Page 45 of Pickled
The security guard didn’t hide his eye roll. “You’re lucky I’m not throwing your ass out.”
I thought that Judy was going to protest and insist that the men be removed from the stadium, but she was already sashaying up the stairs. “Come on, ladies.”
I turned to the girl. “What strings did you pull?” We went from being kicked out to getting the best seats in the house.
“I have a couple of connections.” She placed her hand on my back, urging me to follow Judy and the security guard. “Let’s go, Piper. I want to get away from all this.”
Thankful to be leaving the drunks behind, I trotted up the stairs to catch up. It wasn’t until we reached the door to the VIP box that an unsettling feeling hit me. Confusion and fear churned the stadium beer in my stomach.
Warmup had started, and as we climbed the stairs from our seats, the hollow thump of the pucks hitting the boards and the muffled sound of the players disappeared by the time we reached the top of the rink.
“Are you coming?” The girl waited for me in the doorway. Judy headed to the front row of seats, a glass of champagne in her hand.
“H-h-how did you know my name?”
Her eyes shot open wide, and she clapped both her hands over her mouth. Then she held up her hands in front of her. Instead of a sinister sneer or a psychotic grin, a kind smile spread across her face. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry, Piper. I’m Goldie. Ace’s wife.”
The names took a minute to process. “You’re…”
“Gideon’s sister-in-law,” she replied. “Not a stalker,” she added quickly. “Or a serial killer, if that’s where your mind went…” Her voice trailed off. Gideon had mentioned his sister had an uncanny knack of knowing what other people were thinking, and if I hadn’t seen it firsthand, I wouldn’t have believed it. She had just read my mind.
“I’d almost prefer a stalker.” I tried to laugh off my comment, but the room was starting to spin. “Gideon and I are… We’re just… “ I struggled to find the words to describe what Gideon and I… were.
Her laugh was light, and her eyes sparkled. “Oh, I know exactly what you and Gideon are, or are pretending not to be. That’s why I wanted to meet you in person and why I want you to see him in his element.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to think. Was it Goldie who left the tickets for me? Not Gideon? That would explain the feminine handwriting. Was some cute brunette with nerdy glasses pulling some sort of weird psychic puppeteer strings? Were all of them in on it? Lisa? Mrs. Lockelhurst? Not-Suzette—aka Goldie? Were Gideon and I two innocent bystanders in a drive-by of scheming matchmakers?
Those thoughts were met with one way worse. If he didn’t know I was here, was I the one crossing the line when it came to our “agreement”? Not him?
My knees trembled. What had I done?
“Suzette, Piper. Come on, the puck is about to drop,” Judy announced from the front of the empty box.
The organ music blasted, vibrating the concrete beneath our feet. The atmosphere was getting more charged the closer we got to the start of the game.
15
GIDEON
Game-day suits werethe most expensive piece of clothing I owned. Six foot seven is custom suit territory. My last tailor had to get a stepladder to take my shoulder measurements. Now, the dark navy suit was speckled with cat fur, forcing me to add a new step to my pre-game ritual: lint rolling. One of his favorite things to do was to treat my legs like a moving cat tree and climb them. “You’re a menace.” I dodged C.C. as he lunged at me.
The situation with Owens was eating at me. It was only yesterday that I told him pre-game skate was at nine, and he didn’t correct me. When he figured out I had the time wrong, why did he call Jameson and not me?
I tried to sit and meditate—visualize the plays—but cat claws on my calves interrupted me. I wasn’t superstitious, but I was methodical. My beliefs were science-based, and visualization was proven to trick your brain into thinking that the plays were real.
The thing with Owens, then the cat interrupting my mental priming, stacked with the constant thought of “Will she showup?” running on repeat, had left me feeling… off. That’s the only word I could find to describe how I felt. And I didn’t like it.
I straightened my tie and ran my hand through my hair. “Don’t you dare.” I dodged C.C. one more time and ran down the stairs. The four-pawed menace bounded behind me. I couldn’t help but smile. Maybe I wasn’t off. Maybe the cute distraction would actually help, not hinder, my game.
I grabbed my cell phone and tucked it into my suit pocket. “Wish me luck, C.C.” The kitten wiggled his butt, crouching into his attack position. “Oh no you don’t.” Running, I managed to get out the door before C.C. got to me. I had literally been chased out of my house.
“Back to your scheduled programming,” I muttered to myself as I reversed out of the garage and put on my pre-game classical music. There were a few reasons I drove to games alone. One was that I wanted to be… alone. The second was that most of the guys on the team blared Metallica or something heavy and upbeat. Symphonie Fantastique might not be considered pump-up music to most, but most people hadn’t listened to it cranked at high volume through the speakers of a Cadillac Escalade. The familiar piece shifted me into hockey mode. I narrowed my gaze on the road and stomped on the gas pedal. No one was going to get me off my game tonight. Not a fluffy kitty, a pretty girl, or an asshole teammate. No one.
The energyin the fishbowl was electric. One surprising thing about Miami was that its fans were way rowdier than Toronto’s. In Toronto, season tickets were really fucking expensive. I hatedthe fact that ordinary families couldn’t afford to go to the games, especially in cities like Toronto. Miami’s seats, on the other hand, weren’t bought out by big corporations. There were more ordinary people, real fans, in the stands. Floridians were their own breed of wild—and I loved it. The place was almost full when we went out for our warm-up. I tried not to look, and hated that I did, especially since the two seats beside Goldie were vacant.
Now, standing in the cavernous hallway, the Toronto Tigers’ team had taken the ice, and we were waiting for our entrance music. We exploded onto the ice through the open mouth of a fish, surrounded by rows of sparkling jagged teeth lit with LED lights, to the classic rock song “Barracuda.” I got a running start and burst onto the ice, following Stevens.
We were pumped up. My blades dug into the ice as theb-b-b-barracudasection of the song filled the stadium. Before the puck dropped, I refused to let my gaze track past the plexiglass above the boards. By the time the game started, I was in the zone. I won the opening faceoff, and we were off, our defensemen following close behind. The crowd was on their feet. I passed to Stevens, who circled behind the net. He was known for a wraparound. It was what the Tigers would expect and why he passed to Owens instead of taking the shot. It worked. While Owens stickhandled, the Fridge crushed one of the Tigers players into the boards. The player hit the boards hard and dropped to the ice but managed to recover. It was a fair hit, but I was glad it wasn’t Ace who was on its receiving end.
