Game On

“So? Did you do your homework?”

“Yes, teacher. I did my homework.”

She felt a smile pull at her lips. She was relieved he’d dropped the attitude. He’d clearly made his peace with working with her, which gave them much better odds of figuring out the root of his problem.

“Good. Did you discover anything interesting?”

“You don’t waste time, do you?”

“Not if I can help it. The sooner you have your issues under control, the sooner you can live up to your full potential.”

“Do you really believe that?” he asked as though he really wanted to know.

“Yes. Of course I do. It’s what my entire career is based on.”

Those blue, blue eyes of his made her forget this was a lunch meeting and imagine, almost wish, it were a romantic get-together. A date. The kind where you bolt your food because you’re so anxious to get home and get naked. “Maybe some people aren’t meant to do great things.”

She bet he could do great things in bed, then was shocked to realize that her thoughts were taking a whole different path than their conversation.

“Of course they aren’t. So long as you feel you are living the life you want, that you aren’t getting in your own way, I have no quarrel. I know people doing menial work at minimum wage who are happier than you or I will ever be. They find real satisfaction in what they do. They are living up to their potential. In your case, with the Hunter Hurricanes, you play at peak performance all year until the play-offs and then your game suddenly deteriorates. Why? That’s what we want to work on.”

“It was weird. I started writing out the games like you told me to and I got this feeling, like guilt, that came over me. It got hard to breathe and I had trouble staying in my chair to write it all out.”

He reached for a wad of folded paper in his pocket but she stopped him. “Tell me about it.”

“Well, I remember last year’s championship pretty clearly. Game was tied 2–2. And frankly, they never should have got two goals. Our defense was sloppy—mostly, though, our offense was weak. So I’m open. I yell. Dylan shoots me the puck. I’ve got a clear shot at goal. I mean, you could have nailed the shot. No offense.”

“None taken. What happened?”

“The game was won. It was over. A little tap of my stick on the puck and the cup was ours.”

“And?”

She heard a sound that might have been his teeth grinding together. “I missed the puck.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. I shot and missed the damn puck. A three-year-old with a plastic stick could have got that puck in the net.”

“Interesting.” She sat back and thought about what he’d told her. “What do you think you felt guilty about?”

“I don’t know. It’s like I wasn’t supposed to win the game.”

“You weren’t supposed to win the game,” she parroted. “According to whom?”

“Hell if I know.”

“Who has the power to make you play at less than your best?”

“I do!” The words exploded from him. She felt his frustration and imagined writing out the games had been a difficult exercise.

“Of course you do. But someone or something else is sending you messages. I want you to think about that. Go through your day and really listen. Whose standards are you trying to live up to? A coach’s? A teacher’s? A parent’s? A boss’s? Some kind of authority figure, probably from your childhood, has buried these land mines in your subconscious. It’s up to you to find them and disarm them before they do any more damage.”

“What am I listening for?”

“When have you heard these messages before? You can go back to childhood and listen to the past. Replay conversations you can remember, particularly if they were around winning and success. See what comes up for you.”

“How will I know when I find it?”

She loved how focused he was, how he gave her every scintilla of his attention. She had another momentary flash of being naked with him and shivered. Found her own focus—on the damned topic at hand.

“I remember working with a woman once who could not communicate anger. She was the worst doormat you’ve ever seen. Everyone in her life took advantage of her and she let them. It was making her ill. Actually ill. She got migraines and more colds and flu bugs than anyone I’d ever met. When she did this exercise, she started hearing her mother’s voice saying, ‘Good girls never show their temper.’ When she was young, if she yelled, she was punished. So she learned never to show her anger. Always to show a smiling face to the world and do whatever anyone asked of her. Once she recognized that she’d taken those messages inside and gone completely overboard, she was able to work on expressing her feelings.”

“Wow.” He looked genuinely impressed.

“There’s a kind of resonance when you see the pattern. An ‘aha’ moment. Chills down the back of your neck. You’ll know it when you experience it.”

She watched him polish off the last of the largest plate of enchiladas she’d ever seen.

“What was it for you?” he asked when he’d swallowed. “Your ‘aha’ moment.”

She smiled at him. “One day I’ll tell you. But today we’re focusing on you.”

“One day I hope you’ll tell me a lot of things.” His voice was warm, intimate. She felt the pull of attraction so strongly she knew she was lost.

There was a beat of silence. Their gazes stayed locked. Then she forced herself to pull them back to the reason for their lunch. “Why do you play hockey?” she asked him.

He looked at her as though this were some kind of test question. “Because it’s fun.”

“Good. That’s excellent. That’s exactly why you should play a game. What do you like best about it?”

He reached for the basket of tortilla chips and chose one. “I like the game itself. Strategy, when a play works, scoring a goal, but most of all I like the camaraderie. After a game we’ll have a beer in the dressing room and talk about stuff. Joke around.” He put the chip in his mouth. Crunched down.

“Male bonding.”

“Yeah.”

He chomped more chips. She got the feeling that if he’d known her better, he’d have reached for the half of her salad that she hadn’t been able to finish.

“All right. Here’s your homework for next week.”

“Will it give me writer’s cramp?”

“No. I want you to listen for those messages we were talking about earlier. If you can find the source, then we’re going to be close to improving your performance.”

“Okay.” He scooped the last three chips out of the basket, swooped them through the remains of the salsa.

“And I’m going to give you a couple of mantras.”