The Fifteenth Minute: A Hockey Romance: Chapter 25

I STARE into the depths of the juke box, wondering what to play. I’m sick of the eighties and nineties tunes. If Lianne were here, we’d have fun joking about the lack of selection. We’d marvel at the one-hit-wonders. We’d argue about the classics.

Without her, it’s just a bunch of so-so tracks, and a long night to fill with them.

I know I pushed Lianne away last weekend. At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. Who wants a guy on the verge of becoming a college dropout?

Except that I miss her terribly.

“Hey,” a female voice says, and I look up fast. It’s Bella. I don’t even try to disguise my disappointment or the way my eyes go right over her shoulder, hoping to find Lianne. “She didn’t come,” Bella says, reading my not-very-opaque mind. “I tried. But she’s kind of down in the dumps.”

“That’s my fault,” I grunt.

“No,” she says, patting my shoulder. “It’s not. But there’s something I want to explain to you.” Bella flips a chair around backwards and straddles it. Then she sips her beer. “Okay, I know Lianne seems like the most sophisticated girl in the world. And, yeah, she could hack into NASA and launch a spacecraft from those computers in her room. And she has a selfie of herself with Bono on her phone.”

“Bono? Really?”

Bella nods. “She puts up a big front. But the people in her life? They’re shit, DJ.” She holds up a hand. “Present company excepted.” She gives me a smile and I try to return it. “Her mother is a world-class narcissist. I mean—the woman was too busy with her new twenty-five-year-old French pool boy to come to New York over Christmas to watch her only child perform Shakespeare at a famous theater. And I’ve that creep she calls her manager.” Bella gives an exaggerated shudder. “Lianne doesn’t trust people, because she’s been burned. A lot. So I know you’ve done right by her, except for the one argument. But you just need to try a little harder. It’s like, she needs proof that you’ll stick by her.”

“Okay,” I say slowly. I’m pretty sure I just learned something important. If only I knew what to do with it.

Bella grins. “I know you won’t let her down.” She stands up, pats me on the head, and heads straight to the rowdiest table, where two of my brother’s teammates move aside for her to sit down and join their game.

I’m not in the mood to play quarters. Or for smack talk. So I grab my coat and duck out the back way. I walk home slowly, wondering what I could do for Lianne. It’s a nice thought—a project that has nothing to do with my lawyer and the case. They’ve been keeping me busy all week. Phone calls. Emails. Words they want me to use when I explain what happened that night. Phrases they want me to avoid.

Nobody’s asking me to lie, of course. But they want the truth to come out in a certain way. And that’s hard, because the truth is a messy, untidy thing.

So it’s a relief to brainstorm ways to make Lianne smile. Even if she and I are going to be separated, I can still make the effort. There are six days left until my meeting. Lianne had accused me of behaving like someone who had three weeks to live. And now I could finally admit she was right. A week from now, I’ll still be a guy who likes a girl named Lianne, no matter what. And she’d still be lonely.

I turn the corner onto York, and the T-shirt vendor is there, bundled up against the cold. The offensive shirt with Lianne’s name is still there, too. I’m half a block past when something occurs to me. Backtracking, I hurry back until I’m in front of the guy. “Can you make a custom shirt?” I ask without preamble.

“Sure. Would take me a day, maybe two. Costs twenty bucks, forty if you want two-sided.”

I pull out my wallet. “One side will do.”