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Sara winced as the whistle pierced the air. End of the first period. It was only a formality. Rink space was so hard to come by the games were three fifteen minute periods, with no breaks in between periods. The Zamboni came out for a few laps in between games, but couldn't cover the whole rink. The clock never stopped, even if the play did. The goalies skated across the ice to change goals and took up their positions. Both coaches were trying to organize their teams and give instructions, but as soon as the goalies were in place the ref blew the whistle and started yelling for the boys to get out to the faceoff circle.
"Hi, you're Sara, right?"
Sara looked up at the guy talking to her and vaguely recognized him. Probably one of the kid's dads, but Sara couldn't remember which one.
"Yes, Sara Wilson, Rob's mom," she said.
"Kevin, Kevin White, Aiden's dad," the man replied.
"Aiden, number eighteen, right?" Sara said, scanning the ice.
Aiden wasn't out there, but Robbie was and Sara watched him blow by two defenders and blast a slap shot at the net. She winced when the puck hit the opposing team's goalie in the chest, but not because Rob didn't score. Because it looked like it must have really hurt. At least they didn't allow checking in this age group. Sara wasn't sure if she was going to be able to handle it when Robbie was out there getting slammed into the boards.
"Boo!" Ben screamed, popping up right in front of Sara.
Sara jumped and the Kevin guy reached out to steady her before she landed on her ass on the footrest for the row behind them.
"Thanks," she told Kevin, then she said to Ben, "What are you doing under there?"
"I'm so bored," Ben whined.
"Get out from under there," Sara told him. "It's filthy."
"Who are you?" Ben asked Kevin, ignoring Sara.
"Kevin," Kevin said. "Who are you?"
"Ben. That's my brother, number twelve," Ben said, twisting towards the ice. "Why are you here?"
"I'm watching my son, Aiden, number eighteen."
"I have an Aiden in my class too, but that's not him."
"No, do you know Katie White?"
"Yes, she's in Mrs. Post's class. Where is she?" Ben said, looking around the rink.
Sara felt awful. She knew Ben was bored, but she simply couldn't ask Siobhan to watch Ben for an 8 AM game. Sara had helped Ben pack a bag with a couple of books and word searches last night, but Ben had refused to look at anything in the bag instead choosing to climb up, down and around the bleachers. Sara was just hoping they would get out of the rink today without Ben inflicting a major injury, on himself. She desperately wanted another cup of coffee, but the concessions stand was locked up tight. She'd have to remember to bring a thermos for any future early morning games.
"No, she's home with her mom," Kevin said. Then he looked at Sara when he said, "Technically it's her weekend with the kids, but with the early game on the schedule she said I could take Aiden. She has to get Katie to dance today anyway."
"Oh," Sara said, mostly because she didn't know what else to say.
"I'm hungry," Ben whined again.
That Sara was prepared for. She pulled up the bag at her feet and started digging through it.
"Fruit and cereal bar? Peanut butter granola bar? Oh, any allergies?" Sara said, turning to Kevin. Then she felt silly, as the guy's kid was a good hundred feet away. At least. "Sorry, force of habit," she said sheepishly. Boy she really needed some more coffee, badly.
"No, no problem," he said smiling. "No allergies either."
"I don't want that. I want pancakes."
"Sorry, kitchen's closed, dude," Sara told Ben.
"We're going to go out to breakfast after the game. Mel's down on Route 12, if you guys want to go with us," Kevin said.
"Such a freaking dad thing to do," Sara thought. Don't say that in front of the kid.
"Do they have pancakes, Kevin?" Ben said.
"Hmmm," Kevin said, and made a big show of thinking about it, which Sara quickly decided to use to her advantage.
"First of all, Ben, it's Mr. White, not Kevin," she said, in a voice that she hoped implied solid parenting and not unreasonable bitch. "And I don't know if we are going out to breakfast or not."
"Please, Mom!"
"Eat something now and I'll decide later," Sara said, holding the bag out to Ben.
Truth was breakfast sounded great. Sara was not only desperate for some more coffee, she was starving. She hadn't been hungry when they were scrambling to leave the house that morning and she tried not to eat when she wasn't hungry. Whenever she did that, especially first thing in the morning, she would end up eating more an hour or two later and that made her think the original calories consumed were a total waste.
Sara was about to tell Kevin that they would go to breakfast, when she remembered the other stuff she hadn't done that morning, namely brush her hair or put on any makeup. She had gotten as much as she could ready the night before and Robbie had gone through his hockey bag and double checked his stuff. But Ben had refused to wake up, and once up, refused to get up and get dressed. By the time Sara had dragged him out of bed, literally, and stood over him while he got dressed she barely had time to grab a pony-tail holder and pull her hair up. She must look positively awful.
Nevertheless, by the time the game was over, Sara had decided on breakfast. She told Kevin as they walked over to the area behind the bench to get the kids and he smiled at her and said, "Good." The game had ended in a four-four tie, but the boys were excited anyway. The complex scoring structure of the league meant the more points the better. Sara confessed to Kevin that she hadn't take the time to time to read the information on it and he promised to explain it to her over breakfast.
Following Kevin's truck to the diner, Sara began to have second thoughts. Charlie had called her, after the afternoon at Siobhan's house, and he had asked Sara out for dinner for that very night. Sara had begged off, citing the early hockey game as a reason why she would be lousy company by dinner time. But the truth was she found the idea of going on an actual date with him intimidating. Ty and Sara hadn't actually dated, Ty had shown up in her town and inserted himself into her life so smoothly she had barely known it was happening. It had just been so easy.
But it hadn't been right, Sara reminded herself. Obviously. Last night she had seen yet another "Tinya" update on the internet. Apparently Inya had flown in to travel with Ty and the band, fresh from her Paris shoot. There were even a couple of pictures from the shoot accompanying the story and Sara had thought, "A—what could these advertisements possibly be for, since Inya was butt naked in all of them, nary a product to be seen, and B—was there a support group for women whose exes took up with models, because if ever Sara had needed external support to rebuild her self-esteem it was now".
After she parked, she took a minute to glance in the rear-view mirror and winced at what she saw. She thought about taking a minute to fix herself up, but it was probably hopeless, especially given she wasn't likely to find any makeup or hairbrushes lying around in the car and she didn't want to look like she was trying too hard. This wasn't really a date, anyway. She decided it wasn't, because even the idea of thinking it was a date made her extra nervous.
It turned out to be a little more date-like than Sara had anticipated. Ben ran ahead to sit and spin on one of the stools at the counter. Robbie and Aiden sat down next to him and before Sara could figure out what to do the waitress was pointing her and Kevin to a table for two directly behind the boys.
Once the coffee cleared her head, Sara began to enjoy talking with Kevin. She found out he and his ex-wife were both lawyers. He did mostly real estate and wills, his ex-wife was a divorce lawyer and a child advocate for the state.
"Well," said Kevin. "That's my story. I can't believe I just told you all of that at once, sorry."
"It's okay," Sara assured him.
She had liked listening to him talk. And it was a good excuse to look at him. He was pretty nice to look at and Sara realized it had been a while since Ty left and since she had had sex. She let the thought of Kevin, naked on top of her and in her, while she wrapped her legs tightly around him, slide through her mind and found the idea of it intriguing and thrilling and not at all unpleasant or worrisome. Sara glanced over at the boys and was pleased to see Rob cutting up Ben's pancake for him. Then she quickly resolved that she had to be a lot more careful and take it a lot more slowly this time, no matter how sex starved she was.
"So, what about you?" Kevin said.
"Oh, I," Sara said. "My husband died almost two years ago."
She said it without any great emotion. There were moments that she still missed Dan terribly, but she had accepted her loss. The fact that the kids had to grow up without him, well, that was something she would never get over. Sara had no intention of getting into that now or possibly ever. It would always be with her. But it wouldn't rule her life.
"No, I meant, that singer you were dating? Weren't you guys living together?" Sara was surprised and didn't say anything, so Kevin continued, "My ex-wife, she mentioned it."
"Well, that," Sara said, picking up her coffee cup and taking a long delicious sip. "Is over."
Then she brought the cup back to her mouth, smiling at Kevin, over the top of it, as she did so.