Page 68 of A Shot at Love
Frankie gave it some thought, but it didn’t take much deliberating. She’d spent her entire career working towards where she was now, even if the path didn’t look the way she once thought it would. So, yeah, she still loved it despite the bullshit but if she had it her way, things would be a lot easier. If only life was as smooth as a freshly flooded sheet of ice.
“The only thing I’d rather be doing is actually playing hockey but we both know my leg is fucked so that'll never happen again.”
“Then there you go.” Sydney tossed a pillow at her head and grinned. “I’m proud of you, Frank. We’ve come a long way.”
Rolling her eyes, Frankie caught the pillow and threw it back. “Don’t call me Frank!”
“I’ll call you whatever I want considering I crossed an entire ocean to be here right now. Don’t be ungrateful.”
“Me? Ungrateful? You get a free ticket to the most popular event in town while you're here. You better start calling me coach.”
Sydney batted her eyelashes dramatically and scooted closer to Frankie on the couch. “DoesJulescall you coach?”
“Ew.” She shoved Sydney away but they broke into a fit of laughter and it brought Frankie back to the room they shared in college, when life was easy and all they had to worry about was keeping their grades up, playing good hockey, and impressing girls at parties.
But Frankie had impressed the only girl that mattered and as if she’d known Frankie was thinking about her, her phone buzzed in her back pocket.
“Is it your girllllllllfriend?”
She blushed and pushed Sydney away again then pulled her phone out and smiled to herself at the message on her lock screen.
Jules – 6:15PM
CanI see you tonight?
Frankie always wanted to see Jules, that was never a question, but she hadn’t seen Sydney in nearly a year, and getting time to hang out with her best friend was something she wanted and needed to cherish.
But an idea popped into her head that she didn’t question and she fixed her eyes on Sydney.
Her best friend and the woman she was dating…the two people who meant more to her than anyone else – she wanted them to be friends.
The thought of it filled her with warmth and having them both in her life, having them both at the game, was something she hadn’t allowed herself to consider as a possibility until now. She wanted Sydney to know why Jules had captured her heart, and she wanted Jules to know why Sydney was such a good friend, why they’d stayed close despite their distance.
Most of all, she wanted to look into the stands and see people there to support her. It had been a long, long time she actually got to do that.
"Do you want to grab a drink and meet Jules tonight?"
Chapter 30
“Jules, if only you knew our Frank back then. She was wild.”
Frankie wanted to reach across the table and smack Sydney to shut her up but she couldn’t reach and was certain the small, local dive bar they were currently patrons in wouldn’t be too pleased with violence.
Sydney was, as Frankie expected her to be, eager to meet the woman who had Frankie so captivated and thirty minutes after asking Jules if she’d want to go out for a drink, all three of them were seated around a hightop table in a small bar a few blocks from where Frankie and Jules lived.
Frankie had spotted the bar on the way back from grabbing coffee and bagels for her and Jules one morning and though it wasn’t open at that time of day, she’d cupped her eyes and peered in through the front window, making a mental note to check it out on an evening when they had the time.
And checking it out had been the right decision because the atmosphere was lowkey and comfortable, with soft lighting and music playing just loudly enough that you could hear it while chatting comfortably with the person nextto you. There was a long bartop running along the right side of the room and a string of old arcade games along the other.
The table they occupied was near the window with a view of the quiet Halifax streetfront and the bar itself was the kind of place that made you feel welcome the moment you stepped through the door, though Frankie had quickly learned that many of the businesses she’d frequented since her move to Halifax operated in a similar manner. That kind of authentic friendliness was just an east coast thing.
“And you helped sneak her back into the dorm because she’d left her keycard on some girl’s floor across campus?” Jules questioned, laughing as she raised a glass of cold cider to her lips.
Frankie covered her face in embarrassment as Sydney grinned and nodded far too enthusiastically for someone who had her own secrets Frankie could share if she really wanted to.
“The card fell out of my pocket!”
“Just like you fell out of your jeans when Rebecca Slater, that girl from the volleyball team, agreed to play you in a game of beer pong?” Sydney teased. “Yeah, Coach Stevens here was a bit of a heartbreaker. She was known in our athletic circle for running out the door before the sun came up which meant rushing off without all of her belongings and had a tendency to dine and dash…if you know what I mean.”
