The Year We Fell Down: A Hockey Romance (The Ivy Years Book 1)

—Corey—

“I’m no good at clearing the table,” I said, balancing my weight against the countertop. “But I can wash or dry.”

Hartley tossed me a dish-towel, and Theresa handed me a wet serving bowl.

Bridger walked past the doorway of the kitchen carrying Lucy piggyback style. “I read two chapters already,” he said. “Now you’re going to sleep.” I heard his footsteps on the stairs.

“Why aren’t you going to sleep?” Lucy argued.

“I will,” he said. “After I have a beer with Hartley.”

“I’ll wait up for you,” she said.

“If you wait with your eyes closed, that’s okay,” he said, chuckling. A half hour later, he came into the living room alone, bringing two six-packs with him.

“You know why I invited you two?” Hartley asked Dana and me, taking a deck of cards out of a drawer in the coffee table.

“Why?” Dana asked.

“So that we could play euchre, of course.”

I clapped my hands together. “Yes! Girls against the boys.”

“Bring it.” Bridger cracked open a beer, offering it to Dana.

“But I don’t know what euchre is,” she said, reaching for the bottle.

“Fuck, really? And here I thought Japanese schools were superior.” He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Hey, mom?”

Teresa stuck her head in the room. “You rang?”

“We need a fourth for euchre. Dana doesn’t know how.”

“Ah,” she said, coming in. “The best game ever. Do you know anything about bridge? Euchre is like bridge for idiots. Once you watch a couple of hands, you’ll be good to go.” She took a seat, and the beer that Bridger offered her.

Hartley ran through the rules for Dana. “And there’s one kind of cheating that’s legal.”

“Wait,” Dana said. “If it’s legal, how is it cheating?”

“Just go with it, Dana,” he said. “In euchre, you can steal the deal. If the dealer doesn’t realize it’s his turn, and you step in, you keep the advantage.”

“This is so complicated,” Dana complained.

Hartley shook his head. “It isn’t, not really. Because there’s only six cards in the game. You’ll see.”

Theresa played a hand with us, and she and I quickly euchred Bridger and Hartley.

“So that was, like, a practice hand,” Hartley said.

“What?” I yelped. “No way. Two points for the women.”

“Competitive, much?” Hartley asked.

Theresa laughed. “Pot, I’d like to introduce you to the kettle.”

“You should see them in front of that video game,” Dana said. “I have to leave the room.”

“I can only imagine.” Theresa picked up the deck and began to shuffle. “Bridger, how’s your mom?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not great. But as long as she keeps her job, things will be okay. The work-week holds her together.”

“It must be so hard for her,” Theresa said, shaking her head.

“I used to say that too,” Bridger picked up his cards. “But at some point you just have to pull yourself together, and I don’t see that happening. Long weekends are the worst. That’s why I brought Lucy down here with me.”

Theresa winced. “Bring her anytime.” Then she looked at her watch. “I’m going to go close my eyes for an hour before I have to go to work.”

“Tonight?” I asked, incredulous.

Hartley nodded. “It’s Black Friday. If mom doesn’t go in to work, then the people waiting in the parking lot outside Mega-Mart can’t get a hundred bucks off the latest cell phone.”

“Ugh,” Dana said. “All night long?”

Theresa just shrugged. “It’s no big deal. But, Corey? Before I go, I just want to say that my dear son would be happy to sleep on the sofa.”

“Bullshit,” Hartley said.

“It will be fine, Theresa,” I said. “I have crutches, and I’m not afraid to use them.”

“She isn’t, Mom,” Hartley said, taking a swig of beer. “Trust me.”

Hartley’s mom just shook her head as she left the room.

Dana was a quick study, and our euchre game was soon tied at seven to seven. I dealt the next hand.

“So, Hartley, what’s the countdown?” Bridger asked.

“The countdown?”

“When does the horniest man in the Ivy League get his girlfriend back?”

I flipped over a jack, and Dana gasped at our good fortune. But I was distracted by the conversation.

“Pass,” Hartley muttered at the card. Then he looked at Bridger. “Two weeks or so, I think. She mentioned coming back before the Christmas Ball.”

Before the Christmas Ball? That was December tenth — the same day as our economics final. Suddenly, I saw the demise of our evenings playing RealStix together. I’d always known that Hartley’s girlfriend would reappear next term. But that had always seemed so far off. And now she was two weeks away?

At Dana’s bidding, I picked up the jack, and tried to look happy about it. But inside I was crushed by the news I was getting.

“How is that fair?” Bridger said. “Her term started after ours and ends earlier? What a scam.”

“Totally. And they only had classes Tuesday through Thursday,” Hartley added, throwing away a nine. “That left long weekends to travel around Europe. There are pictures on Stacia’s Facebook page from Lisbon to Prague.”

“I saw those,” Bridger said, swigging his beer. “The architecture was not the most interesting thing in them.”

Hartley shook his head. “Don’t go there, man.”

“Does it really not interest you that the same skinny Italian guy is in every shot?”

Across from me, Dana lifted her eyes to mine.

“Like I said, there is such a thing as legalized cheating. We have an arrangement,” Hartley said, his voice dropped low. “Stacia thinks there’s no point in standing on the bridges of Paris without someone to kiss at sunset.”

“I don’t see you taking advantage of this,” Bridger shot back.

Hartley shrugged. “Not my style.”

“And that,” Bridger said, laying down an ace to win the last trick, “is the reason I don’t do relationships.”

“That’s your call,” Hartley said. “But I don’t see how it concerns me.”

Quietly, Dana scooped up the cards and began to shuffle them together. I saw what she was doing, and busied myself with worrying the label on my beer.

“How does it not concern you?” Bridger asked. “She could at least be subtle about it.”

“Stacia is far too high-maintenance to have a long distance relationship,” Hartley said. “She needs somebody local to carry all those shopping bags. But it cuts both ways, you know? The minute her little European vacation is over, he’s forgotten.”

“He lives in New York.”

Hartley just rolled his eyes. “To Stacia, that’s long distance. And I can’t believe you’re stalking my girlfriend’s… friend.”

“She’s a piece of work,” Bridger said.

“And this is news?” Hartley asked.

Dana flipped over an ace, put the cards on the table and smiled like a kitty cat.

“Christ,” Bridger swore. “You just stole the deal, didn’t you?”

“Hartley gave me the idea,” Dana grinned, “when he said legalized cheating.” She winked at me, and I made sure to smile. But everything Hartley had just said was eating me alive. His girlfriend was fooling around, and he didn’t even care?

My little hope fairy made an appearance then. I hadn’t heard from her lately, but there she was, whispering in my ear. Maybe they’ll break up, she said, her tiny wings tickling my ear.

Right. Not likely.

Bedtime might have been awkward. But it wasn’t, because Hartley was incapable of awkward. No matter what, he was always just Hartley, with the lopsided smile and the “fuck it all” attitude.

“Why is there an enormous bed in your den, anyway?” I asked, digging my PJs out of my bag.

“After I broke my leg, I couldn’t get up the stairs to my room. My aunt was moving, and her new apartment wasn’t big enough for this thing. It’s a California king. So she brought it here to get me off the living room couch.”

“That was nice of her,” I said.

“It sure was. You want the bathroom first?”

“You go ahead,” I said. “I take forever.”

“Suit yourself.”

By the time that I took my turn and got back to our room, he was already snoring.

I shucked off my braces and tucked myself in. He hadn’t been kidding. There was a vast expanse of mattress between Hartley’s sleeping body and my own. I lay there, listening to the comfortable sounds of his sleep. Drifting off, I wondered how Stacia would feel about the rooming assignments. I knew I wasn’t really competition for her. But a girl could dream.

Sometime later, I woke up to the sound of a gasp. Disoriented, my eyes flew open in the dark. Hartley was standing next to the bed, his head bent forward, his arms on the mattress.

“What’s the matter?” I croaked.

“Calf. Cramp,” he bit out.

“Which leg?”

“Good one. Can’t put enough weight on the other one to…argh.”

“Give it to me,” I said, sitting up. I knew a thing or two about leg cramps.

With a grimace, Hartley sat on the bed and spun his good leg toward me.

“Press your heel here,” I said, patting my blanketed hip. When he’d anchored his bare foot against me, I grabbed his toes with both hands and flexed the ball of his foot back toward him. He let out his breath in a great tumble. After a minute, I slid my hand under his calf and probed with my fingers. “Ouch,” I said, finding the knot.

“Happens all the time,” he said.

“Overcompensating for your bad leg is straining your good one,” I said. I made a fist with my hand and tried to knuckle into it.

“Agh,” Hartley said.

“Sorry. I have superhuman strength.” He grimaced as I flexed his foot. “What do you do when you’re alone?”

“Suffer. And yearn for the competent hands of Pat the Therapist. Although you’re no slouch.”

“My father taught me. He’s good with things like this,” I said. “Wait — now I’ve got it.” The knot in Hartley’s muscle relaxed under my hand.

He exhaled. “Jeez. Thanks.”

“Keep that flexed,” I cautioned as he pulled his leg back onto his side of the bed.

“Don’t worry, I will.” He settled himself onto his back, his extra pillow under his knee. “Sorry for the midnight drama.”

“No worries.” We were quiet for a couple of minutes, but I could tell that neither of us was sleeping.

Another minute of silence passed, and then Hartley rolled to face me. “You never told me it was a hockey injury. You said ‘accident,’ and so I thought it was a car.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, rolling to mirror him. We stared at each other for a second. “The thing is, Bridger was right. Hockey is only the seventh most dangerous sport. Cheerleading and baseball have greater injury rates. So do football, soccer, and lacrosse.”

“So you’re saying that you have to be spectacularly unlucky to have a bad hockey injury?”

“Exactly.”

“Unfuckingbelievable,” Hartley said. We lapsed into silence, and I found myself wishing the bed weren’t so large.

There’s a mere two feet between us and that luscious mouth, my hope fairy whispered.

“I love your mom,” I blurted, dragging my mind out of the gutter.

“She’s great,” Hartley smiled. “And she likes having the house full of people. I’m not just saying that.”

“I can tell. And Bridger’s little sister is a cutie. She loves your mom, too.”

Hartley propped his head on his hand. “Yeah. But she’s Bridger’s biggest problem.”

“Really? Why?”

“Well, their dad died about two years ago. And his mom isn’t holding it together.”

“She’s depressed?”

“She’s a drug addict.”

I sucked in a breath. “That’s dark.”

“Tell me about it. Bridger is worried that his mom will lose her job and fall apart. He might have to drop out if things get too ugly.”

“He can’t drop out! In a year and a half he’ll be a Harkness grad.”

“Bridger’s only a sophomore, actually. He took a year off before college, and now he’s kicking himself.”

“You know…” The house was so quiet that even our whispered conversation seemed loud. “I get stuck inside my head too often. I forget that other people have problems.”

Hartley was quiet a moment, watching me. Then he reached slowly across the expanse between us and covered my hand with his. Even that small touch made me stop breathing. “Everybody has their shit to shovel, Callahan. Everybody.” He gave my hand a squeeze, and then took his back. “Now, yours is right up front where everybody can see it. I don’t envy you that. But everybody has some, whether you can see it or not.”

I had to stop and think about that. To look at Bridger, you wouldn’t know that he was dragging around such troubles. But I suspected there were others who had no shit at all to shovel, or else had an entire team of minions to shovel it for them. Stacia sprang to mind.

“Are you sure?” I challenged him. “Because it seems like some people’s biggest problem is that the leather upholstery in their Beemer doesn’t come in the perfect color.”

Hartley’s face broke into the most beautiful smile. “For that, there’s always custom, Callahan.” He rolled onto his back, putting his hands behind his head. “Thanks for the calf massage.”

“Anytime.”

He chuckled. “Don’t say that, or I’ll wake you up every night next week.”

Sadly, I was so deep into him, I would probably look forward to it.

Hartley began to breathe deeply as I lay there listening. He was a warm shape in the dark, and just a few feet away. I would have given anything for the privilege of sliding over, closing the distance between us, and wrapping an arm across his chest. It was difficult to even imagine the luxury of belonging with him. I wanted to roll over in the night and curl up against his body. I wanted to feel his breath on my neck while I slept.

This is torture, my hope fairy grumbled, curling up on the pillow beside me.

She wasn’t wrong. But it was a sweet kind of torture.