“What do you mean?”
“It’s just in New York—and the job at the magazine—everything is high pressure, deadline oriented, and I always moved through life at a full-on sprint. But here…it’s just not like that.”
“You don’t sound enthused about what you’re doing,” I observe.
“It’s not just that,” she says softly. “I mean, yeah…not what I want to do. It’s just…the work’s not all that challenging, so I’m really glad I’m getting this opportunity in merchandising.”
I take a moment to replenish some lotion in my hands, and I scoot to straddle the backs of her thighs so I can work on her lower back. Brooke gives a tiny groan of satisfaction, her closed eyes scrunching tighter for a moment when I hit a tight muscle. I ease up on my pressure and her face relaxes again.
She doesn’t say anything more about the job, but I am incredibly curious about something else, because Brooke told me day before yesterday that she’d go back to New York if she could.
“How’s your dad doing?” I ask her.
Her eyes pop open and her head lifts from her arms. She twists her neck slightly to look back at me in question.
I shrug. “It’s just…if your dad’s doing good, and we’re going to be orchestrating our breakup in a few weeks, maybe you could get your old job back in New York? You could even use the breakup as sort of an excuse to want some distance.”
Brooke just stares at me, her face devoid of any expression. I hold her gaze, still moving my hands across her lower back.
Finally, she lays her head back down and slowly shuts her eyes as she answers, “He’s actually doing quite well. I think training camp sort of got him back on track. New team. New home. It’s the fresh start I think he needed to break away from the darkness he’d sunk into after my mom died.”
“What was her name?” I ask.
Another slight smile comes to Brooke’s mouth speaking of not just a child’s love she had for her mother, but a true fondness for the woman herself. “Margaret,” she murmurs. “But everyone called her Margie.”
“I can tell by the tone in your voice that she was an amazing woman,” I say.
“If you’d known her,” Brooke says in almost a whisper, “you’d understand immediately why my dad was so broken when she died.”
“You were broken too.” I’m not sure why I just said that, but Brooke never talks about her pain. Yet I know she loved her mother as much as her father did.
At first she doesn’t say anything and I regret making this turn heavy, but I find myself really wanting to know the answers too. Brooke sucks in a little bit of air and breathes it out slowly. Her eyes open and she stares across the room almost blankly. “I broke quietly and unobtrusively.”
I immediately draw the conclusion. “So your dad wouldn’t see it. You didn’t want the extra burden on him.”
Once again Brooke twists her neck to look at me and smiles. “My dad has been a source of strength for our family for my entire life. The provider and the protector. If for one moment in my life I could be his strength, then I was going to do it despite how I was feeling inside.”
My hands stop moving on her body as we hold our eyes locked on to each other. Profound respect wells up inside of me for this slip of a girl who could be such a rock at times. I wonder how tired Brooke must have been in those months following her mom’s death, as she became the source of her dad’s strength. As she kept a spine of steel and her wounds inside.
“Lay your head back down,” I murmur as I nod toward her arms crossed beneath her face.
She only blinks once, but complies, immediately closing her eyes as I resume the back rub. I talk to her about stupid shit, telling her a few stories about training camp this week. Stories that aren’t overly interesting and sometimes are a bit technical and boring. She’s not into hockey on a deep level, so it’s the perfect type of information to spout to her right now. I continue to rub her back, going softer and softer in my ministrations, keeping my voice low and level as I tell her about the drills we did last week.
Forecheck drills.
D-zone coverage.
Wall work.
Puck protection.
It takes no time at all before Brooke is breathing deeply, sound asleep as I’d intended.
I slide off the bed and head into the bathroom, where I wash my hands. I snag Brooke’s toothbrush and don’t give a second thought to using it, brushing my teeth quickly with her mint-flavored toothpaste.
Flipping out lights as I make my way back to the bed, I note there’s going to be no way to get her under the covers without waking her up. So I strip down to my briefs and grab the comforter off the other bed.