Page 31 of Tricky Puck

“Not much to tell.” I turn to him. “Don’t worry, Sabe. I have my priorities straight.” They’re so straight that I’ve refused to think about her or the night we spent together. It’s easy to put some distance between her memory and me with hockey in front and center. Coach’s threat of a trade wasn’t necessary. Or that’s what I tell myself.

Pushing my worry about Grandma aside is a little tougher, but I’ll deal with her matchmaking plan when she calls me next. By then, maybe I’ll know what to say. The rest of the team filters into the locker room as I finish prepping and head for the dining room with Sabe, ahead of them.

Ten

DELANEY

“I’m so glad you had a good time last night.”

I smile at Granny, unable to lie to her about last night, and take a big sip of my much-needed morning-after coffee.

“That means you’ll want to join him in New Hampshire right away. Here’s his address and his house key.”

Coffee threatens to spurt from my mouth all over the table, but I clap my hand over it and manage to hold it in and choke it down, coughing.

Granny stands and pats my back. “Don’t get excited, dear. You won’t be far, and we’ll come up to visit you as soon as⁠—”

“Granny, you can’t be serious…?” Again, I find myself asking the question I know the answer to, but this time, I’m a little scared because I know who I’m dealing with now.

She nods. “Of course I am.”

I feel lightheaded.

When I asked Grandma if Link knew about this plan, she assured me he was in on it. Somehow, I doubted it. One thing we both have in common is a commitment to stay single for the foreseeable future. No way did our plan to go along with our grandmothers and fake-date for a while come remotely close to agreeing to living together.

Sure, we’d planned to visit, so here I am visiting. Maybe a little sooner than we expected, but hell, we should probably talk about how to diffuse this extreme matchmaking idea about us shacking up. I’ll stop for one night on my way to George’s cabin. I probably shouldn’t keep referring to him as my friend after the stunt he pulled the other night.

But he’d given me the key and his blessing to write songs to my heart’s content, and I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. That’s my practical New Yorker state of mind talking.

It takes me a day to pack up my things, and the next day, I wave goodbye to Granny with two keys in my pocket to the homes of two very different men—George and Link.

George’s key I’ll use because he won’t be there, and I don’t want to see him. Link’s key, I can’t imagine using because he will be there, and I do want to see him—way too much for my own damn good.

Tonight is Link’s first game of the hockey season—Uncle Torin reminded me often enough all day as if I’d have forgotten. This is a long-ass drive, and I’m taking a long drag on the straw of my ice coffee.

Torin suggested that I should plan to arrive in time for the game, and that I’d be crazy not to call Link to ask for a ticket. I wisely listened to his advice without comment or committing. Asking for a ticket doesn’t sit well with me. Link should have offered it, but he hasn’t called me.

Checking the time on my navigation app, it looks iffy whether I’ll arrive in time. Should I call him? Maybe, but if it’s game day, he must be busy, right?

So by the time I arrive in Portsmouth, my car packed to the roof with all my stuff for the winter and leave it in the parking garage, it’s too late to do anything but hope I’ll nab a ticket. I would never leave my packed car in a New York parking garage, but this is the country, right? Or at least the suburbs. There’s not a building over ten stories to be seen in the downtown area.

Outside the arena, there aren’t many people around. After I find the ticket window closed—because, shit, the game has already started—I manage to find a scalper among the sparse sprinkling of people.

“I’m not paying triple the face value,” I insist.

“Sure. Good luck finding another ticket. This season opener is a hot one.” The guy sporting a cap with a spongey whale swallowing a hockey puck on top turns away.

I take a deep breath and stop him. “Okay.” This is harder than I’d thought it would be. I rummage in my bag and pull out the exact amount of cash, eying the guy warily. “So the Whalers are popular?”

“They’re like royalty in this town and for miles around. Some fans from Boston come up here to watch, too, since you can’t get Brawlers tickets.”

I nod, though I have no idea who the Brawlers are, and hand him the money with one hand as I snatch the ticket from him with the other to make it a simultaneous exchange as if we’re dealing in high-value prisoners or something.

Maybe I need to dial down the big-city paranoia.

My seats are too high in the bleachers to see much, not that I have any idea what’s going on. However, whenever they show Link on the jumbotron or mention his name when he does something special—score or assist or something—I get a flutter like my old butterflies have returned from the other night—or maybe they never left.

Even that vicarious excitement and the jam-packed crowd yelling like crazy isn’t enough to keep me warm, and I wonder how cold it must be down on the ice. Endless rounds of standing ovations, mysterious goings on with the nameless skaters speeding back and forth below, interspersed with trips to the drink vendors for cocktails that I tell myself I need for warmth, not courage, then the final horn blasts, the benches empty, and after a few bewildering seconds, during which there’s a mass exodus from the stands, I realize the game is over.