Page 15 of Goalie and the Girl Next Door
He groans. “Tell me you haven’t already gotten yourself involved.”
“I wouldn’t say involved. I would say…cautiously fascinated.”
Mathieu exhales. “Is she blonde?”
“Dark hair. Sharp tongue. Wears blazers in a heat wave.”
“Business casual or sexy CEO?”
“Both. More like, angry-sexy CEO. The kind that cancels meetings by staring at you.”
“Ah,” he says. “You’re in love.”
“No!” I sit up too fast and almost knock over the box of nails I forgot I left on the windowsill. “I’mnotin love. I’m interested.Professionally. Maybe academically, like a social experiment. She’s fascinating.”
“She have a name?”
“Marcy Fontaine Accounting is what it says on the card she flung in my direction. She’s the accountant for the town and did not have much time for me.”
“You mean she hates you.”
“Deeply.”
Mathieu laughs, and it doesn’t sound forced. “So you’ve introduced yourself.”
“She said I wasn’t supposed to be there,” I say, chuckling. “And then accused me of being the type who rolls into town and jets when it gets hard.”
Mathieu whistles. “She clocked you.”
“I’ll remind you that I’ve planned for years to try my luck in America.”
“And not at all because you’re afraid that your last bout of migraines nearly took you with it.”
That’s the problem with best friends. They keep you honest. I’ve been doing everything I can to forget that there’s something wrong in my head, something that just keeps getting worse.
“I came here,” I say slowly, “to start a new life. I wanted quiet and space. Hockey, sure—but more than that. I wanted mornings with birds and odd neighbors and a diner that remembers my order. I wanted a house that creaks and leaks and probably curses me when I sleep. And a woman who wants the same.”
Mathieu doesn’t say anything for a while.
“Right,” Mathieu says. “Well, she sounds like a woman who files her taxes early.”
“She probably files other people’s taxes for fun.”
“You should go after her,mon frère.”
“I didn’t say anything was going to happen.”
“You didn’t have to. I know you.”
I smile. And for one brief moment, the sun hits the stained-glass window just right and everything—me, the house, this town—feels like it could work.
Then Mathieu says, “I’m surprised I caught you. I thought you’d be at practice by now.”
I glance at my watch and immediately let out a string of French that would make my grandmother wag a finger at me.
I jump off the crate, whack my shin on a rusty toolbox, and drop the phone.
“I’m late!” I shout into the speaker as I scramble to grab it. “I’msolate. They’re going to put me on mascot duty for this!”
