Center Ice (Boston Rebels Book 1)

“Ifeel like every time you cook, I gain ten pounds,” Morgan says as she leans back in one of my kitchen chairs and rubs her belly. Morgan is looking at my sister Jules, who is the cook in our family—it’s how she celebrates and also how she handles stress, so there’s always a lot of food around. “I don’t know how you two don’t weigh three hundred pounds.”

“Jules got our dad’s genes,” I say. My sister looks like Barbie. She’s tall and thin like Dad, but curvy in all the right places, with long legs and beautiful, long ash blond hair. “I, on the other hand, just work hard at not letting my hips get any wider.” I roll my eyes, because while I’m not unhappy with my body, I am a little self-conscious about it. I wish I didn’t have to watch what I eat and force myself to exercise regularly in order to maintain anything resembling my pre-baby form.

My twenties should have been full of late nights at the bars, followed by greasy pizza, then brunch and shopping the next day to burn off the hangover. I should have been traveling the world, like I’d planned to after graduating from college. Instead, I raised a child on my own. Well, not entirely on my own. I’m extremely blessed to have the best siblings in the world who’ve been there for us every step of the way.

There is absolutely nothing I would change about my son, Graham, or our life together. But now that Graham’s entered kindergarten, and the days are less intense, I’ve had some time to reflect—to actually stop and realize what I missed out on while I was so busy parenting—and it’s made me realize that I do wish Graham had come into my life a bit later than he did. Not that I’d ever admit that to anyone, not even to Jules or my brother, Jameson.

Morgan groans as she sweeps her strawberry blonde hair off her face and into an elastic. “Your body is just fine, but with a face like yours, no one is looking at your body anyway. Those freaking lips…” She sighs, honing in on one of my most prominent features. “If I weren’t straight, I’d want to kiss them just to see what they felt like.”

Jules bursts out laughing. “Oh my God, someone get Morgan another Moscow Mule. Oh wait, I’m the bartender as well as the chef. I’m on it.”

“You guys are ridiculous,” I tell them, but I can’t hide my smile. When my brother’s fiancée, Lauren, relocated to Boston from Park City last winter, her cousin Morgan moved back here with her too, and she’s since become one of our closest friends. “You better slow down on those drinks, because we’re not rolling into a family friendly backyard party drunk.”

Morgan lets out an adorable snort. “You’re not.”

“Nope, I’m definitely not.”

Jules gets up from the table and heads to the counter where she’s got tonight’s drink station set up. She won’t have another, I know, because she’s already had two, and that’s her limit, just like it’s mine. When you’re the child of an alcoholic, you learn your limits and hold fast to them. Unless you’re our brother, in which case you’ve never had more than one drink at a time.

“Hey, we’re celebrating,” Jules says. “We’re about to start the demo on the Livingston project”—she references the most lucrative project our company, Our House, has taken on yet—“and Morgan is…what are you celebrating, Morgan?”

While Jules mixes her another drink, Morgan tells me a little about work. She’s the personal assistant for one of Lauren’s best friends, Petra Ivanova, who is not only a famous television personality in her own right, but she’s also married to one of the best hockey players of our time, Alex Ivanov. “So anyway, we’re heading out to Las Vegas on Thursday for the National Television Academy Awards show.”

I note the barely perceptible stiffening of Jules’s shoulders at the mention of that city. But she plasters on a huge smile and asks, “She was nominated for an NTA Award?”

“Yep. I’m not surprised, but she seems shocked as shit. It’s like she’s having some major imposter syndrome. She never expected the show to do this well. She really thought it was going to be a six-month stint getting to film something amazing, then she was going to go back to event planning.”

“Well, it’s not a surprise to anyone who’s seen the show,” I say. Petra is incredibly down to earth, but she’s also a feminist icon. I’ve never wanted to be famous—I don’t in any way enjoy being in the spotlight—but it’s fun to know someone who is.

“Hey, have you thought any more about my offer to get you set up on some dating sites?” Morgan asks me.

I can’t hold in the laugh. It’s funny that Morgan’s such an organization freak, because her brain is a little chaotic. Conversations with her are often peppered with non-sequiturs like that. “How did you get there from just talking about Petra’s award nomination?”

“I was thinking about how fun it is now that I’m running Petra’s social media account, and that led to me thinking about dating apps and the offer I made you a few weeks ago.”

“Yeah, thanks, but no thanks.” Dating apps are not my thing. Not that I’ve ever been on one. In college, I met guys in my classes or at parties or at bars. Then I got pregnant my senior year, and for the last six years, dating has not been a priority. Which is probably why my last boyfriend, Scott, broke up with me. That and, after dating for almost two years and basically being a surrogate dad to Graham, he conveniently decided he didn’t want kids.

“You said you felt ready to get back out there, but it’s not like you’re going to meet people at work.” And she’s right, because most days I work out of our home office in our basement and Jules is the only person I see unless we have a meeting with clients. Morgan sighs and says, “Honestly, the whole working from home thing is awesome, and I almost always love it, but it really makes it hard to meet new people. If I weren’t on any of these apps, I don’t know how I’d ever meet a guy.”

“I’ll just meet a guy the old-fashioned way,” I say.

“You almost never go out at night. How exactly are you going to meet someone unless you join a dating app?” Jules asks.

“Who knows?” I shrug. I met Scott in line at the deli down the street, so it’s not like dating apps are the only way to find someone. “The right guy will probably come along when I least expect it.”

“If only it worked that way,” Jules sighs. My sister is fairly convinced she’s cursed after a string of bad first dates. Guys always find her intimidating because she’s gorgeous and a little brash, and has a job that they seem to think threatens their manhood. She’s a structural engineer and the lead contractor for our renovation business, and I think the combination of her beauty and brains, combined with being better with power tools than any man, makes her formidable. But she doesn’t see that for what it is, she just sees that date after date end badly.

“It can,” I say. “But right now, I’ve got an amazing kid, great friends, and the best siblings. Our business is thriving. I’ve got my rooftop garden I built this summer, I’m taking that dance class on Wednesday nights, and I’m not looking to get my heart broken again any time soon.” I think back to how confused and sad Graham had been when Scott suddenly disappeared out of his life. I can’t let that happen to him again. “Besides, I’ve got a friends-with-benefits arrangement that suits me just fine. I’m happy.”

They both look at me like they’ve caught me in a lie, but I’m telling the truth. I am happy, because my sense of happiness and self-worth doesn’t require validation from a man. I’m about to explain as much, but then from upstairs, Graham yells, “Mom?”

“Shit!” I say, glancing at my watch. “I forgot to set the timer, and he’s been in the shower forever.” The kid loves water and has no concept of how expensive or wasteful it is for a tiny human to take thirty-minute showers.

I rush up the stairs and cross the landing before coming to a stop and knocking on the bathroom door, because my five-year-old is suddenly aware that we’re different genders and insists he needs his privacy. God forbid, I walk in without knocking, even though he does it to me all the time.

“What’s up, Graham?” I call out.

“I’m out of shampoo,” he says, and I’m thankful that his little voice still has the sing-song quality it always has. As much as I appreciate that he can do a lot of things independently these days, it still feels like he’s growing up too fast.

I crack open the bathroom door and a blast of steam hits me in the face. Flicking on the switch for the ceiling fan, I grab a spare bottle of shampoo from below the sink and pass it to him between the shower curtain and the tile wall. “I forgot to set the timer, so I’m giving you two more minutes, and then you need to get out.”

“But I just got in,” he complains.

I hit the buttons on the countertop timer to give him an alert when his two minutes are up. “Yeah, like twenty minutes ago. Wash your hair fast. It’s almost time to get ready to go to Jameson and Lauren’s.”

“Okay,” he says eagerly. Lauren’s twins, Iris and Ivy, have been such a welcome addition to our family. Before them, Graham had no cousins, and he’s absolutely flourished in his role as the big cousin. I’ve loved watching their bond develop, and at the same time, it’s always a tad bittersweet because I think he’d be an amazing big brother. However, I wouldn’t want another child unless I was in a happy, committed relationship. Doing the single-parent thing once was unavoidable, but I’m not choosing that path a second time.

There’s only one branch on our family tree. And I was just fine with that until his stupid kindergarten project came home on Friday. It’s Sunday night and I still don’t know what to do about it. I head back downstairs, and I must be deep in thought because Jules takes one look at me and says, “Uh oh, what’s wrong?”

My head snaps up in surprise, and both my sister and Morgan are looking at me with concern lacing their expressions. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“Bullshit.” Jules pulls out my seat. “Here, sit and tell us before Graham comes back down.”

I sink into the chair. “Graham has a family tree project for school. I’m not sure how to help him fill out the planning sheet, and I feel like a total asshole about it.”

“Why do you feel like an asshole about it?” Morgan asks, and I hear the statement within the question—it’s not like I chose to be a single parent.

“Because they’re doing this whole big unit on families, and to the school’s credit, they are trying to be inclusive. They’ve read books about all different types of families, and now the kids are going to create family trees. They sent home several planning sheets so that people could pick out the one that best represents their family. And you know what type of family tree doesn’t exist? Apparently, the one where you have only one parent, no siblings, and no grandparents.”

Jules’s and Morgan’s lips both turn down at the corners. “Maybe you could talk to the teachers and see if Graham could draw his own family tree?” Jules suggests.

“Yeah, maybe. But I don’t even know what that tree would look like. And every other kid in that class is going to come in with their planning sheets full of names and be able to fill out a normal family tree. My kid is⁠—”

“Amazing,” Morgan says. “And it doesn’t matter if his family tree has one branch or one hundred, he’s still a great kid. After all, who else can tell you that there are over 130 species of ducks on this planet, or that penguins are the only birds that can swim but not fly?”

I let a laugh bubble up, relieved that my friends and family are always around to ground me when the pressure feels like too much. “That’s true. I doubt many other five-year-olds are as weirdly obsessed with birds.”

“You have to prepare yourself, because this is going to keep happening,” Jules says, as if I don’t know that I’ll be facing this reality indefinitely.

“I’m mostly worried about how the other kids in his class will treat him once they figure out he doesn’t know who his dad is,” I admit. Graham has been relatively insulated because he hasn’t been in school yet, but kids can be so cruel—whether intentionally or unintentionally. I probably need to talk to his teachers and let them know the situation, but the lie I’ve always told—I don’t know who his dad is—was easier when I was saying it to my college friends or perfect strangers…but telling my son’s kindergarten teacher? I don’t want Graham to be known throughout his chichi private school as the kid who doesn’t know who his dad is.

“Hey, Mom,” Graham calls as he runs down the stairs. He looks at the table, which was full of food when he went up for his shower after dinner. “Oh, did you guys eat all the food?”

We can’t help but laugh because Jules always cooks enough to feed an army. “No, we just put it in the fridge because we’re going over to Lauren and Jameson’s.”

“But I’m hungry.”

“Really? After everything you just ate?”

“I’m a growing boy,” he says, flexing his non-existent biceps.

“How about if I make you half a sandwich to eat in the car on the way over?”

He nods vigorously, and then Morgan says, “Why don’t you come over here and tell me more about ducks…”