28. Cash
Cash
Me: do married people just… know stuff?
Callie: Depends.
Me: like what women are thinking?
Callie: Absolutely not.
***
I keep my left hand relaxed on the wheel, my thumb tracing the edge of the leather cover, while my right hand rests flat against my thigh.
My knuckles are still a faint, yellowish-green color from the bar fight, but the swelling is gone and the skin is mostly healed. On the console between us sits a fresh postcard—a blindingly ugly photo of a desert rock formation that looks vaguely like a melted boot.
Scottie had claimed it at our last fuel stop, scribbling her secret note on the back with a fierce, quiet intensity while I filled the tank, before sliding it into the growing weight of the envelope.
Memphis is next, and I’m already tracking the horizon for a roadside gift shop to find something even uglier.
I glance sideways at the passenger seat.
Scottie is curled up with her knees pulled into the chest of another one of my sweatshirts that she’s stolen, her bare feet resting on the plastic edge of the glove box.
Her laptop is balanced precariously on her shins, and her red hair is tied back in a messy bun that looks like it was secured with a single paperclip and sheer willpower.
My chest tightens, a sudden, heavy ache pulsing right behind my ribs.
I want her again.
Every time she reaches over to change the radio station, my brain instantly loops back to the feeling of her bare skin under my palms and the sharp, clean sound of her calling my name.
“The rookie salary cap is going to adjust by four percent by the time the winter meetings hit,” she says, her eyes fixed on the spreadsheet glowing on her screen.
“If we don’t get the clause for the performance bonuses locked into the second-year options, Reign is going to try to structure your contract around games played rather than save percentage. It’s a classic leverage trap.”
“Let them try,” I say, keeping my voice steady. “I’m not signing a backup layout, Scottie. We both know that. Besides, are you really thinking about hockey contracts right now, Sharky? With me sitting right here?”
She rolls her eyes, but a telltale flush creeps up her neck. “One of us has to maintain an executive mindset. God knows you aren’t doing it.”
***
The prank war starts because I am a petty bastard who hates the classic rock radio station she chose, and because I need a distraction from how badly I want to pull the vintage van over and kiss her until we both forget our own names.
We stop at a gas station. While Scottie is inside using the restroom and buying her fifth bottle of water, I lean over the passenger seat.
I take her expensive pens and carefully unscrew the caps. I take a tiny piece of clear scotch tape from the dashboard tray, wrap it over the ballpoint tips, and screw the caps back on perfectly.
When she climbs back into the van, she doesn’t notice a thing.
She pulls out her legal pad, clicks the pen with her thumb, and tries to scratch a note about the goalie coach we’re meeting in Memphis.
Nothing happens.
She scribbles harder, digging the metal tip into the yellow paper until it tears. She mutters something under her breath, caps it, and pulls out the second pen. Same result.
By the third pen, she stops, her eyes narrowing as she looks at the tip, her thumb catching the edge of the clear tape.
“You think you’re funny, O’Connell?” she asks, her voice deadly calm.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sharky. Looks like a manufacturing defect. You should write a letter to the company.”
“A manufacturing defect,” she repeats, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across her face. “Right. Okay. Enjoy the drive, Cash.”
I should have known better than to underestimate her.
Two hours later, we stop at a rest area that’s just a concrete picnic table and a single, dead tree.
I step out to stretch my legs, walking a lazy lap around the van to clear the stiffness from my hips. When I get back in and turn the key, the engine roars to life—and the climate control instantly explodes with a violent, deafening blast of air.
The vent right in front of me has been packed to the brim with an entire box of generic gas station baking soda. A massive white cloud hits me straight in the face, filling my nose, my eyes, and my mouth before I can even blink.
I slam my hands against the thin steering wheel, coughing wildly, my vision obscured.
Through the white mist, I hear a sharp, triumphant shriek of laughter.
Scottie is literally bent double in the passenger seat, her forehead hitting her knees, her hands slamming against the dashboard as she howls with delight.
“You—” I choke out, wiping a thick layer of white dust off my eyebrows. “You’re dead, Scottie. Your agency contract is null and void. I’m firing you.”
“You look like a powdered donut!” she snorts, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes. “Oh my God, this is incredible!”
“Oh, it’s a war now,” I mutter, trying to blink the grit out of my eyes. “Watch your back, Sharky.”
Later, at a Wendy’s drive-thru, she goes to reach for her small container of honey mustard, only to find that I’ve used a tiny drop of superglue to fuse the plastic lid to the bottom of her paper cup.
When she pulls hard, the whole thing flips, sending two ounces of yellow paste straight into the pocket of her shorts.
She counters forty miles later while I’m paying for gas.
I climb back into the driver’s seat, slide the key into the ignition, and grab the steering wheel to back out of the pump. The second my palms wrap around the wheel, my fingers sink into a thick, cold, squishy layer of cheap gas station grape jelly.
She had smeared it perfectly along the entire backside of the wheel, hidden from view.
“Son of a—” I snap, pulling my hands away only to find my palms purple and dripping.
She’s staring out the window, chewing on a red licorice rope, pretending to be deeply interested in a billboard for a discount mattress outlet.
By the time we pull into the parking lot of the ice arena in Memphis, the interior of the Volkswagen van looks like a crime scene.
There is baking soda on the roof lining, sticky yellow mustard on the console, and my left shoe is currently missing because she literally unlaced it while I was paying for snacks and threw it into the narrow space between the rear bench and the engine cover.
We are both covered in dirt, soda, and sweat, our collective aesthetic completely shot.
“Alright,” Scottie says, using a wet wipe to clear a streak of white powder from her cheekbone as she checks her phone.
“This is Coach Derrick. Twenty years in the league, handled the Toronto goalie rotation during their playoff runs in the tens. He’s a drill sergeant.
If you look like a slob, he’s going to write you off before you get your pads on. ”
“I don’t look like a slob,” I say, stepping out of the van into the heat with my one shoe. “I look like a guy whose agent belongs in a mental institution.”
“Find the shoe, O’Connell,” she smirks. “I have to go use the rink restroom to fix my hair before the meeting.”
The second the door clicks shut behind her, my brain clicks into a dark, beautiful line of tactical execution.
I don’t look for the shoe.
Instead, I reach down into the side door pocket and grab one of those oversized, condensation-heavy liter bottles of glacier-freeze Gatorade we bought back at the truck stop. It’s been sitting right against the air intake, so it’s practically ice water, the plastic sweating in my grip.
I pop the cap with my thumb and pad silently against the rubber matting of the lobby floor.
Scottie is standing right by the trophy case near the water fountains, her back to me, her fingers working through her red hair as she tries to tame the cloud into something respectable for the coach.
I get within two feet of her. I lift the bottle high and dump the entire freezing, blue liter straight down the back of her neck.
SPLASH.
Scottie lets out a sharp, high-pitched yelp that sounds like a stepped-on terrier, her entire body leaping six inches off the rubber floor.
“Finnian O’Connell,” she whispers, her voice shaking from the pure shock. “You are so dead.”
I grin, tossing the empty plastic bottle into a nearby recycling bin. “The desert is dangerous, Sharky. You have to stay hydrated. Your favorite client is just looking out for your health.”
Before she can lunge at me, a sharp, metallic whistle echoes through the open double doors leading to the ice sheet.
FWEEEET.
We both freeze.
Standing in the doorway to the rink is a man in his late fifties. He’s wearing a black track suit, a whistle tucked into his fingers, and a pair of gray hockey skates that look like they’ve been through three wars.
Coach Derrick looks at Scottie, whose sweatshirt is turning a dark, heavy shade of wet. Then he looks down at my feet, taking in the single gray cross-trainer and the wet white tube sock covered in gas station gravel.
The silence in the lobby is absolute, save for the steady drip from Scottie’s hem.
Vance lowers his clipboard. He stares at us for five long seconds before his eyes move between the recycling bin and the white powder still visible on my collarbone.
“Are you two… okay?” he asks, his voice flat. “Or did I accidentally schedule an appointment with a traveling circus?”
Scottie clears her throat, pulling herself together with impressive speed. “Coach. I’m Scottie Reed. We had… a minor malfunction in the transport vehicle.”
Vance looks at her hair, then at my single shoe. “Right. Malfunction. Well, Reed, your client has three minutes to get his steel on the ice before I lock the gate and go get a beer. Move.”
He turns on his heel and glides back into the darkness of the rink.
Scottie glares at me, her eyes sharp. “Get your gear. I’m going to the locker room to change into my spare clothes. I’ll find your shoe. Go.”
***
Ten minutes later, I am standing in the tunnel, the weight of seventy pounds of goalie gear settling over my shoulders like a familiar, protective skin.
When I step onto the ice, the temperature drops forty degrees. The sheet is perfect—glassy, hard, and white under the high bay lights. Coach Derrick is standing at the top of the crease, a bucket of a hundred black pucks resting between his skates.
“Get in the box, O’Connell,” he says. “Let’s see if the rumors from Boston are true.”
I slide into the crease, dropping into my stance, my knees bent, my center of gravity low and stable.
“Three-puck rotation,” Vance calls out. “Low blocker, transition to the glove side, then the rebound from the slot. Go.”
He moves with a speed that defies his age.
Clack. The first puck flashes across the ice, a hard, rising slider. I drop into the butterfly, my leg pads flaring out to seal the ice, my blocker shifting down to deflect the puck into the corner boards.
Before I can even reset my weight, Vance has already gathered the second puck. Snap. It’s a spinning wrister toward the top left corner. My glove hand flashes out by instinct, catching the puck with a loud, clean pop.
“Rebound!”
He lunges forward, driving down the slot with his stick cocked back. I push off my right skate, my body sliding laterally across the blue paint to cut off the angle, my chest protector absorbing the hard, heavy blast right in the center of the logo.
“Again,” Vance grunts, already pulling more pucks. “Your weight is too far back on the lateral push. Reset.”
For forty-five minutes, he dismantles my mechanics. It’s brutal, exhausting work—the kind of practice that makes your thighs burn like hot iron and your lungs feel like they’re full of glass.
I look past Vance’s shoulder during a brief reset toward the player’s bench.
Scottie is standing behind the plexiglass.
She has changed out of the soaked fleece, now wearing a crisp, dry gray pullover from her duffel bag. Her wet red hair has been neatly woven into a tight, secure braid that rests over her shoulder.
Our eyes meet through the scratched plastic of the glass. She looks straight at me, tilts her head slightly, and sticks her tongue out at me through the plexiglass.
The gesture goes straight to my stomach, hotter than the sun outside.
I want to get through this rotation. I want to get through the next four hundred miles of highway. I want to get back into whatever cheap motel room is waiting for us, throw the phone across the room again, and show her exactly how unmanageable we both can be.
“O’Connell!” Vance snaps. “Stop looking at your agent and get your hands up. Five more minutes. High glove rotation. Move!”