Halfway down the stairs, I shouted back up to them, “I’m heading out. Get your shit out of this house and be gone before I get back or we have problems.”
She listened.
I returned home the next morning after crashing on Alix’s couch, calling an Uber to take me back to the bar to get my car.
By ten the next morning, my house looked like she’d never lived there.
I cracked open a bottle of whiskey and got trashed.
Again.
1
Joey
Champagne fell from the air like rain, the shouts of my teammates as loud as a roaring thunderstorm. The floors shook from our jumping. The screams of men and women so damn jubilant I almost forgot. For a moment, I almost forgot I was there alone.
Arms were thrown over my shoulder. Alix, my best friend, yanked me to him and shoved a bottle of champagne in front of my face.
“Drink up, motherfucker! We’re champions!”
And I’d helped take the team there. A hat trick in game five of the playoffs where we won the series four to one. At home. The arena was still trembling either from fans refusing to leave or the ground shaking from the hoards making their way down the ramps to exit.
I grabbed the champagne, tugged down on the Stanley Cup Champion hat I’d already had tossed at me, and chugged.
Around the locker room, it was a haze of bubbly being shaken, confetti sticking to everyone’s uniforms, and wives. Girlfriends. Family members. My parents were there, my brothers and their wives and their kids. Lizzie was holding on to Garrett’s waist and Katie, her best friend and my brother Jude’s wife, was clinging to her arms, laughing so hard she was using Lizzie to hold herself up. In Jude’s arms was his baby daughter and my newest niece, Marissa, looking adorable and ridiculous with noise-canceling headphones over her ears that were twice the size of her tiny, seven-month-old head.
And there I was.
Chugging champagne, seething with jealousy at the guys who had their women with them.
It’d been seven months since I kicked Lenora out of our house. Five months since our divorce was finalized. Three months since she started posting pictures of her and Rhianna on her social media pages.
Three hours since she sent me a text, texts that started coming once we reached the playoffs.
Good luck tonight. I know you’ll do great. I’d love to talk when you can. Followed by a kissing emoji that’d made me want to smash my cell phone into my locker and then slash it to pieces beneath my skates.
Every time her name popped up on my screen my gut rolled. They weren’t personal. No questions asked. No hellos. A simple good luck text like we were still friends and they kept coming even though I hadn’t responded to any of them.
Partly because I couldn’t figure out why she’d start texting me now. Asking me to call her? For what fucking purpose?
Lenora never gave a shit about hockey. One of the things I loved most about her. Once I got over my own insecurities with her, there was no doubt she was with me for me, not the game or the excitement or the money. At first, she’d tried to understand the rules. She’d listen while I talked about the game or my team. She came to the occasional game, but outside my family who liked her, she never fell into the whole hockey wives and girlfriends’ traditions of watching games together. She’d had her own life, one she loved.
I’d always thought her independence and confidence was sexy as hell—until that life of hers ended up naked and riding my wife’s face in my own fucking bed. One I burned as soon as I was sober enough to do so without setting my backyard on fire. I’d slept on my couch for two weeks before my new bed was delivered.
Possibly—not my greatest moment in life but whatever.
Alix went to take the bottle out of my hand and I grabbed it back. “It’s mine now.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Damn straight.” He just shook his head and grabbed a bottle from Max, one of our defenseman, next to him.
As soon as he did, Max hip-checked him, shoving Alix into me so hard I almost stumbled on my skates.
“We’re getting fucked up tonight, boys!” Max shouted.
“Hell yeah!” Alix screamed right back, waving the champagne bottle in the air and drenching us further. He turned to me. “You in?”
How I wanted to. Badly. “Can’t.” I shook my head and pointed the tip of my champagne bottle toward my mom and dad.
John Taylor Sr. was surrounded by our coaching staff and veteran players. Everyone flocked to him. As a man who was now in the NHL Hall of Fame, I didn’t blame anyone for their interest in him. Hell, he was still one of the best men I’d ever known. “My parents insisted we all had dinner tonight first, win or lose. Johnny and Jason and their families head back home tomorrow.” Had we lost, we would have hit the road and headed back to Boston for game six. Johnny had planned to watch us there, since they lived in New York, but Jason and Tessa couldn’t handle all the traveling, not since we just learned she was pregnant. The Taylors procreated like bunnies. My parents had been thrilled. I’d left the room, burning with jealousy.
“Fuck. That sucks. Meet up later? Kane just got word Lavo’s shut down the terrace for us tonight and opened up the VIP section. We’re busing it there.”
“I’ll be there,” I assured him.
The last place I was going was home tonight. Not to an empty house since my parents and family had suites in a downtown hotel. I’d told them all they could stay with me but Dad didn’t want to interfere with my traveling and need to focus. Silly, since the entire team was required to stay in a hotel the night before games on lockdown for the same reason.
I might have been twenty-six years old, but I’d long since learned that arguing with my parents was useless.
Coach Vik shouted out and the room went silent as he praised us on our wins, congratulated us on an amazing season and told us to stay strong in the off-season. Then, like Coach tended to do, he shouted for us to stop acting like Neanderthals, get dressed and get the hell out.
An hour later, I was pulling up to the restaurant where my parents had reserved a private room, to find it packed.
Garrett and Lizzie were already there, along with his mom and sister who’d been staying with them for a few months. At the sight of Gabby, my chest did that strange tightening thing it’d started doing lately whenever I saw her. A few months back, she and I had spent an hour in a waiting room together where she’d lost her shit thinking of Lizzie losing the babies she was still currently carrying. I’d brought Garrett to the hospital the moment we arrived back from an away game after he’d received alarming texts when our plane landed. While he went to be with Lizzie, it’d been me Gabby had turned to.
“I can’t… what if she’s in trouble. And God, I barely know you. You don’t need this.”
“Hey.” Without thought, rhyme, or reason, I draped my arm over her shoulders and pulled her to my chest. “It’s okay. You’re allowed to be worried and if I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be.’’
She cried softly, knee bouncing as it continually brushed against mine, and I focused on the medicinal smell of the hospital instead of the minty scent of her shampoo.