Chapter Seven
Logan
The Corrigan Falls beach was quickly becoming my favorite place in the world. Not for the beach itself—it was nice enough, but just sand and water like anywhere else—but more for the way I felt when I was there. Relaxed, for the first time in way too long. Content, as if I was where I was supposed to be and didn’t have to worry about what was going on anywhere else. Happy. Yeah, maybe even happy. I probably should have called my mom and given her an update, just to put her mind at ease.
It sucked to have to leave after only a couple hours, but then, in the Jeep driving Dawn out to the golf course, I realized that I was still relaxed, still content. Still happy. It wasn’t the beach that was making me feel that way, it was the company.
There was a crowd of golfers standing around in the parking lot at the clubhouse; if they hadn’t been there, I would have tried for a kiss, but even though I was pretty sure Dawn would be happy to kiss me back, I didn’t need the pressure of an audience. I think she was feeling the same way so we were both kind of awkward as she looked over at me, raised her eyebrows, then jumped out of the Jeep.
“That was fun,” she said, backing away. “Thanks for calling.”
Well, that wasn’t enough. Not by a long shot. “How late are you working? I have to stick around until the campers are all in their bunks, but I’m hoping that’ll be early—they’re just little kids. Do you want to do something after that?”
She was always pretty, but when she smiled at me, just at me, she was completely beautiful. “Yeah,” she said. “That sounds good. I’m done at work by six, so—I don’t know, I’ll probably be at home. Text me, or give me a call when everybody’s tucked in.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
She nodded, then half turned, heading to work. I was out of the Jeep before I thought it through. I didn’t have a plan, I just—I didn’t want her to walk away, even though we had plans made.
She heard me coming and turned back around, waiting for me to explain myself. I took three steps toward her. Four. I saw the realization on her face at about the same time I felt it myself. And neither one of us looked over at the crowd of golfers. We just kept looking at each other, and I took two more steps until I was in front of her.
She looked up at me with a grin. “Really?” she asked, and I could hear the dare in her voice.
“Really,” I said, and I lowered my head. She tilted hers back slightly, completely natural as if we’d been doing this together for years, and we were both smiling a little as our lips met.
I pulled away fairly quickly, because if I’d gotten any more I’d have wanted way, way more. Like, everything. As it was, I was still in control of myself, although I admit my resolve weakened when I saw her amber eyes dancing as she looked at me.
“Tonight,” I said, and I was both giving a promise and asking for one.
She nodded. “Absolutely.”
And then I made myself get into the Jeep and drive away.
I made it to camp in time for a busy afternoon of coaxing seven- and eight-year-olds away from their parents and into the loving arms of a bunch of teenage counselors more interested in getting into each others’ pants than nurturing little kids. Good times.
It all got even better when one of the dads saw my face, squinted at my nametag, then leaned over and whispered something to his wife.
No. No, no, no, not here, not now. Not when I was so far away from it all and really managing to start moving on.
But if my no-saying had ever had any damn power in the universe, I wouldn’t have been in the mess I was in. So the dad came over and held out his hand. I shook it, trying not to seem too anti-social, and he pointed at my nametag. “Logan,” he said. “Logan Balanchuk. Right?” He squinted down at my knee as if he thought he’d be able to see something through the denim. “I’m a huge Montreal fan. We were so excited for you, man—you were looking good.”
Well, I’d been fairly excited myself, but that didn’t matter, did it? I smiled tightly. “Sorry to let you down.”
He looked genuinely startled, and I felt like an asshole. “No, no, it wasn’t your fault! It was a hell of a hit. Just bad luck, right?” Then he frowned and looked around as if figuring out where I was and what I was doing there. He leaned in closer and saying, “There must have been insurance or something, though? I mean…”
“Yeah, there was insurance.” Damn, did I really have to get into my personal finances with some clown at a kids’ sports camp? “I’m covered. Just helping out here, you know?”
The dad looked over at his son, then back at me with sudden excitement. “You’re coaching? Will you be on the ice with them, or—”
“Golf. I’m helping out with golf.”
“Golf.” He looked like the word tasted bad, and I had to admit it wasn’t anywhere near as sweet as hockey. But I definitely wasn’t going to get into that.
“Yeah. So if your son wants to give that a try, that’s where I’ll be. Has he found his bunk counsellor yet?”
The dad seemed confused enough by the whole situation that I was able to shuffle him off onto another topic and then guide him away toward the bunks. He must have been talking to some other people, though, because about half an hour later, as I was helping a little goalie pull her gear bag out of her mom’s trunk, Brady Thomas came over in his freshly pressed Camp Director polo and said, “I’ve just received an official request from a delegation of parents to have you working with the hockey program.”
I let the words sink in as I made sure the bag’s wheels were working and then let the goalie take over. “An official request? The guy noticed me this afternoon and already he’s formed a delegation?”
Brady shrugged. He seemed kind of amused by the whole thing. “Hockey parents move fast. And I told them you’d been hired for golf and swimming and I wouldn’t move you unless you asked to be moved. But I did want to check in with you and make it clear—if you do want to be moved—”
“I don’t. At least, not to hockey.” And not away from golf, really, since that was my chance to maybe hang out a bit with Dawn. “I’m good where I am. Sorry for the fuss.”
He nodded and turned to look in the same direction as me. We watched the campers shuffling around for a bit, and then he said, his voice carefully neutral, his gaze still on the crowd, “Your dad called this morning. Wanted to know how you were doing.”
I groaned. My mom had at least come to me directly. My dad had apparently decided on a more embarrassing approach. “I’m so sorry. They’re kinda—you know. They can’t do anything about the knee and it’s frustrating, and it’s making them a bit crazy, I guess. I hope you told him I was okay? And I’ll call him and tell him to leave you alone, I promise.”
“Logan. Your dad is one of my heroes—probably my all-time favorite hockey player. Getting a phone call from him is enough to make my month. Please, don’t discourage him from calling.”
Brady said it lightly, but I was pretty sure he was serious. I guess I could understand it—if Wayne Gretzky called me up and wanted me to discuss different ways to butter toast, I’d talk about it for as long as he’d listen. To me, my dad was just my dad, but to other people? He was a big deal. At least to some of them. Still, I was going to call him and tell him to stop spying on me.
“I did tell him you seemed okay,” Brady added. “I told him I’d barely seen you and that you were hanging out with locals. I hope that wasn’t a violation of your privacy.”
Anything Brady knew about really couldn’t be considered private, and after playing hockey for so many years I was used to people keeping track of what I was doing, so it wasn’t a big deal. Still, I wished—I don’t know. I guess I wished people were keeping track of me because I was a great hockey player they wanted to impress, not because my dad was. But as my grandma used to say, if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. In other words—stop whining, Logan. It won’t do any good.
“No, that’s fine,” I said. “Whatever you want to tell him is fine.”
“You’re at a tough age,” Brady said. “Most of my counselors are. If you were five years younger, it’d be clear that your parents need to know what’s going on. If you were five years older, it’d be clear—at least to me, if not to them—that it’s your business and they should talk to you about it.”
“They did talk to me about it. At least my mom did. But, you know…” It wasn’t like I’d ever been suicidal or anything. I’m not even sure if I was depressed, at least in the way that needs medication. I’d just been sad. Frustrated, angry, sad, bargaining—all the stages of grief, probably. Because my dream had died. But my mom was right. It was time for me to start working on new dreams.
I saw the little goalie across the field, then, at the bottom of the flight of rough wood-and-stone steps that led up to the cabins. Her mom was carrying her backpack full of clothes or whatever and they were both staring at the steps as if they were Mount Everest.
“Gotta go,” I told Brady and jogged across the field, barely even noticing the hint of stiffness in my knee.
“You need a hand?” I asked the little goalie, and she nodded wordlessly up at me.
“Thanks so much,” her mom said.
“Gotta take care of the goalies,” I told her. And I tried not to dwell on the fact that taking care of the goalie wasn’t my job anymore and never would be again. New dreams. I needed to focus on new dreams.
So I hauled the gear bag to the top of the stairs, helped the girl find her cabin, then started back down to the parking area. The sooner all these little campers were tucked away, the sooner I could go find Dawn. New dreams. And she seemed like a pretty good place to start.
…
Dawn
“So. You and Logan.” Scott’s wolfish grin had never been more annoying.
At the same time, I really wanted to talk to someone, and most of my girl friends were still down at the draft, and—
“Maybe,” I said and smiled at the customer sorting through the golf shirts. And even though I should have left it at that, I added, “Why? What did you hear?”
“A kind of weird story about him getting naked at the beach last night—unless the boy’s a bit wilder than I thought, I’m going to assume that one’s a misunderstanding. But you and he did disappear at about the same time. And then this morning, you were making out in the parking lot?”
“Making out? No. Whoever told you that is dreaming.”
“Don’t even try it, Sunrise. I can see your little smirk—you’ve been up to something.”
“Did you drive all the way out here just to interrogate me?”
Scott had the nerve to look offended. “It’s a golf course. I’m here to play golf.”
“With who?”
Scott looked around. “My foursome has not yet arrived.”
“Do you even play golf?”
“Have my own clubs and everything. Not sure where they are, though, so I’m going to have to arrange for a rental—are you the one who handles that? And while we’re getting all that set up—anything you want to tell me about our new young friend?”
“If I rent clubs to you, you’re going to pay for the damn clubs, even if your foursome is completely fictional. You get that, right?”
“You’re so suspicious. It pains me to imagine what childhood trauma made you so untrusting.”
“It involved people wasting my time and making me fill out paperwork for rentals they weren’t going to go through with. Don’t trigger me, now.”
Scott smiled indulgently at me as if I were a cute kitten trying to climb stairs that were too big for me. “You really think you’re going to change the subject? You think we aren’t going to talk about the parking lot?”
Well, if I didn’t want to talk about the parking lot, we wouldn’t have talked about it, but as it was? I shrugged. “I like him. I think he likes me. It’s not a big deal, but—it’s fun. That’s all.”
“That’s all you need,” Scott said. He sounded genuine, and I thought, not for the first time, how much more I liked him when he wasn’t hanging out with Toby and letting his stupid jealousy make him into an asshole. But then he added, “Well, not quite all. Now that you’re not at school anymore, you don’t have access to those free condoms in the health room. You need me to hook you up, or is Logan man enough to go to the drugstore himself?”
“You just can’t let a nice moment stand, can you? You just have to wreck it.”
“It’s part of my charm,” Scott said almost sadly, and there it was, the flash of lost-little-boy that I could never figure out. Was the vulnerability genuine and he was letting it show by accident, or was it all just one more trick from him, and he was pretending it was an accident when I saw it?
I didn’t want to waste my time on questions like that. I wanted to be with someone I could trust to be honest with me all the time. Someone who was the same on the surface as he was underneath. Someone like Logan?
I hoped so.
And when he called me that night and asked if I wanted to do something, it all seemed so clear, so simple. He came by to pick me up, and I ignored my mom’s comments on my way out to the Jeep and he smiled at me and it was perfect. No subtext, no tricks. He was happy to see me so he smiled. And I was happy to see him so I smiled back.
That was what I wanted. A simple, happy time with a straightforward, happy guy. It really didn’t seem like it was too much to ask.