Hawke

Regardless of the way things worked out over time, it wasn’t until last week when she told me the truth about why she did what she did that I considered that Vale could be a mainstay in my life again. I have no clue where this is going, and I’m too hesitant and skittish to believe that it could ever go back to what we used to have. I wasn’t lying to Vale when I told her that I get why she did what she did. If I was in her shoes, feeling abandoned by me, having experienced a tremendous physical and emotional loss, and then was told my lifestyle is what caused it, I could see making a drastic decision to cut me out.

I totally get it. I totally forgive it.

But it’s definitely not something to forget. Vale has always been ruled by emotion; it’s one of the reasons I think her star shines so provocatively bright. It’s what attracted me to her, because she was full of no-holds-barred passion. But that is also dangerous. It causes impulsive decisions at times, and those decisions can cause unforgettable pain.

But now is not the time to brood on such inequities of life. I’ve got more important things to worry about at this very moment.

“I’ll see your fifteen cents, and raise you a quarter,” I say with a challenging stare leveled at Vale over the top of my cards. She raises her lovely eyebrows at me, purses her lips as if she’s shocked by my confident stance, and hums low in her throat as if in grave consideration. She’s so goddamn sexy right now I want swipe the small piles of nickels, dimes, and quarters off the table along with the cards, two cans of beer, and a bottled water, lay her up there with legs spread wide, and devour her.

Nice thought and all, except I think it would be awkward with Max and Garrett in the room.

We’re on a road trip, having won the first regular season away game against the Toronto Blazers. Bruce Duvall has had Goose and Vale alternate away games with him, and I have to say I’m looking forward to when this poker game is over and I can have some alone time with her. While we get to see each other almost every day between either her duties with the Cold Fury, or the fact I’ve been fucking her almost every night for the past week since our “reconciliation,” she’s usually jetting out of my bed and heading home, not wanting to spend too much time away from Dave. It’s not that he can’t stay alone, but she just doesn’t want him to be alone. I suggested letting me stay at her apartment, in her bed, but that wigged her out. I didn’t quite get that either, because Dave’s no idiot. He knows I’m back in his daughter’s life, and he’s wise enough to know we’re having sex. It makes me wonder what hesitations Vale has about our new relationship.

Still, I don’t push it, because the bonds we’ve reestablished are tentative and neither one of us wants to go charging into what could still be turbulent waters between us.

A lot of the single guys went out after the game, and I was on my way out too for some celebratory beers, but Vale didn’t want to go. As she had told me before, it just wasn’t her scene anymore, and more than that, she was exhausted. She’s still valiantly working two jobs and wanted to get to sleep early. She encouraged me to go out with the guys, assuring me she didn’t mind.

And she didn’t. I could tell.

But when I weighed the joy of partying with my teammates over a win, and spending some quiet time with Vale, the choice was sort of easy for me. I told my mates to have a great time and that was that.

Except Garrett and Max didn’t feel like going out, and Max suggested playing some poker and ordering in pizza and beer. And thus here we sit in Max’s hotel room. The round table that normally seats two is pulled up to the end of the king-size bed. Garrett and Max have the two chairs opposite of where Vale and I sit beside each other, our knees barely touching.

“All right,” Vale says after considering her cards and raising those sparkling eyes to me. She throws a quarter into the pile and says, “Call.”

Garrett and Max had already folded during the last round of betting, having realized what a deceptively good player Vale is. Dave is a good poker player and he taught his daughter when she was very young. They used to play for Monopoly money, but she’s since graduated to the real stuff. Although with her poor bank account these days, we put a quarter cap on the betting.

Max leans to the left and takes a peek at Vale’s cards in her hand. His eyebrows shoot high, and that leads me to believe she’s got something really good.

Or Max could be playing on Team Vale and trying to bluff me as well.

“You might as well fold,” Max says with a devious grin as he settles back in his chair and picks up his beer. Garrett shakes his head and chuckles.

Max and Garrett know about me and Vale. Hell, the whole team knows now.

Not that I got up and made an announcement or anything, but I had told Max pretty much our entire history over beers that day we went out. I didn’t spill my guts right away, and I half expected he had a crush on her, but by the end of the first beer, I realized we had a lot of stuff in common with each other, one of which wasn’t an attraction to the new athletic trainer.

Both of us are the oldest siblings in our families and thus know the burden of the toughest kind of love. We’re both extremely close to our parents and siblings, and Max is Canadian as well, although he’s from Quebec. He’s bilingual but has only a faint trace of the French-Canadian accent that denotes his heritage. After talking about family and hockey for a while, he mentioned Vale, and next thing I knew, I was spilling the gist of the story to him. I didn’t paint details of the breakup nor what it did to me, but it was enough to know we had a history that had ended on the ugly side of things.

By the time Max and I had finished three beers, I came away with some new clarity to things.

First, I needed the truth from Vale as to what happened that night. Max pointed out that we’d never move forward or have a peaceful friendship without me knowing. That’s what prompted me to go to her apartment a week ago and pull her out with the guise of taking her to a movie.

Thanks, Max.

The second thing I learned from Max was that my struggle to balance career and relationships is not atypical. Max had a high school sweetheart he lost to the distance and rigors of becoming a professional athlete. He as much as admitted that he didn’t put her first, and didn’t really even realize her feelings for him had died because of it. It made me feel slightly better about losing touch with Oliver and gave me the final push I needed to reach out to him.

While the call was awkward for all of about thirty seconds, it was clear that Oliver couldn’t have been happier for me and my accomplishments, or any more understanding about losing touch. I apologized. He accepted. Since then we’ve talked one more time and have made “loose” plans to get together.

So with my life seemingly back on track, and old relationships reopened and currently being explored, as well as a mutual decision by Vale and myself to move forward—whatever that means—there was no sense in hiding any of this from the team. Besides, the first time I walked naked through the locker room with Vale’s name on my hip sort of told the story. I admitted to one of my teammates it was indeed Vale the AT who had residence on my pelvis, and by day’s end, the story had spread like wildfire. I even got an email from Gray telling me she was glad I had reconnected with her.

Something I’d like to do again, very literally, very soon.

“How about an additional bet?” I ask Vale, waggling my eyebrows at her.