Page 5 of Center Ice
In fact, according to my conversations with Jameson during the negotiations, one of the things that AJ—Boston’s general manager and the only female GM in the league—insisted on was that I clean up my act. Less partying, and less fighting. I’ve always been a bit of a wildcard, and she wants me to be a steady presence on the ice.
“AJ knows we need someone to step up for Renaud,” Colt says.
“She told you that?” Jameson asks, and it’s clear he already knows the answer.
Colt rolls his eyes. “She would have, if we’d talked about it.”
“Well, I actually did talk to her about it, and you’re wrong.”
Colt’s neck stiffens, and he turns toward Jameson. In addition to being former teammates and Jameson now being Colt’s agent, I think they’re also close friends. But while Jameson is so serious he comes off as aloof, Colt is flashy and a bit hot-headed.
I don’t catch what Colt says to Jameson because the back of my neck prickles with the sensation that I’m being watched, again. Scanning the backyard once more, I don’t notice anyone focused on me. That is, until I lift my eyes to the deck, where a woman with dark hair falling in loose waves well past her shoulders is staring at me with the most beautiful blue eyes rimmed in long, dark lashes. She’s talking to Jameson’s wife, and she looks a bit panicked as she looks away from me. She also looks…familiar?
I continue to stare at her, trying to place how I know her, and then her eyes widen, and she spins on her heel and heads into the house. And that’s when I remember. She had that same look one morning right after I’d graduated from college, when she rushed out of my apartment because she’d fallen asleep in my bed the night before and was worried about being late for the first day of some summer class she was taking.
Audrey. She was a year behind me at Boston University and super smart. She’d tutored me through calculus—the one math course I needed to take to graduate and had stupidly put off until second semester my senior year—and we’d slept together once. Then I was drafted, and we never talked again.
Is she pissed about it now, all these years later? And what is she doing here? I wonder how she knows Jameson and Lauren?
“Where’s the bathroom?” I turn and ask Jameson after Audrey shuts the screen door behind her.
“Through that door.” He nods his chin to the door Audrey just walked through. “Go through the kitchen, and it’s down the hall on the right, before the stairs.”
“Thanks,” I say, and walk purposefully toward the house. Once I step through the screen door, I see Audrey. She’s pacing and looks like she’s about to crawl out of her own skin.
“Audrey, what’s wrong?” I ask, and she spins toward me.
Her eyes are full of panic and what I might even describe as fear. “Drew.” The word is not friendly, so I slow my steps, stopping when I’m still a good six feet from her. “I was just leaving.”
“Don’t go yet,” I say, even though I have no right to make demands like this. But now that she’s standing here in front of me with those bright blue eyes, her skin creamy and her cheeks flushed, I remember how beautiful I always thought she was. I also remember being a bit intimidated by how serious she was and how things like math just seemed to come easily to her. I was initially also a tad embarrassed that she was a junior tutoring me because she’d taken calculus in high school. But the more time we’d spent together, the more I’d liked her—and not just because she was pretty. “I haven’t seen you in, what…five years?”
“More like six. But anyway, I was just leaving.”
She grabs her bag off a hook near the front door, but I can’t stop myself from trying to keep her talking, hoping she’ll stay a little longer. “How have you been?”
She swallows, the sound is audible in the silent house. “Goodbye, Drew,” she says, but she doesn’t make a move to leave.
The screen door slams open behind me, and I turn in time to see a little boy barreling straight toward us. “Mommy!” he says. “Are we going already?”
I glance at Audrey, then back at the boy. His hair is a lighter shade of brown than hers, and his eyes are familiar.
“Yes,” she says definitively. “Sorry, Bud, but I don’t feel good. We need to go home.”
“What’syourname?” the boy asks, looking up at me like he just noticed me standing here.
“I’m Drew,” I say as I squat down next to him so we’re eye to eye. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Graham.” He gives me a lopsided smile as he stares back at me with his big brown eyes. It’s like looking into a mirror.
“How old are you, Graham?”
“I’m five and I’m in kindergarten.”
Heart stuttering, I glance up at Audrey, and I’m sure there’s confusion written across my face. Even I don’t need a tutor to do this kind of math.
Her arms are folded across her chest, and her voice holds a certain level of finality when she says, “It was good seeing you again, Drew.”
I’m being dismissed.Fuck that.
