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“Tessie.” I say, “my cat.” I’d sent him that selfie weeks ago. Before his second trip here. Before my dad’s surgery.
“He lives alone though,” Vic says as if I haven’t spoken, “So it might not matter where he keeps the photo. He could still get freaky with it. The frame is a bit of a fancy touch, though.”
I try not to roll my eyes at Vic, but it’s a near miss.
“He told you about a photo of me?”
“Nah babe. I saw it at his apartment.” He grins for a moment, then drops his chin to his chest and shakes his head. “Don’t tell Erik I said that. He has a mean right cross.”
“I shouldn’t tell him I know about the picture?”
“The ‘babe’ babe.”
Right.
“I doubt he’d hit you over that,” I say.
Vic must have visited Erik during their game in Chicago. They’d played the night before, rounding out a week on the road. The team must have flown straight home after the final buzzer if Vic’s here on my couch. That shouldn’t surprise me. Of course, they had to come home fast. They have a home game tomorrow. A red-eye flight means that they can get in some practice before facing off against Toronto, and the team doesn’t need to shell out for a hotel room, but the guys must be beat. Vic yawns, proving my point, and tries to cover it with a strangled cough.
“He’s extremely possessive of you. He warned me off your roommate.”
“I’m going to warn you off my roommate.” I glare at him, but there’s no heat to it.
“I think I’m offended,” Vic says with a smile. “Jen loves me.”
“Yeah, like people love puppies until they chew up their furniture and shit in their shoes.”
“People love puppies because they’re adorable.” He said with mock outrage.
“Why is your brother warning you off my friends?” I ask.
Vic’s grin is bright as he turns it on me, and I know—I just know—that I’ve walked right into a trap.
“Because,” he draws the word out like a ringleader in a circus trying to drum up the crowd’s excitement for what’s coming next. “He doesn’t want me to do something stupid and fuck things up for the two of you.”
That’s a sweet thought, but Jen and I don’t interfere in each other's love lives. I’m pretty sure she’s not into the Arctic forward, but I’ve been wrong before. Either way, I wouldn’t let it affect our friendship or our living situation. If Vic hurts her, I’ll hurt him, but that won’t change anything. I tell Vic the same, but when I threaten him with bodily harm, he throws his head back and cackles.
“Quinn, my darling, dense, almost-sister. He’s not worried about me messing up you and Jen. He’s worried I’ll mess up things for you and him. That if I do something awful, which I take offense to by the way, that it could cause an issue for you and Erik.”
“That’s fucking dumb.” The words are out of my mouth before I can swallow them back, and Vic raises an eyebrow as he watches me. He isn’t as relaxed as he’s pretending to be. I just can’t figure out why. “Erik and I agreed to be something. Boyfriend-girlfriend. Long distance. I don’t know exactly, but I do know I wouldn’t hold him responsible for something someone else does. Jen’s an adult. You’re an adult. Your decisions are not my problem and I won’t let go of someone I love because other people in our lives have the potential to be idiots.”
“Good,” Vic says and I frown at him.
“Good?”
So he wants my blessing to date Jen? It’s not mine he needs, but that’s okay. It’s the Cheshire Cat grin that tells me I’m way off base, that I’ve missed something major.
“I’m going to tell you something about Erik, something he probably assumed wasn’t a big deal. You need to know this one tiny piece of information and then what you choose to do with that information is up to you. Okay?”
I nodded, certain that I’m going to regret the direction this conversation is about to take. Anything I learn about Erik, I want to learn from him, but Vic’s brows furrow, he’s bouncing his legs on the balls of his feet, and I think he might vibrate off the couch if he doesn’t get this out.
“Do you know the standard treatment plan for localized forms of osteosarcoma?”
“Chemo and surgery,” I say. I’d googled everything I could about Erik’s type of cancer the minute I’d recovered from the shock. I’d done the same for my dad months ago.
Vic steeples his fingers. “Limb salvage surgery involves removing the tumor and infected portion of bone and replacing it with a metal graft. Erik did almost three months of chemo before his first surgery.”
“It didn’t work,” I say, thinking of the metal joint of Erik’s prosthetic ankle. How he must have gotten his hopes up thinking he’d be back on the ice soon, only to come out of surgery down a limb.
