22. Joey
”Trade?” I asked, my voice higher than intended. It seemed like all the chaos in my own life was finally tapering off, and now this?
John”s face was drawn and pale, and his beautiful dark eyes looked dull. This news had stolen his shine, and it made me want to rush over to the coach”s house and shake some sense into the guy.
”Where will they send you?” I asked. ”Why would they want to trade you, though?” I didn”t understand. He was so talented, and I’d seen how much the fans loved him when we’d been at Paddy’s that night. “But you’re the youngest goalie in the league!” I repeated the fact I’d heard so many times.
”That”s why,” he said. ”I don”t have the experience a lot of other guys have, which means I might make poor decisions when the heat is on, just because so many things will be new to me. They don”t want a guy to be living through a bunch of first times with their team. They want a vet, someone who”s already proven.”
”That”s not fair,” I said. ”This is your time to get that experience.”
”Yeah, but they thought I”d be getting it with Mizzoni there to take over when I screw up.”
”So they should bring in a second string.” I knew next to nothing about hockey and sensed that this wasn”t a solution, but I was grasping at straws.
”My agent says this isn”t surprising.”
”Can”t he fight for you to stay?”
”He said he”d try, but he thinks he can leverage my success at the end of last season to get me better contract terms somewhere else. He thinks it”s a good idea.”
”So you”ll have to move?” I asked, realizing the full implications of this news. If he moved, I should move. We were a couple. But I”d just gotten my dream job. My life was just starting, and it was here... in Wilcox.
”Unless the team is in commuting distance. Like if it was DC, I guess I could come home sometimes when we had a few days off.”
His voice mirrored the disdain I felt for this idea. I”d never see him. We”d be apart more than we were together.
”I could look for another job,” I said, trying to rally excitement for this idea, but realizing I really couldn’t. I’d signed a non-compete. I couldn’t work for a biotech company for a year after concluding my employment with FarmPharma. I looked. For other ideas. ”I could see if maybe my job could be remote.”
”Don”t you work like, in a lab? With microscopes and things?” John asked. ”How would you do that from home?”
”Maybe I could like, process data or something instead,” I said.
“Joey,” Sammy took my face in his hands and kissed the tip of my nose. “That’s not what you want and there is no way I’m going to let you compromise your own future for mine.”
”There are a lot of biotech companies out west,” I said after that. ”I could work here for now but start interviewing and stuff...”
”No.” John sat up, putting his wine on the coffee table. ”Look, whatever happens, you should stay here, in this house. It”s a great commute for you from here, and this will still be our home, okay?”
”Not if you aren”t here,” I said, feeling on the verge of tears.
”Well, we don”t know anything yet,” he said, but his voice was clear. Something was happening, and it wasn”t going to be good.
”I hate this,” I told him, moving to nestle myself against him. His arms fell around me automatically, and I realized I didn”t want to be without him. Not when I”d just found him again.
”We”ll figure it out,” he said. And then he looked deep into my eyes, and the need and sadness I saw there nearly broke my heart.
I leaned my head up and kissed him. I couldn”t undo what had been done, but I could prove that we were okay, solid. I kissed him with all the reassurance and love I could find inside myself, doing my best to tell him I”d be here either way. I was not going to let this ruin what we”d only just discovered again.
* * *
I started work for real the next day.
I loved everything about it. From leaving the house in the morning in my ”business clothes” to parking outside the long, low building near the FarmPharma sign and feeling a misplaced sense of pride that I was part of this. Part of something.
It would wear off, I was sure. But I reveled in the moment when the woman from HR walked me out to my cubicle, and nearly did a little fist pump when Dr. Masters gave me my own lab coat. It was like being a kid, playing at ”job.” Except it was all real.
The elation was tempered by the little worry in the back of my mind that kept reminding me that in the face of my joy, John was suffering. His camp launched tomorrow, and I knew he was worried about keeping his focus for the kids. But so much of that camp was based on who he was, who he”d been, and how he”d gotten to where he was. And now it was being threatened.
My real worry about John”s trade was selfish.
The ring on my finger caught the fluorescent lights overhead in the lab, and the sparkle I saw matched the flicker I felt inside at the idea of marrying my best friend.
I spent the day shadowing Virginia, the woman who was leaving, and there wasn”t a moment when I regretted leaving my past behind and taking this step through the door to my future.
”My daughter had another grand baby,” Virginia told me over sandwiches in the lounge at lunchtime. John had made mine—ham and cheese—and he”d tucked in a little note wishing me good luck. ”I”ve been out to visit the other two, but now my oldest grandkid is almost five, and I just feel like I”m missing everything. That”s why I”m moving to be with them.”
Virginia did not look old enough to be a grandmother, and I told her so, hoping that wasn”t the wrong thing to say.
”I appreciate the compliment,” she said, her face aglow beneath the dark hair she”d pulled back into a bun. ”But what you”re looking at here is a very late bloomer, I guess.”
”What do you mean?” I asked.
”I got married young. Like way too young.”
I felt every one of my twenty-three years at that moment. ”How young?”
”Eighteen,” she said with a laugh. ”Married my high school sweetheart.” She shook her head, as if she was looking back into the past and laughing at her younger self. ”Those things never work out, do they?”
”Maybe,” I said, the sandwich beginning to feel like it wasn”t settling quite right.
”Well, it was the wrong move for me,” she went on. ”I had babies at twenty and twenty-two, and spent the rest of my youth chasing them around. Not that I regret a second of that. It was hard, though. Our lives weren”t formed when we got together and they began to diverge as we aged and figured out what we each wanted. We got divorced when I was twenty-four, and I worked hard to raise those kids right—to give them things I didn”t get.”
I nibbled the cookie John had included in my lunch and listened, my heart doing strange things in my chest. Why was it I couldn”t just hear someone”s story without having to see myself in every aspect of it?
”I went to night school to get my degree,” she went on. ”And when they were in high school, I started work. And then I met Elodie.”
”She”s great,” I said, already knowing it was true.
”She”s one in a million,” Virginia confirmed. ”And she has a knack for hiring exactly the right people. Which says a lot about you.”
”Thanks.”
”So...” Virginia raised her eyebrows at me. ”Don”t make me be nosey. Just tell me.”
”Tell you what?”
”Everyone has a story. Everyone has the thing that”s top of mind at a particular moment. Mine is grandkids and a move to California. Yours is a brand new job and an engagement ring?”
”You nailed it.” I considered how much I wanted to tell her, and realized I was excited to talk about all of it. I didn”t have a lot of friends here yet. There was Clara, of course. But now that the chance to talk to someone about John had popped up, I found myself eager to open my mouth. ”I”m getting married. But he”s not my high school sweetheart. He”s my high school best friend. Do you think that has better odds?”
Virginia”s eyes were warm. ”Friends make the very best partners,” she said. ”As long as you”ve got a little magic too.”
”Oh, we”ve got plenty of magic.”
”Good,” she said, dropping her cheek into her hand and giving me a misty smile. ”Because when the romance wears off, you”ll have friendship to sustain you. And then hopefully, when you really need it, you”ll get the magic.”
”I hope so,” I told her, finishing my cookie. I felt like maybe we could use a little magic right now.