Stay: A WAGs Novel Page 4

  “GOOD TRY!” Jenny screams, getting into the fray.

  For the next twenty action-packed minutes, we forget everything except the game. The first period is fast and furious. Our boys don’t manage to score, but they’re giving Buffalo a very hard time.

  “We have seventeen shots on goal,” Jenny grumbles, draining her beer after the buzzer. “Their goalie must have been to church this morning or something.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I growl, my voice hoarse. “We’re winning tonight. I can just feel it.”

  We hit the ladies’ room and then buy two more beers. The kiss cam does its thing, and I don’t watch the jumbotron. Tonight I’m not the girl who got divorced at twenty-seven. Tonight I’m a party girl with coveted seats to the best game on earth.

  And for once the universe is with me. We score three times in the second period and twice in the third. Matt Eriksson gets a goal and an assist. I scream my head off for him both times. Buffalo can’t keep up, and the score is 5-2 when there are only three minutes left on the clock.

  I’m tired and sweaty as my heroes line up for one more face-off. They know they’re going to bring this victory home, and the whole stadium is excited. “Wow.” I sigh, fanning my flushed face. “This is very invigorating. It’s been over a year since I…”

  “Had sex?” Jenny finishes.

  “...saw a hockey game in person,” I correct, even though that other thing is also true.

  “Whoa!” Jenny says, drawing my attention back to the ice. Naturally my gaze gravitates to my favorite player. “Eriksson’s going to get a penalty for tripping.”

  Sure enough, the announcer calls for a two-minute bench minor. And suddenly my celebrity crush is skating right toward me, his handsome face creased with displeasure. I’ve never been so close to him before. The way his broad shoulders move with each stride makes me strangely hungry.

  Is it weird to have a shoulder fetish? Get a grip, I tell myself as he sits down. You’re only ogling his padding, anyway. But that just makes me more curious to see what’s under it.

  That’s when he turns his head and looks right at me.

  “Omigod,” Jenny squeaks.

  My thoughts exactly. I’m sort of frozen now. Like one of Mr. Freeze’s victims in those comic books Jackson collects. I can feel myself staring, and it’s possible my jaw is hanging open a little. But those gray eyes! So sexy. This man’s press photos don’t lie.

  There’s a scramble at my left as Jenny does something. I don’t look. Still frozen.

  But then—I swear to God—a flicker of a smile crosses his sensual mouth before he turns back to watch the action on the ice. And the spell breaks. I turn to Jenny, opening my mouth to say something. She’s holding her sign. No—she’s holding a different sign. “Omigod. What did you do?”

  “It’s just a funny little joke,” she says, trying to tuck it back down below her chair.

  “Jenny!” I gasp, grabbing her wrist and taking a second look.

  HOTTIE IS SINGLE! the sign shouts.

  “What... Oh. God. You didn’t!” My whole body flashes with the heat of embarrassment.

  She grabs both my wrists with a ninja move. “Breathe, okay? He said you were cute. He calls you Hottie, for heaven’s sake. I just gave him a little push.”

  “He’s a client!”

  “I don’t care! This is your life, Hailey. The only one you get. The old Hailey was the most confident woman I knew. She was always hustling to get what she wanted. Bring her back, okay? Stop moping around like a kicked puppy and have a fling with the man. I’m begging, here. Even if he gives you a raging case of the flutterstutters, it’s still worth it.”

  “The...what?” Jenny likes to invent words, but I’m too shaken up to understand them tonight.

  “The nerves. The butterflies. You practically had an aneurysm when he looked at you.”

  “I didn’t,” I lie. “Not until I saw your stupid sign.”

  Jenny only grins. And then the buzzer sounds, and fifteen thousand fans stand up to cheer.

  Well. Even if I die of embarrassment the next time Sniper87’s name appears on my computer screen, at least we beat Buffalo.

  Four

  Breakfast Emergency

  Matt

  Hottie is single.

  I’m still chuckling to myself the morning after the game. The sign had been funny, but the bright red cheeks of the woman sitting next to the sign-holder? Priceless.

  And even while tomato-faced, Hottie had looked gorgeous, even prettier in the flesh than on that security footage. Her eyes are dark blue, the color of the ocean after a storm. They were really nice to look at—well, for the three or so seconds I looked into them. I still can’t believe she even showed up to the game, but with seats like those, she’d have been a fool not to.

  Maybe I should ask her to dinner.

  I ponder this new idea as I brush my teeth in the master bath. I rinse, spit, and then study my reflection in the mirror. I haven’t shaved in a few days, so I’m rocking dirty-blond scruff. My eyes look a bit bloodshot. And my hair, which I usually keep buzzed, has grown out and is now sticking up in all directions. Everything about my appearance tells me I’m not ready to ask Hottie, let alone any woman, on a damn date.

  Divorce fucking blows.

  I’ve spent the past eighteen months feeling angry at Kara for leaving me. Even though we’d hit a rough patch, I would have never done that to her. But there are times when…I…fuck, I might be…relieved.

  Shame has me turning away from the mirror. I hate it when thoughts like that creep into my head. I’m not relieved that my marriage blew up in smoke. I’m saddened.

  And relieved.

  No, I’m devastated.

  But also relieved.

  A silent groan lodges in my throat. I march into the bedroom and grab some clean clothes from the dresser. Fine. I have to concede to my traitorous subconscious—that last year with Kara had been pretty fucking awful.

  Just the last year? my asshole brain mocks.

  All right, maybe it was more than a year. Maybe I’d felt us growing apart long before that. Truthfully, the strain started after the twins were born. Other than some possessiveness and unwarranted jealousy on Kara’s part, and lots of traveling and some laziness on mine, our first two years of marriage were a blast. It wasn’t until the girls came along that Kara decided every single thing I did was absolutely wrong and that shit needed to be done her way—no highway option.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming my kids for the tension in the marriage. I love my girls. I wouldn’t give ’em up for the world.

  Buzzzzz.

  I brighten as the landline on my nightstand gives a loud buzz. Speaking of my girls…

  I grab the phone and press the button to contact the doorman. “Tommy, my man,” I say cheerfully. “Please tell me there are two lovely ladies on their way up.”

  “Three,” he corrects, and I hear the smile in his voice. “They just got on the elevator.”

  “Thanks.” I hang up and tug my sweatpants into place, then throw a Toronto hoodie over my head and hurry toward the front door. The floor-to-ceiling windows that span the massive main room sparkle in the early morning sunshine. It’s a gorgeous day, blue skies and yellow sunshine on my rug. In the warmth of my apartment, I can pretend that it’s a summer day and not freeze-your-balls-off cold out there.

  I’m wired with anticipation as I wait for the knock. I have the girls until tomorrow morning, at which point their mom will pick them up so they can spend the day with their grandparents in Markham, a nice suburb northwest of here.

  I’d been brutally disappointed when I found out I wouldn’t have them for the whole day tomorrow. I wanted to point out that they see Kara’s parents every Friday for lunch, a tradition that started when they were still in diapers, but arguing with my ex is about as effective as conversing with a wall. She always wins arguments. Always.

  “DADDY!!” two voices shriek the second I open the door.


  In a nanosecond, I’m bending down to scoop both girls into my arms. Two pairs of little hands wrap around my neck. Two sets of beautiful, heart-shaped faces peer up at me in delight. And two mouths release squeals of laughter when I smack kisses all over their chubby cheeks.

  “Oh, I missed you guys!” Emotion is thick in my throat as I hug my four-year-old daughters tight to my chest.

  “Missed you too, Daddy!” June yells.

  “Me too!” Libby pipes up.

  “Yeah? How’s my Junebug doing?” I ruffle June’s dark hair before doing the same to her twin. “And my Libby-Lu?”

  “Mommy got us new hats!”

  “With pom-poms!”

  I gasp. “No way! Why aren’t you wearing them?”

  “Mommy says it’s not cold ’nuff yet,” June informs me.

  I stifle an irritated curse. Of course. Kara is an expert in all things. I guess that includes determining the precise point of Toronto’s seasonal change in which our children are allowed to wear their hats. To distract myself from my annoyance, I swing the girls in my arms again, eliciting more happy squeals.

  “Would you put them down, please?” a sharp voice asks from the door. “They haven’t had their breakfast yet and all that spinning around will make them nauseous.”

  The curse that’s jammed in my throat is now a string of expletives that are dying to fly out. Instead, I take a breath and then gently set my daughters on their feet.

  “RUFUS!” June shouts when she catches sight of the dog, who’s just rounded the corner to see what all the commotion in the front hall is about. His delayed entrance only highlights what a shit guard dog he’d make. Lazy bastard.

  As the twins scamper off to pet their dog, I turn to my ex-wife and force myself to make eye contact. And there she stands, her glossy brown hair streaming down her shoulders in bouncy curls, her lithe body decked out in jeans and a leather jacket, a bright wool scarf setting off the color in her cheeks. Divorce obviously agrees with her. Or maybe it's her new boyfriend, the dentist. Good old Dentist Dan, the man who gets to spend more time with my kids than I do.

  But who’s bitter?

  This is the woman who decided I wasn’t good enough to remain a full-fledged member of the family. That my children would be better off seeing Daddy once every couple of weeks. She cast me aside like she does with her designer clothes when she determines that they’re out of style.

  Anger curls in my gut. But that’s not how I want this day to go, and it’s not the tone I want to strike with Her Highness. So I force myself to say something nice.

  “How’s it going, Kara? You look good.” I’m not lying, either. My ex is still as beautiful as the day I married her.

  “I’d say the same for you, but…” Her nose turns up slightly. “Did your razor break?”

  I manage a wry grin. “Nah. I’m trying out the rugged look.” I gesture to my beard growth. “What? I’m not pulling it off?”

  A reluctant smile tugs at her lips. “Sorry, Matty, but no, you’re not.”

  Her use of my nickname causes me to soften a bit. I never know which Kara I’m going to encounter when she shows up—the laughing, easygoing girl I met at twenty-two, or the sharp-tongued, rigid woman who divorced me at twenty-nine.

  It still confuses me sometimes, how much she changed. I mean, certain aspects of her personality, which I didn’t always like, were constant throughout our marriage—her pessimism, her candidness, her impatience. But in those early days, she was fun. She took risks, she laughed, she knew how to relax. Somehow those moments of relaxation became less and less frequent, and she became more and more unyielding.

  She blames it on me, of course. Says the hockey lifestyle broke us, that I broke us. “I'm tired of being disappointed,” she’d whispered after one of our fights only months before the divorce. I'd missed her parents’ anniversary dinner the night before because the team’s flight was delayed in Michigan thanks to a snowstorm. Fuck, it wasn't like I'd set out to miss an important event, but for Kara, it was just another neon sign that screamed, “My husband neglects me!”

  Matthew Eriksson, folks. Chronic disappointer of wives.

  “Anyway,” my ex is saying, “I’m sure you already took care of it, but I wanted to remind you that the girls are off gluten, so no waffles for breakfast this morning.”

  “Wait, what?” I blink in bewilderment. I always make waffles for the girls. That’s our thing.

  Kara huffs impatiently. “No gluten, Matt. Scramble some eggs instead. I also sent you options for lunch and dinner.”

  What the fuck is she talking about? “What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask aloud. Then I cringe and glance toward the living room, but the girls are too busy fawning over Rufus to notice that Daddy said a bad word.

  “You didn’t check your email,” Kara says flatly.

  “I had a game last night,” I answer through clenched teeth. I’m already heading for the kitchen counter, where I left my cell phone. I hurriedly open my email app and click on Kara’s name.

  “And you didn’t check it this morning?” Kara’s tone is laden with disapproval.

  I ignore her and scan the message. For fuck’s sake. It’s essay-length. And yup, she did include potential meal plans for me to implement during this way-too-short visit with my kids. She refers to them as “suggestions,” but we both know better.

  “What do we have against gluten?” I ask tightly.

  Her lips pinch together in a frown. “I told you last week—Elizabeth has been having some stomach sensitivity lately. I’ve monitored her food intake and I believe the gluten is wreaking havoc on her system.”

  Or she just had one fucking stomach ache—probably because she snuck in some cookies when Dictator Mommy wasn’t looking—and it has nothing to do with fucking gluten.

  “We spoke about this,” Kara says irritably. “And you agreed that we needed to change the girls’ diet.”

  I don’t remember agreeing to that at all, but truth is, I probably did. Our weekly phone calls consist of Kara droning on for about an hour, while I say things like “uh-huh” and “sure” and “sounds good.”

  “Fine,” I mutter. “Libby can’t handle gluten. Gluten is evil. Gluten will be banished from this household.”

  “Are you mocking me?”

  “Not at all.”

  Kara’s dour expression tells me she knows I’m lying. Then she pastes a smile on her face and calls out to the twins. “C’mere, angels! Say goodbye to Mommy!”

  June and Libby rush over to hug and kiss their mom. Kara squeezes both of them tight before saying, “Be good for Daddy, okay? Call me if you have any questions. I've got dinner plans tonight, but I’ll have my phone on.”

  “Big date with Dentist Dan, huh? Don't forget to floss beforehand.”

  She gives me a dirty look over our daughters’ heads. “I am having dinner with Daniel, yes. But I repeat, my phone will be on.”

  My daughters are four years old, and great at telling me exactly what they need. But Kara doesn’t think I can make it twenty-four hours without consulting her on their care? Anger rushes through me once again, and it takes a superhuman effort not to say something snarky.

  Honestly, I’ve had divorced teammates before, and I’d never understood how they could still carry a grudge against their exes. But now the joke’s on me. Right now I’m more ready to throw off the gloves with Kara than our team enforcer is when someone fouls our goalie.

  Fortunately, a moment later she’s gone, and it’s like a weight has been lifted off my chest. Kara is a difficult woman. She loves our children dearly, I know that, but she acts like she’s their only parent. I have no say in anything when it comes to the girls. None.

  Elizabeth has been having some stomach sensitivity lately.

  Elizabeth. Libby’s full name brings on one last ripple of anger. I didn’t even have a say in naming my kids, for fuck’s sake. Kara informed me after the delivery that the girls would be named after her great-grand
mothers—June and Elizabeth. I didn’t get a veto.

  And, Christ. What am I going to do about breakfast? I promised the twins waffles when we spoke on the phone. Waffles are our ritual, damn it. They already don’t get to see me as often as any of us would like.

  Drawing a deep breath, I grab my phone again and pull up the Fetch app. In the subject line, I type: SOS! BREAKFAST EMERGENCY! MAYDAY!

  Hopefully that sounds dire enough to trigger an insta-response. The message itself is less crazy.

  Sniper87: Hey HTE! I’ve got my kids this morning and I’ve just been informed that gluten is the devil. I require gluten-free waffle mix—ASAP. Please help.

  I don’t expect her to answer the SOS herself. I mean, I’m sure she’s got better things to do than field the pettiest client emergencies. But surprisingly, it’s Hottie’s name that shows up in the response box.

  HTE: Oh boy! Does someone have celiac disease?

  Sniper87: I doubt it. But my ex-wife lives to make things complicated.

  HTE: Gotcha. Will send someone with gluten-free waffle mix ASAP.

  Sniper87: For reals? You can keep me out of the penalty box?

  HTE: Get out that waffle iron, Sniper.

  “Daddy!” June appears at my side, tugging on my pant leg. “I’m hungry!”

  “Me too!” Libby chimes in, and suddenly I’ve got two pairs of gray eyes peering up at me in accusation.

  “Working on it,” I assure them. “How about some OJ for now?”

  “Fruit punch,” June orders.

  “And ice cream!” Libby shoots me an angelic smile and adds, “I missed you, Daddy.”

  I narrow my eyes at her. “Stop trying to manipulate your old man, Elizabeth. You’re not having ice cream for breakfast.”

  “What’s manipoolate?” June asks.

  “It means your sister is trying to trick me into giving her a tummy ache.” I head for the fridge and peek inside. “You’re in luck. We’ve got fruit punch.” I always put this stuff on my grocery order because it’s Junebug’s favorite juice.

  Also? It’s organic. Take that, Kara! I give her the mental finger as I pull out the carton and then grab two small plastic cups from the cupboard. Rufus, my jerk of a dog, decides to pick that moment to dart into the kitchen and run between my legs, causing me to lose my balance. I end up spilling fruit punch all over my light-gray hoodie. Awesome.