Chapter 6
I’m not particularly excited about being here, but anything is better than staying home and dealing with an annoying woman who won’t leave me the hell alone.
“Don’t look so grim,” Keith says, slapping me on the back hard enough to jolt me forward. “It’s just bowling. Lighten up for goodness sakes.”
My jaw tightens. He doesn’t notice. Or maybe he does and just barrels on because that’s who he is—Keith, the eternal optimist, the fool who thinks dragging me into bright lights and noise will somehow stitch me back together.
Inside, the place is chaos. Laughter, pins crashing, the metallic trill of arcade machines, kids screaming in the corner. It’s an assault on every sense. I want to turn around and leave, but Keith blocks the exit with his bulk, ushering me toward the counter like I’m some reluctant child.
“C’mon, don’t be shy little one.” He grins at me.
Sometimes I wonder how he has managed to remain optimistic even when life’s so fucked up.
I roll my eyes, “Between the both of us, who should be called the little one?”
“Well…you might be bigger than me but in certain areas, I still have a lot of advantages over you.”
“Oh fuck off.”
He laughs but sighs happily as he rolls up his sleeves as if telling himself he’s ready to take over the world. Shoes. Bowling ball. Score sheet.
He handles it all, talking to the attendant like we’re here for a good time. I keep my hands shoved deep in my jacket pockets, eyes fixed on the stained floor tiles.
When he tosses me a pair of rental shoes, I don’t move.
“C’mon, Cam. Don’t make me bowl alone.” He whines like a petulant child.
We end up in lane twelve. Keith punches our names into the console, embellishing mine with an exclamation mark like that’s supposed to make me feel included. “CAM!” flashes across the screen in bright green.
Finally, I’m able to find a spot to stay in. I sit in the booth, shoulders sinking deeper into the cracked vinyl, my cold water sweating on the table untouched.
I sit down and watch Keith go first, striding up to the lane like some pro, hips loose, grin cocky. He hurls the ball down the polished wood and knocks over eight pins. He pumps his fist in the air like he’s won a championship.
“See? Easy. Your turn.”
“No.”
He groans. “You can’t just sit there, man.”
“I can. Watch me.”
He rolls his eyes and takes another shot, cleaning up the spare. Then he flops down beside me, sweat beading his forehead already. He smells of cheap deodorant and misplaced enthusiasm.
“You know what your problem is?”
I tilt my head, give him the flattest stare I can manage. “No, but I’m sure you’d take the liberty of enlightening me.”
“You think brooding is a personality. But you’re just…stuck.”
“Deep analysis. Should I pay you by the hour?” I raise a brow, taking a swig of my water.
“You look like someone shot your dog,” he says.
I drag a hand over my face, resisting the urge to snarl. “It’s worse.”
“Worse than that time you found out Chipotle stopped serving your favorite salsa?” Keith slides into the seat across from me, grin sharp, eyes bright with the kind of humor that bounces off me like pucks off a post.
I don’t bite. “Collins called.”
That wipes the grin off him.
“Oh.”
Keith winces like I’ve jabbed him with my stick. Then, almost immediately, he shakes it off, reaching for his beer like he can drown whatever storm he just imagined. “So what? Collins always calls. That’s his job. Probably wanted to remind you your jawline photographs better from the left side.”
My laugh comes out low and humorless. “Try again.”
Keith studies me for a second, then sighs. “This about your arch nemesis?”
The name tastes sour in my mouth. I stare at the buzzing neon sign above the shoe counter—BOWL ‘TIL YOU DROP—and mutter, “It’s always about Jack.”
Keith leans forward, elbows on the sticky table, lowering his voice.
“You’ve come back from worse. Hell, if I’d heard the crap he said to you, I would’ve put him in the hospital myself.
You just got there first. Jack’s always talking trash, he had it coming for him.
I mean the guy talks like he has a knot loose in his head or something. ”
His attempt at comfort makes me smile but it still makes me feel worse than I already do.
“You don’t get it,” I say, shaking my head.
The words taste like rust as they scrape out.
“That scumbag is in the hospital. Last I checked, he wasn’t doing too good.
I did that. I landed him in the hospital.
I beat the shit out of him and look where he ended.
He said really nasty and provocative things to me, and I snapped.
And now I’m the villain, the thug, the washed-up thirty-five-year-old liability no team wants to touch.
No one cares what he did or said to me, everyone’s focusing on what I did.
Do you have any idea how bad this is for me?
I’m only one wrong move away from being the total reject. Without hockey—”
I stop. The words catch like barbed wire in my throat. Without hockey what? Who the hell am I then? Cameron nothing? The boy from the living spring with washed up dreams and a failed future?
Fucking hell.
The lane lights blur, glowing streaks that pull me under. I hear the pins crash from someone else’s strike, kids squealing two lanes down, the low drone of some bad rock song from the ‘90s overhead. My chest feels like it’s caving in, the walls pressing tighter with each shallow breath.
Keith doesn’t laugh this time. He leans back, beer in hand, suddenly quiet. He looks at me the way only Keith can like he sees the cracks and doesn’t flinch from them.
For a second, I almost tell him how damn tired I am. How the noise in my head doesn’t shut off anymore. How even sleep feels like punishment.
But instead, I blurt the thing that’s been clawing at me since forever.
“And if that’s not enough,” I mutter, “I’ve got a stranger living in my apartment.”
Keith nearly chokes on his drink. He coughs, sputters, then breaks into laughter that echoes across the alley loud enough to make people look. “Wait. What? Say that again, I think I missed that.”
I glare. “Don’t start. Don’t fucking start.”
“Oh no, I have to start. You? Mister I-Lock-My-Door-Twice and Mister I-Don’t-Even-Answer-The-Door-For- have a stranger living with you? Please tell me you’re screwing with me.”
“I wish I was. I really wish I was pulling your legs right now.”
Keith slams his palm on the table, wheezing with laughter. “Okay, okay, tell me what the hell is going on.”
“No, no, hold on.” He leans forward, bracing his elbows on the sticky table. “A stranger. In your house. As in… moved in? Eating your food? Taking over your couch?”
I rub my hand down my face. “More like obnoxiously loud singing, cooking nonstop, and waving lease papers around like she’s goddamn royalty.
She made fucking pancakes this morning and dared me to eat them.
I left. She literally barged into my house the other night and started acting like my wife or something and it’s so fucking annoying.
She thinks I’m going to move out in a week. ”
Keith freezes. Then he explodes into laughter so loud heads actually turn from the lanes.
He slaps the table, wheezing, tears gathering in his eyes.
“Oh my God. Cameron Gray. NHL’s angriest enforcer, terror of the ice, nightmare of defensemen everywhere—getting his ass handed to him by a pancake-flipping squatter. ”
“Shut up.”
“No, seriously—” He gasps between laughs. “—please tell me you’re kidding. She’s in your house right now? Singing? Cooking? And you’re just—what—sitting here sulking instead of throwing her out?”
I grit my teeth so hard my jaw aches. “It’s not that simple.”
“Oh, it sounds real simple.” He leans back, arms wide. “You, ex-hockey god with fists the size of bricks. Her, random woman with… what? Pancakes? Lease papers? Cam, come on. This is comedy gold.”
I glare at him, but it only fuels his grin.
“You think this is funny?” I growl.
“I think it’s the funniest goddamn thing I’ve heard all year.”
“It’s not funny when it’s the apartment you pay for,” I snap. “When it’s your kitchen smelling like chocolate chip pancakes that you want but can’t eat. When you wake up to some stranger’s voice singing through the goddamn walls.”
Keith lifts his brows. “Sounds cozy.”
“Sounds like hell.”
“Sounds like it’s something you need.”
That throws me. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve been moping around for too long, Cam. No noise. No company. Just you, the ghosts of your glory days. Then bam—some girl waltzes in, shakes the dust off your mausoleum, and suddenly you’ve got something to bitch about besides Jack and hockey.”
I narrow my eyes. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“Damn right I am.”
I push the water away, untouched. My throat feels tight, my chest tighter.
Keith studies me, and for once, he’s not laughing. “So what’s the deal? Is she a scammer? Some squatter with fake paperwork? Or…” His grin returns, sly. “Is she hot?”
I groan, shoving my chair back. “Jesus, Keith.”
“Hey, I’m just asking the important questions.”
I drag my hands through my hair. The words stumble out before I can stop them.
“I don’t think she’s a scammer. From what I take, the landlord told her that I’d be out of the place and she could move in mid-month.
I don’t know if he mixed up with the wrong apartment or what, but she said she had nowhere to go.
That she paid first month’s rent, the deposit, and last month’s rent.
She agreed to let me stay for seven days.
” I almost laugh. “She reminded me this morning that it’s now six, but she has no idea who I am. And I don’t fucking remember her name.”
That silences him. His smirk falters, replaced with stunned amusement. Then, inevitably, the laughter comes again, loud and unrelenting. “You—” He points at me, gasping. “You’ve been ranting about this woman for how long, and you don’t even know her name?”
“Shut up.”
“No, no, this is too good. Cameron Gray. All fists, no brains. Jesus Christ, man, what do you even say when you walk into your own kitchen? ‘Hey you, pancake lady?’”
“Keith—”
“Oh my God, you do, don’t you?” He slaps the table again, nearly spilling his beer. “Tell me you’ve actually called her pancake lady.”
I grind my teeth, “Of course not.”
Keith howls, tipping back in the booth until the seat groans. “Unbelievable. You’re living in a sitcom.”
“It’s not a sitcom,” I snap. “It’s my life and it’s falling apart piece by piece while you sit there laughing.”
That kills his grin. He leans forward, eyes narrowing just a fraction.
“Cam. Listen. Your overzealous PR guy doesn’t define you.
The asshole in the hospital does not define you either.
Hockey doesn’t define you. And some squatter or flat mate, sure as hell doesn’t define you.
You’re still you. You just gotta figure out who you are off the ice, man. ”
I look away, jaw tight, throat raw.
Keith sighs, softer now. “Or you could start with step one. Ask her name and try to remember it.”