Page 6

6

Liam

E ven though I thought I had her, I was fully prepared for Alana to shut me down. I had prepared myself for the ‘no’ because the more I thought about it, the more I realised it was ridiculous of me to suggest to a woman I hadn’t seen in twelve years, by her own choosing, that we tell people we were dating. Two months after her eight-year relationship had ended. Mine had also been long-term, but at least it had ended closer to the beginning of this year than the end of it.

Now that she had said yes, I was equal parts excited and terrified.

I wasn’t super excited about lying to either of our parents and her brother, but I was so tired of people asking me how I was holding up after everything. I was fine. I had been bummed when the relationship ended but the more time I had away from her, the more I accepted that it was a good thing that it was over. The only thing I was good for was keeping her profile up. It hadn’t taken me long to enjoy not having a camera shoved in my face when I was doing something boring like waiting for my coffee to brew all for the sake of ‘content’. In fact, the relationship ending probably made the reality of my life without hockey a lot easier because I wasn’t around someone who was always asking me about it.

If there was one thing I knew about Alana, it was that she gave exactly zero shits about hockey. That applied to most sports, which was always funny because she was a cheerleading co-captain and had to attend a lot of sports events back in high school, but she really didn’t care about hockey. It was her apathy to hockey and her belief that there was life outside of the sport that got me through rehab in our junior year. Finding myself with someone like Lenny now made sense. And I could talk about her all day long.

“You got any other backstory bits you want to add or are we just going with that?” I asked, just to be sure we were on the same page.

“Don’t think so, no. How hard can it be to figure the rest of this out on the fly? I mean, I’ve gathered that you and Teddy are still close as anything, not that he brought you up much, but you said he would be the reason you got dragged to a party, so I just assumed. Am I wrong?”

I shook my head. Behind her, Teddy was my closest friend. Had been since eighth grade.

“No, we’re still close. He was part of the reason I made the move to Detroit. I couldn’t pass up the chance to play with him one final time.”

“Always the poet,” she muttered to herself. “Anyway, it’s not like that much time has passed since we started supposedly dating, so it should be pretty easy. Besides, you were right, we did know each other quite well, a lot of it might end up being muscle memory.”

As if by magic, our gate was called, and I picked up my well-worn duffle and the backpack that Lenny had shucked off her shoulder sometime after I handed over her coffee. We both started towards our gate.

It was only as we joined the queue at the gate that she noticed I had her bag over my shoulder.

“I can take that, you know,” she said. She held her hand out to me. I shifted the strap up higher on my shoulder.

She huffed and dropped her hand.

“This is lighter than you used to pack for a carry-on. You finally figured out how to pack light?”

“Yes and no. I stopped doomsday packing. At least when I’m going to certain places. Like home. I could say the opposite for you though.” She gestured to my duffle, which was almost bursting, but still within the weight limit.

“The thing about spending so much time on the road is that it gets annoying having to pack all the time. You get really good at stripping everything down to the bare bones. It turns out that the skill also translates to longer trips.”

“You mean to tell me that you have managed to pack everything you need for what…two weeks? Into that one bag?” Her mouth was slightly open.

I nodded.

“I’d say teach me your ways, but I know I wouldn’t be able to swing it when travelling in the winter months.”

“You still got that sweater obsession?”

“It’s not an obsession, Liam. Sweaters are an essential layering piece. Need I remind you that we were raised in a state that gets snow?” She was pouting at me as she handed her ticket over to the clerk. It was checked quickly and then she moved on to mine.

“No, I remember that we were raised in a state that gets snow. I also remember that you wear sweaters year-round. Which I think is what makes it an obsession.” I followed her down the tunnel, ignoring the flirty eyes that the clerk tried to give me as she handed my ticket back.

Lenny noticed, though, and a furrow between her brows appeared for the length of a heartbeat before her face smoothed back out.

“I can take my stuff now,” she held her hand out again.

“Where are you sitting?”

“17F.”

So she was the reason I couldn’t choose my preferred seat.

“Well, it’s your lucky day, I’m 17E.” It was a dreaded middle seat, but that didn’t seem so bad now I knew who had the aisle seat. If I was lucky, she might switch with me mid-flight to give my legs some room. Like she used to.

“Of course you are,” she grumbled as she walked down the tunnel. I let her put some distance between us for now. She could only get so far, anyway.

When I got to our seats, a man was standing very close to Lenny. His head came to her shoulder, and he looked like he was trying to say something in her ear. Lenny had a resigned look about her; it was one I was used to seeing on her.

She was trying to figure out how to get this man to back off without angering him to the point that he got abusive.

Melanie used to love finding herself in those situations because it gave her a chance to say that Liam Mulligan was her boyfriend. They usually backed off after that.

Lenny’s eyes flicked away from the man to me, and I saw relief bloom in her eyes when she saw me. “My boyfriend is gonna need to get by you.”

The way she said ‘my boyfriend’ made my blood feel hot, which could not be more inconvenient if it tried.

The man seemed to take a moment to hear what Lenny said and when he did, his head turned to look behind him. There was a split second just before he recognised me that he looked annoyed that I was impeding his opportunity to hit on Lenny, and then when the recognition hit, I tried to figure out if he was a fan or if he had simply seen one of my many billboards in the city. Billboards that I would have happily burned down instead of constantly seeing them throughout Detroit. Mom told me New York was worse. Which I could believe because my mother was telling me about how she kept seeing me in my underwear around the city while she went about her day.

“ Gunner?” Well, that answered that question.

“Hey man, what’s up?” I said as I slipped Lenny’s backpack off my shoulder and handed it to her. She dropped down into her seat and started rummaging around her bag.

“I’m all good. What about you? What are you doing here?”

“Yeah, fine thanks. We’re going home for Christmas.” I flicked my eyes to where Lenny was trying to disappear into her backpack. She looked up for just enough time to roll her eyes at me. I smiled.

“Oh, what happened to that blonde girl?”

The one thing no one ever warns you about when you get a modicum of fame is how much people start commenting on shit independent of what you’re ‘famous’ for. They also never warn you about how it never gets any less jarring when people you have never met ask you about your personal life.

“We are no longer seeing each other,” I responded.

“You didn’t waste any time moving on, did you? Guess there isn’t much else for you to focus on now that you’ve hung up your skates.” He tried to playfully elbow me like we were old friends. I struggled to keep a neutral face.

“Hey babe, do you have my headphones? I can’t find them in here and if you don’t have them, then I’ve forgotten them.” Lenny was standing again, looking at me and pointedly ignoring the man in between us.

“I think I might. Hey, sorry man, do you mind moving out of the way so I can give my girl a hand?”

The man nodded and moved out of my way, clapping a hand on my shoulder as he walked past. Just in case he was still looking at us, I made a point of looking through my bag for a moment, pulling out my headphones and giving them to her before putting both our bags in the overhead bin.

As I sat down next to Lenny, I waited for her to give me shit about calling her ‘my girl’. It wasn’t quite like her calling me ‘babe’ because she called everyone in her inner circle babe after a while. Although I was pretty sure it was the first time she had ever called me that.

“You get that a lot?” she asked instead, nodding in the direction the man had walked.

“What?”

“Comments on your personal life.”

“Oh yeah, kind of, I guess. Depends on the person and how much they know about me.” Fortunately, most of them only talked about my career and tried imparting knowledge about how I could make my game better.

“He knew enough about you to know that there used to be a blonde in your life. That’s so weird. What have I signed up for?”

“We haven’t entered a legally binding contract, Len. If you want out, just say the word.”

“The word was ‘no’ about half an hour ago when you asked. We’re in this now.” She offered me a humbug.

I never travelled without humbugs. There was always one in my mouth when we took off and when we landed. The guys jokingly gave me shit for it but also respected the superstition. When one of the newer guys asked how it came about, I said I couldn’t remember, it had always just been a thing for me.

Teddy had found my answer hilarious, but I never bothered to figure out why.

Looking at the bag of humbugs in Lenny’s hand, I realised now, three years later, why Teddy had found it so funny.

It was Lenny’s way of dealing with take-offs and landings and I’d pestered her enough once to give me one. Then she never stopped giving one to me until suddenly, I had my own supply, and it was a habit I couldn’t break. I’d been so distracted looking for headphones that I had left my own humbugs in my bag.

I took one from Lenny.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said before putting the earbuds she hadn’t forgotten in and opening the book in her lap.

I sent a text to my mom to let her know I was about to take off and put on my headphones.

Another thing I had taken from Lenny? No talking, headphones in, for the duration of any and all flights.