Chapter 1: Home Game: Chapter 1

“SHIT,” I said under my breath, looking in dismay at the screen of my laptop. I was in a cafe trying to get my receipts submitted to Frank, my accountant, who had threatened to disown me if I didn’t get him an accurate account of my expenses. I had been doing good but now the screen I had been working on had disappeared and there was nothing. I leaned back in my seat and rubbed my face with frustration. Wasn’t the point of having an accountant was so he could do all this shit?

“You accidentally minimized your screen. That’s all,” a soft voice spoke from my left.

I looked beside me. A tiny punk rocker chick was looking at my screen. Messy black short hair tucked behind her ear that was lined with multiple piercings. She had a tiny silver ring on the side of her petite nose. The biggest blue eyes, lined with heavy black make-up avoided my gaze.

“You know how to get it back?” I asked. She didn’t look like she knew her way around a computer, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

She leaned across me, punched a couple keys and my program was back.

I stared at the screen in amazement and then looked back at her. “Thanks.”

Her head was already bent over a beat-up paperback. Her thin, plaid-covered shoulders gave a slight shrug but other than that, she didn’t acknowledge me.

I took a deep breath. Only in Vancouver. People in this city all seemed to walk to the beat of their own drummer. Here, it seemed like anything went when it came to personal style. I started to work again.

God, I hated working on the computer. This was my fault. Krista, my agent, had been bugging me for months to hire a PA but my life had been stupidly busy. First, it had been playoffs. Then when the season ended, they had drafted me to the NHL Vancouver Wolves. It had felt like chaos packing up my life, saying goodbye to my old team and finding a new place to live. I got the keys to my apartment and my boxes the same day I needed to show up for my first practice with my new team. Between off season conditioning and training, trying to get to know my new teammates, and sorting out everything from HR paperwork to changing my bank accounts, there had been no time for anything but what was necessary.

“But this is why a PA would help you. All this stuff that is making you too busy to hire someone is exactly the stuff you can just give to them,” Krista told me yesterday at our dinner meeting. “I’m going to set up some interviews for you.”

If it meant that someone else would organize my receipts, then I was onboard.

“Shit,” I said again, when the program disappeared from my view. I clenched my teeth in frustration.

I glanced over at the little punk rocker, who was reading with intensity.

“Hey,” I said.

Nothing. She didn’t even lift her head.

“Yo, computer genius,” I spoke again.

She didn’t even lift her face from her book. “Drag your mouse down the screen. Your docking station is set to hide itself.”

“My docking what?” I asked, trying to negotiate the trackpad on my laptop. Nada.

She lifted her head and looked directly at me. The electric light blue of her eyes again surprised me. “Your docking station is where your apps are. And when you minimize your document, it gets pulled down to your docking station.”

“I want my program to open again.”

Her expression was a mixture of disbelief and incredulity. “I just told you how to get it back.”

“Can you show me?” I flipped my laptop towards her.

Her look told me she thought I was a sad fucking idiot too stupid to own a laptop, but then with an exaggerated sigh, she pulled the machine closer to her. She moved the mouse.

“I will set your computer so that your docking station is static.”

“Sure.” I still didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

She shoved it back and pointed at the screen with a tiny hand. Her short nails were coated with chipped black polish. “See these dots up in this corner? The yellow dot minimizes it. When you do that, it will go here. You click on it to pull it back up.”

She demonstrated.

“Wow, you know what you’re doing.”

“It’s called opening and closing a program. Pretty basic.”

“Thanks.” I reluctantly pulled the laptop back towards me. “I appreciate your help.”

She snorted. “Yeah, well, while we’re at it, you’re using your program wrong.”

“My tax program?”

“Yup,” her tone was short, her nose already buried back in her book.

“What do you know about that?”

“Enough to know you’re using it wrong.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“You’re in the wrong screen. You’re inputting your receipts as taxable income. When you should put it in as federal non-refundable tax credits.”

I stared at her in shock. “How the fuck do you know that?”

She gave me another one of those disbelieving looks. “How do you not?”

‘No, seriously. Are you an accountant?’

Scoff. “No.”

“Can you show me?”

She pulled the laptop closer. “I took accounting in grade 10.”

“You learned that in grade 10?” I studied her closer. She looked young, and she was tiny. So petite. Was she still in high school? All I needed was some angry dad accusing me of hitting on his daughter.

“Um, have you graduated from high school yet?”

“Have you?” she shot back.

Touché. “You’re over 18, right?”

Her fingers stopped typing, and she looked at me with aggressive hostility. “I will not fuck you after I help you.”

I lifted my hands. “Whoa. No one is talking about that here.”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Just quit being such a creepy fuck then.”

A creepy fuck? If I hadn’t been so shocked, I would have laughed. In my world, I almost needed to beat the women off me with a hockey stick. Apparently, punk rockers weren’t hockey fans. “I don’t want an irate dad coming in here and freaking at me for talking to his underage daughter. That’s all I was getting at.”

She stopped typing momentarily but didn’t look at me. “No worries about that happening.”

“Okay. I’m going to grab another coffee. Can I get you anything?”

A long beat. “No, thank you.”

“Seriously, let me get you a drink. Want a water or a juice or something? It’s the least I can do.”

Those damn blue eyes looked up at me again. Hesitant. “Could I have a hot chocolate?”

This chick was a dichotomy. I expected her to drink her coffee black and her liquor hard. A hot chocolate didn’t fit with her whole hate-the-world persona.

“Of course.”

I walked around the corner to the counter and stood in line. It took me a few moments to realize that I couldn’t see her, or my laptop. Whatever. Fuck. If she wanted to take off with it that was her prerogative. I hated the fucking thing. In fact, it would probably get me off the hook with my accountant.

“What can I get for you?” the barista asked.

“I’ll take a coffee and a hot chocolate.”

“Would you like whipping cream?”

Did punk rocker chick like whipping cream? No clue.

“Sure, why not?”

She leaned closer, mock whisper. “I’m sorry to bother you, but are you Ryan Parker?”

I looked at the flushed barista for the first time. Another barista friend hovered behind her.

Shit.

I leaned forward. “I am. But I’m just here to drink coffee like every other patron.”

In other words, don’t make a fuss.

“Could I get your autograph?”

“Sure.” I took the proffered pen and signed a paper napkin. I needed to move this along before everyone else in the cafe figured out who I was. Vancouver, as I was finding out, was as crazy about hockey as a small town in Saskatchewan. They were loyal, relentless fans that treated their team like royalty.

“How much do I owe you?”

“It’s on the house.”

I shoved a twenty in her tip jar. “Thanks.”

“I’ll bring it out to you.”

“Thanks.”

Back around the corner, punk rocker was working away at my laptop. I sat down beside her.

“I’m just setting up categories for you.”

“Okay.” Recalling vaguely that Frank had spoken of such things.

She glanced over at the shoebox of receipts. “Sort those into the following groups: medical, travel, housing, moving and everything else.”

The barista appeared at our table. “So, who’s having the hot chocolate?”

“She is.”

“Oh,” the barista said, shock laced her voice when she looked at the chick beside me. “I… okay.”

She set down our drinks. When she was out of earshot, I asked, “You come here a lot?”

Defiant. “It has clean washrooms.”

“Huh,” I said. Didn’t all coffee shops have clean washrooms?

“Just sort your receipts, okay?”

“On it.”

We worked in silence together. After I sorted, I read them off to her while she typed. We were halfway through the box, which was a fucking miracle as far as I was concerned, when she looked up in alarm.

“I have to go,” she pushed my laptop back towards me, and then shrugged into the most beat up little leather jacket I had ever seen.

“You’re leaving me?” I sounded as panicked as I felt.

“I have to catch the bus.” She turned to walk away.

Without thinking, I reached forward and grabbed her wrist. It felt like a tiny doll wrist in my huge hand. She yanked hard, and I instantly let go.

“What the fuck!” she glared at me. True anger etched on her face.

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to touch you.”

“What?”

I spoke fast, “I’ll pay you. To help me.”

“How much?”

“Uh… twenty bucks.”

She looked tempted and then backed away. “I can’t. I have to go before I’m late.”

“I’ll give you fifty bucks if you help me and then I’ll drive you wherever you need to go.” I gave her the most charming smile I had in me. Which usually melted panties off, but in her case, she glared at me like I was the scum on the bottom of her beat up Doc Martin boots.

“You going to make me beg?” I tried another smile.

She stared at me. Unmoved. “I can do twenty minutes for twenty dollars. And you pay me up front.”

Okay then. I pulled out a twenty and set it on the table.

She slid back in her chair. “Let’s move it. I can’t be late.”

We got through almost the entire box when she suddenly gave a cry. “Oh, no!”

“What?”

She stood up, yanking her jacket over her shoulders and pulled a knapsack up from beneath her feet. “It’s been forty minutes. I’m going to be late.”

“Calm down,” I said, standing up, dumping my receipts into the box. “I can take you wherever you want to go.”

“I told you I couldn’t be late,” she sounded anguished. “Hurry.”

I grabbed everything and took off after her.

I started my SUV. “Tell me where you need to go.”

“East Hastings and Gore.”

“Can you give me directions?”

“Do a U-turn. Stay on this street and then cross the bridge.”

I felt bad. I had no idea what she was running late for, but it obviously upset her. She hunched in the seat beside me, chewing the fingernail of her thumb. I sped when I could, going through lights that were more orange than yellow.

“Turn here at Hastings,” she said.

Where the hell were we? The entire street was crawling with society’s down and out. People with all their worldly belongings pushed rusty shopping carts up the street. People screamed. Two men were brawling on the corner. Others, so drugged they reminded me of zombies, lurched down the street.

“Are you sure this is where you want to be?” I said, slowing the vehicle to a crawl.

“Pull over here,” she said, flinging open the door before I could even come to a full stop. She slammed the door. I pulled against the curb and then watched as she ran across the street, weaving between oncoming traffic, narrowly missing getting clipped by a truck before racing up the steps of a church. She stood on the steps. It looked like she rang a bell. After several moments, a man came to the door and talked to her. Something agitated her in her conversation. He leaned forward and patted her on the shoulder. And then he went back inside and shut the door.

She stood there, a lone, tiny figure and just faced those closed doors. With a dejected stance, she came down the steps. She pulled a hood up over her head, and arms crossed, she slowly walked down the street away from me.

“What are you up to?” I asked out loud. Then I caught sight of the sign.

United Church Shelter for the Homeless. Doors close at 8 PM.

I sat there with incredulity. Punk rocker was trying to get to a homeless shelter? I had made her late. And now it was full or closed.

Without thought, I got out of my vehicle and crossed the street, running after her. It took nothing to catch up with her.

I tapped her on the shoulder, and it was like a wildcat going ballistic on me.

“Get off me,” she screamed. Then she recognized me and stopped.

Dark streaks of make-up ran down her face. Shit. Punk rocker was crying.

“Why didn’t you tell me where you were going?” I asked.

“Because it’s none of your fucking business.”

We stood there looking at each other. Fuck this was fucked up.

“Are they full?” I asked, unsure what else to ask.

“They close the doors at 8 PM and they make no exceptions.”

“That’s stupid,” I said. I couldn’t even wrap my brain around this situation. Who stayed at a homeless shelter? Didn’t a friend have a couch she could crash on? Where was her family? This was so far out of my scope, I didn’t even know how to troubleshoot this.

She shrugged and squared her shoulders. “Whatever.”

She turned and walked away. A tiny, hunched over little figure. How the hell did I get myself into this mess?

“Let me help,” I said to her back.

She turned and looked at me. “I don’t need your help.”

I wanted to believe her lie. I wanted to get off this stinking street and get back to my life. But I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t right. “What are you going to do?”

“Find a 24-hour diner. Finish my book.”

“Isn’t there another place you can go to?” I couldn’t even bring myself to say the word shelter.

“The other ones aren’t safe. I wouldn’t sleep.”

What the fuck.

Deep breath. Wasn’t my life complicated enough? Did I really need to do this? Could I walk away in good conscience? My mom, watching me with a stern look on her face, came to mind. Some people worried about God judging their actions. My mom was my entire moral compass. She always did what was right whether it was right for her. And she would definitely not let punk rocker walk away.

I tried once more. “This is my fault. Let me help.”

She rolled her eyes, but she looked so sad it almost gutted me. “What? Are you going to invite me over to sleep on your couch?”

I hesitated. For a fraction of a second. Anyone in my situation would. But she didn’t even give me that fraction of a second before she was shaking her head at me. “Whatever. That’s what I thought.”

She got three steps away from me before I spoke without thinking. “I have over 300 channels on my 72-inch screen and I can order a pizza. My couch is yours for the night if you want it.”

What the fuck? Seriously? I didn’t have the time or the energy for this shit. Why hadn’t I offered her a couple hundred bucks to get a hotel?

She stood there for a long moment with her back to me. “What kind of pizza?”

I had at least $500 on me. I could give her that and drive her to a nice hotel. She would probably feel safer and more comfortable there, anyway.

Instead, I said, “Any kind of pizza you want. Or I know of this great burger place that delivers.”

She slowly turned around. Assessing me like I was a threat. She lifted her chin. “You should know that I’m not going to fuck you.”

Again, with the shock talk. It left me speechless. I was used to having an unlimited supply of the most beautiful, incredible women throw themselves at me. Punk rocker would come in dead last on my fuck list if she even made it on the list. Which, if I was going to be honest, she wouldn’t.

“Okay,” I said.

She gave me an unapologetic look and said with complete sincerity. “Sorry. But you’re not my type.”

Jesus. She was killing me. “Good thing I don’t lack confidence.”

She looked at me critically. “You do have a lot of confidence, although I have no idea why.”

I tried, but I couldn’t wipe that damn smile off my face.