Page 25 of Best Things in Life

Fuck him. He doesn’t know how this feels. And if there’s a version of love that’s worse than this, and by worse, I mean stronger and deeper, then I want no fucking part of it. Because it hurts like a thousand hells.

“Coach,” I say, dipping my head. He doesn’t bother smiling, thinning his mouth by way of acknowledgment.

“Garino.”

“I’m leaving.”

“Congratulations.” He frowns, but it’s a bored frown, not an irritated one. I snort.

“Nice talking to you,” I say, and I think I see a small quirk of his mouth that could be a smile, but it’s probably a nervous tic. I turn and head for the door, pushing it open to the chill autumn night and breathing in the soul-saving air scented with the heady mixture of pine and leaves and a special ingredient only an elite university can add. I swear I can smell success.

I lean against a column on the front portico and slip out my phone to text Summer that I’m outside waiting for her whenever she’s ready. It doesn’t take long for her to appear with her glam cape thrown over her elegant little black dress as if she’s not sure she’s an adolescent or an adult. Kind of like I feel.

Maybe it’s how we all feel here in the bubble of college life, protected on all sides from the encroachment of the outside world with our own rules and constructs—like a fucking homecoming ball.

“You’re drunk,” she says. “I’ll drive.”

Chapter 10

NATE

It’s early Monday morning and the official start of hockey practice. The team starts slow, but I’m on fire. It took me all day yesterday, sleeping late, hydrating, and then running the track until I sweated the last of the whiskey out of me. Coach blows the whistle after two hours and there’s not a guy on the ice who isn’t breathing through his wide-open mouth, some bent over and no one ready to talk as we skate to the boards and through the door. As captain this year, I wait until everyone else leaves the ice first before I step off the ice and onto the rubber.

There are a half dozen guys in suits and I’m not sure which are agents and which are NHL scouts, but does it matter? A zing of excitement shoots enough adrenaline through my system to carry me with confidence as I meet Coach outside the locker room door.

“There’s a guy here from the West Coast doing a sweep of the hockey schools up here in the Northeast. Says he wants to talk to you.”

I nod. “Which team?”

Coach doesn’t answer me, instead lifts his chin in the direction of a sharply dressed man who has to be from LA.

“Don’t waste time showering,” Coach advises, so I lean my stick against the wall and walk over to the guy, lumbering in my massive goalie pads, carrying my helmet and facemask under my arms, my hair dripping.

“Nate Garino, I hope you have a few minutes to talk,” he says. He goes on to introduce himself and my guess was close. He’s from San Jose, not LA. I listen to him rattle on about their program, asking me questions about where I want to play and my expectations. Thinking long and hard, I know what I need to tell him.

Attracting the interest of an NHL team is something that should never be taken for granted or lightly. Something I’ve been dreaming about all my life, something I’ve worked hard for the past three years here and so many years before that, to get the interest of a legit NHL scout. And yet, I can’t lie to him or myself.

“San Jose is a great organization and sounds like an awesome place to live, but truthfully, I think I’m an East Coast kind of guy.” He nods with understanding and warns that I might change my mind, going on about the marvels of travel by private jets shrinking the country.

Though I continue to listen politely, my attention shifts when I see Sarina show up standing near the locker room, which is fucking strange at this early hour.

So I risk being rude and look more closely. Something’s not right. She’s wearing sunglasses and lifts them to dab at her eyes with a tissue. Her hair is wild and her face and her body language tell me she’s more upset than I’ve ever seen her. If she notices me watching her, I can’t tell. She looks in Bigsby’s direction and it’s obvious she’s waiting for him. I’m hardly listening to the man from San Jose now and trying mightily to stay in place and act like a professional. This is my career and I can’t blow it by ditching this guy and running to Sarina’s side.

That would set up the wrong kind of reputation, not the kind of look I want. Because in this business everything you say and do gets out. Even if I don’t have an interest in playing for San Jose, Coach has always hammered the point home that we need to assume they all talk to each other and that they all know everything you say. So choose your words carefully.

I glance over at Bigs. He’s talking to a serious-looking dude I assume is also a scout. There are a couple of suits talking to Coach now too.

When I finally break away from San Jose guy with a handshake, I head in the direction of the locker room, but Bigs beats me to it and has Sarina in his arms, pulled off to the side.

And she’s sobbing. What the fuck?

My heart drops to my belly like a kettlebell and I stop for a flicker, almost stumble with the need to go to her, to find out what’s wrong and, fucking shit, to console her, to wrap her in my arms until she stops crying. Like the time I consoled her when her Zia Rosaria—great aunt Rose—had a stroke, which thank fuck turned out to be minor.

But Bigs gets to console her now and I watch for a split second. Then I push inside the locker room, sick with the need to know what’s making her so miserable, to know what’s wrong with her. My mind explodes with the possibilities and I rip the shirt over my head as the horrible prospects spin in my head like a ball in a roulette wheel. Then it all stops. Fuck.

Someone’s died. Certainty knocks the breath from me. It’s the only reason she’d be crying that way. I reach into my locker and grab my phone dialing my mother’s number. She’ll know what’s going on.

“It’s Rosaria,” she says without me asking.