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I might have apologized, but she’d been pretty mean there at the end.
BTW, who says BTW?
Fine. We were both here to work. Nothing more, nothing less.
I started skating again and couldn’t help but admire her transitions. I kept waiting for her to make her way onto center ice so she could start working on jumps and spins before her legs got too tired.
But she just kept building speed along the boards.
To say that I was a competitor was an understatement. They called meThe Heart,surely because of my last name and its French translation, but I’d earned that nickname too.
I didn’t quit. Ever.
There was no game out of reach. No score deficit I wouldn’t lead my team to overcome. I played with every ounce of my soul from the start of the game until the final buzzer, and I never let up.
Apparently, today was no exception.
I skated harder in her direction until I caught up to her, sped past her and then turned and skated backwards so I was facing her.
“You’re fast, but not that fast,” I said with a smile.
Her eyes narrowed again, and her cheeks, already flushed and covered in a smattering of freckles, went beet red. From anger or effort, I wasn’t sure.
“You hockey players are all alike.”
“What makes you think I play hockey?” I asked, though my size and my skates gave it away.
“Years of observation at the zoo,” she said.
Oh! As far as hockey player insults went, that wasn’t bad. “Yeah, well, you ice skaters are all the same.”
“In what way?”
“You all think you’re better than hockey players at skating.”
“We are,” she said, all smug and competitive. I kind of dug it.
“And you’re obsessed with that toe pick movie.”
“The Cutting Edge is a modern classic, and I won’t hear a word otherwise.”
“I rest my case,” I said.
“You think you’re hot shit because you can sprint for what… a few seconds?”
“I think I can go a little longer than that,” I assured her. I could hear my sister in my head screaming Elitist Dick, but I shut her out. The same way we shut out Tampa last season.
She came even with me and the smile on her face was nothing but sheer ruthlessness.
I felt a similar smile cross my face.
Game. On.
“Okay, you want to go, big boy?” she taunted me.
For the record. Ialwayswanted to go.
But I was a professionally trained hockey player with years of experience and about a hundred pounds of muscle on her. It was not a fair match up. At all.
