It was right.
They chatted for a while, and Eli thought that Piper was skirting the thin line between friendly and flirty, a familiar dance. He listened to her stories about being a pharmacist, wondering if he was interested. He should be. How refreshing, the idea of spending time with a beautiful, intelligent, funny woman who didn’t loathe the idea of being attracted to him.
It would be good for him—a hard reset. Rue had messed up his parameters, but someone else might bring him back to factory default. Someone with whom a simple conversation wouldn’t be a land mine. Someone who wouldn’t look at him like he’d turned into a balloon animal when he asked for a date, who saw him as more than a quick fuck. At the very least, racquetball was on the table.
Did Rue play any sports? Basketball or volleyball, maybe, given her height. She’d be good at it, he was sure. She seemed coordinated, and her body was strong. He’d felt the muscles tense under the pliant flesh of her thighs, and just that little moment had been more of a turn-on than some of the seriously dirty stuff he’d been up to in the past decade.
“You guys ready?” Hark asked from his side of the court, and Eli had his answer. He was not interested in Piper. Not if while she told him about her last Pacific Northwest road trip, all he could do was think wistfully about having his head between another woman’s legs.
“That was unexpected,” Hark told him in the parking lot after more racquetball, after Eli pleaded a previous commitment when invited out for dinner, after a shower spent contemplating the severe idiocy of being hung up on Rue Siebert.
“Yeah. Really good players.”
“I meant, the part where you debuted your monastic endeavors.”
“Just tired is all.” Historically, Eli had been the one who got around. Girlfriends, friends, people he barely knew. Dates, relationships, hookups. Hark . . . even before Minami, his sex life had been more circumspect. They hadn’t discussed it much after, because there was little to talk about.
“Right. Nothing to do with Dr. Rue Siebert, then?”
Sometimes Hark was insufferable. “Nothing at all,” Eli lied. “Did you like . . . ?”
“Emily.”
“Did you like Emily?”
“She’s pretty fantastic. Gave me her number,” Hark said quietly.
A beat. “Are you going to use it?”
He didn’t reply, but they both knew the answer.
The last transcript of a three-part witness deposition was dropped on Eli’s desk that Friday night. “In case you’re in search of some light bedtime reading,” Minami told him.
When he looked up, her smile was mischievous.
“Is it . . . ?”
She nodded. “The lawyers are still combing through it. They refuse to commit on whether the depo gives us reason enough to send a notice of default and acceleration, but they have no doubt that something weird is going on. At the very least, we’ll be able to go to court and ask for more discovery.”
“Thank fuck.”
“I know. Let’s get dinner. To celebrate,” Minami offered. “Just the two of us, no Sul or Hark. I’m tired of my stupid husband and your stupid husband getting in the way of our affair.”
Eli checked his watch and got to his feet. “Can’t. Meeting Dave.”
“Right, I forgot. We’re still on for tomorrow, though? All four of us.”
“Sure.” He gathered his stuff, and couldn’t help chuckling when she began chanting, “He was a skater boy, he said, ‘See you later, boy.’ ”
“C’mon.”
“His friends weren’t good enough for him.”
“It’s for a noble cause.”
“Now he’s a hockey star, driving off in his car.”
“You’re the worst,” he told her lovingly as he slipped out of the room.
The face of Dave Lenchantin was smile-wrinkled and sun-weathered—somewhat surprising, for a man who’d lived two-thirds of his life inside an ice rink. He immediately spotted Eli, and quickly wrapped up a conversation to weave through the crowd and greet him.
The yearly fundraiser was an informal occasion, not unlike the carnival Eli’s middle school had organized when the district refused to allocate funds for graphing calculators. There were bake sales, crafts stations, portrait artists, temporary tattoos, ring tossing, and even a dunk tank—in which, Eli was amused to see, sat a terrified Alec, Dave’s partner. The event was a great moneymaker for the charity initiatives sponsored by the rink. “Dr. Killgore,” Dave said, reaching up to hug Eli. They’d first met when Eli was in his early teens, but the man had never been less than half a foot shorter than him.
“I never did get that doctorate, Coach.” Being reminded of that part of his life never got easier. “I’ll take mister, though.”
“I ain’t calling you mister, Killgore. Not after that time you bent down to pick up a cracker, threw out your back, and sat out three games.”
“Lies.”
“Hell no.”
“It was an Oreo.”
“Well, I hope it was worth your dignity.” Dave smiled, genuinely happy. “Thank you for the generous donation, Killgore.”
Eli shook his head. “Thank you for . . .” Training me for years, even when I was a dumbass teenager who thought he was hot shit and knew better than anyone around him. For believing in me. For calling over talent scouts. For providing me the structure I needed and didn’t even know it. For being there when Maya and I were alone. For my entire fucking life, really. “Making me do bare-knuckle push-ups on the ice that time I showed up wasted to practice, even though it was Rivera’s fault for spiking the Gatorade.”
“It was my pleasure, son.”
“I just bet.” Eli wasn’t sure why he’d responded so well to Dave’s brand of discipline, especially when the relationship with his own parents had always been so strained. He’d been a rebellious, defiant child. One of Eli’s teachers suggested that a physically demanding extracurricular activity might soak up the hostility coursing through him, and he’d been forcibly enrolled in every team sport the greater Austin area had to offer. Only hockey—and Dave—had stuck.
“How’s Maya doing?” Dave asked. “I think I saw her around a couple weeks ago?”
“Visiting Alec, probably. She’s staying with a friend, or she’d be here with me.” When Eli had become the sole caretaker of his eleven-year-old sister, his financial situation had been disastrous. He’d had several minimum-wage jobs on top of debt and a mortgage, which meant long hours and no money left for childcare. Leaving a clearly bereaved, obviously confused, extremely angry child home alone had been out of the question, but Dave had offered Maya a spot on Alec’s figure skating training team—which, to Eli’s surprise, she’d accepted. Access to a rink, let alone a trainer, would have been cost prohibitive, but Dave had covered most expenses—thanks to fundraisers like this one. Maya had never been more than an amateur skater. Nonetheless, the sport had grounded her.
“You two should come over for dinner soon.”
“Just name the night.” Eli smiled. “But let’s order out.”
“You damn princess. It was one time. And how is ketchup on mac and cheese not a good idea? I was just tellin’ Rue that Alec and I have been taking these couples cooking classes—”