6. Jamie
Jamie
“Damn, Tazja. Are you braiding my hair or my skin? Geez, sis,” I complain, the words escaping through a sharp hiss of pain. My reward for opening my mouth is an impatient yank of my head to the side and the disapproving click of her tongue that I have heard my entire life.
“Jamie, you spend your life on the ice getting pushed, shoved, and crashed into with extreme force, and you’re sitting here crying over a cornrow.” She says it with a slow, deliberate shake of her head, like she genuinely cannot believe she shares blood with someone this dramatic.
I look up into the big brown eyes of my baby sister and give her the most withering eye roll I can manage, trying like hell not to wince again in the process.
This is entirely what I get. I cut my hair months ago on what I can only describe as an impulse I deeply regret, then decided to let it grow back out so I could have my signature cornrows again, and somewhere in that gap my brain apparently decided to protect me by erasing every memory of what getting my hair braided actually feels like.
I should be used to this. I am not used to this.
“It’s the small things that hurt the most,” I finally say, by way of both explanation and dignity, as she parts my hair with practiced precision and begins another row.
“Aren’t you glad we all live in Seattle now?” She chuckles, and I can hear the little shimmy she does without even needing to look. “You don’t have to have just anyone do this for you anymore. You can whine and complain to your heart’s content and I will be right here to ignore every word of it.”
I can’t help but smile along with her, because she is absolutely right, and she knows it.
My family is here. Finally, properly, permanently here.
No more red-eye flights back and forth to New York, no more showing up to the holidays exhausted and leaving too soon.
This is our home now, all of us together, and I will never stop being grateful for the fact.
My mother would argue, passionately and at length, that family is everything and there was never any sacrifice worth mentioning.
I know what it cost each of them. My baby brother, Jacques, transferred universities mid-degree to follow us out here.
Tazja closed her successful beauty shop, a business she had built from the ground up, a clientele she had spent years earning.
She took a genuine leap of faith on starting something completely new in a city that didn’t yet know her name.
My parents are retired now, comfortable and settled, and they still packed up their whole lives without hesitation.
I would do anything for them. I would help Tazja every step of the way with the new shop if she would only let me, which she mostly will not, but I will keep offering regardless.
Having them all close soothes an ache in my chest I’d carrying since the day I first boarded a plane to Seattle years ago and left everyone I loved behind in a city that was no longer my home.
“I am absolutely questioning my life choices right now.” I hiss again, flinching at a particular tender spot along my scalp. “But I am genuinely glad you’re all here. For the record.”
“Yeah, because I don’t haul myself out of bed at the ass crack of dawn for just anybody.
” She grins, entirely unbothered by my suffering.
“Plus, it gave me a proper chance to look at this fancy house of yours. You’ve been at Mom and Dad’s so much since the renovations finished that none of us have actually had the chance to see what you’ve done with the place. ”
The house itself is a 1906 Seattle Box, something I purchased about a year after I finally secured a no-trade clause in my contract.
The decision felt significant at the time, and not entirely for practical reasons.
It sits only two streets over from Devan and Tobias, which had been part of the appeal when I first put in the offer.
Having teammates that close meant the commute to most team commitments was almost incidental, but more than that, it meant having someone familiar nearby in a city that had taken a long time to feel like mine.
The house was already in remarkable shape when I bought it, structurally sound and well maintained, full of the kind of quiet character that comes from a building that has simply survived long enough to earn it.
I’d left it largely untouched, telling myself there was no urgency, that it was fine as it was.
Then, during the All-Star week, I finally stopped procrastinating and brought in an interior designer.
The result was a careful balance between what the house already was and what I needed it to become, original bones intact but with something cleaner and more current layered over the top.
In a way, the decision to do it at all had mattered more than the renovation itself.
It was, quietly, my official putting-down-roots moment.
I shift my position on the stool in the newly finished bathroom and study her reflection in the mirror, her hands moving through my hair with the confident speed of someone who has been doing this her entire professional life.
“I owe you for this. I had absolutely no intention of being anywhere other than my couch for the foreseeable future, but my agent and the PR team rep for the Vipers called me in for a meeting this morning.”
“It’s the off-season, Jamie.” Tazja says it slowly, like she is explaining something to someone very simple. “You are supposed to be resting. Spending time with family. Living your best post-Stanley Cup life and letting that sink in.”
“Exactly. But I can’t just say no.” I shake my head at my own reflection. “Apparently everyone else is unreachable. My best guess is that they saw the PR team’s name on the caller ID and put their phones face-down. Can’t say I blame them.”
I know for a fact that Devan and Tobias are somewhere in Paris with Lia and the girls.
Ridley and Brea are down in Lark Bay, deep in new-baby-induced hibernation with their son.
Tor and Jaz took their little one to Texas to see her family.
I was, by simple process of elimination, the most reliably available and answerable member of this entire organization.
I will show up, be present for whatever press opportunity or promotional photos they have lined up, give them a day or two of my summer, and then I am coming straight back to my couch.
“Just don’t be too accommodating about it, J.” She shrugs, working oil carefully along my scalp and assessing her finished work with a critical, satisfied eye. “I know how you are. Don’t give them more than they’re actually asking for.”
“I won’t.” I mean it. “We have plans this summer. Real ones. It’s the first summer we’ve all actually spent together in years.
Jacques is out of school for the break. We still need to find you a location for the shop.
” I spread my hands in a small, ceremonial gesture.
“It is officially the Maxwell Family Summer.”
Tazja steps back and I rise from the stool, turning to check her work properly in the mirror.
The rows are immaculate, tight and clean and exactly right, and she knows it.
I catch the flicker of something uncertain crossing her face the moment I mention finding a location for the business.
She schools it quickly, the way she always does, but I see it.
She has nothing to worry about. I have her back completely, and with the help of some very prominent faces in what I consider my other family, we will have the women and men of Seattle finding their way through her door before the summer is out. I am not worried at all.
I turn and open my arms, and she walks straight into them the way she has since she was small enough for me to carry.
I wrap myself around her and rock her gently, slowly, the way that has always been our language for things that are too large for words.
I know what she gave up to be here, regardless of how many times she denies it.
“Everything is going to work out,” I murmur into the top of her head. “I promise you.”
She exhales against my chest, and then she pulls back and slaps my sternum with an open palm.
“Stop with the mushy shit, J. It is far too early in the morning for me to start crying and I have a date with a swimming pool and a very large stack of pancakes waiting for me back at Mom and Dad’s.”
“Taz—”
“Nope.” She cuts me off before I can get another syllable out, pointing one finger directly at my face.
“You are not buying me a house. That is a big, absolute, non-negotiable no. I have my own money and I will find something suitable on my own terms. You helping with the shop is already more than enough. We work for what we want in this family.” She drops her voice dramatically on the last part, a near-perfect imitation of our father’s particular brand of principled authority.
“No hand-outs,” I say, dropping my own voice to match.
“You know it.” She tosses one hand up in a loose salute, turns on her heel, and marches herself out of my bathroom without a backward glance. I suppose that is her cue to leave.