Poke Check by RJ Scott & V.L. Locey

Author:RJ Scott & V.L. Locey [Scott, RJ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78564-114-5
Publisher: RJ Scott

Ten

Stan

My neighborhood is what is called upper class. Big, expensive homes. Fancy cars. Someday I think I’ll buy the biggest American car I can. Maybe a Cadillac. That’s the mark of success in America. Big cars. Big houses. Big boats. Big, big, big. Like my ice cream. A big tub of chocolate with marshmallow. Everything here was super-sized, jumbo, enormous.

So different from my childhood home. Yet the sound of children out playing in the snow was the same. Several ran up to me, eyes bright, cheeks red and wet, all with hockey sticks in hand.

“Mr. Stan, will you play with us?” asked Darren, the boy who brings me my daily paper. I glanced up at his house, a sprawling two-story with an attached two-car garage. There in front of the two doors, in the recently plowed drive, sat a net. “I know my dad said we shouldn’t bother you because you’re busy, but now you’re just walking with ice cream.”

He made a good point. I smiled down at the boys and girls. “I am happy to play with you.”

They cheered. I shoved my tub of ice cream into the bank of snow along the drive, and settled into the net, the pipes resting on my back. Someone brought me an old wooden goalie stick.

“That’s all we got,” the young lady informed me. “It was my grandfather’s.”

Yes, I believed it was that old, but I thanked her anyway and got ready to block the rubber ball they were using instead of a puck. That was a mother’s touch—that pink rubber ball—I was almost certain. The next forty minutes was spent blocking shots, laughing, and passing on what knowledge I could with my good but not great English.

When it was time for me to go, they all waved and thanked me. I grabbed my ice cream and continued home, feeling like a hundred bucks. No. Wait. It is more than that. A thousand bucks! I was feeling like a thousand bucks all the way home. When I saw that my friend Arvy was there, my high spirits got higher. This was also good. Another way to keep the memory of what had happened in my kitchen with Erik shoved aside. Right now, I would take any kind of distraction to help me not think, because thinking had only made me edgy, upset, and confused beyond help.

I did not expect to see Erik sitting in my living room, smiling over something my sister had said. Damn. How did I do this? Walk past and grunt? Maybe. Yes. That was good.

“Stan, come see this baby,” Galina called as I stalked past after grunting. Lucy trotted out from the kitchen, weaving around my legs, meowing for attention. I bent down and picked her up with one hand and continued moving forward. Not once did I look back at Erik or Noah. Hearing the baby cooing made it hard not to go back. He was a sweet babe.

Lucy made spitting sounds.

“I know you are not football.”

I placed her on the counter alongside the tub of ice cream.

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