The Goalie Bet novel · Chapter 6 of 32

Chapter 6: Captain's Sister

The text came Thursday afternoon from a number I didn't have saved.

Team party, The Blue Line, 7. Come meet everybody.

I went anyway. That's on me.

The Blue Line is four blocks off campus, low ceiling, dark wood, framed jerseys.

Three long tables pushed together in the back room.

Twenty players, a handful of girlfriends, one guy's parents.

Loud before I got my coat off.

Jenna was at the head of the table with a glass of red.

She saw me and stood up.

"Dana! You came."

"I said I might."

"Sit. Wade, move."

Wade was at the far end. He looked up at his name, then back at his plate.

He hadn't spoken to me since the rink.

Jenna pointed at the empty chair past the last player, near the coat rack.

I sat there.

Somebody brought a pitcher of beer and it went around and didn't reach me.

I got a water from the bar and paid for it.

The defenseman next to me asked what I did and said "oh, cool" and turned back around.

I sat there for twenty minutes.

Then Logan came in.

Everybody yelled at him. He went down the line doing the handshake thing.

He got to the empty chair beside Jenna and she patted it.

He looked down the length of the table.

Then he walked right past her.

He came all the way to the end and sat down next to me.

The room didn't go quiet, exactly. It just changed.

Jenna's smile stayed bolted on.

"You're at the wrong end," she said.

"I'm at the right end."

"There's a chair up here."

"There's a chair here."

He got two beers and set one in front of me.

"I don't drink beer," I said.

"You do tonight."

I drank the beer.

Jenna watched us over the rim of her glass.

Everybody at that table knew something. Nobody knew what.

Wade knew. Wade was cutting his steak into very small pieces.

"You're limping," Jenna said across the room.

"I'm not."

"You are. You came in limping."

"I came in from the cold."

"It's sixty degrees."

"Then I came in from the ice."

"Are you skating?"

"No."

"Because I heard you were skating."

The table went quiet.

Logan picked up his beer.

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