He liked all of it-every whim she might dream up. They'd been together a year and a half already, and things were only getting better. The new team owner had stunned Lauren by offering her a job in Manhattan, and stunned everyone by moving the team to Brooklyn.
The next chapter of their lives would happen in the city. He was giving up his rental house and Lauren would finally move off her parents' property. "So where do the spreadsheets come in?"
"I'm building one to help me with the rent versus buy calculation," she explained. "I need to estimate the tax savings for each property and do a cost/benefit analysis. I still think we might want to rent for a while. Just until things settle down on the team."
"Oh, it'll be fine." He didn't have any idea if that was true, but he didn't want Lauren to worry. Worrying was a waste of time, and it prevented people from living in the moment. That was no good.
By definition a goalie needed to be very good at pushing aside the hum of anxiety in his life. Another man might panic when the new team owner started making a lot of changes. Mike had a bad feeling about his ex's health problems, too.
His entire existence was up in the air, except for Lauren. She was his rock.
"Where shall we go for dinner?" he asked her suddenly.
Her smooth hand massaged his shoulder with a firm grip. "I thought you were taking Elsa out to that pizza place?"
He stretched lazily on the sheets that Lauren had picked out for the bed. The rental house was better furnished these days, with furniture in all the important rooms. The bedding was silky against his skin, but not as silky as Lauren. "The pizza is terrible where I'm headed. Even Elsa thinks so. But she likes to try her hand at that claw game. You know that thing?"
"Sure. All those stuffies look easy to grab, but you can never do it."
"Yup. Elsa loves pouring dollars into that sucker. And after a while she's like-Daddy, win this! But I can't. I think it's rigged." He ran a hand over Lauren's perfect hip. "So I could take you out for a late dinner, after I take Elsa home. Seafood?"
"Sounds nice." She rolled in to hug him. "Or I could cook."
"You don't have to. I could grill a couple of steaks." That was one of two things he could cook.
"I'll cook." She snuggled a little closer into his embrace. "Who knows what kind of kitchen our apartment will have? Might as well take advantage of that monster Wolf range you've got downstairs."
He tugged her up onto his body. "We're not going to have a shitty kitchen, Lo. I'm not going to cheap out on our place."
"Hey-I'm not worried. But I've overheard the wives who have been house-hunting in Brooklyn. They keep complaining about the kitchens," she said. "But it's not the end of the world. I'm looking forward to having a dozen restaurants within walking distance."
"That does sound fun," he said, running a finger down her perfect nose. "You and I have more flexibility with finding a place, anyway. The guys keep talking about schools and crap. But we don't care about those."
"True." She put her head down on his chest and said nothing further on the topic.
It took him a minute to realize his error. "I meant yet, Lauren. Unless our future child is a prodigy, we don't need to do the school shuffle for years."
"I knew exactly what you meant. I was just thinking what a tough transition it must be for these Long Island moms who are moving to Brooklyn."
"Not all of them are doing it," he pointed out. "Some players will commute from Long Island. Chancy's wife said ‘no way, no how' to moving."
"He'll be retired in a couple of years, anyway," Lauren pointed out. "Looks like Coach is trying to deepen the bench on the left wing to get ready."
"Yeah. This kid Castro is gonna be good."
"Agreed."
Their pillow talk frequently involved shop talk. When he was with Shelly, she used to complain if he talked about hockey to her, but Lauren didn't mind at all. It's who you are, she'd said once. And I love who you are.
"I have to get up," he said, and then didn't.
"I know," she agreed, and then didn't slide off him.
"I love coming home to you," he whispered.
She kissed his neck in agreement.
He wrapped his arms around her to draw out the perfect moment of quiet just a little longer.
• • •
The drive from his rental house to his old one took about four minutes.
Although he'd moved out a year and a half ago, it was still a little weird to drive up like a guest to the house he'd bought with Shelly. He parked his car at the curb instead of pulling into the garage like he used to.
Same car. Same driveway. New routine.
A few times during the past eighteen months, Lauren had come along when he spent time with Elsa. But it wasn't easy. Even after all these months, he and Elsa were still trying to settle in to the daddy-doesn't-live-here-anymore routine. And he'd never say this out loud but Elsa did not exactly crave Lauren's company. His daughter was tight-lipped and brittle whenever his girlfriend was around. At eleven, she understood what Lauren and Mike were to one another, and she didn't like it.
Lauren had noticed it too, and it made everyone feel bad. So he'd stopped including her in these pizza outings. And Lauren made herself scarce whenever he had Elsa overnight. Like last Thursday-Shelly had gone to see a specialist in Baltimore. They'd told Elsa that Shelly was having a girls' night out with friends. But it was really some kind of biopsy.
He hadn't told Lauren the truth, either. In the first place, Shelly had specifically asked him not to talk about her health with anyone.
Lauren could keep a secret. But there was another reason he hadn't told her. He felt superstitious about it. If he said "something terrible is happening," then it would.
The possibilities were too awful to contemplate. He hoped that in a year this would all just seem like a bump in the road. Maybe the doctors in Baltimore were about to give Shelly some good news. Somebody would. She was young and healthy.
Uneasy, Mike sat there behind the wheel of his car, watching his (former) house for movement. But Elsa didn't appear. Since he'd rather not sit in his car all day, he got out and walked up to knock on the door.
Knocking on his own door felt pretty weird, too.
Shelly answered, but it took her a good long time. "Michael," she said, her voice rough. "Elsa won't come out. I'm sorry."
"What do you mean?" He leaned on the doorframe and looked past her. "She's not ready?"
Shelly slowly shook her head, biting her lip. He was momentarily distracted by the fact that she looked exhausted. "Elsa says she won't go. I've been working on her, but she won't come out of her room."
"Why?" Elsa was always happy to see him.
Shelly looked up the stairs, as if the answer lay up there. "You could try to talk to her."
Irritated now, he stalked past her and went upstairs, taking them two at a time. The familiarity of the carpet under his feet tugged at his gut. And his old house smelled the same-like Shelly's favorite hand soap. Every time he'd taken a lengthy road trip with the team, coming back had been just a little weird. His family's lives happened out of his sight a great deal of the time. He'd felt like an intruder sometimes.
As he reached the second floor, the last stair tread squeaked. As it always had. Annoyance flared in his chest. Elsa could have spared him this awkward little trip down memory lane.
His little girl's room was straight ahead, and he opened the door without knocking. Elsa sat cross-legged on the bed, a stuffed raccoon in her lap, her bony knees jutting out. Too thin, his subconscious prodded. And when he got a look at her face, his heart squeezed. She was awfully pale, with circles under her eyes.
His anger died as quickly as ashes dampened in the rain. "Elsa?" he asked softly. "Sweetie? Are you sick?"
She looked up at him as if he'd said something completely idiotic. "Not me. Mom."
"Well, I know about that." He sat on the bed. Shelly was in the middle of her second chemotherapy regime. Her cancer hadn't responded to the first one.
"She throws up all the time," Elsa said in a quavering voice.
"That sucks," he said softly. "You and me can go and have some pizza, and give your mom a few hours to nap."
Elsa shook her head. "I don't want any pizza."
"But we're going to play the claw," he tried, bringing out the big guns. "Maybe today's our lucky day."