Chapter 4

man this hockey like every night doesn't give a girl a lot of free time so forgive the tardiness of this chapter

“I don’t think I heard you right. I thought you said he bought you a bed? Like a whole bed with mattresses and everything.” I rolled my eyes and continued to wipe down the table that had just been vacated by a group of patch wearing bikers. There was so much beer on the floor it was difficult not to leave my shoes behind as I pocketed the ten dollar bill they’d left beneath the emptied pitcher. 

“Well he’s mostly been staying at my place and neither of us has been getting much sleep....” A chorus of wolf whistles drowned out my explanation and I flipped the bird towards my work mates as moved to the next table and swept a handful of peanut shells onto the floor.  I could have argued the point but the enormous hickey on my neck that made me feel like I was back in grade ten made it impossible for me to. “I was fine with something from the thrift store but he ordered it from some la-dee-dah furniture store and had it delivered and everything,” I added, details which had impressed the hell out of me. Having always had hand me downs, a brand new mattress was a luxury beyond words to me, let alone the kind with a pillow top that had probably cost more than I’d made in six months. 

“So did you break it in yet?” Dylan asked, crudely miming taking a girl from behind and swatting her ass. I pressed my lips firmly together to stop myself from blurting out just how many times I’d shown my gratitude.

“Look at her face! She’s been riding him like she’s trying to break him in,” the other server, Hannah, called from across the bar. I turned to face the wall. I wasn’t used to being the one being teased and I felt flames licking at the inside of my cheeks. I did not, however, deny it. 

“You’re just jealous,” Dylan told Hannah, grabbing my wrist and holding up my arm as I slid my change box back onto the bar. “When’s the last time a guy you dated bought you something like this?” I looked up at the bangle hanging from my wrist, the bright white gold Tiffany bracelet with the star pendant catching the light. I’d been impressed with flowers but since then I’d gotten kind of used to being treated like I’d always imagined Cinderella must have felt like when she met her Prince Charming.

Not that I thought Pat was a keeper, despite all the lavish gifts and his flash car. I knew he was going back to whatever college he came from in September. That didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy being treated like a princess for once in my life.

“I can’t think of the last time I wasn’t the one paying for dinner,” Hannah admitted with a sigh, dropping her rag and change box on the bar. “Of course I’ve never been lucky enough to catch a frat boy slumming it on the wrong side of the tracks,” she added with a wink. She didn’t have to let me know she was teasing, especially because I happened to agree with her. 

“So is he picking you up again tonight?” Dylan asked as he counted our change boxes into the float. 

“He is,” I confirmed, untying my apron and stashing it under the bar, exchanging it for my leather jacket and my purse. 

“Where’s he taking you?” Hannah asked, sipping on some brightly coloured drink through an equally brightly coloured crazy straw. 

“He said somewhere special but he said I didn’t have to dress up...like I could,” I added, inwardly wincing at the memory of the way the head waiter at Fiamma had looked down his nose at me and my summer dress. Pat hadn’t seemed to notice, or mind but that didn’t mean I hadn’t felt about two inches tall. 

“Speak of the devil,” Dylan glanced towards the doorway where the light had just caught his goldilocks blonde curls. My heart didn’t miss a beat but I smiled at him and the stupid popped collar on his golf shirt.

“Ready dollface?” he asked, leaning at the end of the bar and making no attempt to hide the fact that he was checking out my legs. I rolled my eyes.

“Ready,” I replied, sliding my arms into my jacket. There was no use thinking he’d help. He wouldn’t. It wouldn’t even occur to him. 

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“No...no, no. No way.” She shook her head and pressed her lips together in an unhappy line.

“Just tonight...there’s kind of a...a thing,” I tried to explain. My parents always did this the night I left. They’d been doing it for years and my mother would have had a stroke if I’d missed it but I had my reasons for insisting on Beth being my plus one. 

“A thing?” she repeated and glanced up at the house. There was a ton of cars on the street and in the driveway. I could hear the music and raised voices from here. 

“Yeah, a casual thing,” I insisted, reaching for her hand across the vehicle. We didn’t hold hands, much anyway, so she glanced down at mine as it covered hers’ as if it was something foreign, strange. 

“Why do I feel like I’m being railroaded?” she asked. I shrugged. I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant by that but her tone was accusatory enough that I didn’t figure I needed to. She didn’t want to go up the driveway and I hadn’t told her the truth about the party or me so, if what it was wasn’t good then she was probably right anyway.

“C’mon, it’ll be fun.” She rolled her eyes and immediately reminded me of the last time I’d said those words to Tazer the last time we went to a strip club and I talked him into going into the champagne room. I’ve never seen a guy’s face get that red before...or since come to think of it. 

She held my hand voluntarily all the way into the backyard, mostly out of fear I’m guessing, but the minute my sisters jumped me she let my hand go like I’d burned her and her wide kitten eyes got narrow...fast. 

“Hi I’m Jessie, you must be Beth!” My middle sister hugged her like she was a long lost relative and then stepped aside and let Rickie and Jacquie do the same. Beth stood there like a totem pole, staring daggers at me. I smiled back. They’re my sisters. It had to happen sometime, and besides, I knew there was worse to come. 

“We thought you’d ditched us,” my youngest sister, Jacquie gave me a dark look, her hands on her hips, trying to give me the whole tough mom thing. I shrugged again. 

“I told you, I had to pick up Beth from work,” I explained, an explanation that was clearly not good enough as all three pairs of my sister’s eyes continued to gaze sternly at me. “Betts works at a...drinking establishment that’s open pretty late,” I added, reaching for Beth’s hand, which she quickly stuffed into the pocket of her jacket. She was pissed. It was plain as day on her face. 

“Establishment? Have you been reading the dictionary again Patty?” Rickie smirked and then wrapped her arms around me. “Go say hi to mom, she’s been freaking that you’re not here,” she added in a whisper in my ear. 

“Yeah, just gonna grab a beer,” I promised and gave my oldest sister and extra squeeze. Erica wants to marry Tazer. I’ve told her that’s gonna happen...over my dead body. I do not want to be related to Captain Boring Mcyawnypants. 

Beth followed me up the stairs of the deck but she looked at every single person there as if they were a potential assassin. I looked around at my old hockey buddies, the guys from the block and a few guys form school and wondered what she had to be worried about. It was a sea of t-shirts, shorts and jeans. Her plain black t-shirt, short denim skirt and high top runners fit right in, at least they did to me. 

“Patty! There you are.” I grinned as my mother emerged from the house with a big bowl of something covered in cling film and beamed at her only son as if I’d just come back from the dead. “Pat can you put this on the table?” she handed the bowl off to my dad without even looking to see if he’d grabbed it before she let go, and then practically ran across the deck and wrapped me up in a bear hug like I had just come back for the summer, not like I’d eaten a stack of her homemade waffles that morning. 

“Hey Ma,” I hugged her back, the scent of her distinctive mom perfume filling my head. I’d miss that smell during the season, so I sucked it into my lungs now like I was taking my dying breath. “I...brought someone for you to meet,” I added as I untangled myself from her. When I turned around Beth was trying to beat a retreat towards the stairs but my reflexes and speed are not that bad off the ice either and I managed to grab her and pull her back. “Mom, this is Beth.” I didn’t need to say more. My mom should work for the FBI. You can’t hide anything from her. Not like I try, but two consecutive nights away from home and I had to tell her. I don’t know what she’d do if I didn’t tell her, but I don’t want to find out either.

“Oh Beth darling, it’s so nice to finally meet you. Patty here has been telling us all about you.” Beth shot me a look that could have withered a daisy but she let my mom hug her too. My family are huggers. 

“Uh...yeah, I’d say the same but uh...?” She glared at me over my mother’s shoulder and I realized she was wracking her brain for my mother’s name, which I totally hadn’t told her. 

“Donna,” I told her and she gave me one of those ‘you’ll pay for this later’ purses of her lips. I kept grinning. I didn’t mind being tied to the bed, even if she thought it was some kind of punishment. 

“Yeah, Donna...Pat says you’re a heck of a cook,” she added, pulling maybe the only detail I’d probably shared about my mom out of her ass. 

“Well you need some fattening up,” my mother cooed, holding her hands at Beth’s trim waist. I liked her hourglass figure, all tits and ass. Beth blinked at my mom, and then smiled. 

“Well, I could definitely eat,” she agreed and followed my mom over to the overflowing table beside the barbeque.

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“There’s something I want to show you.” The crowd had thinned out and the music turned down when Pat took my hand and lead me into the basement of his family home. I kept the palm of my hand against the wall as he lead me down a narrow staircase with no railing. Every so often my hand bumped against the sharp corner of a picture frame or ran over the soft felt of a pennant. “One more step,” he warned and took both of my hands, steadying me as I took that one last step into the pitch dark. “Three steps to the left,” he instructed as he let go of my hands, which I then put out in front of me like a zombie as I made my way, blindly, into the darkness. 

I’d taken the last step and stood, waiting for him to do something childish, or, alternatively, to run his hands over my skin and press his lips to the back of my neck where it would make me shudder but instead I was suddenly blinded by a brilliant, white flickering light that buzzed above my head. I blinked, my eyes adjusting slowly to the sudden brightness. 

I wanted to ask if someone had died as I slowly spun and took in all of the medals, trophies, and plaques that littered the shelves around the room. The entire room looked like a shrine. 

It wasn’t until I got closer, until I peered at some of the photographs mixed in with the trophies that I recognized the curly golden locks and elfin smile of the winner of most of the awards. 

Not all of the pictures were of a boy though. There were some that were newer, much more recent. 

“This is you?” I asked, pointing at a picture that looked like it was from a magazine. It wasn’t really necessary to ask, I knew his face, I’d studied it enough times, trying to feel something I didn’t feel. 

“Yeah,” he grinned proudly, puffing out his chest as he looked over my shoulder at the silver medal with the Olympic logo etched into it beside the picture of a team that did not look happy to have won it. I stared at the picture for a moment longer and then turned and shoved him backwards, both hands pressed firmly to the middle of his chest. 

“You fucking little asshole.” He didn’t so much as stumble and I hardly moved him an inch. It wasn’t nearly satisfying enough but a second shove had no more impact than the first.

“I can explain,” he began, wearing an ‘I’ve got something over on you’ grin that I wanted, right at that moment, to claw off of his face. 

“Explain that you’re that little shit that beat the fuck out of a cabbie, or that you’re kind of a big deal and you’ve made me out to be a complete fucking idiot because I didn’t know?” I gathered my arms into myself and turned away from him. I did feel ridiculous and I didn’t take kindly to being made a fool of. My face was burning for what seemed like the thousandth time that night and not least because I had been starting to like him. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, not sounding the least bit remorseful, “but I kinda liked that you didn’t know who I was, it was nice for a change,” he added, leaning his chin into my shoulder and making kicked puppy noises. I rocked my shoulder so he had to reset and took a step forward so that he couldn’t. 

“You introduced me to your family and I didn’t even know who you were,” I added through my teeth. A summer barbeque just for friends and family...I shook my head and stared at the image of in a pair of ridiculous shades leaning drunkenly against the Stanley Cup with nearly naked woman with enormous breasts draped all over him. He was giving a “thumbs up” to the camera. I wanted to break his thumb off with my teeth. 

“They loved you, if it helps,” he whispered in my ear, still sounding proud of himself, as if he had nothing to actually feel sorry for. 

“They were nice to me because they’re polite and I don’t know how you came from those nice people you...you jerk,” I snapped and turned to shove him away. I was more successful that time, making him stumble, but he righted himself immediately, the way that a long time drunk will as they fall off a curb but manage, somehow and quite miraculously, not to fall flat on their face.

“Well, just so you know, I haven’t brought a girl home in, well, a long time, so my mom is already planning the wedding” he blurted out. I stared at him, open mouthed, all the nasty names I’d just been thinking up and preparing to call him were very suddenly and completely erased from my mind. “C’mon Beth, don’t look at me like that. I want you to move back to Chicago with me. Whaddya say?”