with not so much as a birthday card! He’s a dick. And probably a criminal. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were up to something. He’s probably trying to scam you. Hide your wallet.”
“So, you think I shouldn’t get back together with him is what I’m hearing?” Not that I was going to. She was right about one thing, I couldn’t trust Jake. He’d practically said as much himself. Carson. I had to start thinking of him like that.
The look she gave me would have quelled a different man. “You can stick your dick wherever you want. Just don’t come crying to me when he skips town and breaks your heart again.”
The chair felt like a prison all of a sudden. I shoved back from the desk and stood up. This was all too much. Was I actually considering hooking up with him? That way lay heartache for sure. Jake wouldn’t be staying, no matter what happened or didn’t happen between us. I paced from glass wall to glass wall, watching skaters and coaches glide across the ice. “There will be no sticking of dicks anywhere. I promise.”
“Lie,” she said under cover of a cough.
“I swear,” I said, meaning it. “I just want some answers, you know? I need…” Words failed me as I tried to express everything that Jake meant to me. His name alone evoked so many memories and emotions. Not just of our relationship, but of the person I had been back then. Seeing him, God, touching him, was forcing me into some kind of confrontation with my younger self. As if I had to justify how we had turned out. I wasn’t sure teenage Eric would even like grown-up Eric. Not because I hadn’t made the NHL, that was always a long shot, but for how small my world and my dreams had become.
How had I never thought to plan for life after hockey?
“Eric?” From the tone of Maddie’s voice, I could tell she’d been talking to me without a response.
“Sorry,” I said. “Woolgathering.”
She came up behind me, laying a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Just be careful, okay? I don’t want to see you hurt again.”
“I won’t be. I’m not that kid anymore. Besides, there’s Ryan.”
Her mouth twisted with the effort of not saying anything bad about Ryan. Finally, she sighed and slipped her arms around me from behind. Her cheek rested against my shoulder blade. “Has anyone ever told you that you have terrible taste in men?”
I laughed. “Yes. Frequently.” And that was enough of that. Taking a deep breath, I slid out from her embrace. “Are you sticking around?”
“I got no real plans.”
“Jake’s meeting Aunt Momo here. If you wait a little, you can watch.” Maybe with Maddie around, I could be a little more objective about it all.
“Really? He hasn’t talked to her yet?” Her eyes opened wide.
I shook my head.
“She’s going to kill him.” She threw herself into one of the old club chairs in front of the desk. “Fuck yeah. I’m staying.”
The clock loudly ticked off the seconds as I waited for Jake. Finally, there was a quiet knock on my door. “Eric?”
“Door’s open,” I said.
Maddie put down the magazine she’d been pretending to read and leaned forward in her chair. Then she reconsidered, leaning back as the door opened and holding the magazine open lazily on her lap as she didn’t have a care in the world.
She needn’t have bothered. He didn’t even notice her. His eyes locked on mine as soon as he stepped into the room. “Hey,” he said with a shy smile. It took me back all those years to when the first thing he’d do when entering a room was look for me, and when he found me, he’d give me that same shy smile.
“Hey yourself.”
He let the door close behind him but didn’t come closer. Tucking his hands into his back pockets, he stared at me from across the room. That was okay with me. It gave me a second to check him out. He looked more like the Jake I remembered. Dark blue jeans hugged his lean legs, ending in a neat cuff and a pair of brown leather chukka boots. He’d traded the hideous yellow polo for an eggplant-colored cardigan over a white-on-white pinstriped dress shirt with an expensive sheen to the fabric. The top two buttons of the shirt were undone and he’d pushed the sleeves up to his elbow and a heavy silver watch with a thick brown leather band