Page 13 of Goal Line
“We’re going to watchPride and Prejudiceafter we get something to eat, so I’m going to stay at his place tonight. He has ice time in the morning and wants me to skate with him. I’ll text you and let you know when I’ll be back tomorrow.”
Dad looks uneasy at the idea of me spending the night at a guy’s house. I figured this would be his response, which is why I snuck my skating bag and a backpack into the back ofthe Jeep this morning before we left Newbury Falls. It’s such a teenage avoidance tactic, but I just didn’t want it to turn into a big discussion.
“Dad,” I say with a laugh, “it’s Luke.” Luke, who I’ve had a million sleepovers with, starting when we were little kids and stopping...never. He’s visited me in LA, I’ve visited him in Calgary, and every summer, we practically live at each other’s houses.
“I know,” he says, relaxing his shoulders as he folds his arms across the door of the Jeep and leans in. “How’s he doing, by the way?”
I’ve only seen Luke once since our dinner nearly a week ago. “You know Luke,” I say, worried that if I say too much, it’ll influence my dad’s opinion of him as a player. “Things just roll off him. But, if I’m being honest, I think the constant sports commentary about his performance in the game is probably affecting him more than he’s letting on.”
“He needs to turn that shit off,” Dad says with a sigh.
If only it were that easy.
“Sometimes other peoples’ voices just get in your head. We’ve all been there, it sucks.”
“I hope the skills work he’s doing with Evan helps with his headspace,” Dad says. “I’m far more worried aboutthatthan his actual skill level. He’s going to be fine, as long as he doesn’t let that one game get to him.”
“Have you told him that?”
Dad twists his lips together, his classic thinking face. “Not sure if I have.”
“Might be good for him to hear it. You know how much he hates disappointing people.”
“Does he think we’re disappointed in him?”
“Dad,” I say, my voice flat, as though to indicate the answer is beyond obvious. “Clearly,the fans and his teammates are upset about the loss, and most of all, he’s disappointed in himself. There are no two ways about it;heis the reason the Rebels lost Game 7.”
By now, I’ve watched the replay of the end of the game dozens of times, trying to figure out what the hell happened. His head wasn’t in the game, obviously. And given the panicked texts he had sent me and Christopher right before the game started, I’m worried that he was too focused on me, too afraid something was wrong with me or the baby, or that my mom would find out I was pregnant when she got to the hospital.
Damn it, I need to tell my parents.There’s a little voice in the back of my head that reminds me that he probably could have focused more on the game if he hadn’t been worried about whether my secret would be exposed before I was ready.
“Things were falling apart before he came in. Plus, people have shit games,” my dad says. “It happened to Colt during the second round of the playoffs a few years ago. Sometimes the pressure gets to people. Sometimes they just have a bad day. There are a hundred reasons his game could have been off. The point is, he needs to figure out why it happened, and fixthat.”
It’s good advice, but if Luke knows what happened that day, he hasn’t admitted it to me. “You guys have a team psychologist or something?”
“No, not officially. But Zach has someone he swears by, and I think he’s gotten some of the other guys to talk to her. I’ll see if he can mention it to Luke.”
I’m about to suggest that maybe the team should invest in having a sports psychologist on staff when Luke’s car takes the turn onto the top level of the garage, the sound of his engine signaling his arrival before I even see the sleek black Mercedes pull up beside us.
Once my bags are packed into the back of his car and we say goodbye to my dad, Luke asks, “You see the text from Amy earlier?”
“Yeah.” Amy was my best girlfriend in high school, and while we’ve kept in touch over the years, we’re not nearly as close now as we were before. She lives in Boston now, and apparently she’s going out to celebrate her birthday tonight with a group that includes some of our other high school friends. Since Luke and I are both in town, she invited us to come out.
“Any interest?” he asks, taking turn after turn to reach the exit of the parking garage.
I roll my head back against the padded leather headrest, thinking about how I’m starving, even though I got myself lunch earlier. I’m always starving now, and I’ve never been able to make decisions on an empty stomach. “I don’t know. You?”
“On the one hand, we can stay in with Mr. Darcy and Lizzie, and on the other hand, we can go out with our friends.How could we ever choose?”
I’d expected that Luke would want to hide out in his condo, licking his wounds out of the public eye. Maybe now that it’s been a week since the playoffs ended, he’s finally ready to reemerge?
Generally, Luke’s always up for going out and making sure everyone has a good time. It’s probably one of thereasons our friendship has worked so well over the years—he keeps me from being too serious, and I keep him from being too wild.
So maybe after a week of being a hermit, a night out is exactly what he needs?
“I can’t make decisions like this when I’m hungry,” I tell him. “Feed me, and then we can decide what we want to do tonight.”
“So what’s the game plan?” Luke asks as I enter his living room. When his eyes flick up from his phone and he sees me standing there, he presses his lips together and raises his eyebrows. “You look...nice.”
