or else he was going to destroy what was left of my self-confidence.
Before I can make up an excuse that doesn’t involve an accidental-arson confession, the pharmacist comes back with a tiny white paper bag in hand. “I’ve got your prescription ready . . .” She trails off once she notices my phone pressed to my ear.
Now I’m being rude to my date, my dad, and the pharmacist. Overwhelmed with limited options, I give her the one-minute gesture
with my finger. For once, my dad is silent.
“Instruction for your prescription is in the bag,” she says, setting it down on the counter. “Hope you feel better. Go Freeze!”
she cheers with an enthusiastic fist pump before disappearing again.
The silence is short-lived. “Prescription? What’s going on over there? You better not miss any games.”
Olivia clears her throat, catching my attention. She motions to me with an open palm, gesturing to the phone pressed against
my cheek. There’s no way I’m handing it to her. I shake my head no.
In a low threatening voice, she says, “Give me the phone.” While I stare at her perplexed, she says softly, “Trust me.”
I slowly hand it over like it’s a live bomb. My dad’s shrill voice—spiraling to conclusions—continues to project into the
store.
“Hi, Mr. Parker, it’s Olivia.” She grabs a seat on a nearby chair in the waiting area. “I want to assure you that Brody is
in top shape. We’re here to fill his prescription for ?2-agonists to help increase his power and stamina so he can be quicker
on the ice. All the best in the league are doing it, and we can’t have Brody falling behind in any aspect of his game, now
can we?”
She’s lying for me, but there’s no way he’s going to buy the whole I’m-getting-an-inhaler-at-a-quarter-past-midnight bit.
I sit next to her, holding my breath and leaning into the phone so I can listen closely.
Suddenly, my dad’s voice isn’t so big and mean. “That’s great. I think I read an article about that recently. It’s big in the NFL too,” he says, not wanting to admit he has no clue what she’s talking about.
“Totally, I knew you would agree.” Olivia leans back in her chair, kicking her leg up and crossing it over the other as if
this is some chitchat with a friend. “And, Mr. Parker, I’m sorry for stealing Brody away from you this Christmas, but my dad
passed during the holiday season when I was a teen, and I can’t face the family festivities without my boyfriend by my side.
Plus, he plans to get in extra ice time and work on improving his stick handling.” She juts out her bottom lip. With her whole
body in character, she sells the lie like a skilled salesman.
I stop eavesdropping after that. In fact, I’m not sure I can hear anything at all. Is that ringing in my ears? Did she say boyfriend? More importantly, why would she help me get out of a toxic Christmas visit with my dad?
The calls ends and Olivia hands back my phone. “You didn’t have to do that,” I say, though my lie is hardly as convincing
as hers.
“Yes, I did. You should have seen your face. You were in more shock talking to your dad than you were when your leg was lit
up like a birthday cake.” She looks down at my exposed shin and the pant leg burnt into Bermudas like I’m trying to start
a new fashion trend.
Becoming self-conscious of how unhinged I look, I ditch my foil blanket. “So . . . I’m your boyfriend?” I let the question
roll off my tongue. If I forced myself to be any more laid-back about the term, I’d be horizontal.
She smirks and laughs to herself. “Don’t worry, I know it’s a bit early to make anything between us official just yet, but
if it helps get you out of a visit, you can be whoever you want.”
What does that mean? Wait a minute—who cares. She basically answered all my prayers: She’s Erik Parker repellant. This is the first time I’ve ever gotten my hands on some and after the scary hallucinations during tonight’s game, I’m using it.
“Thanks,” I tell her. “My relationship with my dad is really complicated. No one knows this, but I came to Minnesota to get
some distance from him. My dad knows no boundaries—except when it comes to you.”
“Happy to help.” Up from her seat, Olivia grabs the medical supplies from my hands and bends down, beginning to bandage up
my leg. I think about stopping her—assuring her she’s done enough for me tonight—but after all we’ve been through, this intimacy
is hardly inappropriate.
“Your dad passing around the holidays must have been difficult. I know how important Christmas can be for some families.”
I avoid looking down at the red splotchy burn on my ankle by focusing on her face. Even with smudged makeup and disheveled
hair, she looks angelic.
“I lied.” She stops wrapping briefly to look up at me with her signature sexy smirk. “Wow, I was really convincing, wasn’t
I? My dad died in the spring—April Fool’s Day. Sick bastard had to get in one last bad dad joke.”
My mouth falls open. “You lied about your dead dad?”
“Please, the least I can do is exploit it for a good excuse every now and then. It’s what he would have wanted.”
“Was he as good an actor as you are?”
She sits back down next to me and thinks about her answer. “Yeah,” she says as a smile overtakes her face. “He would make
similar calls to the office at my school, telling them I had a dentist appointment. We would grab butter burgers instead.
I can’t believe the secretaries never caught on—I was at the dentist weekly.”
“My mom never let me skip school. Except this one time when a famous Korean author did a reading and signing at her library. It was a big deal. I got her autograph and everything.” I don’t notice I’m smiling until my cheeks strain.
“Do you still have it?”
I nod. If I dwell too long on this memory, I’ll be angry for days. Instead, I push it aside, back where I keep all my memories
with Mom. Compartmentalized with my few and fading good childhood moments.
“You should come to the team’s holiday party with me,” I blurt out.
Olivia fusses with her hair, tucking it behind her ears. “No, I couldn’t impose,” she says, making a face. “You should bond
with your team or whatever you guys call all the homoerotic behavior you can’t stop doing to each other.”
“It is a lot of spanking. I know,” I say, picturing it. I shake my head and get back on topic. “No, really, you should come.
Everyone wants to pick your brain about Catan strategy.”
She likes that compliment. I can tell by the way she’s fighting her smile.
“Okay. I’ll go with you,” she concedes as easily as I’ve ever seen her. “And if you ever want to use me as an excuse to keep
your dad away, by all means, inflate our relationship as much as you need.”
“You don’t mean that. You just feel bad about my leg.”
“I don’t. You’ll have a cool scar and an even funnier story.”
My cheeks burn up with embarrassment. I am never doing a striptease again—I’ll leave that to the professionals. I hide my
face in my hands.
“A story that I will take to my grave,” she adds, resting her hand on my leg.
“Never mind Hot Hands, I think I invented Hot Leg tonight.”
Olivia cackles at my joke, and it’s the most euphoric feeling in the world. “Look at us!” She toggles her finger between the two of us. “We look like we were rescued from a deserted island.” She laughs so hard she begins to tear up.
“At least we got a fire started.”
We both fold over into a disruptive fit of laughter in the middle of the night, in an empty pharmacy.