ALLIE BITES HER TONGUE, CAUGHT between saying, “This is incredible” and “How can you waste money like this?”
“Well?” Marcie asks. She waves her hand at her brand new washing machine and dryer, both bright red, both perched on stainless steel pedestals. She looks like a model from The Price is Right, complete with her high heels and deep purple pencil skirt. Except for that slight bulge her silky shirt doesn’t quite hide.
Allie should have kept walking past the post office. She should have run past the post office. Instead, she stopped when her sister waved at her through the window. So this is what she gets, another example of this-is-what-I-have-and-you-don’t-have, poor-unfortunate-little-sis. Endless parading. This time it’s a renovated laundry room, amazing with its fresh new paint and red tulip paper-lined shelves, the Tide and Febreeze and Shout all in a neat row.
“It’s nice,” she says. Understatements piss Marcie off.
“Nice?” Marcie’s model-like smile dips.
“Really nice.” The inflection in her voice almost turns her statement into a question. Being in Marcie’s or Tracy’s company puts her firmly in the role of little sister, either the pushy, teasing brat or the child seeking approval and acceptance. Thank God Becca isn’t like that!
“This is a laundry room out of the Canadian House and Home magazine,” Marcie says. She leans against the side-loading dryer, clicks her purple painted nails on the red steel lid. Allie wants to tell her that purple and red clash.
Marcie’s entire house is out of the Canadian House and Home magazine. It is a surprise the photographers haven’t come and shot a spread and . . . would they do perfect family, too? As Allie remains silent, Marcie’s face starts to fit in nicely with the colour-scheme of the laundry room. It does not suit her neatly curled blonde hair or gold dangling earrings.
Of the little sister personas Allie takes on, she finds it easier to slip into the snark. “Yes, Marcie, really nice.”
Marcie heaves a deep put-upon sigh. She avoids confrontation like she is riding her stationary bike through an obstacle course. “Come on,” she says. “Thomas had a craving for Jell-O and made some this morning. I thought it was a pretty crazy thing for him to do. But, well, you know how twenty-year-old boys can be?”
No, actually, she hasn’t a clue how twenty-year-old boys can be. Not perfect ones, anyway. The twenty-year-old boy she was most familiar with never would have made Jell-O. Jell-O shots maybe.
“It should have set by now,” Marcie says. She glances back. “He has your taste for lime so it’s nice and green. I think we even have Cool Whip.”
Allie nods, pauses before she steps out of the laundry room. It is gorgeous. She wishes she could tell Marcie that but little-sister belligerence doesn’t allow it. Neither does envy.
Lyne rounds Rick’s car, stops suddenly when Matt walks out of Delwood Grocers. He flaps the bottom of his T-shirt in the non-existent breeze. Showing off his six-pack. What an asshole. “You’re not as hot as you think you are.”
Matt almost tumbles down the four peeling wooden steps.
She smirks, slouches against the passenger car door. She starts another running tally in her head.
“What the fuck?” He gives her the once over, jerks his eyes back to her face.
“You’re nothing.”
“What the fuck?” This time he stresses each word.
She tucks her thumbs into the front belt loops of her low-riding denim shorts, makes sure her belly-button stud gleams in the sunlight. “Truth hurts, doesn’t it?”
“Fuck you.” Matt leans against the railing on the stairs, crosses his arms.
The mocking gesture grates at her. Who is this boy to come to her town and figure he is hot shit? He hits on her and then dismisses her? He cannot begin to compete at the same level as Rick. He hasn’t earned a thing. But she has. She has earned the right to be with Rick. She has put in her time. This is why she despises him. He doesn’t care about how things work in Delwood.
“You’re dreaming if you think Kennedy will spread her legs for you.”
Matt’s cocky grin falters.
Chalk one more on her tally board!
Then he pastes on the expression that makes her want to knee him in the balls. He tips his chin at her ride. “Not like you with the rich boyfriend?”
“Take a good look at that car because it doesn’t matter how many lawns you mow, you’ll never own a Camaro.”
Hurt flashes across his face and she tallies another point before his features harden.
The bell chimes on the glass door. Glory steps out, a white plastic bag clasped in her hand. “Matt? What are you doing out here?”
“It was fucking hot in there and Ben was taking too fucking long figuring out what the fuck he wanted. He was driving me fucking nuts.”
“Oh,” Glory says.
His knuckles blanch white on the railing.
Lyne smiles. Mr. Suave isn’t so suave. Another mark for her. Go Team Lyne!
Matt looks at Glory. “Sorry. It’s just hot.”
Oh, God. Another sappy scene. “You’re boring, Matt.” She swings Rick’s car keys on her finger. Becca and Ben are now with Glory on the steps. “You’re all boring little kids.”
“We’re not little kids,” Becca says.
“Oh, just go mow a lawn, Matt,” she says, gripping the handle on the driver’s door.
“Fuck you, Lyne,” he says.
“If wishing made it so.” She laughs, high and rich, slides into the driver’s seat and peels out. Screw her grapefruit. She looks in the rear-view mirror. Matt is flanked by Ben. Glory and Becca are two steps behind them. There is something sad about that way the boys stand alone. Then she turns the corner and the picture is gone.
“Christ!” Jack slams on his brakes, prides himself in missing the hockey stick that came flying into the street. He’s not so lucky with the puck. It thunks off his passenger-side door.
He pulls into the first spot he finds. What a perfect way to end a perfect day. If Tanya Rathenburg doesn’t start delivering on all the goods she’s been dangling in front of his face — with her tub of a husband right in the garage, for Chrissakes — he is going to tell her to fuck off and he’s going to find someone else to put his efforts into.
With the number of small towns he and the boys have lived in after criss-crossing Alberta for years — Christ, almost an entire decade — it doesn’t surprise him any more how easy it is to bed married women. God knows there are enough women casting the scent, who stop in at the garage regularly. Most of them are teases. But Tanya, the way she is acting, not looking for promises, that’s his kind of woman. Christ. He should have had her by now! He slams his car door, stalks back to the house with the opened garage. There is hockey gear strewn over the driveway next to a well-cared-for red Camaro.
“What the hell?”
“Sorry, man!” yells a kid, about Matt’s age. The kid stares hard, a twinge of recognition in his face.
Jack sure as shit doesn’t know this kid. “ ‘Sorry, man?’ That’s all you have to say? You about put your stick through my windshield. Dent my door with your puck! And ‘sorry, man’ is what you say?”
The kid rubs his hand over his head. It’s a crewcut that has gotten out of control. His grey eyes are desperate now. “Look, my dad’s not in a good mood.”
“Your dad threw your equipment out into the street?” He can’t believe it. The little piss-ant is lying.
“If you’re not going to play hockey, you might as well get rid of all this crap.” The voice booms from a dark corner of the garage.
The kid holds Jack’s eye, pleads with him to walk away. But he is worked up over Tanya, worked up from this heat, worked up over another dead-end crap job, worked up over dodging fucking hockey equipment.
He picks his way through the shoulder pads and hockey socks to the back of the garage. “Yeah, get rid of the equipment, but don’t throw it at passing cars.”
“Passing cars?” The man steps out from the shadows. He’s the kid’s old man, no doubt about it. Same face, same build, but Jack is man enough to admit he wouldn’t want to throw down with this guy. His hands are beefsteaks, wrapped around a glass of clear brown liquid. Bourbon. Neat.
Jack straightens to his full six-foot-two height. The guy is still a good four inches taller. “The hockey stick just missed my car. The puck wasn’t so lucky.”
“Sorry ’bout that,” the man says gruffly. “My kid just told me he isn’t playing hockey when he goes to Edmonton this fall.”
“I didn’t say that, Dad!” The kid is right behind Jack and Jack jumps.
“Shut the fuck up! I’m not talking to you.” His mouth is a mean slash when he turns to Jack. “You give up all your time, your weekends, Christ, all your fucking money for this equipment and all the camps and all the hockey fees. And then he wants to piss it all away?”
The guy’s grey eyes, just like his kid’s, bore into Jack. “Fucking ungrateful kids,” the man steamrolls on. “Going to school — going to NAIT — and he figures all he’ll do is study.”
“Dad,” the kid whines.
“If you’re not going to play hockey, then you better be showing the girls a good time,” the guy says. “No Jeffries is just about studying.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t play hockey. I said I didn’t know. But showing the girls a good time, I can do that.” The kid’s smile is wicked.
“Christ,” Jack mutters. He scrubs his face, walks away wearily. He pauses on the passenger side of his car, pulls at the bottom of his garage shirt. He wipes at the puck mark. It is only a smudge. He looks back up the driveway. The kid is picking up the equipment. The old man is nowhere in sight.
So, the kid is a couple years older than Matt, going on to trade school. Jack has no idea what Matt wants to do when he graduates. The boy is smart. Matt might push Benny as the geek, but he gets good report cards, too. The boy could do anything.
Jack stops cold. If Matt goes to university, he will be alone with Benny. That face. Those eyes. The constant reminder. Christ. Tanya better put out tomorrow. He needs a damned good lay. He doesn’t want to think about Matt leaving him.