Page 1 of Overtime Positions
My eyelids closedas I took a deep breath in the quiet, cold air, letting it fill my lungs as I imagined it moving through my veins, pushing away the fatigue. The heavy black weight of exhaustion kept my eyes closed as I leaned against the freezing cold shelf, resting my forehead on it.
I just needed a moment to collect myself, and then I’d go back out to face the day. Just one quiet second.
“Yo, Boss,” a voice interrupted my solitude, and I jumped, whacking my head on the top of the shelf and cursing as I rubbed the spot. “Wait, were you sleeping?”
“No, I was doing a fucking jazz number,” I barked in frustration, staring at the man who irritated me like it was his full-time job. “What do you want, Rick?”
The old man stood up taller as if my tone offended him, but I knew better. He ball-busted twenty-four seven.
“A beer. It’s ten after eight. If I don’t drink two brewskies before hitting the ice?—”
“You’ll break your hip,” I droned on, brushing my bangs off my face. “I’m on it.”
I went to step around the jolly green giant, who kept the entire rink afloat most days, but he stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Hey, are you alright?”
“Perfect,” I said and then sighed when his face tightened annoyingly. “How do you dothat?”
Pleased with himself, he crossed his arms with a smirk. “I spent years studying misfits who were silent verbally but said everything they could with their actions.”
“You were a teacher at aprep school,” I glared. “And don’t call me a misfit.”
“Spill it, kid.”
“I’m not a kid either.”
“Spill it,lady?” he joked, leaning on the heavy metal door, still blocking my way.
“I’m just tired,” I sighed. “Toby was up at three.”
“Ugh,” he grimaced, “Stomach ache, or insomnia this time?” he asked, moving aside and following me out of the walk-in cooler to the rink-side bar. Some days he made it hard to ignore that he knew my kids better than their—nope, never mind. Not a spiral I was about to go down.
“Worse.” I went behind the bar as he took his usual seat, glancing at the scores above my head on the television. “He wanted to know how caterpillars grow wings inside their cocoons.”
He snorted and shook his head. “That kid is too fucking smart.”
“Agreed.” I cracked the top of his beer and grabbed his mug from its honorary hook behind the bar, pouring it in. It was a gag gift from years ago when he took on the imaginary position of coach and captain of the team, and it stuck. Watching him drink his brew from a coffee mug that saidWorld’s Okayest Coachalways made me smile.
It didn’t hurt that the man who gave him that mug made me smile for no reason at all, he was just that great.
“You’d think a simple Google answer would have sufficed, but no.” I rolled my eyes. “We had to watch three Nat Geo shows to quench his thirst for knowledge.”
“Thank God you get to sleep in tomorrow, huh?” He picked up his beer for an air cheers, and I nodded, moving down the bar to set a round of cans up on the end.
“Small miracles.”
I bartended the night shift at the ice rink on Wednesdays and Saturdays, which meant I usually crawled into bed after my kids were deep into their REM cycles. Thankfully, my mom kept them over for sleepovers on those nights so I could actually get some sleep.
Lucky for me, she lived right next door—and Emmie and Toby loved her more than me most days.
I would be lost without my mom.
Even at thirty years old, she was my best friend, the only thing that kept me afloat when the single-mom chaos got to be too much. I moved back home four years ago, with a one-week-old strapped to my chest and a two-year-old on my hip. Alone, scared, furious, and ashamed.
And my angel of a mother opened her arms, gave me one of those warm hugs that reminded me of sunshine, and patted my head, telling me I’d be fine, and everything would work out in time.
Four years later, I was still waiting to feel fine.
As soon as I set the last beer on the bar, the doors opened and the team started filtering in, joking, roughhousing, totally amped up to do their favorite thing in the world—drink beer and beat the shit out of other smelly, sweaty men in an old man’s hockey league.
