Fake Skating(56)

To see bright lights.

To hear noise.

We walked in, and the garage barely resembled a garage at all.

It had shiny floors and finished walls, so the space felt more like a basement rec room than a place to park cars. There were three TVs mounted on a wall covered with sports posters, and two refrigerators sat underneath them.

Neon beer signs hung on the other wall, above a line of tables that were set up as a slow cooker–rich buffet, and I half expected to see servers and bartenders milling about the place.

In the center, a bunch of rectangular multipurpose tables had been shoved together to form a supertable (with PACKERS HOCKEY tablecloths, of course), which was where the team appeared to be sitting.

Coach Osman was standing next to the refrigerators, talking to the other coaches and some guys who I assumed were team dads, and I felt like they were all looking at us as the door closed behind us.

Probably just paranoia.

“Danigirl!”

Big John stood on the other side of the garage with a couple of the guys I’d met at his house during dinner my first night in town.

Just seeing him made me feel a little more comfortable as I waved back.

I heard multiple people shout “Zeus!” but Alec was looking at mewhen he said, “Should we get some food?”

I nodded, eyeing the three different kinds of casseroles, four different types of pasta, three different sauces, and the two lasagnas displayed on the table.

Oh—and three kinds of bread.

These moms were notplaying.

We filled our plates and sat down at a table beside Cassie just as Kyle said, “No, they’re my dad’s venison meatballs.”

Venison meatballs?

I didn’t say anything, but I must’ve made a face because Alec said, “I promise they’re good.”

I shrugged like I had no issues with Bambi meatballs because I knew it was technically the same, right? Cow or deer, either one had me eating an animal. “I’m sure they are.”

But something about the cuteness of deer messed with me for no good reason whatsoever.

“If they’re your dad’s,” Cassie said to Kyle, “then my dad helped.”

“True,” Richie agreed.

“They cook together?” I asked. “That’s really nice.”

“That’s not exactly it; it’s not that sweet,” Alec said, smirking.

“Yeah, no,” Cassie interrupted, shaking her head. “Our dads all have this little… shit, I don’t know what you’d even label it. Call chain, maybe…?”

“On-call group,” Kyle corrected, nodding.

“Yeah,” Alec agreed.

“During hunting season, if one of them bags a deer, they put it out on the group text so by the time they get home, each person in the group is already there and waiting to help break down the deer,” Cassie explained.

“Big John still tells the story,” Richie said, “of the time Cassie came out to where they were breaking down a deer, and peed her pants.”

“Shut up,” she said, but she was laughing. “First of all, I was three. Second, no one warned me I’d be walking into a scene from a horror movie or I would’ve hit the bathroom first.”

“Mm-hmm,” Kyle said with a grin.

“Third,” she said, flipping him off, “Big John gave me twenty bucks to stop crying, so I think I was actually the winner.”

“Are you saying twenty bucks can erase childhood trauma?” Alec said.

“I’m saying twenty bucks bought two kick-ass Barbies.”

The four of them started laughing—I mean, I did too—but I felt a pang of envy in my stomach for what they had, what I would never have. There was this long-game history between all of them, a braided-together past that made them more like cousins than friends.

I wondered what that felt like.

Everyone smiling and reminiscing about the collections of stories they didn’t run out of telling—it was warmth and sunshine, and I was jealous.

Just as I was thinking that, the basket holding the plastic forks toppled over as Big John stumbled into the table, grasping his knee and grimacing in pain.

“Dad!” Alec jumped out of his chair and was at his dad’s side in an instant, joining another guy in helping Big John right himself. He hadn’t gone all the way down, but it’d been close. They each grabbed an arm, and my heart sank as Big John plastered a smile onto his face, dismissing their help.

“Damn leg keeps locking on me whenever I stand up. I’m fine,” he said, as if it happened all the time.”

Wait. Did this happen all the time?

“Give us the word and we’ll get one of the boys here to give you a piggyback ride,” Vinny’s mom said.

And she laughed.

And Big John laughed.

Everyone laughed.

Everyone except Alec.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Alec




“So I feel like this is going well, don’t you?” she asked. Her voice was soft, and I knew she was trying to break the tension.

I nodded as I drove because I wasn’t really sure what to say.

Yeah, it went really well at the team dinner—except when my dad damn near collapsed in pain!—and Coach seemed happy to see us together. Our fake relationship was going great at school, too, except for the fact that I kept getting distracted by her.