Page 32 of Securing the Pucking Rebound

“Like the knowledge that I moved in beneath you that he seems to have kept to himself.”

“Yeah, not sure what he’s playing at there,” Calvin confesses.

There’s another silence, but this one is different from the first.

“I’m gonna go,” I say quietly.

“Okay. I hope you feel better.”

“Thanks. Don’t work too hard.”

“Pfft, there’s no chance of that,” he dismisses before we end the call.

I sit there in the silence of my apartment, running that whole conversation through my head and wondering what the hell just happened.

Since when do I have NHL players calling to check in on me?

Since today, apparently.

When I wake my cell up again, I find that I’ve got messages from Bea and my mom, along with a whole heap of email and social media notifications.

I reply to both messages but ignore everything else. It can all be tomorrow’s problem. Or maybe even the day after.

I manage to eat half the oatmeal after drinking the smoothie, and I barely make it thirty minutes into the new show that starts before I’m drifting off to sleep again.

I can’t remember the last time I was this sick, and I don’t want to repeat it anytime soon. The only time I’m good at doing nothing is when I’m lying on a lounger next to a pool with the sun beating down on me.

When I wake up enough to function, the sun is setting, casting a beautiful orange hue through my apartment.

Fall is firmly upon us. The trees have shed their leaves, and the mornings and evenings are getting a little brisker. Thanksgiving is right around the corner. A little excitement stirs within me at the thought of seeing my parents. Of having our little family together again for a couple of days. We don’t get to spend anywhere near enough time together these days, and I always savor every moment we get. At least that’s one good thing about getting the flu this week: it isn’t going to stop me from traveling.

The plate of fresh fruit taunts me from the coffee table as I shuffle back from the bathroom with the blanket wrapped around me so I’m a human burrito.

I’m not hungry, but also…

“Oh my god.” I groan when the sweetness of the strawberry hits my parched mouth. Before I know it, I’ve eaten the entire plate.

Grabbing the TV remote, I begin scrolling through Netflix, hoping I might be able to stay awake long enough after sleeping all day to watch a movie.

None of the new releases call to me, so I go back to some of my old favorites—the comfort movies I used to watch with Mom and Garrett when we were teenagers. There’s something about late-nineties and early-two-thousands rom-coms that just hits differently. Especially when you’re not feeling yourself.

I’m about to hit play on Bring It On when there’s a rap at my front door.

My eyes shoot in that direction.

Surely not.

There’s no way I’ll have a hockey player at my door twice in one day.

This time, it’ll be Bea, or one of the others. Surely, it can’t be Killer again?

But after making my way to the front door, I pull it open to exactly that.

“What’s this? Déjà vu?”

“Nah, baby. This time I come with dinner, not breakfast.”

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