Page 17 of Thrown for a Loop
I?’m aware that most women my age don’t leave home the way I did—by leaving a vague note about my New York plans on Mom’s kitchen table and sneaking out of town with my clothes and skating gear.
That’s what I did, though. My overbearing mother was on a business trip to Paris, and my stealthy exit bought me a five-day reprieve from her probing questions and sharp comments.
But now I know the exact moment she arrives back home in Massachusetts, because that’s when she starts blowing up my phone.
Zoe, what have you done.
New York? Really?
Which team? Brooklyn?
It’s not HIS team, is it?
It’s only eight thirty a.m., and there’s no way she’ll leave me alone unless I talk to her. So I sit back down on the mattress—my only piece of furniture—and I call her.
“Zoe!” she gasps when she answers the phone. “Where are you?”
“In my new apartment,” I say crisply. “I got a job, as I mentioned.”
“Thisjob,” she sniffs. “Is it full-time? With benefits? Was there a signing bonus? New York is expensive. Is there corporate housing? Where did you find to live in such a hurry?”
I glance around my tiny, drafty New York apartment and flinch. If she could see this place, I’d never hear the end of it. “I signed a lease. The building is close to the Legends’ headquarters.”
She gasps again.
I roll my eyes. “Mom, that’s who was hiring. What do you care which team it is?”
“Because ofhim. He destroyed you.”
“Are you referring to Chase Merritt?” I ask, rolling my eyes. “Can you not even say his name?”
“Why should I?” she demands. “You cried for months after he left. Your skating suffered. And it’s all his fault.”
Her facts aren’t exactly wrong, but the emphasis is odd. She remembers how myskatingsuffered. Not howIsuffered.
Yet I don’t argue the point, because trusting a nineteen-year-old guy to love me forever was something I did to myself. “There are two dozen guys on this team, Mom. I’ll barely see him.”Especially since he’s avoiding me.
“Still,” she grumbles. “There must be better jobs.”
This, too, is hard to argue at the moment, so I change the subject. “How was your trip? Any good meals?”
“The meals were a challenge. Too much butter in everything.”
My mother, ladies and gentlemen—always a hater, even of Parisian food.
And she’s not done with me yet. “This contract you signed with the Legends—did you have Bruce look at it?”
Just hearing my ex’s name makes my stomach twist. “Of course not. It’s not his kind of contract. And I don’t talk to him unless I have to.”
“That’s a shame,” she says. “He’s a tough negotiator.”
This is accurate. He’s a cutthroat sports agent—that’s how we met. Except Bruce would never help me get a job in hockey. In fact, he’s blowing up my email inbox right now trying to get me to headline a skating show in development in Las Vegas.
We’re divorced, though, so I don’t have to read his emails. And unlike my mother, he’s not allowed to text me.
“Hey, Mom? I actually have to go. I have my first one-on-one training sessions today. We start in half an hour.” This excuse has the benefit of being true, so I get up off the mattress and reach for my Legends jacket.
“Oh!” she says, because my mother hates tardiness almost as much as she hates hockey. “We’ll talk soon, then. I need to see this new apartment of yours.”
