A few days later, Brody huffed out a breath as he dropped onto the bench in the dressing room. He grabbed some Gatorade and gulped it down, exchanging high-fives with his teammates as they filed past.

"Good job." Chuck Baxter clapped him on the shoulder as he dropped to the bench next to him. "Now we just have to do it all again next game."

"No problem." Brody grinned. "Give me ten minutes."

Baxter laughed and started unlacing his skates. "Ten? Come on, man, you're ten years younger than I am. You shouldn't need more than five."

They joked and horsed around for a few more minutes, then Brody took his turn at a shower, relishing the hot water that poured over his tired muscles. He was looking forward to some food, then maybe some time to unwind with a video game. He wondered if Ryan would be up, and if she'd eaten anything with any nutritional content.

It had been a good night, he decided. A win was never a bad thing, and he had two assists to add to his totals. He'd taken a couple of hard hits, and a slash on his arm that would leave a bruise, but it was worth it to gain the two standings points.

His thoughts wandered back to Ryan again. She was an odd one, but he liked her. Plus, he mused to himself, there was the kiss that she'd avoided so far. Now it was a challenge; a matter of principle.

"Come on, Langer, let's go grab a beer." Baxter looked over from buttoning his shirt. "It's early yet."

"Excellent idea. Since you came up with it, you can buy the first round."

Baxter rolled his eyes. "You are one cheap bastard, Lang."

Brody just laughed.

At the bar, they rehashed the game for a while before moving on.

"So, Bax." Brody tapped a finger on his beer bottle. "How supportive were your parents when you told them you wanted to play hockey?"

Baxter scoffed. "Are you kidding? I'm Canadian."

Brody laughed. "Right. What was I thinking?"

"Actually, my mom wasn't so enthused. I got a million lectures on how hard it was, how long I'd have to practice, how hard I'd have to work, how zillions of guys want to do that and don't make it."

"Typical mom stuff."

"Yeah, but you know." Baxter shrugged. "I got support with the lectures. She'd drive me to practice: 'Work hard, Chuck. You can do it.' She'd pick me up: 'It's a long shot, but not impossible.' All kinds of shit like that. She's a great mom."

"With me it was my dad who was the skeptical one. He kept telling me how slim my chances were and all that. Wanted me to have a back up in case it didn’t work out, so I went to college." Brody grinned. "I started with an English major. You should have seen his face."

Baxter laughed. "I bet."

"But they were supportive, right?" Brody studied his beer, then looked at his friend. "Never . . . I don’t know . . . never made you feel bad about it?"

"What's wrong with you? You never get maudlin over beer." Baxter narrowed his eyes.

"No, no. I was just talking to someone and it got me thinking."

"I thought I smelled something burning."

Brody rolled his eyes.

"Come on, out with it." Bax took another swallow and waited.

"All right, all right. It's a neighbor of mine. She loves music and wants to be a musician, but she said her family gives her a hard time. They're sports fanatics. It just got me to wondering if I'd be playing here if I hadn't gotten the support from my family. I mean, none of us ever questioned that. Mom and Dad were great about helping us do what we wanted. It must be weird not to have that."

"Well, yeah, not everybody does. But people manage anyway. Can't make everyone happy."

"Thank you, Dr. Phil."

"It's true." Baxter shrugged. "My sister's friend wanted to be a hairdresser. Her parents thought it was a waste and tried to talk her out of it. She did it anyway, and now she owns her own salon and she's happy. You want to be happy, you can't care what other people think. Christ, where would we be if we hung on every sports column out there?"

"Good point. Still, it's a lot to do on your own."

"If she wants it, she'll do whatever she needs to, family or not."

"How's your family, anyway?"

"Good." Bax smiled, which emphasized the scar near the right corner of his mouth. "Adam is acing science, and Tara scored a goal in her last hockey game. She'll be the next Cammi Granato, you watch."

"I don't know how you do it." Brody shook his head. Bax had come to the team the year before in a trade with the Boston Bruins, and his wife and two kids were still in the Boston area.

Bax took a pull on his beer, then shrugged. "You just do it. It’s not ideal, but it was best for the kids. I feel bad; it puts a lot on Doreen's shoulders, but we both agreed. The kids were comfortable up there, and we didn't want to uproot them. Tough enough being a teenager, I remember. They'd have been miserable having to change schools and all that."

"Yeah, I get it." Brody took a swig of his own beer, tapped the bottle on the table. "Make sense, but . . . I don't know. Don't think I'd like it."

"Didn't say I liked it," his teammate pointed out. "I said we agreed it was best for the kids."

Brody nodded but said nothing. He'd watched a number of his siblings and cousins marry and start families young; many times too young in his opinion, and along with the weddings, he'd seen a fair number of divorces. That, he'd long ago decided, was something he could do without.

"I think I'll just wait," Brody said. Baxter raised an eyebrow, amused. "I'm in no hurry for the house, kids, and picket fence."

Bax chuckled. "That's what they all say, until they meet someone. Like you and your musician."

"You're way off base on that one," Brody informed him. "She's nice, and it's cool she's in a band, but neither of us is looking for anything."

"Neither was I when I met Doreen."

"Yeah, well." Brody shrugged, then grinned. "Guess I just have more willpower than you."

Bax guffawed. "That's what I said. Then I asked her to marry me. Jesus, Langer, you sound just like I did. You're sunk."

Brody just shook his head and smiled as he finished his beer.

* * *

Ryan stifled a grin as Lara regarded her with exasperation.

"You're not going to tell me anything?"

"There's nothing to tell."

"Oh, come on." Lara threw up her hands. "I swear, you're doing this just to aggravate me."

Ryan couldn't hide a laugh. "You're right. It's much more fun to string you along over any potential love life I might have than to actually have one." She leaned back in her chair.

"So there's potential!" Lara's eyes gleamed.

Ryan berated herself for bringing the subject up during a rehearsal.

Well, Lara had brought it up, she thought, but Ryan should have ended it as soon as possible. Luckily the guys were chatting amongst themselves as Nate changed a string on his bass.

"Come on, Ryan. I can tell there's more." Lara crossed her arms.

Ryan dropped her head. She needed to say something or there'd be no peace, not to mention no rehearsal.

"Look, I haven't seen him for a while. There's nothing to say." Lara gave her a skeptical look and Ryan tried to move things along. "I've talked to him a few times; he's been busy with road games, and I've been busy with, what was it? Oh, yeah, the band." She arched an eyebrow at Lara.

Lara was about to say something when Nate said he'd finished with the string. Lara sent her a look that said they'd talk later, and at least, Ryan thought, that gave her time to prepare. Not that preparation would necessarily help; Lara could be relentless.

"Great," said Ryan. "Let's run through the song." She nodded at Mitch, who counted them in and she hit the first notes. Ryan bit her lip as she kept half an eye on Jason; he had a tendency to improvise additions to maximize his parts, which annoyed the rest of them since they'd been playing some of the songs for over three years and had them down cold. This one was newer, but Ryan thought it could be one of their best.

Ryan told herself to relax as she played; to not get upset until and unless anything happened. That lasted about thirty seconds, as Jason started early and trampled on her keyboard intro by soloing over top of it. She stopped and counted to five before saying anything.

"Jason, what the hell are you doing?"

"What? It sounds better this way." He looked over at Nate, then Mitch, and at last Lara, but got bland, blank expressions in return.

Ryan glared at him but Lara spoke first. "Not this time, Jason. Just play it like we wrote it, please. Okay, let's take it from the top." She looked at Ryan, who nodded and let out a slow breath.

Mitch did the four-count again and Ryan began, watching Jason the whole time. He joined in on time, but then ran over Lara's vocals, and they stopped again. Ryan wondered if he'd done it out of spite that time.

"Jason!"

Jason glared at her. "What? I wasn’t finished the solo. You can't run through the progression once more while I finish?

"This song doesn't revolve around your damn solo. This is not the time to fuck around with the songs. You know it; play it." Ryan stared at Jason until he looked to Nate and Mitch for support. When he didn’t find any, he glared at the floor and sulked.

"All right." Lara looked over at Mitch. "One more time."

He nodded and they went again. Ryan made herself focus on her hands so that she wouldn't distract herself trying to make sure that Jason didn't pull any more tricks. He played it straight all the way through, and Ryan was relieved when it was over.

"Okay, pretty good." Lara looked at the others, then exchanged a nod with Ryan. "If we can do it that way, I think it'll be great." Her eyes settled on Jason at the end.

"Absolutely. We should put it in the list for the 9:30 Club," Mitch said. He tapped a stick on his leg.

"Speaking of which." Lara dug out her phone. "Can we take care of some business before the next song?" Everyone nodded and she tapped at the screen. "First off, I want to put up a new song on Facebook and MySpace. I was thinking 'Roam Around,' but if we can clean this one up, we could use that."

"Either's good with me," said Ryan, and Nate and Mitch seconded the idea.

"I think we should go with 'On the Far Road,'" said Jason.

Ryan all but bit her tongue in an effort to keep her temper. "On the Far Road" was not their best song, but it did have the guitar front and center. "Roam Around" was far better, and the song they'd just finished, "Skyline," could be a close second. Neither of those, however, spotlighted the guitar.

Nate spoke up. "'Far Road' isn't ready, Jason. We agreed on that last time."

"It's Facebook, it doesn’t have to be perfect. It's a good song." When no one spoke up to support him, he scowled and shrugged. "Whatever."

Lara took a deep breath. "Moving on. I don't think it's too early to start making flyers to put up about our gig at the 9:30 Club. Plus we have GW in two weeks and University of Maryland the week after. Those would be excellent places to hand out flyers."

"How about songs?" Nate asked. "Maybe we could put another one up before each of the college gigs."

"Sounds good to me." Mitch nodded. "I can help put some flyers up. We should put some up near Adams Morgan and areas like that. We don't usually hit those."

"Cool." Lara nodded and her thumbs flew over the tiny keypad. "Okay, I'm still working on our website, the one with our own domain name; Facebook is good, but MySpace is kind of worthless. I think we can have some fun with this. Maybe we can take turns blogging or something like that. Trout said he'll help."

Ryan murmured her agreement as the guys nodded. Trout may have had an odd name, but the man knew his way around websites.

"Great. Let's get back to work." Lara slid the phone in her purse and settled back on her stool.

For the next couple of hours, Jason didn’t make any more trouble, but neither did he hide his dissatisfaction. Ryan couldn't recall the last time rehearsal had seemed so much like work. When they were done, they ordered pizza and talked over the "big gig," as they had come to think of it.

"We should try mixing up the order." Mitch reached for his first slice. "I think we're all getting tired of that, and we know the songs inside out."

Ryan pulled a pizza box over to her and Lara; she knew from experience that otherwise they'd be lucky to get a slice each, the way the guys went at it.

"Good idea." Ryan debated pepperoni versus sausage and went with the former. "Let's figure it out and we'll have the GW and Maryland dates to experiment." She grinned. "We should be all set to rock the 9:30 Club. Good work, Lara."

"Absolutely. It's going to be so awesome," Nate chimed in. "I'm really psyched about it."

"Thanks." Lara beamed. It had taken weeks to get the date.

"Too bad you didn't get an earlier date." Jason took a swig of Coke.

Ryan saw Lara's expression darken a bit. Her friend didn't get angry often, but Jason was good at pushing buttons.

"It was the first open date I could get, and we should take advantage of the lead time to maximize the exposure," Lara said.

Jason grunted and went back to his pizza.