Chapter Thirty
The next morning Ali woke up feeling amazing.
She’d slept like a rock after the best sex she could ever remember having.
When she’d dragged herself off the couch and up to her bedroom, she’d spent an hour wide awake thinking about JT telling her how unappreciated she felt and planning how she could change that.
She double-checked the calendar while she waited for her coffee to brew and made a few calls to some of her teacher friends to see if they could make her plan work on short notice.
After five years of always saying yes to every request for help, every time her principal asked someone to volunteer, and taking every crappy chaperoning job known to the world of Hart’s Landing High School, she had enough goodwill that folks were thrilled to make her vision happen, even with less than half a day to prepare.
Next, she called Tommy and, after yelling at him for a solid ten minutes, told him what he needed to do to get back into her good graces and make it up to JT. He agreed immediately.
“I’ll make sure she’s there,” he said. “I promise.”
The only thing she was unsure about was JT’s family.
A big part of her wanted to invite them, to give them a chance to show up this time for their daughter.
But, in the end, she decided against it.
The possibility that they would let JT down again was too much.
This was JT’s day and Ali wasn’t going to give anyone a chance to ruin it.
Ali spent the rest of the morning running errands to get everything they needed to make her plan a success. She stopped by the venue two hours early to talk to the guy in charge.
“You want me to take that down?”
Ali nodded. “Yeah, I need you to take it down so we can do a ceremony and put it back up.”
Charlie, the rink manager, Zamboni driver and “ice guy,” rubbed the stubble on his chin. “What’s all this for?”
Ali smiled. “You know why we have that banner in the first place?”
Charlie nodded slowly. “Yeah. But I don’t get why I have to take it down just to put it back up. You know that’s stupid and a pain in the ass, right?”
“How about we don’t take it down but just cover it? Then we can take off the cover during the ceremony.”
“That sounds good. I have some tarps in the back that should do the trick.”
“Thanks.”
Charlie cocked his head and squinted at the banner hanging on the wall. “You do know it’s really high up there.”
“Mmm-hmm. That’s why Jill is going to bring over the lift we have at the high school. No one has to get on a ladder, just the lift. Easy peasy.”
“Lemon squeezy,” Charlie said without thinking. Then he blushed. “Damn, my kid says that. Fine. I can do all that. The free skate guys have a Spotify account if you want music or anything like that.”
Ali made a note on her phone. “Good idea. Thanks, Charlie. See you in about an hour, okay?”
As Ali walked to the parking lot, a busload of teens arrived carrying massive bags of equipment. Ali spotted their coach and ran through the plan. The coach, a gruff sweetheart of a man named Ben, nodded along.
“The girls are super excited. They loved the idea when I told them. This is going to be great. Think JT will stick around to watch us play?”
Ali considered the possibility that this could all go horribly wrong. But she wouldn’t let it.
“I’m sure she will.”
Ali mentally added to her list to figure out a way to make sure JT wanted to stay for the game. Hopefully, the rest of her plan would go so well JT would be happy to stick around. Otherwise Ali was going to need to improvise.
Ali checked her texts. The group chat she had going with her teacher friends was a steady stream of people telling her who they’d convinced to show up and what they were bringing.
The school administrator had gotten permission to use the school email lists to send a message to all the parents in town about the game.
The head of the PTO had posted about it all over social media, including in all the parent groups.
Maybe they would pull this off after all.
She took a minute to chastise herself for not coming up with this plan with more than a few hours to make it work, but then moved on.
No time to dwell on it. She had streamers to hang and T-shirts to pick up from the guy in town who owned a custom printing place. She was going to owe him big-time.
She hopped in her car and drove through town as quickly as she dared. When she arrived at the shop, Greg was waiting for her with two giant boxes.
“If you pop your trunk I’ll load them up for you.”
Ali shoved a few bags to the side to make room and let him drop the boxes in the car. “I can’t thank you enough for this, Greg. I know it was a bonkers request and I appreciate it so much that you could make this happen.”
Greg paused with his hands in his jacket pockets. “I told you I’d do anything to repay what you did for my kids. They’re both in college now and doing great.” He scuffed his boot over the gravel driveway. “If I’d had more time with the shirts…”
Ali shook her head. “I called you like four hours ago. This is amazing. I hope you’ll come to the rink to see your handiwork in person.”
He nodded, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll do my best. The kids are home but maybe they’ll come with me if they know you organized all this.”
* * *
Ali drove back to the rink, her mind racing with all the things she needed to do.
She had just pulled into the rink parking lot when Tommy texted her to say he would be arriving with JT in ten minutes.
Ali rushed to unload the box of T-shirts onto a table one of the parents had brought for a bake sale but agreed to share with her.
“Miss Porter, over here! Maddy is so excited that she is going to get to meet JT! She could barely contain herself. I told her to get her head in the game.”
Ali smiled. “Thank you so much. Please call me Ali.” She set out the shirts in piles. “Can you help me hand these out to people as they come in?”
The moms nodded vigorously. “Can we have one?”
“Of course! I was hoping we could get everyone wearing them, but I don’t know if I have enough.”
Ali had already put one of the blue-and-yellow shirts on. It had “Hart’s Landing Loves Our Olympian!” on it with JT’s number on the front. She handed shirts to the moms and busied herself with any last-minute things she could think of to burn off her nervous energy.
Townspeople filed into the rink and grabbed shirts along the way. Aside from a couple of confused people, everyone was there to see JT and was excited to put the shirts on.
“Thank you for coming early! Be sure to cheer loud!” Ali called after them as they found seats on the bleachers in the rink. The closer it got to the ceremony, the more nervous Ali got.
What if JT wasn’t happy with all this nonsense? What if she didn’t want all this attention? After last night, Ali felt like she needed to make JT understand that even if her parents didn’t get it, everyone else was so proud of everything she accomplished.
Ali had a vague understanding of JT’s complicated relationship with the town and her time living there.
She made a mental note to ask JT about it later, and she hoped that maybe JT would be able to change that a little bit.
Even if all she could do was adjust the story in her mind about how the town felt about her now, even if people had sucked when she was a kid.
That was a lot to ask of a fifteen-minute ceremony. But Ali wanted to try. JT made her want to try, and that was something new.
After Kyle, she’d had a while where she wondered if any of what she did mattered.
She’d been a good wife, at least she thought she had, and it hadn’t been enough for her.
She was a good teacher, that she knew for certain, but she wondered if all of her going above and beyond for her students mattered.
Or if it mattered enough. Because there was always another kid who would need her, and as much as she relished being needed, she wondered if there ever was a time when the needs would be smaller, less acute, or if she was one person trying to stem an impossible tide.
Ali’s phone buzzed in her back pocket. A text from Tommy.
In the parking lot. Coming in now.
“She’s coming!” Ali squealed. The moms at the table went into a flurry of activity. Ali was a little embarrassed by the way she’d shouted, but it was important they got this right. She scurried to the door and opened it as JT approached. JT looked at Tommy when Ali opened the door.
“Hi? What’s going on?” JT hovered by the door, seemingly unsure if she wanted to come in,
Ali pulled open her coat, revealing the T-shirt she and the other moms were all wearing. “Surprise! It’s JT Cox day at the rink!”
JT stepped inside. “I’m sorry, what are you talking about?”
Ali waved her arm toward the women working the bake sale booth. “We’re celebrating you today! Surprise!” Ali smiled, but the longer she waited for a response the more unsure she was.
JT smiled at the mom and pulled Ali aside. “Ali, what is going on? It’s not JT Cox day. What are you doing?”
Ali’s smile faltered. “Everyone wanted to celebrate you, but you’re not home very often so I took a chance that we could pull this off today.
It’s the only game the girls have while you’re home…
” Ali had a terrible sinking feeling in her gut.
JT did not look pleased, and Ali was starting to see that this surprise might be a total disaster.