Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 98134 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98134 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 491(@200wpm)___ 393(@250wpm)___ 327(@300wpm)
I’m at the table now with Nolan and Maddox while Jake, Liam, Carter, and Jesse are somewhere in the cabin, probably getting ready for the day.
Nolan slides some little french toast rectangles onto my plate. He has crisped them and coated them with brown sugar and cinnamon, then dusted them with powdered sugar, creating an angelic blend somewhere between a churro and French toast.
“Thank you, Goalie Gourmet” I say.
He smiles. “Give it a try,” he urges.
I crunch into it and sit back in the chair, sighing around my mouthful. “So good,” I manage.
Nolan’s smile goes even wider. “I baked the bread this morning. I tried to mess with the egg mixture a little. Doubled the vanilla and added some more nutmeg. Can you tell?”
I shrug. “It just tastes like magic to me. I don’t have a very complicated palette.”
“Magic,” he says, almost as if to himself. “I can handle that.”
He goes back into the kitchen, probably making a batch for the other guys. It’s kind of adorable. I know the team is supposed to be this big macho beefy man machine. They’re supposed to chest bump each other through walls, grunt, lift heavy objects, and radiate masculinity. But the more time I spend around them, the more I see how sweet they actually are with each other.
Nolan loves to cook for the guys and eats up any feedback he can get on his food. Jake is almost as overprotective as the guys as he is of me. The other day, I saw him having a long heart-to-heart with Liam after things went south with the girl Liam was seeing from town. There was a lot of shoulder touching, arm squeezes, and genuine gestures of concern.
Then there’s Carter, who tries to act like he doesn’t really care about anything except making jokes. But I’ve seen glimpses of there being more to him beneath what he lets on. Just the other night, he was the star adult with the kids at the skating event. We had to keep splitting groups off to spend time with the other players and the girls trying to teach figure skating. Every time we took our eyes off them, they’d sneak back to Carter’s group, where everybody was laughing and having the time of their lives.
Liam is still a little bit of a mystery to me. For most of the time I’ve been here in Frosty Harbor, he has been busy with the girl from town named Avery. I took him for the typical heartthrob who shrugs off break ups without a care, but I’ve been surprised to see how hard he’s taking the end of their little fling. Mostly, he’s just been sulking around the house and withdrawn since it happened.
I eye Maddox, who is happily chomping on his french toast across from me. I can’t say I’ve fully explored the depths of Maddox, if there are any. He seems like the kind of guy who doesn’t ever try to dig too deeply into his own thoughts. Maybe he’s exactly what he lets on.
He notices me looking, lifts one of his french toast sticks, and extends it toward me for a kind of toast. A french toast toast.
I grin and tap my stick to his. Cinnamon and brown sugar drift down to the table and we both take a bite.
“So, Mojo” I say, curious to make conversation with him. “Who is the best player on the team?”
“Jesse,” he says simply. “I mean, right now he’s all gimped up so not technically. But normally, he’s the best. Without him, it’s looking like we may miss the playoffs this year.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Jesse has that killer instinct on the ice. He just always knows when to take the shot and where to put it. It’s like magic.” Maddox considers, frowning at his french toast stick, then looks back up at me with surprise in his eyes. “Probably is magic.”
“Have you always been… um,” I search for a delicate way to put my question. “Interested in superstitions and things like that?”
“Oh, definitely. My mom was a palm reader. She taught me all about it. And have you ever seen those Conjuring movies? My dad was kind of like Ed Warren. He’d go to people’s houses and help them with hauntings and stuff like that. They both passed,” he adds, looking uncharacteristically sad for a moment. “Keeping my finger on the pulse of this kind of thing makes me feel like I’m still with them, I guess.”
“Wow,” I say. I definitely wasn’t expecting that out of him. “That’s really sweet.”
He nods, chomping down on his food and leaning closer, face suddenly growing serious. “Look. I know how crazy it all sounds, but think about this, okay?”
“Ready to think,” I say.
“Alright, here’s the way I see it. Nature isn’t perfect. Every natural process has imperfections. A whole forest can burn and you’ll still find intact trees. A rainstorm can pass over a city and miss a whole block.”