Offside: Post 16

In case you thought that now that the main couple has had sex (multiple times, with a one-eyed cat watching) readers would no longer received a running commentary on their turgidity, I’m very sorry to disappoint. Chapter twenty-one opens post-coitus, and post-breakfast, with Logan loading the dishwasher and, having caught sight of Billie wearing only his button-down shirt, gets “instantly hard. Again” (345). I’ll spare you the further adventures of Logan’s penis.

Shane interrupts the two of them as they have a make-out session in the kitchen (remember that Shane lives in the apartment above Logan’s garage. Why that requires him to wander into Logan’s kitchen, I do not know. But he sees the two of them, approves, and says he’ll tell the workers at Logan’s garage that Logan will be late.)

After Logan muses on the fact that he’s never had breakfast with any of the women he’s ever slept with (seriously??), Billie says that they have to keep their relationship secret because of the way that the whole town is already treating her. I’m surprised but pleased to report that Logan is understanding—he says he doesn’t care if people know, but if she wants it to remain clandestine, he’s fine with that.

Then there’s more sex. But it’s speshul sex ‘cause Billie says she’s on birth control and they’re both STD free, so it’s sex sans condom, which neither has eeeeeeeever done. (Well, Logan says he did once as a kid but then was given the “’don’t get anyone pregnant, don’t get a disease or your pecker will fall off[‘] speech” (352). (Yes, the text forgot to close its own quotation marks. If the author paid the person she thanked at the beginning for editing/proofreading, she didn’t get her money’s worth.)

So, let’s see. Billie is Logan’s first date at the restaurant in the city (other than his mother), first post-coital breakfast, and first unprotected sex. I understand wanting to share firsts with the person you think will be your Forever-and-Ever, but this is a strange list. The restaurant thing is seriously arbitrary. The breakfast thing just makes me think Logan is a jerk to the women he dates. And the unprotected sex thing is cliché.

Oh, and Logan’s never been late to work before (for any reason), so there’s another first. He arrives, still musing on how great sex was, particularly without a condom, then chats with Shane. Both of them commiserate over how the town is absolutely ridiculous with their hatred of Billie  (or any woman) playing hockey with the guys.

No sh*t. I kind of feel like this is a conversation that needed to happen about 325 pages ago, because one way to get over things that don’t quite make sense in a novel (or film or play) is to have characters comment on it. (Fabian, from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: “If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.”) Oh well.

One conversation leads to another and Logan is bemoaning the fact that he has to tell Billie that he slept with, and took the virginity of, Betty.

How exactly did you tell the woman you were kinda crazy about that you had sex with her sister?

…Not only had he had sex with Billie’s sister—he had taken her virginity. Complicated didn’t come close to describing his current situation (361).

Again, I’m an only child (as are, I believe, my two main readers/commenters of this blog), so I don’t know that I’m the right person to comment on this particular bit of Manufactured Drama. But… really? I mean, if he’d had sex with Betty, say, last week, that’d be one thing. But it was years ago. If Logan really had had sex with Betty (instead of with Billie, as we the readers know), would it really have been that big of a deal? And if it were, wouldn’t he assume that Betty would have told Billie, since they’re triplets and all? I mean, sure, he should probably tell her as opposed to keeping it a festering secret, but does have to be a Hyooge Big Deal? I don’t get it.

Someone with siblings wanna chime in and help a Commissioner out?

Her Man Advantage: Post 15

Chapters 11: All the Angst

The next morning, Jennifer is at the practice rink, in the conference room, in order to get some work done. Her little sister, Julia, the one whose bullying experience is driving Jennifer to get funding to make the documentary on online bullying, gives her a call.

Back when we first met Jennifer, the text described the situation with her sister only minimally, and it came up again in conversation with Axel a bit later. At that point, Jennifer described it as her 15 year old sister having a crush on an older boy. Some junior girls discovered this and made a fake Facebook page for him, and started messaging her (as him) as if he liked her. Then they printed out all the private messages and circulated them around school (which seems like an unnecessary step—why not circulate them, y’know, on facebook?) When the boy found out, he was a jerk, too, making things worse. Jennifer helped her sister get into a new school.

“I had hoped she would stay and fight through it, but she just wanted to get away. She’s at a new school now and seems to have put it behind her” (82).

Thirty pages later, when Jennifer gets this phone call from Julia, she learns that her little sister is not, indeed, settling in, but in fact hates her new school and wants to go back to her old one. Her sister is conscientious enough that she’d tried to talk her principal into giving Jennifer (who paid for the private school) a partial refund on the tuition, although he’d refused, and has decided to get a part-time job in order to pay Jennifer aback.

Jennifer’s reaction is to refuse.

“I want you to attend a school where you’ll be happy. Where you don’t have people whispering behind your back” (114).

But Julia insists and even, quite logically, explains that she’s over it and that if she hadn’t freaked out, the school probably would have gotten over it quickly.

The first time I read this, I, in fact, misread it, thinking that here Julia was claiming that Jennifer had forced her to go to a school she didn’t want. (She does say “I know you would have liked to attend a school like this, but it’s not for me” 114). Which would have irritated me as it would have meant either the author forgot what she’d written earlier (that Jennifer wanted Julia to stay and fight) or that Jennifer willfully misremembers the situation. Instead it’s a bit more nuanced, which is good. It seems like Julia freaked out, along with Jennifer being protective, and since then Jennifer has embraced the new school thing. For example, she questions Julia on how she can get decent grades “with the distraction of online gossip and negative cliques using social media to wage a smear campaign?” (114) which … is not how I think you should be chatting with a 15 year old. That reads a lot more like the pitch one throws to financial backers of your social campaigning documentary…

And speaking of documentaries, Jennifer even says she’s got a film project in the works about this sort of thing and Julia panics and demands that Jennifer not do the film. She insists she won’t be “one of [her] causes” (115).

So this leaves Jennifer in a tizzy. But as readers, we know it also leaves an open door for Jennifer to find a new project that will enable her to stay with Axel. Because there’s only 30 pages of novel left, so we’ll have to wrap things up in another 15 or so. She doesn’t get time to ponder the situation, however, as Chelsea comes in, looking for coffee.

I’m a little curious as to why a woman who works at the arena gift shop is wandering into conference rooms in the practice rink looking for coffee, but apparently she’s there a lot and knows where all the ingredients are. This isn’t explained—it may just be something she’s picked up as a Magical Groupie being allowed to go wherever she wants. Or maybe the author forgot that the practice rink and arena are two separate things.

But has Chelsea gotten her car back since it’s early the next morning? If so, where are the other groupies? If not, how did she get here? Although she did say her apartment is close to the rink, so okay, she could have walked. But if so, why bother? Given the way she left things with Vincent a few hours before, and having gotten no sleep, as she tells Jennifer in a moment, is this really a practice her groupie-self needs to be at? Is she literally at every public practice? Because if yes, that’s not being a groupie, that’s being a stalker.

(Also, it just occurred to me one of the reasons why the author might have chosen to create a fictional Philadelphia team instead of using the Flyers. The Flyers don’t practice in Philadelphia, they practice in New Jersey. Of course, paying the NHL for the rights to use “Flyers” probably had something to do with that, too, but the book does reference the Stanley Cup and the NHL specifically, unlike Body Check.)

Anyway, Chelsea, despite the narrative assuring us earlier that she’s intensely private, tells Jennifer that she had a misunderstanding with Vincent and that they’ll not be a story for the documentary. This surprises Jennifer, having seen them be all Displaying Public Affection on the plane the day before. This leads to Chelsea asking rhetorically what if they just can’t get through all the obstacles, and Jennifer is in agreement, given her own situation. So this Scene of Woe and Angst closes the chapter.

Her Man Advantage: Post 14

Chapters 10 & 11: Nonjudgmental Cows

Chapter 10 opens with Jennifer and Axel flirting via cell phone as they both drive to his house from the airport. (They’re driving separately, I mean. They’re not so odd as to be in the same car and chatting via Bluetooth.) Things are going swimmingly and Jennifer’s getting all hot and bothered until she sees his mansion when she starts to freak out a bit about his life-style.

…she felt out of depth with him suddenly. It was one thing to tease and flirt with a Neanderthal hockey player trying to intimidate her with the scent of sweat. It was another to sleep with a wealthy athlete who traveled the world acquiring exotic cars (99).

Well, actually it’s not two different things since she’s talking about Axel in both cases.

The question of Axel’s intimidating mansion gets dropped, however, in favor of debating the finer points of what sexual chemistry means, and whether it’s enough to overcome the challenges that two very different people face when they have pantsfeelings for each other.

Then the perspective shifts to Axel who is feeling guilty for his pantsfeelings because he knows he’s going to have to back off in order to keep Jennifer safe when he deals with the biker gang. Despite his guilt, though, we have the following very common romance novel trope after they have mind-boggling sex:

He wanted to pause the night right there. Make sure the sun didn’t rise for another seventy-two hours or so in order for him to get his fill of this woman. Then again, that would never be enough (105).

Why seventy-two hours? That seems fairly arbitrary.

That’s pretty much all for chapter 10 because it’s mostly sex. (And I’d be happy to comment on sex scenes if they were anything other than sex scenes, but these are just straightforward so I haven’t anything to say.)

Chapter 11 begins at the same time as chapter 10, only it’s Vincent suggesting he’ll drive Chelsea home from the airport. She wants to demure but then remembers that her car is with the other groupies on the way back from New York.

Vincent is super sweet about it. He knows she’s uncertain, so he offers to call her a cab instead, and even has his phone out before Chelsea says she trusts him and they get into his heavy-duty truck “which looked as if it would be at home on a Minnesota farm” (106).

See, ‘cuz Vincent’s just a farm boy at heart. Except that at least half the Arizona Coyotes drive trucks, too. (No, I’m not a stalker. I just saw them drive the night that the fans met the team at the airport to celebrate. Also, I’ve been to enough practices to see which cars/trucks are frequently in the lot.) And while Shane Doan does actually have a farm, the rest of the team not so much.

Chelsea is justifiably proud of her apartment, since it’s nearly impossible for a homeless person to get enough together to be allowed to rent somewhere, so this leads to Vincent asking how she went from homeless “to walking into the Phantoms’ practice rink and making half the team fall in love with you?” (107). Since we’ve only seen one other player ever say anything about Chelsea, and said player is in the process of falling for the novel’s other heroine, I can’t say whether Vincent is exaggerating or not.

I will say I’m pleased that the narrative doesn’t make it sound like hard work is all it takes to go from homeless to secure. The author did her research. If you’re wondering how Chelsea did it, she says she used gyms for showers and a place to keep her stuff and libraries to research where to get free clothes and jobs that paid by the day. The only thing that sticks out for me here is that to make fake membership badges, as she says she did for the gyms, she’d have to have some computer skills and access to equipment that it seems unlikely public libraries could provide. (Also, the only gym I’ve belonged to didn’t have membership badges but instead scanned your fingerprint. But as I said, that’s only my experience.)

Chelsea also tells Vincent of the time when she woke up in an alley being robbed. She got away safely but lost a year’s worth of savings. This upsets Vincent so much that he asks if he can hold her (they’re still in his truck) because it would make him feel better. She lets him. This leads to Vincent telling her how he doesn’t know what he’d have done in his first year without her—that seeing her in the stands kept him going through his early, bad games, so now they’d have to forcibly remove him from Philadelphia to get him to leave her. She asks what if she wants to see Minnesota and he says he’d drive her there himself. There’s some snuggling and then Chelsea declares,

“I think I’d like cows.”

“You do?” He grinned and felt her snag another piece of her heart.

“They sound very nonjudgmental” (111).

Um. Sure.

But you know what doesn’t sound nonjudgmental to Chelsea? Parents. And Vincent’s are showing up in Philadelphia next week and he wants her to meet them. Immediately Chelsea shuts down and says she should go inside. Vincent insists on walking her to her door, but he’s mindful to not touch her, knowing her issues. Even so, Chelsea gets inside, closes the door most of the way, and finishes with “You deserve a nice, normal girl. And that will never be me” (113). 

I know I said that I felt that Chelsea’s turnaround on the plane was awfully quick. So the freak-out is in character. That said, he wasn’t asking her to marry him, just to have dinner with his parents. And having dinner with the SO’s parents kinda sucks, regardless, but I’m surprised that it’s what makes Chelsea hit the brakes and flee, especially since Vincent is so solicitous. He could have immediately been all “Okay, no problem, next time maybe.” But no.