“Speaking of presents . . . I have a delicious morsel of news to accompany the scrummy scones, but you’ll have neither until you hit the loo and look less knackered.”
“Oy. Just get off the telly with yer mum? Because blimey, you’ve gone full-on British slang first thing this morning, mate.”
Liddy rolled her eyes. “Wanker.”
“You love me.”
“I do. Which is why, ever since our conversation Wednesday night, I’ve been thinking of ways to help get you out of this slump.”
My face got hot. After a couple of glasses of wine during our weekly Whine Wednesday and Liddy’s urging, I’d voiced my dissatisfaction about my personal and my professional life. I didn’t regret opening up to her even when I should’ve known that Liddy—a “fixer”—would obsess about helping me. Maybe that’s what I’d secretly wanted. “Liddy—”
The teakettle whistled. The interruption allowed her to shoo me off, promising my tea would be the perfect temperature after I exited the shower.
I shuffled off to the bathroom after snagging a Red Bull from the fridge. While I liked tea, it didn’t provide me with enough of a caffeine kick.
Under the lukewarm shower spray, my thoughts drifted to my friendship with Liddy and how important she’d become in my life.
Liddy and I had met months ago when I’d moved into Snow Village.
Snow Village was like any other gated community in that it was comprised of three connected apartment buildings with separate parking garages, a fitness facility with a large multipurpose room, a fenced pet park and a playground. The unique aspect? Most of the residents were athletes—current and former—who competed in winter sporting events. I’d been lucky to score a two-bedroom apartment due to the fact my boss, Jax, and Jensen Lund, the owner of Snow Village, were cousins, not solely because I played hockey.
Other than having my new furniture delivered, I’d opted to move myself in, since my boyfriend, my sister and most of my hockey buddies were in Florida at USA Olympic training camp. It’d felt wrong asking my colleagues at Lakeside for help, so there I was hefting boxes onto a handcart, hauling them out of my truck bed and up the elevator to the third floor in building three.
On the second-to-last trip, I heard a very annoyed, very British female voice yell, “Are you daft? Moving all those bloody boxes by yourself? Just wait a minute.”
Then I found myself looking up at the lithe, lovely Liddy Eldridge, who I’d soon discover was the former national ice dancing champion from Great Britain. Not only did she help me drag up the rest of my belongings, she assisted me with assembling my IKEA furniture. Between the cursing over missing hardware, sharing two bottles of wine as I unpacked, and her gentle teasing about my sports-themed decorating style, we became fast friends.
I also learned that Liddy had retired from professional skating after an ugly breakup with her skating partner/husband, and after a few years touring the world with Disney on Ice, she’d become a freelance ice dancing choreographer as well as a representative for a London-based athletic apparel company. She, in turn, heard about my assorted hockey triumphs, from winning back-to-back state championships at Fargo North High School, to accepting a full-ride hockey scholarship to UND with hopes of bringing a women’s hockey Frozen Four title to my college, to playing on the U.S. Women’s National Hockey Team, winning three world championships and two Four Nations Cups, to winning silver medals in 2010 and 2014 playing with the U.S. Olympic Women’s Ice Hockey Team, as well as my short-lived honor of being named the first female assistant coach to a college men’s hockey team at UND, only to resign in protest a few months later after that same college—my alma mater—eliminated the women’s hockey program entirely.
With Liddy, I could be honest about everything going on in my life, when I’d taken to editorializing it for everyone else. After I’d blurted out the incident with Tyson and my sister, she’d kept pouring the wine while I’d detailed my fears about lack of direction and cohesion in my professional life. My position at Lakeside was supposed to be temporary, and as a part-time coach I wasn’t making much money, so I had to supplement my income by refereeing with the Minnesota Youth Hockey League. When I considered playing hockey professionally again, I had to weigh it against searching for a full-time coaching gig that’d pay the bills, but wouldn’t restrict my ability to travel and run