“A bag of Red Vines.” He thought for a moment and added, “I guess I better /spess I bhave some Tic Tacs.”
Yes, because God forbid his breath wasn’t minty.
By the time Mark made it home, his bones throbbed and his muscles ached. It took him only a few minutes to get rid of his little assistant. Most likely because she seemed more than happy to go. With any luck, she wouldn’t return. If the look on her face when she’d come back from buying condoms was any indication, she was probably looking up help wanted ads on Craigslist and calling for interviews at that very moment. Sending her into Bartell had been damn funny. A flash of pure brilliance and quick thinking on the fly.
Mark downed six Vicodin straight from the bottle, grabbed his bag of Red Vines, and headed for what the Realtor had called the leisure room at the back of the house. He picked up the remote to the sixty-inch flat screen and sat in a big leather chaise that Chrissy had found somewhere. Most of the other furniture she’d bought was long gone, but he’d kept the chaise because it fit his body and was comfortable.
With his thumb on the remote button, he flipped through the channels without really paying attention. He’d had a doctor’s appointment, haircut, and hour-long interview. It wasn’t even three yet, but he was exhausted. Before the accident, he used to run five miles and work out with weights, all before hitting the ice for practice. He was thirty-eight years old but he felt like he was seventy-eight.
Dr. Phil flashed across the screen and he paused to watch the good doctor yell at some guy for yelling at his wife. He tore open the bag of licorice and pulled out a few. As far back as he could remember, he’d always loved red licorice. It reminded him of the Sunday matinees at the Heights Theater in Minneapolis. His grandmother had been a huge fan of the movies and had bribed him with Red Vines and root beer. Even though it was something he’d never admit out loud, he’d seen many a chick flick in the late seventies and early eighties. Everything from Kramer vs. Kramer to Sixteen Candles. He and his gran had always gone to the Sunday matinees because he’d usually had hockey games on Saturday, and also there was less of a chance that one of his friends would see him walking into a sappy movie on Sunday. His dad had usually been working second and third jobs to support him and his grandmother and to make sure Mark had the best hockey skates and equipment. One of the best days of Mark’s life was the day he signed his first multimillion-dollar contract and set up his dad so the old man could retire.
Mark took a bite of his licorice and chewed. He’d never known his mother. She’d run off before his third birthday and had died a few years later in some car accident thousands of miles away in Florida. He had a vague memory of her, more faded than the few cards she’d sent. She’d write to tell him that she loved him more than anything, but he hadn’t been fooled. She’d loved drugs more than him. Her husband and her son hadn’t been enough for her, and she’d chosen crack cocaine over her family and even over her life, which was one of the reasons he’d never been tempted to do drugs.
Until now. Not that he was addicted. Not yet, but he certainly had a clearer understanding of how easily it could happen. Of how drugs took away the pain and made life tolerable. Of how easy it would be to slip over the edge and become a full-blown addict. But he wasn’t there yet.
He’d been fighting pai He fightin all day, and as the Vicodin kicked in, he felt his muscles ease. He relaxed and thought of the photo in the sports section his little assistant had told him about. It sounded like the guys were having a fine old time, and if he’d won the cup with them, he probably would have been there. But he hadn’t and he didn’t want to drink from the cup and celebrate as if he had. And giving him a day with the cup anyway felt like pity.
Sure, there had been several guys he knew who hadn’t played in the cup finals for one reason or another and had still celebrated. Fine. Good for them. Mark just didn’t feel the same way. For him, looking and touching and drinking from the cup was a big, shiny reminder of everything he’d lost. Maybe someday he could get past the bitterness, but not today. Tomorrow didn’t look good either.
The reporter from Sports Illustrated had asked him his plans for the future. He’d told her that he was just taking life one day at a time. Which was true. What he hadn’t mentioned was that he didn’t see a future. His life was a big blank nothing.
Before the accident, he’d thought of his retirement. Of course he had. He had enough money so that he didn’t have to work for the rest of his life, but he hadn’t planned on doing nothing. He’d planned on getting hired as an offensive coach somewhere. It was what he knew. Seeing plays in his head before they happened was what he’d been good at. Finding lanes through traffic and scoring goals had been a talent that had made him one of the top ten goal scorers for the past six years and was something he’d helped teach the guys on his team. But to coach offense, or defense for that matter, the coach had to skate. There was no way around it, but Mark could hardly walk a hundred feet without pain.
He ate a few pieces of licorice and tossed the bag on the table next to the chaise. As a Burger King commercial came on the air, Mark closed his eyes, and before Dr. Phil returned, he drifted off into a peaceful, drug-induced nap, the remote still in one hand. As with most of his dreams, he was back at the Key Arena, fighting it out in the corners. As always, he heard the roar of the crowd, the slap of graphite sticks on ice, and the shh of razor-sharp blades. He could smell sweat and leather and the unique scent of the ice. The cold breeze brushed his cheeks and neck as thousands of pairs of eyes watched from the seats. The anticipation and excitement in their faces were a blur as he skated past. Adrenaline bit the back of his throat as his heart and legs pounded down ice. He glanced at the puck in the curve of his stick, and when he looked back up, he saw her. A clear face in a blurry sea. Her big blue eyes simply looked back at him. The light bounced off her two-toned hair. He turned his skates to the side and stopped. Everything around him fell away as he continued to stare at her though the Plexiglas.
“Why are you here?” he asked, beyond annoyed that she’d shown up and disrupted the game.
She smiled—the full-lipped tilt of her mouth that he recognized after one day of being around her—but she didn’t answer. He skated closer to the wall and his stick dropped from his hands. “What do you want?”
“To give you what you need.”
There were so many things he needed. So many. Starting with the need to feel something other than constant nagging pain and the void in his life.
“Lu Keem">cky you,” she whispered.
Mark’s eyes flew open and he gasped for breath. He sat up too fast, and the remote fell to the floor. His head spun as he glanced at the clock on the bottom left of his television screen. He’d been asleep for an hour. Jesus, she’d intruded in his life. Now she’d infiltrated his dreams. Of all the faceless people in his dreams, why was her face clear?
He reached down and grabbed his cane resting on the floor. Thank God the dream hadn’t been sexual. He didn’t even want to think about getting it up for his assistant. Not even in a dream.
The splint on his hand itched, and he tore it off. Tossing the Velcro and aluminum aside, he slowly stood and made his way from the room. Why her? It wasn’t that the little assistant wasn’t cute. She was plenty cute, and God knew she had a body that could stop traffic, but she was just so damn annoying. The rubber tip of his cane thumped across the stone floor and his flip-flops slapped the heels of his feet. Rested and his pain somewhat dulled, he walked with relative ease.
In the kitchen, the Bartell sack with the condoms, KY, and vibrating ring lay atop the granite island. He didn’t know what the hell he was going to do with that stuff. It wasn’t like he was going to use it anytime soon. He opened a drawer and shoved it inside.
He didn’t know what he was going to do with his assistant either. Too bad he couldn’t shove her in a drawer and lock her inside. He thought of her driving his new Mercedes like she owned the road. He thought of her face when she’d first slid into the leather driver’s seat. She’d looked like she’d been about to orgasm. Under different circumstances, he might have pulled her into his lap. Under different circumstances, he might have thought the way she’d caressed his leather was about the hottest thing he’d ever seen. Under current circumstances, it had been just one more thing to irritate him.
More than likely, the woman would be back tomorrow. His optimism of a while ago faded. For reasons that he couldn’t begin to understand, she seemed to actually want to be his assistant. Maybe she was a little off in the head. No, she was definitely off in the head because why else would she buy condoms and KY when she clearly didn’t want to?
Chelsea would put up with a lot for ten thousand dollars. “He made me buy him condoms,” she told the back of her sister’s dark head. “And warming KY.”
Bo looked over her shoulder and reached for a half gallon of milk. “Well, he’s a hockey player,” she said, as if that explained and excused it. “And he always did have a lot of different girlfriends. At least he’s using protection.”
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“And a vibrating ring.”
“What’s that?”
“A cock ring that vibrates.”