24. JAGGER
Chapter twenty-four
JAGGER
“Another tough one, huh?” April asks as I step into her flower shop.
It’s kind of crazy that besides my teammates, April is my closest friend out here in Echo Ridge. I started coming in here consistently after Jess left. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. She helped me find a flower shop in Pittsburgh to order all the sunflower varieties from and have them delivered to Jess.
Jess hasn’t answered any of my calls or texts, not that I thought she was going to. Coach told me he helped her get a job in Pittsburgh, so I know she’s in that area, but I don’t know where exactly.
I found her sister Nat’s address online. It’s not that difficult to find people if you’re willing to pay, and of course I was. So, I started sending sunflowers to her apartment every day, thinking maybe the memory of them and our night in the park might help.
So far, nothing. I don’t know for sure Jess even lives with Nat. But I have no other ideas, so I’m going to keep trying. I want so badly to just fly across the country and show up at Nat’s door on the chance Jess could be there. But it’s impossible with the season in full swing.
A season that’s not going well. We just… Well, we just stink, really. And we shouldn’t. The Hawks have a lot of talent, and Coach Bradley is a great leader.
I blame myself for most of it. I’m not a captain. But I’m the unspoken commander, the only player with NHL experience. I’m the guy that should be bringing us together. But my whole game is off. I know it and so do they. My heart’s just not in it. It’s not hard to know why.
Losing Jess before fueled my fire for hockey, made me focus on smashing heads. But the day she left I tried that same method when I came back to practice, and it just didn’t work. I had no desire to send my teammates into the rails. She made me want to be a different man, to leave the old Jagger behind.
I keep looking up to the balcony where I’m used to seeing her beautiful smile, the one that warms every part of me, makes me feel whole. Something in my brain believes that eventually she’s going to be there when I look. Of course it’s ridiculous. She’s all the way across the country.
The problem with thinking about her constantly is that I’m always a step behind on the ice. Dax and I have lost our Thunder and Lightning spark—he’s even stopped calling me Thunder, and weirdly, I miss it.
The forwards on a hockey team are like engines; when we’re running, everyone else follows. But right now, we’re sputtering, dragging the whole team down. Even Dax isn’t his usual upbeat self. He’s walking places now, and he never does that. He’s lost his pep.
We started out on such a high, but our decline was so sudden, so steep it’s taken the life out of this team. Nobody seems to believe we can climb back out of our hole. It’s understandable. We haven’t won a game in three weeks.
It’s hard enough not being able to see Jess, but now I’m the guy everyone came to—or still comes to sometimes—trying to figure out why she suddenly vanished and took with her all that effort that kept the fans in the stands.
Nobody knows the whole story, but there’s definitely a hole in the team where she used to be. And it keeps getting worse the more we lose, our following decreasing rapidly by the day.
People in Echo Ridge are still kind, stopping to say hi when I’m in town. I still love the small-town vibe here, the beauty of the area. I even went back to Glacier National Park by myself last week, to the trail Jess and I hiked.
Thankfully, I didn’t see my goat friend. It wasn’t the same, of course. I visited all the spots we went to, replaying the memories in my mind because that’s all I have now.
The weather’s cooling off and we’re heading toward the beginning of ski season, which is huge in this area, so the residents have better things to do than watch a terrible hockey team. Even if Dax played the entire game shirtless, it wouldn’t be enough for people to travel hours to see us get destroyed night after night.
It’s easy for me to get why the guys miss Jess—I know what a powerful force she is in a person’s life. But Troy, Brooks, Dax, Talon—they’re only figuring it out now that she’s gone. After hearing Talon open up in her office, I can’t help but wonder how many other guys stopped by to talk to her too.
I’ve been peppered with questions because it’s clear I knew her, but I just say I heard she needed to go back East with family.
So, here I am in Petal we got shut out five to zero. It was never close.”
April gives me an empathetic smile. “Still haven’t heard from Jess?” she asks. I finally came clean when I started my sunflower barrage. Not that April ever believed that Jess was my grandmother.
I’m not usually a “talk about my feelings” type of guy, but there’s just something about April. She’s like a florist and psychologist rolled into one for me. She didn’t push me to tell her, just made it easy to open up.
“No. But that’s not going to stop me.”
“I know.” She hands me a card to fill out and a pen, our usual routine. The flowers come from the shop in Pennsylvania, but I write my own cards and mail them ahead of time for the next week. Maybe I should try writing something different this time.
“April. Any chance you’re a Daisy Piper fan?”
She giggles. “That’s random.”
“There’s a backstory I’ll tell you someday.”
April points a finger at me. “I’m going to hold you to it.” She thinks for a moment. “Today’s pop music isn’t really my thing, but my fourteen-year-old granddaughter is a huge Pipette. Want me to call her?”
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but desperate times call for desperate measures. “Actually, yes, I do.”
Fifteen minutes later, a red-headed, ponytail wearing teenager skips through the front door. “Grandape!” she calls out, running over to give April a squeeze.
“Grandape?” I ask.
“My adorable granddaughter here,” she rubs the top of the girl’s head, “thought Grandma was too boring, that I needed more spice. So, she started calling me ‘Grandape,’ a combination of Grandma and April, and it stuck. She says I’m larger than life like the magnificent ape creatures but hopefully not as hairy.”
She smiles proudly. “The grandkids all call me that now.”
I tilt my head. “It suits you. Not the hairy part, the larger-than-life part.”
“Thank you, Jagger. This is Cara, Daisy Piper fan extraordinaire.”
I walk over to shake her hand. “Hi. Thanks so much for coming.”
“Of course!” she does a few little claps, grinning wildly. “Grandape said someone needed to talk Daisy Piper, and that’s all I needed to hear. How can I help?”
I give Cara a teenage version of what I need, a song that conveys that my relationship with Jess is worth another try, that I can’t live without her. We shouldn’t let anything stand in our way, no matter how difficult the situation seems.
“Does Daisy have anything like that?”
“Of course! She’s had a tough time with love herself. Did you know that?”
I raise my eyebrows, careful not to let on how ridiculous that question is for a professional hockey player. But she’s here to help, so I try to buy in. “Uh, no. I haven’t been keeping tabs on her love life. Sorry to hear that, though.”
“It’s ok,” her smile instantly brightens to megawatt status. “I think she’s finally found the one. I hope so. She deserves it.” Cara looks dreamily in the air like she’s picturing Daisy and whoever her current boyfriend is in the sky.
I give her some time to complete her Daisy relationship daydream, then clear my throat. “Ok, ready to get started?”
“Oh, yes. Sure.” Cara comes back down to Earth.
I point to the one table in the shop, and we each take a seat. Cara gets out her phone and starts showing me the lyrics to a few different songs, explaining back stories, giving me details on who some of the songs are supposedly about.
She’s so passionate about it, I find myself no longer faking interest. Daisy’s life is kind of fascinating. After about twenty minutes, she hits on the perfect song.
I look over at April. “I think I’m going to need a bigger card,” I tell her.
She smiles and moves toward the back room. “I have a few I save for special occasions, when a small one just doesn’t cut it. I keep them in a closet, give me a minute.”
April returns with a jumbo-sized card, it has to be two feet tall. “This big enough?” Her smile is wide.
“It’s perfect.”
“I’ve never sent one in the mail before. We’re gonna need more stamps,” she cackles.
“Whatever it takes, we’ll put it in a box if we need to. This has to work.”
Cara looks at me, sincerity on her young face. “This song is Daisy at her best. It’s going to work.”
It’s crazy I’m putting my faith in a teenager, but this feels like a last-ditch effort, so I hope she’s right.