Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 55048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 275(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 275(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
“Where is he?”
“He’s crashing on a friend’s couch in Chicago.”
Sam opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it.
“What?” I asked.
She gave me a tentative look. “I don’t want to say it.”
I smiled. “Just say it.”
“I’m just…wondering if he’ll be back for more money soon.”
I sighed heavily. “I know, same. He had a job for a few months but he lost it. I wish I could help him get on his feet. I told him he could come stay with me, but he said he doesn’t want to be in my way.”
“At least you let him know he has someone who won’t turn their back on him.”
I took another drink from my glass. “Our dad and my grandparents love Luke. They want nothing more than for him to be a happy, functioning member of society. But they told him they won’t enable him anymore. He had limited access to his trust and he was being really careless with the money, so they took it away.”
Sam nodded. “I guess they thought he needed tough love.”
“It’s so hard because he does have issues. It’s hard for him to hold a job or have relationships.”
“You must worry about him a lot.”
I smiled sadly because it was true. Like I’d told Ford, I refused to believe I couldn’t “fix” things for my brother if I just stressed and cried until the answer came to me. I’d been doing that for a while now, to no avail.
“I have an idea,” Sam said brightly.
“As long as it doesn’t involve me and a dating app.”
“I still think you should give that one app a try, but I digress.” She grinned. “Let’s finish the pod and organize some shit, and then we can have food delivered and watch the Coyotes game, and we can call Ford and Dom pussies and cheer when they screw up.”
“That sounds lovely,” I said wryly.
“It’ll be fun, I promise.”
I wouldn’t admit it to Sam, but I was feeling just a little bit invested in tonight’s game. I would have preferred that pro hockey not be played at all, but tonight, it would be, and I was secretly hoping Ford and his team would win.
“Or!” Sam’s eyes widened hopefully. “We could try to get tickets to the game so we can call them pussies in person!”
“Absolutely not.”
I’d given Ford’s idea about attending a game some thought, but I wasn’t going to scream names at the players from the stands. It would be a professional outing, and I would be a professional.
Sam got up from the table. “Okay, we’ll watch it from here. I’m going to organize your linen closet.”
“You’re the best.”
“Pretty much. Now let’s get back to these horrible dating stories.”
She turned the podcast back on and I got back to work organizing the kitchen cabinets. I felt a little lighter after talking about my worries for my brother. All I could do was be there for him and hope he would eventually find his way.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ford
“Check out this lady-killer,” my teammate Beau said, turning his phone screen toward me.
It was, of course, a picture of his baby son. Beau never missed an opportunity to show off photos of his kid. He showed them to reporters in the middle of an interview, to food delivery drivers, and even to his pool guy when the pool guy was ten feet away from the actual kid.
“Nice,” I said.
“Here’s him and Shelby,” he said, swiping to a photo of his wife and son grinning, their noses touching.
I silently groaned, knowing this was on me. I’d encouraged him. Now I’d never get free of him, and we were just starting the thirty-minute bus ride to our Las Vegas hotel.
Beau had quickly transformed from carefree playboy to devoted husband and father. He and his wife had met in a very unconventional way when she’d asked him to be a sperm donor so she could have a baby. Their son Charlie had been born the day the arena exploded, leading to an entire collapse of the building, making him eight months old now. As soon as Beau was able to get that kid into a pair of hockey skates, I was sure we’d be seeing a lot of him on the ice.
“Huh, I guess that’s all I took in the last few days,” he said after showing me no less than a dozen photos of his family.
He was sitting next to me on the bus, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t feel like talking. I was wound tight over our game against Vegas. We had to win this one. I was fucking sick of all the TV pundits and analysts getting all earnest when they talked about our 0–3 record.
Every reporter out there could talk for hours about why we hadn’t won yet, but none of them said the same thing. It was because we’d lost Kirby Teller in the arena explosion. Because too many players who had survived that day were traumatized. Because our coach couldn’t figure out how to turn this new group of players into a cohesive unit. And my personal favorite—because we were all too rusty after eight months without games. I just wanted them to stop talking about it.