12. Chase
Chase thought he had been doing the right thing by encouraging Zak to talk to her father. But boy, did he feel like the biggest asshole in the world when she showed up at the door to his room that night.
Sobbing. Uncontrollably.
“Oh, honey.” The soft words fled from his chest as he brought her in and held her tight. He didn’t know what else to say to the unbreakable, impenetrable woman who now stood freezing cold in his arms, her body vibrating with strangled cries.
“Ugh.” She made a garbled noise in the back of her throat and sniffed back the teary congestion as she shook her head. She pulled away from him, shrugged off her coat, and headed to the bathroom. “I hate this. Give me a second.”
“Sure. As long as you need.”
Chase assumed she meant a second to calm down. But moments later, he heard her heave over the toilet and completely forgot to knock before bursting open the door.
“What—”
“Too. Much. Fucking. Wine,” she choked out. Followed, contradictorily, by, “Not enough wine in the world, though…”
She flushed what would’ve been a horrifying amount of red without the wine disclaimer, pushed herself to her feet, and faced the large bathroom mirror.
He sat on the closed toilet seat and watched as she turned the cold water on and furiously scrubbed the redness and tears from her face. “What did he have to say?”
Her laugh came out in one irritated burst. “Nothing worth hearing, that’s for sure. You know what my favorite thing about addicts is? They’re always the victim. Even when they fucked up, and they’re the ones apologizing, they’re still the victim. Sure, they ruined your life. But was it really their fault? Or was it the drugs? They couldn’t help it. They’re a different person now, so how do you not forgive them?”
Chase sifted through her rambling for the bits and pieces of her night that had led to water spilling from her eyes, wine spilling from her throat, and rapid bursts of words spilling from her lips.
“Forgiveness is for you, and only if it helps you. Not for him. He’s already lost the most important thing of all.”
“Doesn’t seem like it was all that important to him. I don’t know. He seems to think he had no other option. Told me it wasn’t about the fame. But then, he was obviously enjoying all the perks that came with it. Especially the edible, snortable, injectable ones. You know, shit so good it makes you forget about the life you brought into this world.”
“Did you get any answers?”
“Sure.” Zak took apart the bun that had fallen from the top of her head to the base of her neck and re-did it. “Confirmation of what I’ve known my entire life. That he wasn’t cut out to be a father.”
She loaded up her toothbrush with a wad of paste and started going to town. For a few seconds, she brushed her teeth like a normal person before she was talking again, speech muffled by minty froth. “An’ thass fine. I don’ fu’ing need a father anyway. Ne’er did. Jus’ thought, may-b, he would wan’ to get to know me instea’ of mak’ng esscuses.”
He stood behind her, placing a hand at her hip as she swished water around in her mouth and spat. Her eyes found his in the mirror, tender vulnerability replaced by a hardened stare.
“I hate him, Chase,” she said like she was trying to goad him into talking her out of it. “I tried to go in with an open mind, but I knew the moment I saw him sitting there that nothing he could say was going to make it better. I don’t think I’ve ever been so fucking angry in my entire life. And let me tell you.” She laughed bitterly. “I’ve been angry a lot.”
“Yeah, the receiving end of that isn’t so fun, for sure.” Chase pressed a kiss to the tension at her temple.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. It’s not like I can fall asleep like this. I’m going to throw up the second anything touches my stomach. I can’t damn well fuck away the angerwhen I can’t stop thinking about my dad.” Her face scrunched in disgust. “I can’t turn my head off. I can’t sit still. And I can’t figure out how to get over it.”
I can’t turn my head off. It stuck to the back of his mind like a nagging insect to flypaper.
Now that, Chase knew how to fix. But would his only solution be of any help to her?
“Alright.” He checked the time on his watch as he wrapped an arm around her waist. “How about we put your coat back on?”
Having a recognizable name came with certain privileges Chase rarely exercised. Trading convenience for attention was never worth it, and when it came to money, he found there were very few things he cared about spending it on. But paying a generous sum to a local ice rink owner to keep his business open after hours?
All worth it, for the look on Zak’s face when they walked in.
“What are we doing here?” she asked in a panic that told him she knew exactly why he’d brought her there.
“Why do you sound so scared, Parker?” He smiled back at her. “I thought hockey was easy.”
Hands buried in his pockets, Chase took in the dejected state of all the skates at the rental stand, dangling from hooks in a row of open-faced cabinets like flea-ridden strays at a pound. Uninvited thoughts about the first pair he had gotten for Christmas and the very last pair he’d owned—in his storage unit back home—entered his mind as he folded the sides to check for ankle support and scrutinized the blades for cracks and chips.
Well, it looked like those would be impossible to avoid.
“Are we allowed out there? It’s empty.”
Chase glanced at the vacant rink, illuminated by overhead lights. A leaden pang reverberated through his chest. “Worried about trespassing? How very not rock’n’roll of you.”
Her indignant laugh pulled him back down to Earth. “Oh, you take that back.”
He grabbed the least treacherous-looking pair in her size off the hook and set them on the glass counter. “As soon as you put these on. Size ten, right?”
“Well, yeah.” She stood the skates up and let them topple back down, as though testing to see how easy it would be to fall. “Spend a lot of time looking at my shoes?”
“Spent a good amount of time with them tossed over my shoulders,” he teased, picking out a pair for himself. “Now, come on. They won’t bite.”
“Chase, I’m not trying to point out the obvious here or anything”—she glanced down at his prosthetic leg—“butthey do bite.”
Yeah, he supposed she had a point there.
“Operator error. I won’t let you get hurt.”
They walked to the lowest-tier bench on the section of bleachers facing the left goalpost and sat side by side. Light reflected off the pure white, freshly resurfaced rink, and cool air hovered all around them.
She slipped out of her boots. “How long has it been?”
It occurred to him that she had never tied ice skates before, so he got down on one knee in front of her and helped her into the first one. Wrapping the laces around his hands and cinching each row from the toe up.
“I went once, with the new leg, as soon as my physical therapist gave me the green light. Just to see if I could. They thought it would help if I could find a way to still enjoy the things I used to do.”
Instead, it had been a terrible idea. After he’d moved on from the shooting-pains-up-his-leg stage and the falling-on-his-ass stage, he was right back at the maybe-I-can-play-again stage.
She crossed her arms over her knees. “And? How did it go?”
“It went so well, I decided I mastered hockey and should move on to something more challenging.” He offered her a small smile as he tied a double-knotted bow for the first skate. “Like seeking out my high school crush and joining her rock band as their lead singer.”
Zak gave him a quizzical look. She gestured to the pair of boots he’d left on the bench. “Obviously you can. So why don’t you skate anymore?”
“Well, it’s not as easy as it used to be. But mostly, it reminds me of things I don’t want to be reminded of.” He lifted her other foot. “Not just the injury—I’ve been injured plenty of times out there—but the way I handled it. It reminds me of the people who worried about me, who I ignored and cast away. It reminds me of how controlling my parents were. It reminds me of the days I did love being out there, and how it’s over.”
“Do you ever think about getting in touch with your old teammates?” she asked. “Going to a game again?”
“I don’t know if I can.” He finished tying the second boot and sat beside her. “Don’t know what I’d say to them. Don’t know if I could handle all those old memories yet.”
“And this?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he told her. “You wanted a way to let out your anger, and this is the best there is. Hands down.”
“I don’t know if this is letting it out so much as replacing it with terror.” She buried her admission against his sweater as she leaned into his arm.
“Do you trust me?”
Her eyes browsed over him in consideration. Too much consideration. “I’m wearing knives on my feet, aren’t I?”
It wasn’t the yes he’d been hoping for. It wasn’t spoken with the same conviction that she had for everything else. But he let himself imagine it was.
He finished tying his own shoes and stood, limping to the community barrel to pick up two sticks that looked like someone had cut them out of the side of an antique barn with a jigsaw. The pucks collected at the bottom in a puddle of melted ice, so he dipped his head below and fished for one without deformed edges. When he looked back up, Zak was already on the rink.
He heard the soft rip of sharp metal through smooth ice before he saw her, moving with a shocking amount of grace for a beginner. Then again, he’d seen her in plenty of footwear more difficult to balance on than a blade.
He stepped onto the rink, the sensation of gliding so familiar and unfamiliar all at once. His right leg took to it with muscle memory assuming control, and then his left. In thick jeans and chunky skating shoes, it was a conscious effort to remember he didn’t have an ankle.
The prosthesis was an illusion of a leg without the sensation of one.
He remembered the way the kinetic energy felt, transferring from his core, to his hips, down his thighs, to his feet. Now, with each opposite shift, it ceased unnaturally at one knee, snuffing out the flow. He couldn’t make sharp turns, couldn’t skate backward like he used to.
Instead of speed beneath his feet, he felt only bruising at the bottom of his stump.
“Are you hustling me?” he called out.
“Are you blowing smoke up my ass?” She looked over her shoulder at him. Because, as he now realized, she had no idea how to turn. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Chase, and more importantly, how do I—”
She took a jerky step, throwing her arms out to her sides. Like a premonition, Chase saw exactly what was about to happen even before she started to lose her balance. He sped in her direction to grab her by her waist and keep her upright, but she was already falling by the time he got there.
And she took him down with her.
“—stop,” she groaned.
They were in a tangled pile on the hard ground, Zak’s elbow in his stomach, his knee in her side, her hair disheveled again and poking into his mouth. And he wasn’t sure who laughed first because the sound of their laughter blended in the open air, echoing off the walls of the rink.
It was the longest he’d ever stayed down after a fall. His father used to yell, “Get up, Number 10!” from the sidelines, whether he had been mortally injured or already in the process of standing. He had probably shouted it somewhere in the crowd the night Chase’s ankle got sliced open.
“You could have waited for me, you know,” Chase coughed out, smoothing her hair away from her face.
“I had some shit-talk to back up,” she said. “I was kind of hoping it might actually be easy.”
“And?”
“And maybe. Maybe I’m the slightest bit impressed by your abilities.”
“You can say it, you know,” he pressed. “Hock-ey.”
“Yes, that.” She moved off him, already pushing up to her knees. “The sports thing.”
She gave him a wink as she stood uneasily and offered a hand to help him up, too. The gesture of consideration was comical in its own right, but more so knowing she would fall back down if she tried to support his weight.
He got to his feet and rubbed his sore tailbone with a smile. “Damn, I haven’t fallen like that in a long time.”
“Is there a better way?”
“Yeah. Go for the side next time.”
Her eyes widened. “Next time?”
Chase took her hand. “Here. You don’t want to skate like you’re walking. It’s more like gliding. Like pushing your weight around. You want to lean forward instead of standing up straight.” He ran a hand up her spine.
“You don’t want to step. You can lift, but you want to use the slickness of the ice to help you move.” He showed her, carrying them both. “And next time when you want to stop—” he emphasized, kicking one skate to the side. Ice scraped, spraying up around them. “Like that, okay?”
“That was a lot to remember,” she said, still clinging to his arm.
“You’ve got hundreds of songs stored up there.” He pressed a thumb to her forehead. “Shit, maybe thousands. I haven’t seen you not be able to play one.”
“Songs are all made up of the same chords and scales. Those areall you need to remember. After that, it’s all improv.”
Chase would argue that it also involved remembering which songs used which combination of chords and scales, and in which order. Remembering the different ways to make those sounds on different instruments, of which she knew quite a few. Not to mention, she remembered the lyrics to all of them, too. It had become a running game of theirs for him to find a song she didn’t know the words to on the radio, and so far, she was undefeated.
“You can make anything sound simple if you reduce it enough. Hockey is made up of a few motions and techniques,” he countered. “After that, it’s about how fast, strong, and observant you are.”
“Yeah, sure,” she said, “If you say so.”
“You’ve got this,” he said before he let go.
And she did.
For a few laps, they skated side by side as she got her footing. She probably didn’t think so, on account of the falling, but she was a natural. He should’ve known she would be since it was the thing they’d always had in common, the thing that drew him to her. She wasn’t a quitter. She could take a hard knock and get back up.
“Ready for the real reason I brought you here?” he asked once she was stable on her feet.
He handed over one of the sticks and took the puck out of his back pocket, dropping it on the ice. Stick in hand, he maneuvered it back and forth, then passed it to her.
She stopped the puck with her stick, then pushed it forward, gingerly. “And this is supposed to be therapeutic somehow?”
“You don’t have to be so gentle with it.” The corner of his mouth quivered upward. “Come on.” He skated in front of the goal, picking up speed for the first time since they’d gotten on the ice. “Give me your best shot.”
Zak’s dark hair, dark sweater, and dark jeans made her look like a shadow on the rink as she approached the net slowly. Forgetting about the puck every few seconds as she continued to focus on the skating part. She got to what she deemed a respectable distance, about ten feet away, and fumbled with her grip.
“You’ll want to make contact here.” He demonstrated, and she followed along. “But the power comes from your whole body, not just the swing.”
“I believe you.” Zak placed a hand on her hip. “But I still have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.”
Fair enough.
“Give it your hardest whack,” he suggested.
Without any further consideration, she swung. The puck jumped two feet in the air and scattered across the ice to the corner of the rink.
Chase collected it and tossed it back. “Little less of an angle there.”
She caught the puck with her stick, and shot it again, missing the net posts by a good five feet. “I don’t know how this is supposed to help with anything.”
“Focus on the puck.”
A few more practice shots in, he saw the switch flip.
Her grip tightened around the handle. Her eyes zeroed in on the goal. And she slammed the blade into the stupid little piece of “plastic” she had given him such a hard time about when they were younger.
A smile lit up her face, and Chase’s, as it swished past his feet and into the net.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” he asked.
“It’d feel a lot better if I didn’t know you were going easy on me.”
His face twisted in amusement. “You think you can handle me going hard on you?”
“Not at all.” She closed the distance between them, bumping into his arms. “But if I’m going to play with a pro, I want you to play me like a pro.”
Now chest to chest, she snaked one hand up the hem of his shirt. Tracing shivers over the lines of his stomach with her cold fingers.
“You want me to play you, huh?” he mumbled as her lips curved into a grin against the corner of his mouth.
He saw the trick coming, but he let her think she had distracted him enough to steal the puck and skate off. After all, it wasn’t far from the truth. He was still thinking about her heated eyes and her soft lips in the two seconds it took him to catch up to her and knock the puck away from her stick with his own… and in the next two it took him to score with it.
Either he was delusional, or Zak liked watching him unabashedly show off. Moreover, it didn’t make her shy away when he placed the puck at the center of the ice and challenged her to her first face-off.
“One hand at the top, one hand at the bottom.” He showed her, settling into the familiar crouch. “And you want to get lower.”
“And then what?” She repositioned her hands. “I just smack it away from you?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much how it goes.” He counted down and pushed her stick away, knocking the puck to his side before she knew what had happened.
“That’s stealing!”
“No trespassing, no stealing. And here I thought you were the rebellious one.” He retrieved the puck and started again. Next time, swooping in to take the puck from between her legs. “Too slow. Try again.”
Her laugh made him laugh as she battled him for possession round after round, eventually getting bold enough to push her way in and put up a fight. But he stood by her request not to go too easy on her. Some ten-odd goals in, she aggressively went for their next face-off, still unpracticed at stopping, and came careening into his stomach again.
Something that normally wouldn’t have been enough to knock him down, was. And all it had taken was the fact that his damn ankle wouldn’t move in the slightest ways it used to.
They skidded into the wall of the rink first, him bracing her as they took the next topple onto the ice.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she didn’t have to tell him why.
He already knew what she was thinking because she’d watched the last time someone else had knocked him down. She’d seen how that ended.
“It’s a contact sport. It’s part of the game,” he told her what he’d told himself every time he’d gotten hurt over the years. “Are you okay?”
Her body had made it out unscathed, but she must have knocked the side of her face against the ground because she was rubbing off the soreness.
“You know what’s always bothered me?” she directed her question to the ceiling as she stretched out her jaw. “You’ve played this sport your whole life. How are your teeth so perfect?”
“Well, for starters, four of them are implants.”
She scanned his mouth as he smiled, seeming to search for the difference between his fake teeth—his left lateral incisor and cuspid on the top, and his right central and lateral incisors on the bottom—and his real ones.
“How long has that been bothering you?” he asked, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Or should I say, have you always paid so much attention to my mouth?”
“Oh, don’t start with me, ‘high school crush.’” She sat up on her elbows, unbothered by the frozen ground beneath them.
“You were,” he said simply. “You are.”
No matter how many times he told her that, Zak’s disbelief seemed to remain the same.
Perhaps he shouldn’t scrutinize her reaction too closely when, every time he kissed her, his heart raced like it had the very first time.
“Well, you are too.” She rested her head in the crook of his shoulder. “And you might have been, if I knew you then like I do now. If I didn’t assume the worst of everyone.”
“I don’t think anyone who’s been through what you’ve been through would start by searching for the good in people.”
“And I don’t think anyone who’s been through what you’ve been through would be able to do this.” Her head turned as she took in the rink.
“Well, don’t give me too much credit. It’s weird being back here.” He stared at the toes of his skates. “For a long time, this was my happy place and my hell. But when you told me you couldn’t turn your mind off? This was all I could think of.”
“Tell me about when it was your happy place.”
She had seen the hell on TV. She had heard about it in the way he talked about his overbearing parents. She had been in the stands at the very game that changed the trajectory of his life.
“I don’t know how to describe it. Sweating in the cold air. Moving so fast it felt like flying, with just the force of your own body. All the little split-second decisions and responses,” he remembered. “As soon as I stepped out there, everything melted away. It was me and the puck, my teammates, and nothing else. And I think that’s where the passion came from. It was something different than music.
“When I’m singing, when I’m with you, I’m soaking up every moment. I’m wishing it would never end. Out here? I was passing time. Focused on being the best, so I could collect titles and accolades to prove it was all worth something. I had nothing to my name besides this damned sport, and I lived like it. I could turn my brain off for a while, and when the game was over, I could ride that high of winning until the next time all the anger and unhappiness built up, then let it all out again.”
She took in every detail of the blank slate of a building with him. At least, he thought she did.
The empty canvas of the rink. The poured concrete steps serving as bleachers in six sections, about ten rows high. Floors scratched by skates and walls scuffed by the hundreds of kids who came in every week for hockey and figure skating classes.
“I can see why. It’s nice out here. Peaceful, in sort of a masochistic way,” she relented. “If you ever wanted to go again. Not for me… but, for you, I would be happy to keep you on your toes. You know, with all the falling and what-not.”
“I never thought I’d see the day.” He smiled to himself. “Zak Parker—asking to play hockey with me.”
“I’m not asking.” She held up her index finger. “I’m offering.”
“Hoping.”
“Being generous.”
“Begging.”
“Making a personal sacrifice.”
“Pleading.”
She finally picked up her stick and got back up. “You know what? Call it what you like.”
She skated after the discarded puck. Dazed and confounded, he made it to his feet in time to watch her shuffle it into the net for the most gentle goal he’d ever seen.
“Fifteen to one, pro!” she shouted across the ice, leaning with her arm over the hockey stick and a devilish smirk on her face. “Better watch out. I’m coming for your title.”
There was nosubduing the satisfaction on his face as he met her for a congratulatory kiss… turned congratulatory hand-in-the-back-pocket-of-her-jeans. “Ruthlessness looks hot on you, angel.”
Their game persisted with Zak yelling at him to stop letting her win every time she scored, but then staring at him, gobsmacked, every time he played to the best of his ability.
With a final score of lost-count to three, it was safe to say, she wasn’t taking his title anytime soon. But she seemed happier than when she came back from dinner. Maybe just simply happy.
That was the ultimate win.