Offside: Post 18

Chapter 23: I’m mad that you’re doing what I asked you to because it seems like it’s too easy for you to do it

The narrative jumps ahead three weeks from the previous chapter and finds Billie by herself at the “arena” (by which I’m still pretty sure the author means rink), skating at crack-of-dawn early because it’s the last time slot left of her $1000 coaching of Logan. Logan, however, has left town for the week, apparently for Magical Reasons (we’ll learn why later, but even then I sort of thing it’s Handwave-y Reasons.) No, the text never before made it clear that there were to be 4 coaching sessions.

The time alone is spent working on edges (when you use the, well, edges of your skates to dig in and turn quickly. My coach loved him some edges. Fortunately, they’re something I’m not terrible at.) and pondering how much she misses Logan and how much it bothers Billie that Logan is perfectly fine with keeping their relationship a secret just like she asked him to. Apparently Billie wants to keep the secret, because of her fear of damage to her already tattered reputation, but it should be a hardship for Logan to keep said secret. It’s not like he didn’t tell her upfront and immediately that he’d be fine with people knowing, not like he’s seeing her on the side while married to Sabrina, Goddess of the Folded Towels. I assume it’s this bizarre paradoxical desire of Billie’s that leads to some of her upcoming asinine behavior, but more on that later.

First, we have to start redeeming the townspeople. Some of the female teenaged hockey players have started to watch Billie skate by herself, as they have practice at the same time, on the other sheet of ice, as the donated charity coaching lessons. They ask Billie to teach them some of her drills. This is adorable and exactly how the town should be treating their home-grown TWO TIME OLYMPIAN. (I know that when a female ice hockey Olympian came to Phoenix recently, all of my friends’ hockey-playing daughters were super excited to meet her and to attend a coaching session with her. And that’s Pheonix, Arizona. You know, the place where it routinely gets to be 116degrees Fahrenheit in the summer? The desert where fans of other NHL teams make fun of Coyotes fans not because the team is terrible (which at the moment it is) but because “Hockey doesn’t belong in the desert”? (To be fair, there’s actually a lot of hockey in the desert. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a very good player and yet I’ve played or skated at 6 different rinks/arenas and there was at least one more on the west side that I’d never been to. But still, not exactly known town for hockey. UNLIKE New Waterford, which apparently is supposed to be.

Sorry, didn’t mean to rant. It’s just another part of why the Great New Waterford Cootie War makes no sense.

But it was a relevant rant because the narrative tells us that the girls’ team coach, Dave, was originally one of the Misogynistic Asshats who didn’t want her to play.

“I have to be honest though. I was opposed to you playing in our league. Hell I almost considered pulling out and driving twenty minutes to the city to play, … You’ve shown me that the desire to play trumps all that small stuff” (2383-84).

Frankly, that latter part is the attitude that a coach for a girls’ team should have started with. Asshat. I’m glad my (non-existent) daughter doesn’t have him for a coach.

He continues on to say that he thinks that everyone in the league is playing at a higher level thanks to Billie and that most of the players disagree with what Seth-the-Sociopath did. (Seth, we learn by the way, has ceased to play in the league and started playing “in the city.” That sure was an anticlimactic end to that conflict. I guess the “I slept with your sister but it was actually you!!!!” dramallama is now more important.)

He also says that the guys who complain that they can’t be “guys” around Billie are full of it, since they act the same around Billie as they did without her there. See? I feel (vaguely) vindicated since that’s what I said before.

Anyway, Billie forgives him. (In her shoes (skates?) I probably would have, too. As a reader, I’m still cranky, but that’s kind of my schtick.) So Billie coaches the girls and it gives her a “glimmer of something—a spark. A vision of what she could accomplish” (386). The narrative leaves Billie’s POV at this point to rejoin Logan, but I’m guessing that Billie’s Great Plan will involve coaching. And while that’s great and I hope that that’s what will bring her satisfaction, I’m somewhat surprised it’s taken her this long to come up with that. Hockey coaching is not exactly an unheard of career path for, y’know, former hockey players.

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Logan is eager to get home. He’d gone to the west coast in order to visit various clients and consider a “some reality crap type of television show” (386). We learn almost nothing about this trip except to see him flirted with outrageously by “some rich man’s bored trophy wife” who touches his thigh a lot, while all he can think of is his planned Skype session with Billie (387).

Then it’s the next morning, and Logan is actually on the airplane home, being flirted with outrageously by multiple women in first class. He tells them he’s gay to shut them up. Yes, yes, we get it, Logan is hot.

Oh, but lest you think that all this travel would keep you from being updated on the state of Logan’s trousers, you should not have worried. For you see, Billie apparently wore something super skimpy and did super naughty things on Skype the night before, which led to a long cold shower then (why not just take matters into your own hands, Logan?) and now, on the plane, he’s afraid he’ll spend the whole flight “sporting the hard-on to end all hard-ons” (391). I feel like I need some sort of special icon for News Bulletins Pertaining to Logan’s Penis.

Logan lands back home, presumably at an airport in “the city” on Friday night, meaning he’s missed the week’s hockey game, but he drives as quickly as possible to make it to the town’s One & Only Bar & Grill to join the players post-game.

Only, HORROR OF HORRORS. There’s another player STARING AT BILLIE’S BUTT. Gasp! Shock! Horror!

A butt that belonged to Logan and maybe it was about time the whole damn town knew about it (393).

Yes, Logan. Maybe your irrational jealousy and creepy possessiveness should overrule your promise made to the woman you’re so wild about and thinking about Forever with. Oh wait, no. Strike that.  Reverse it.

Tune in next time for Showdown at the Only Bar in Town.

Offside: Post 9

Chapter 12: Convenient Veterinarian

As Billie’s injury becomes apparent, she leaves the ice, so chapter 12 starts with the end of the game. Logan wants desperately to “deal with” Seth-the-Misogynist, but realizes he should check on Billie first. Shane growls that he’ll “have a few words” with the opposing team. While his gallantry is appreciated, the text doesn’t say that Shane obtained any magic powers during his stay in prison, so it’s fortunate he doesn’t have to take on the other team single-handedly, as uninvited he’s followed by three other members of his own team.

Billie needs stitches, but that’s okay, Logan’s brother is there to help. I have no idea why Logan’s brother, Connor, was there—was he watching the game or did someone call him? More importantly, Logan’s brother is a veterinarian. I mean, I don’t see why a veterinarian couldn’t stitch up a human quite well, but if Connor wasn’t already at the rink, then you’d think they would have taken Billie to an emergency clinic as opposed to making a specialty call… to a veterinarian. And while rinks do absolutely have first aid kits, I don’t really think they have suture kits on hand. Do veterinarians carry suture kits with them? (You don’t actually stitch up humans with ordinary needle and thread, y’know.)

But we couldn’t have Billie leave the rink because then Logan can’t dash into the locker room and find Billie wearing “boy shorts that did nothing but emphasize the fact that, Billie-Jo Barker, definitely was not a boy” (191). Do NOT ask me about those commas because they make absolutely no damn sense. She’s also wearing only a sports bra.

Logan wasn’t sure if he was all hot and bothered because he was pissed the Whalers had played so dirty, or the fact that Billie stood a few feet away wearing next to nothing, with his brother’s hands all over her (192).

Those are two very different things that should have very different physiological reactions, Logan. Unless being angry gets you in the mood for sex, in which case you need therapy. You can get in line behind Seth-the-Sociopath. Especially since Billie is so hot that she makes Logan feel like he should “circle the room and piss in all the corners like a dog marking his territory” (194). No. Just… no.

Billie now has eight stitches, “perfectly sown.” Which means that she should be sprouting in just a few weeks. (Sown =/= sewn). I mean, c’mon. If you’re going to thank you editor, shouldn’t your editor have EDITED? After taking in the stitches, Logan goes back to admiring Billie’s body, then remembering what it was like to kiss her.

He thanked all that was holy that he still had his hockey pants on because he was sporting one hell of a tent in there… (197).

Despite Logan going on all territorial, Connor is busy flirting with Billie and Logan starts to think violent thoughts about how long his brother’s hand is on Billie’s shoulder and how dare he have the gall to slide his fingers down her arm.

As this little war of testosterone starts to break up, Connor reminds Logan that they have to go to some fundraiser their mom is throwing the next day, and that their mom expects him to bring Sabrina (the now ex-girlfriend. You remember her—the one who flipped out that Logan offered to let Billie play on his team, and who got dumped for saying the L-word and folding his towels.)

Maybe this was the problem with folding towels.

Apparently Logan’s mother is a matchmaker who has told him that if he doesn’t have a child by the time he is thirty-five, she will write him out of her will. Holy crap. So Connor suggest that Logan should be nice to Sabrina and bring her along so that their mother will be placated. But Logan can’t do that.

He’d run into Sabrina at the bank a few days earlier and she’d practically drilled a hole through his hide with the ice in her eyes as she’s (sic) stared dagger at him. …what the hell was up with that? He’d been nice to Sabrina. He’d let her down easy. There’d been no cheating or horn-dogging. It just wasn’t right (201).

Seriously? You break up with someone, no matter how nicely, and you’re insulted when she’s mad at you? Bloody hell.

Sabrina is forgotten, however, as the locker room clears, leaving Logan and Billie alone and they flirt. There’s staring and nonsense talk and Logan keeps looking at Billie’s glistening lips and they lean closer and Logan is about to say something that surely would have been brilliant… and Shane walks into the locker room to ask Billie about her flirting with Connor.

Flirtation denied. Sorry, Logan, you’ll have to deal with your “aching cock” (204) on your own.

(This is where the chapter ends, so I’m going to end it here too, particularly since chapter thirteen seems to jump to the next night. Tune in next time to find out … well, I don’t know what we’ll find out as I haven’t read any further!)