When the sun starts poking through the curtains, I get up and sneak out to get her some breakfast. Maybe that will help. Before this midnight misadventure, the last time I was in the same room with Mac was when she was in college. I remember back then she was a vegetarian.
So that's how I find myself in the Trader Joe's staring at the Meatless Magic section at eight in the morning. I'm like a toddler looking at a trigonometry textbook. Completely clueless.
“Why do they flavor meatless food like meat?”a female voice from behind me asks. “It’s like, hey cow, I won’t eat you I’ll just eat stuff flavored like you. That feels morally gray. Not that morally gray is a bad thing, necessarily.”
I turn to locate the person speaking and, oh shit. It’s Tenley. My cousin. I frown at her. She blinks her green eyes and her expression turns from flirty to utter horror. “Oh fuck! I thought you were a hot guy. Sorry. What the hell are you doing back?”
“First of all, Iama hot guy,” I reply. She immediately makes a gagging sound, which I ignore. "Second of all, why are you cruising the vegetarian aisle at eight in the morning?”
“Because…” Tenley pauses, tilts her dirty blonde head, and smirks. “Never mind that. Why areyouin a vegetarian aisle? In Silver Bay. Why aren't you in that baller penthouse loft of yours in Brooklyn?"
“I’m home for Christmas. I always come home for Christmas.”
"Yeah… but you aren't home. I was at Aunt Callie's and Uncle Devin's last night. Everyone was there. They threw their annual tree-trimming party. And NYC is five and a half hours away in good weather, eight hours in the post-storm conditions we've got happening right now. You expect me to believe you woke up at like… two in the morning to drive here? So you could come to TJ’s to make bedroom eyes at fake meat? Something you’ve never eaten a day in your life.”
Tenley is not my most annoying relative, but she's in the top three. Why? Because she's too smart for her own good. Also, I used to have to threaten to fight my teammates to keep them from trying to bang her when we were kids. People say she's good-looking. Stunning, hot, and beautiful are the most common words people use to describe her, actually (but she's my cousin, so gross). Another tick in her annoying column is she actively flirts with any guy in skates. But my biggest pet peeve with Ten is she's afraid of absolutely nothing, which makes her terrifying.
“Tenley…” I could lie to her but it’s no use. She’s got her eyes narrowed in on my face, scanning it for any twitch or flicker of deceit. Did I mention she’s minoring in criminology? Who minors in that, like it’s ahobby? “I got back last night, but I saw all the cars at Dad and Callie’s, and… I didn’t feel like peopling, so I stayed elsewhere.”
“Oh my God, youtotallydidn’t lie!” Tenley whoops, the bright smile of victory so wide on her face her dimples are showing. “I’m kind of impressed. But it means I don’t get to practice my more advanced interrogation techniques, which sucks. FYI, I knew you were in town. Saw your car hidden behind the barn late last night. I had to go out there with snowshoes to double-check the plates because the snow was like four feet deep and I thought I might get swallowed up by it, but yeah. I knew."
“You are a special kind of crazy, Ten.”
She shrugs, neither confirming nor denying my accusation. "So why does your family's unwavering support annoy you?"
“Well, when you put it that way I sound like an asshole,” I mutter and sigh.
She smiles. “Nah. I get it. We’re a lot. And I know you’re having a rough season and half the family will probably shower you with unsolicited hockey advice. All the ones with testicles for sure.”
“Yes. Exactly.” It’s a win that Tenley doesn’t realize the Brooklyn Barons still have a game to play before the holiday break. If she followed my team, herUnsolved Mysteriesbrain would be in overdrive.
Instead, she latches onto something else as a smile spreads across her wide mouth that she inherited from her dad, just like her light hair. "So…you’re with Mac?”
“I’m notwithMac,” I counter quickly, absentmindedly reaching up and rubbing the spot on my forehead where there’s still a little cut, now all scabbed up. Tenley’s eyes follow myhand, but she likely thinks it’s a hockey incident and I don’t explain otherwise. “I didn’t know she was living there. I figured it was empty. And I knew the keys were hidden under the garden gnome.”
Tenley and my cousin Harlow do pottery in their spare time and Tenley likes to make lawn ornaments. There are fourteen gnomes, fairies, rabbits, and other ceramic wild things peppered about the yard at her place. “His name is Sir Geoffrey Gnomeo,” Tenley informs me.
“You are so fucking weird.”
She slaps my arm at the insult, then wiggles her eyebrows. “There’s only one bed in that apartment at the moment.”
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” I demand. “My team is dead last in the entire league and you think I’m out here trying to hook up with a woman I haven’t seen in… like a decade?”
“It’s a possibility. As for your team, it’s only temporary, Con. You’ll have them back on top soon, I know it,” Tenley says, and she’s completely sincere. She gives me a small smile. “You’re a Garrison. You don’t fail.”
If only she knew what she was talking about.
“The whole pep talk thing is exactly why I’m avoiding family, remember?” I turn back to the vegetarian foods to avoid making eye contact. She’s creepily good at reading expressions and I don’t want her to realize there’s more to my melancholy than a losing streak. I don’t want to tell her I’m about to lose my whole career.
“You should talk to Mac about hating pep talks,” Tenley suggests and moves to stand beside me again in front of the cooler full of fake meat. “She’s about to be a full-fledged psychiatrist. She can figure out why your brain rejects support.”
“Psychiatrist. Right." I suddenly remember Mac mentioning that. If Mac psychoanalyzed me last night, did she figure out whyI'm suddenly unable to be good at the only thing I've ever been good at? Should I ask her? Do I want to know?
Tenley reaches out and grabs a package of meatless breakfast sausage off the shelf, and also the fake bacon. She puts it all in my basket.
“She’s the vegetarian, not you,” Tenley says, smiling. "And I think it's cute that you're trying to impress her with breakfast.”
"Not impress her, just thank her for letting me sleep there." Tenley's eyebrows raise. "On the blow-up mattress on the floor in the second bedroom."