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Jake grins. “It was sarcasm, dude. Andi and Jesse are sickeningly happy. They’re so happy it’s disgusting.”
“Oh,” Maddox mouths silently. He lifts his fingers and pretends to zip his lips.
“I get it,” I say, cutting in. “You’re all acting like I wasn’t going to handle this. I made a plan after the conference championship, okay? I’ve got a plan. A great plan.”
“You have no plan,” Liam says, grinning. “Your plan was to tell her you never slept with those women, wasn’t it?”
I clench my jaw. “No…” I say slowly. I wasn’t planning on telling everybody this. Not yet. But I can tell they don’t realize how far I’ve already come on my own. They have no idea what I’m planning, and they’re not going to get off my ass unless I bring them in on it. Maybe they don’t need to know the real big surprise, but I can at least give them the general gist of it.
I take a deep breath, meet all of their eyes, one by one, and then I start talking.
36
MIA
I’m whisking eggs in the kitchen of Taste by myself. We’re temporarily running a modified schedule and only open three days a week until the Stanley Cup Finals are over. With the combination of Zander leaving and me trying to take over his duties, and Nolan and Paisley both being away every few days for games, it just made sense.
I’ve got music playing on the speakers in the restaurant, but I go to my phone and quickly tap “skip” when a sad, sappy song starts.
I’m not exactly in an emotional state for sad and sappy songs right now. I’m feeling entirely too sorry for myself. I’m trying to channel all kinds of “this is everything I’ve ever wanted” energy. I'm the head chef of Taste now. I’m exactly where I dreamed I’d be when I started culinary school three years ago.
It’s everything I wanted. It was supposed to be everything I wanted.
I sigh, setting down the bowl of whipped eggs and hanging my head over the counter. I glance at my checklist for the recipe and walk to the fridge, grab a few ingredients, and set them on the prep table. My hands move mechanically while my brain picks over everything that has been happening the last few days.
Last night, Paisley joined me to wish Zander well and drop him off at the airport for his flight to New York. This morning, she joined Andi and Caroline on a flight back to catch game four of the Stanley Cup series. The guys lost the first match, but they’ve won the last two.
I let my friends talk me into going to the first match last week. It seemed like the Vandals were doing fine, then one of the camera operators spotted all of us in the stands. They kept cutting to our group, and I think Nolan noticed it on the screens. I think he noticed me.
After that, he started giving up goals left and right. I felt terrible when I imagined it might have been my fault. They ended up losing the game by one goal, and Nolan stormed off the ice, slamming his helmet.
Even though a guilty, selfish part of me felt relieved to see that I at least meant something to him, I decided to stay home for the rest of the games. I know how much the Stanley Cup means to the guys, and I don’t want to be the reason any of them can’t focus.
So I’m here, even though we’re closed tomorrow and all this prep could easily wait for another time. I look at the eggs I whipped and realize I screwed them up. I over whipped them, so I groan in frustration and toss the bowl in the sink. I scoop up the ingredients, take them back into the fridge, and walk out to the dining room. I sit in a random booth and pull out my phone, loading up the broadcast of the game.
The camera is following Jesse and Jake as they bump elbows, nodding with grim determination after scoring a goal. The replay shows Jesse passing the puck to Jake between an opposing player’s skates just before Jake slaps it in for a goal.
The score is four to two. The Vandals are up.
I could just curl up here in the booth and watch the game, but decide I could also walk to Caroline’s bed and breakfast. It might feel less depressing to watch with company, even though I know Caroline’s at the game. Grams and Edgar are running the place for her, and I did promise to check on them and make sure they weren’t burning the place down.
I spend a few minutes cleaning up my mess in the back, lock up the restaurant, and throw on my coat and scarf.
The bed and breakfast is getting busier every day because we’re getting closer to the holidays. Frosty Harbor is a popular Christmas vacation destination, after all. People come from all over for our famous “Frostival” celebration we have every year for the holidays. The tradition has an even more fond place in my heart after the way Jesse and Andi’s romance started during it three years ago.
I’m not surprised when I find a couple families gathered in the lobby. Grams has the game on the TV. I spot her sitting in the middle of the crowd, fists balled as she curses. It looks like Nolan just gave up a goal.
I walk slowly in. Nobody notices me, at first. Then Grams turns and sees me. “Hey, asshole, get up.” Grams gives the little boy sitting beside her a light shove and gestures for him to move. He looks up at her, confused. The kid’s dad is about to say something so I quickly lean in.
“Sorry,” I say. “My grandma had a stroke. And she has dementia. Even before all of that, she was generally unpleasant and rude, though.” I gesture to the kid and point back to where he was sitting. “Please ignore her.”
The kid sheepishly takes his seat as I jerk my thumb for Grams to get up and stop tormenting Caroline’s guests.
She glares, but hops up from the couch and comes to stand with me a little ways back from the couch.
“Bullshit I have dementia,” she says. “I do wonder if I have had a stroke, though,” she adds, tapping her chin in thought. “Once, I was on the loo and straining a little too hard. I blacked out for a minute or so. Came back to in the living room. Just like that,” she snaps her fingers. “But I’m still sharp as a whistle.”
“I’ve never seen a sharp whistle,” I say. “Most of them are rounded and plastic.”
