Grumpy Puck

27. Michael

Chapter 27

Michael

“ Y ou’re retiring?” Dante takes his goalie mask off, blinding everyone with the paleness of his skin. “After all that hardcore practice?”

The rest of the team look just as shocked, and I can understand why. Lately, I have been a beast on the ice, but it was the only way to get my mind off Calliope. That, and I was doing Coach a favor by whipping the team into shape before departing.

“I’ve been increasingly focused on my foundation,” I explain. “And the next phase will require me to travel all over.”

“‘All over’ includes New York, right?” Dante asks with a wink. “After all, that’s where Tugev—I mean, your biggest donor—resides.”

“Exactly.” Dante’s Tugev jibe doesn’t land because I no longer see that overconfident prick as an enemy. It’s almost the opposite, in fact, thanks to a surprising number of things we’ve turned out to have in common.

“If I may.” Coach slaps me on my shoulder. “You’re going to be missed here, Michael.”

“It sure won’t be the same without you,” Isaac says, and I can tell what he means is, “It will be so much easier for me to act in my role as the captain without an asshole like you undermining me at every step.”

“Yeah,” several of the players say in unison.

“And you can’t leave until we have some drinks to wish you farewell,” Coach adds.

This idea is met with cheers all around.

Fuck. At some point these assholes stopped hating me as much as they did before, and I guess I can almost stand having them around. Hell, I might even have to visit this shithole from time to time—purely because they are all sentimental ninnies.

“Can I have a word with you in private?” Dante asks, looking more serious.

I skate away, and when we’re out of everyone’s earshot, he asks, “When in the Big Apple, are you planning on visiting a certain theater?”

I give him a look so vicious he manages to pale another shade, which I didn’t think possible, but here we are. “Go to the dick.”

“Fine. None of my business. I get it.”

He skates away, his shoulders stooped. Regardless, I want to give chase and punch his kidneys for putting the thought back into my head.

Not that it hasn’t been there for over a month now, like a broken record. No matter how hard I’ve worked on the ice or how much progress I’ve made with the foundation, treacherous “what if” thoughts have kept popping up, like a splinter from a cheap hockey stick.

What if I’d left that dinner more politely? What if I’d groveled a little more before she left?

Fuck… what if I called her now? Wrote to her? Visited her?

Those last three are the killers, and it’s taken all the willpower I possess to not give in to the temptation to reach out… and, lately, I’ve forgotten why I resist it so much.

Am I a fucking masochist?

My phone dings.

Oh, fuck. It’s the guy I hired from a freelancer site.

I get off the ice, perch on a bench, and debate if I should watch the video that I commissioned. A video that is likely going to make the “what ifs” infinitely worse.

Fuck. Who am I kidding? My fucking excuse for willpower is useless. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t have hired the guy in the first place.

So, I play the video of Calliope’s first show, and I’m glad that I’m sitting—and that I’m away from my knucklehead teammates. If my eyes are misty by the end of it—and they’re totally not—the last thing I want is to have to kill anyone for teasing me.

Calliope was magnificent. She and her rats. And it was the first show. It’s only going to get better from here. To be honest, I couldn’t imagine the rats could be that entertaining, but they were, especially as they played their little soccer game, which has gotten a lot more sophisticated since I last saw it performed.

Fuck. I totally am a masochist. All the pain I felt when she left—it’s back with a vengeance. As is the desperate desire to get in touch with her, or go after her, or?—

You know what? Fuck it. I can’t take this shit anymore.

I’m going to call her, and if she tells me to go to hell, so be it. I doubt I can feel shittier than I have this whole time without her.

Heart hammering viciously in my chest, I dial her number—and hear a phone ring near the entrance to the rink. The ringtone is The Hockey Song by Stompin’ Tom Connors.

Weird.

As I wait for her to pick up, that ringtone keeps blasting. My chest squeezes when I get her voicemail.

Fuck.

I hang up and call her again—only to hear that same ring tone right behind me.

No.

Can’t be.

Pushing to my feet, I turn around and frown.

The sound is coming from a person wearing some other team’s mascot suit—or at least I think that’s what it is. Then again, which team has a yellow bird for a mascot? It’s got a giant head, enormous eyes, and clownish orange feet.

But wait.

On the shoulder of the bird… is that a rat?

“Calliope?” I exclaim.

The reply from the bird person is muffled, so I can’t be sure it’s her, but I step forward anyway.

The yellow bird lifts its arms and pulls off the giant head, revealing Calliope’s beautiful face.

I gape at her. Is this a dream? “I was just calling you.” I display my phone to her, like a moron.

“I saw,” she says, beaming. “But I didn’t want to spoil this.” She proudly displays the mascot’s head.

“ This being what?” I manage to ask—even though what I really want is to sweep her into my arms and kiss the crap out of her.

Calliope frowns. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“No?” I look at Wolfgang, hoping he can help me out, but all I get back in reply is a ratty chirp.

“I’m a canary,” she says. “As in, a bird .”

“Right…” I think I even recognize this particular bird now. It was in a cartoon, and there was a cat that wanted to?—

“I’m your little bird,” she says gruffly. “And you like birds. So, as my grand gesture, I used my old theme park connections to dress up like Tweety, who is the quintessential ‘little bird.’”

Oh. “This is a grand gesture?” My heartbeat picks up. “As in… you want me back?”

She nods solemnly. “If you want me. If you forgive me.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m so sorry about the way I left. I was so sure you had run from my family when you left that dinner, and even after I found out you hadn’t, I just couldn’t shift gears fast enough. All my exes had dumped me after meeting my family, and I was so sure you’d do the same that I couldn’t entirely believe the truth when you told me.”

“Calliope, I loved your fam?—”

“No, listen.” She sucks in another breath. “I realized that it’s not really my family I was afraid you’d find too weird. Just like how, now that I think about it, my exes didn’t dump me because of them. I mean, Voldemort petting her snake during dinner might’ve been the last straw, but the reality is, they dumped me because of me . Because I’m the weird one. I’m probably the Klaunbut-ist Klaunbut of us all, with my rats and my hair and?—"

I capture her hand in mine. “I love your rats. And your hair. And all your wonderfully weird relatives.” I mean, what the fuck is she smoking? She and her entire clan are awesome. Gruffly, I say, “And I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have left that very important dinner with your family as abruptly as I did. If?—”

“Stop.” She squeezes my hand. “You don’t need to say more.”

“In that case…” I stop talking and kiss her fiercely, desperate to make up for all the time we were apart.

There are annoying cat calls in the distance, and even clapping.

Fuck. I forgot about my asshole teammates.

Calliope pulls away, glances at the ice, and blushes.

“Leave us!” I roar. “Or suffer the consequences.”

To my shock, they do leave, but they laugh among themselves as they go, probably at our expense.

“Sorry about them,” I say sheepishly. “Where were we?”

She moistens her pink, kiss-swollen lips. “I think we’re the ones who should’ve left, not them… so we can go find a bed.”

And just like that, I’m harder than I’ve ever been in my life. But… “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I should have said that night. Something that might mess things up again, but if?—”

“What is it?” She drops Tweety’s head onto the floor.

This is it. I’m getting a second chance at the biggest “what if” that has been tormenting me all this time.

I cradle Calliope’s face in my palms. “I love you, ptichka .” I stare deeply into her eyes. “I started falling for you when you took off that bear’s head, and I saw your green eyes and pink hair for the first time. Then I fell a little deeper when you took off the gloves, and I saw your sparkly nails. And deeper yet when I saw the rat on?—”

“Can I reply already?” she says with mock grumpiness, but her eyes gleam with happiness. At least, I hope that’s what I see.

I nod.

“I love you too,” she says breathlessly. “You’re the drake to my duck and the dove to my pigeon.”

Is my chest glowing? Because that’s what this feels like. “You know, ducks are not the most romantic birds to use in your declaration of love,” I can’t help but point out. “They don’t mate for life, and they have very aggressive sex.” Not to mention an even less romantic factoid: drake dicks are shaped like corkscrews. “Oh, and a dove is not a female pigeon or vice versa, which you seemed to imply. They’re technically the same bird, but with slight chromosomal differences.”

She rolls her eyes. “I love you despite what you just said. I love you as if I were…” She pauses, searching for words. “As if I were the puck to your stick.”

And in response to that brilliant analogy, I kiss her again.