Page 61 of Pipe Dreams
Tampa fans are probably all fantasizing about a Mike Beacon injury tonight. He’ll be watching his back for sure.
It was the most irresponsible piece of tripe Lauren had ever read.
She forwarded the link to Georgia, then just sat there at her desk, stewing over it. Georgia’s reply was swift.
I saw it. Just smack talk.
Sure. It was smack talk that had been retweeted nearly six hundred times before fiveP.M.But who was counting?
At six o’clock, Lauren accompanied her boss to the arena. She didn’t avoid the place anymore, but watching the action would be stressful for brand-new reasons.
When the game began, it was a brutal one right from the first face-off. Both teams skated as if they had something to prove. And they did. Lauren found herself unaccountably nervous.Maybe it’s the hormones, she told herself. The medication she’d just started taking was probably to blame for the nervous stirring in her stomach. Standing in Nate’s box,watching the boys fly down the ice, it was hard to remember that she wasn’t supposed to care about this team anymore.
For more than a decade of her life she’d watched fifty games a year. And well before she and Mike were ever a couple, her eyes used to always come to rest on the goalie. She knew his stance so well she could draw him with her eyes closed. His long limbs were loose, waiting to spring into action. Even the set of his shoulders as he watched the action was familiar.
In a month, or six weeks at the latest, this exciting detour into her old life would be finished. She might be on a jet to China, with prenatal vitamins in her carry-on.
Tell that to her thumping heart. Tampa made an unlikely shot on goal. She stopped breathing as Mike lunged for it. It smacked safely into his glove, but not before her heart nearly failed.
In front of her, Nate sat watching the game with an expression as calm as Buddha’s.
“How do you stand it?” Nate’s father asked, putting a hand on his son’s shoulder. Nate’s parents were visiting from their home in Iowa, where they were school teachers. Lauren had met them several times already. They were lovely people.
“The tension is killing me!” his mother squealed. “Not that I understand much about the game.”
Nate, being Nate, just shrugged.
Lauren couldn’t sit still any longer. She popped up out of her seat and stalked over to the food table where Georgia hovered. As Lauren watched, she grabbed a cheese puff and took an eager bite. “I can’t take it,” she said, chewing. “We have to win.”
“I know.” Lauren nabbed a cheese puff, too, and took a bite. “Let’s eat our feelings.”
Georgia laughed. “Glass of wine? I’m on my second.”
“Sure,” Lauren said, feeling reckless. All her old habits were already thrown to the wind. What was one more? And she would probably be giving up wine soon.
Not to mention hockey.
She let Georgia pour her a glass of sauvignon blanc, and then the two of them watched as closely as they dared while the game ground onward.
If she keeled over from stress tonight, her obituary might as well read:Death by game III in the second round.
Down on the ice, a fight broke out between Brooklyn’s Crikey and the other team’s scrapper. The fans stood up at their seats and cheered. Lauren held her breath until Crikey shoved the other man down to the ice, and the refs broke it up. But the players kept chirping at each other even as the linesmen hustled them back to their teammates.
“Looks testy down there,” Georgia said, chewing her lip.
“It does. That won’t be the last fight of the night. I think we’ll see one each period, and a record number of penalty minutes, too.”
“See, I always forget that you grew up in a hockey household like I did.”
Lauren used her best bitch voice, but tonight it was meant to be ironic. “Well, I obviously haven’t treated you to enough of my insightful commentary.”
Georgia grinned. “You should watch more games up here with me, even after Becca is back. There’s always room for one more.”
“I’ll do that,” she said before realizing it was never going to happen. The invitation was nice, but she knew she couldn’t follow through. These weeks with the team were cathartic. They were helping her to let go of some of her own grief about times gone by. But if she stuck around she’d just end up staring at the goalie’s well-padded backside all night, trying not to imagine how things might have been different.
That wouldn’t be healthy. Not even a little.
The game ground onward. It was 1–1 near the end of the second period, and she and Georgia were practically dancing a nervous jig. Lauren was on her second glass of wine and Georgia had finished all the cheese puffs.
