“Fun,” Freya said, standing up. “I’ll get a lighter and an ashtray. And another bottle of wine.”

Though I was a novice drinker, I knew that cross-fading (combining pot and alcohol) was a bad idea. No way would I be able to drive home now. But I had set something in motion that I couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop. So I reached for my wallet and extracted the blunt.

I’d worry about getting home later.

5

maxime beausoleil

I didn’t know the tall, gangly teen drinking wine in our living room, but I didn’t want her there. Freya shouldn’t have been serving alcohol to a kid. And she shouldn’t have been smoking pot with one, either. (I could smell it, even from the second floor.) We’d had enough trouble and controversy. We couldn’t handle any more without coming apart. But Freya had always liked to be adored, craved it even.

When I first met her, I didn’t know she was famous. She was beautiful and effervescent, like expensive champagne. Back when I drank, I was a beer guy, but no one can turn down really good bubbly. She was a social media celebrity, an influencer. I wasn’t on social media, didn’t even know that you could make money that way. But Freya had turned posting about nightclubs and clothes, workouts and makeup into a lucrative career.

We met at a charity fundraiser in Beverly Hills. I was with the LA Kings then, and the whole team was there. I believed in giving back, in using my celebrity to raise money and awareness for important causes, but I was never comfortable at these events. I grew up in a small town in the Yukon with a population under fifteen hundred; LA was like another planet. And people acted weird around me. Grown men turned into excited little boys. Women fawned and flirted. That fundraiser was for a children’s hospice, so I pushed my unease aside. I like kids, and the thought of them getting sick, even dying, hurt my heart. So I was standing on the lawn of this mansion, soaking my lips in a sickly signature cocktail, when she approached me.

“You’re obviously one of the Kings,” she said. “You any good?”

This was early in my career, before I was written off as the team enforcer, the muscle, the vigilante. I was a physical player, but also a strong face-off man with a powerful slap shot, so I said, “Yep.”

“I’d better get a photo with you then.”

I obliged, letting her nestle under my arm, holding her phone out as instructed. She curled herself into me, smiling coyly at the camera. She was transformed on the screen; polished and pouty and perfect. I thought she was more beautiful in real life, when she was animated and real. After I snapped a couple of photos, she took back her phone.

She looked at the images. “We look good together.” She didn’t seem to require a response, so I didn’t give her one. Her eyes were on the screen, her fingers tapping on the keyboard. “What’s your name?”