by Penny Reid
And here I thought I was the awkward one. Maybe Alex is drunk dialing me. I go with it, lowering my voice to what I hope is a sultry whisper. “Do you want to know what I’m wearing?”
“Yes. No. Is this a trick question? Only if you won’t hang up on me for saying yes, otherwise no.” He’s cute, even for a manwhore.
“I’m wearing a black lace thong and a matching lace bra.”
He sighs into the phone. “Really? I didn’t take you for a black lace kind of girl.”
“No. Not even close. It’s fun to pretend, isn’t it?” I’m thankful he can’t see my face right now. It’s hot, so it’s probably blotchy. “I’m in jeans and a T-shirt. I was thinking I’d lose the bra soon.” I shouldn’t be entertaining him after what I’ve seen on the Internet and that magazine spread.
Charlene smacks me with a pillow. I fight her off while trying to keep the phone to my ear.
“Is the shirt tight?”
I check out my rack. “Um, I guess. It’s a small. If I wasn’t wearing a bra I could probably see my nipples through it.”
There’s more heavy breathing on the other end of the line. I roll off the couch, run to my bedroom, and lock the door so Charlene can’t get in. “Alex?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you whacking off?”
“God, no.”
“Okay, that’s good. I think.” I can’t believe I’m having this conversation. As soon as I hang up, Charlene is going to lose it on me for being such an idiot. “Did you call to find out what I was wearing?”
“No. I called to apologize.”
What a kick in the nonexistent nuts. Apologies after sex are never good.
He clears his throat. “I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures by now . . .”
“Oh, yeah, those.”
“I hope Butterson doesn’t give you a hard time. There’s always someone at the bar snapping photos.”
“No worries. There are way worse pictures of Buck. Besides, there are plenty of other pictures of you out there, so I’m sure these ones will be buried soon enough.” I cringe at the way it sounds, and because it’s most likely true.
“I wanted to explain—”
“Anyway, I got your message and the text. My beaver’s fine, by the way, nothing a long bath won’t fix, and don’t worry, I have another pair of glasses, and contact lenses, so lots of backup.”
“I’d still like to drop them off when I’m in Chicago.”
“You really don’t need to go out of your way. You can mail them if you want. I can give you the address.”
He repeats it back to me. “I’d still prefer to bring them by, if it’s okay with you.”
The prospect of seeing Alex again makes my beaver all drooly. “Um, sure.”
“Great. Awesome. I’ll see you when I get back.” He sounds almost giddy.
“Okay. Well . . . talk to you later, then.”
“I sure hope so. Night, Violet.”
Charlene is waiting on the other side of the door. “So? What did he say?”
“He wants to drop my glasses off.” While part of me is excited, the other part is wary. According to media reports, Alex Waters is a player, and I don’t want to get played.
Despite the low alcohol content of Sour Puss, I’m mildly hungover the next morning. Char and I consume copious quantities of water as a means to flush the sugar out of our systems and follow it with a pot of coffee.
Too lazy to deal with my hair, I pull it up into a high ponytail, exposing marks on my neck. I have a hickey. No, wait. I have—let me count them—four hickeys. How I haven’t noticed them until now is beyond me, but there they are: faint, pinkish-purple reminders of my failure of a one-night stand.
I find an infinity scarf, which Charlene arranges artfully around my neck—i.e. she loops it twice—and covers up my misdemeanors.
Carrying my travel mug and messenger bag, I open the door and nearly have a heart attack. A guy holding a huge bouquet of flowers stands on my front steps. It’s colossal in the most preposterous way.
I can only see his eyes and the brim of his hat. “Delivery for Violet Hall.”
“Oh. Wow. Thanks.”
I’m surprised flower shops deliver this early in the morning. The flowers are heavier than I expect, and I almost drop them when he passes me the bouquet. After the flower guy leaves, I set them on the table and check out the card while Charlene hovers behind me.
I’m glad your beaver made a full recovery.
~Alex
“Beaver?” Charlene asks.
“He’s referring to my girl parts.”
“He’s a bit of an odd duck, isn’t he?”
“He’s Canadian,” I reply as if this explains everything.
Charlene plans my wedding on our drive to work. I remain mostly silent as I’m reeling from the phone call last night and the flowers. The trek to my cubicle is telling—I get a lot of looks from the guys in the office. The kind that tell me they no longer regard me as the nerdy girl in accounting. Now I’m the nerdy girl who makes out with hockey players. Someone made a collage of the Internet pictures and taped it to my computer screen.
I rip it off and survey the office for the culprit. Fortunately, Charlene and I have a pre-team-meeting meeting with two of the other junior accountants this morning, so I can evade most of my colleagues until lunch. I gather my things and avoid eye contact on the way to the conference room.
As I flip open the laptop, Dean arrives. Only Jimmy is missing now. Logging onto the system, an alert shows several new emails. Four stand apart from the rest; they’re from Alex. I don’t remember telling him where I worked. I supposed if he searched my name, it wouldn’t be hard to find my email address on the company website.
“Oh my God,” Charlene squeals. “First the phone call, then the flowers, now he’s emailing you?”
“Who’s emailing you?” Dean asks.
I pull the laptop toward me, hiding the screen. “No one.”
“Alex Waters,” Charlene says.
I shoot her a glare. “You’re suspended as my best friend. I’m not talking to you for the rest of the day.”
“I heard there are pictures of you two getting it on,” Dean replies.
“We were just kissing.”
Charlene cuts in. “Didn’t you call it ‘mouth fucking’?”
“Ooooh, ‘mouth fucking.’ That sounds dirty.” Dean taps his fingers on his chin. “So we have his account now?”
“What? No!” I’m appalled Dean would think I could stoop to such low, unprofessional tactics to secure a client for the company.
“Why not? Waters is one of the top earners in the league. He cleared almost eight mil—”
I hold up my hand. Buck makes an obscene amount of money. I don’t want to know what Alex is worth, even if it is as easy as looking it up on the Internet. “Stop! I didn’t sleep with him to get his account!”
“You slept with him?” Dean’s jaw drops, his shock is understandable.
“Shut up!” I stalk across the room and shut the door. “Why don’t you announce it to the whole building since it’s not humiliating enough to have pictures of us kissing taped to my computer?”
“For real?” Dean leans forward. “You slept with Waters? Is the rumor true?”
“I’m not answering that.”
“So it’s true.”
“Enough. We have a presentation to prepare for. Unless we’re changing the topic to the size of Alex’s dick, we need to get going.”
“It would be way more interesting than this.” Dean gestures to the PowerPoint presentation on the screen.
Of course, Jimmy, the last member of our team, arrives, and we have to go through the entire thing again, including the mouth fucking explanation, which Jimmy loves as much as Dean. It’s going to be another long day.
I check my phone when I excuse myself to use the restroom. I have three voice mails and several texts. The first voice mail is from my mom. She found the flowers. Obviously she’s bee
n in my place without asking again. The next one is a telemarketer advertising a free trip and the last one is from Alex. It goes something like this:
“Hi. This is Alex. I wanted to call and see if anything came for you this morning. I have a game tonight, but . . . um . . . maybe I’ll talk to you later.”
I listen to it five times and save it as I did with the first one.
I move on to the text message.
Checking 2c if something came 4 u b4 u left 4 work :)
Okay, so two messages checking to see if I got the flowers. Odd.
I move on to the emails.
The first one is blank.
The second one reads:
To: Violet
Violet?
The third one reads:
To: Violet
If this is you, the code word is another word for-
The fourth one reads:
To: Violet
I’m sorry if I offended you with the previous email. I realize it’s your work email. I realize it’s your work email and it was probably in bad taste. I’m also sorry for the message on the card. I was trying to be funny. I could’ve come up with something better.
Alex
PS. Please don’t block me from your email contact list.
The email is completely ridiculous. As much as his persistence irritates me, I’m beginning to like the awkward tone and his inappropriate comments. Especially coming from a man who seems so self-assured on the ice—and in bed. I curb the warm fuzzies. He’s still a player.
I hold off on responding until I’m home from work. I type and retype a message fifty times before I settle on this:
got the flowers, gorgeous but not necessary, thx
I debate adding a smiley emoticon and decide against it. After I press send I have regret. It’s not the friendliest text, but I’m torn. Beyond being great in bed and possessing the ability to read above a fifth-grade level, his media persona isn’t one I like. Especially with the plethora of photos I’ve seen of him with various women.
I don’t want to put out positive vibes because in reality, I kind of like him. If he hadn’t called or texted or sent flowers or emailed, I would write him off as another asshole because it’s exactly what I expected. Except he’s done all these things that contradict my assumptions. How did a one-night stand get so complicated?
I should finish Tom Jones since my book club meets tomorrow. Chicago playing tonight, though, so reading isn’t my first priority. Bringing my book with me, I snuggle into the corner of the couch. I’d watch it with the ’rents on their seventy-inch HD flat screen, but my mom keeps asking Alex-related questions I’m not interested in answering. Sometimes she forgets she’s my mother, and it gets weird.
By the end of the first period Chicago is losing by one goal. No one scores in the second period and the players are getting chippy. Alex ends up with a two-minute penalty at the beginning of the third for interference. The camera zooms in on him. He’s tight-jawed and livid as he sulks in the time-out box. His knee is bouncing a mile a minute as if he’s barely managing to contain his frustration. I bet sex with him when he’s this riled up is amazing. I can imagine him being intense, dominating, and possessing.
When Alex returns to the ice, he finally pulls it together and scores a goal, tying the game. Aggressive and focused, he’s clearly determined not to let his team down because he lost his temper. Chicago scores another goal in the final minutes of the game and win by one. According to the sportscasters, it’s an important game that gives them the advantage moving forward, so the team’s excitement is understandable.
Alex is edgy during his interview with the sportscaster; maybe because the final score is too close. He rubs the side of his neck, his chagrin over his penalty obvious. I notice the dark pinkish-purple hickey, which matches several of mine. He angles away from the camera as if trying to hide it. I remember giving him one on his shoulder, but after what I’ve discovered in my research, I can’t be certain this one’s from me.
I climb into bed with the hickey on my mind. It’s all I can focus on as I toss and turn, trying desperately to get my brain to shut off and let me sleep already. As the cusp of dreamland makes my eyes droop, my phone buzzes, signaling a text. I sigh and grab the device from my nightstand, highly aware I don’t want it to be Charlene.
My stomach does a weird flip thing when it turns out to be from Alex, in response to my earlier text thanking him for the flowers.
not as gorgeous as you ;)
I wait exactly four minutes to respond, so as not to appear too eager.
charmer. The red ones r my fave. Congrats on the win tonite
It buzzes less than a minute later.
I played like shit
I smile. He’s fishing for compliments.
Hothead. u recovered tho
I’m graced with a winky emoticon and another message.
2 bad ur not here to celebrate w me
While my lower half gets all excited, I don’t fail to recognize he could easily pick up any puck bunny and celebrate his brains out. I must not reply fast enough because another message arrives.
Expect a delivery tmrw. Nite, beautiful.
I send one final text in response, my uncertainty as pervasive as my excitement. If he keeps this up, I’m going to start to like him more than I already do.
The week follows with daily deliveries from Alex. I receive a complete set of Tom Fielding’s works with a note suggesting that he read them to me so I’m not bored to tears. I laugh and send him a text in return. He calls again during my book club meeting; I let it go to voice mail rather than answer. The butterflies in my stomach unnerve me.
The next day he sends a USB stick with a compilation of albums for a band I’ve never heard of called The Tragically Hip—they’re Canadian, like Alex. It’s accompanied by another note in his messy scrawl, citing all his favorite songs. Next is a box of truffles from Godiva and then a gift certificate from Victoria’s Secret for an unknown amount. It’s made out to my boobs, which Alex officially asks on a date.
He sends an email the same night, apologizing for the content of the card and asking the rest of me out on a date, as well. He’s beginning to wear me down with the cuteness. It takes me a good hour to compose a response. I remain evasive by saying I’ll check my schedule.
The next day I receive a giant tin of coffee from a Canadian diner called Tim Horton’s. It’s named after a famous hockey player. Sidney tells me it’s like Starbucks, except cheaper, and if I won’t drink it, he sure as hell will.
The gifts aren’t the only thing I receive from Alex. Daily texts and emails follow, checking to make sure my packages have been delivered. They’re always thoughtful, often explaining the nature of the gift he’s sent. At the end of each email, he offers to take me out for dinner when he returns to Chicago. I don’t give a definitive answer.
The day before Buck is scheduled to come home, I open a box to find a stuffed beaver wearing a jersey with the number eleven and WATERS embroidered on it. It was accidentally delivered to the main house, so my mom stands beside me as I open my newest gift. She giggles like a teenager over how cute it is. She thinks he sent it because the beaver is Canada’s national animal. I don’t correct her.
I miss Alex’s call that night because I’m watching the game highlights at Charlene’s, and her basement apartment is like a cellular signal black hole. Solace comes with knowing Alex will be in Chicago tomorrow. My excitement is a problem.
I arrive home from work the following evening to find Buck on my couch, drinking my beer and eating my leftovers. I should’ve anticipated this; he does it almost every time he comes home from an away game. It’s his way of scamming a meal while he waits for a truckload of food to be delivered to his house since he doesn’t do his own shopping.
“Where’s your car?”
“A friend dropped me off.”
I drop my purse on the kitchen table and head straight for the fridge. If Buck is home, Alex is, too. His
voice mail from the previous night is the last I heard from him. It’s disappointing to have Buck taking up space in my living room yet hear nothing from my sometimes-stalker.
“Wow. You sure don’t waste any time.” By friend, I’m assuming Buck means one of his puck bunnies. Buck doesn’t “date” in the traditional sense of the word. He does, however, have a rotation of women he sleeps with in Chicago. He calls them his “regulars.” One of these days he’s going to contract an STD and put his parts out of commission.
“What can I say? My ladies miss me when I’m away.” Buck sets up the Xbox with a lecherous smile.
“You’re disgusting.”
“I have needs.”
He regales me with the finer details of the last four games while we play NHL hockey. Buck plays himself, and I have my own awesome avatar which I created. His phone keeps dinging with endless messages while we play, so it’s easier to kick his ass.
“You’re popular tonight,” I say after the eight-millionth text comes through.
“Some of the guys are picking me up in twenty.”
“Didn’t you spend the last two weeks on the road with them? How aren’t you all sick of each other?”
Buck shrugs. “I’m new to the team. We need to talk strategy for the next game since we’re facing our biggest competitor in the league.”
“Oh. Right.” I try not to perk up, curious who might be coming to get him and if Alex is among his buddies now.
Ten minutes later, he gets a call from some girl named Honey. All the puck bunnies who call him are named Honey. Probably easier than remembering their real names. He pauses the game while he sets up round two of puck bunny lovin’ for later in the evening, inviting Honey to the bar. He even goes so far as to suggest she bring some friends. This is where my beliefs about the habits of hockey players originate from. Once he hangs up, Buck makes another call, this time to a teammate. He kindly informs whoever it is that he has bunnies lined up and primed for action. He really is a dog.