Hockey Is My Boyfriend: Part One

by Ting, Melanie

  As they walked away, Phil looked back once, twice, and then he turned around and came over.

  “What’s up, Kel?” He smiled at me, and I felt happy that he wasn’t still mad.

  “Not too much,” I told him.

  “Want to come over to my place and hang? The weather’s kind of crap, but if the rain holds off we could go for a paddle.”

  “Thanks, but I can’t. I’m waiting for a ride,” I explained. I didn’t really want to rub in the Nicklas part, but just then his SUV pulled up. Phil tilted his head to see who was driving, then curled his lip. He was majorly pissed off.

  I opened the car door and Nicklas greeted me. He was still wearing his school uniform, so he looked both like a kid and someone’s dad.

  “Bye, Phil, I’ll see you later.” I got into the car, but he caught the door before I could close it and leaned inside.

  Nicklas nodded at him. “Hey Phil, how’s it going?”

  “Hey Nicklas.” Then Phil didn’t say another word, he just stared at Nicklas. Well, more than a stare, I had seen that look during games. It was: “I’m going to win this face-off and then shove the fucking puck down your throat.”

  I had to break this up. “Okay, well, nice that we could have this little team reunion… but, uh, we’ll see you later, Phil.” I tried to pull the car door shut but didn’t succeed. Phil switched his glance to me, but turned off the death ray.

  “Yeah, see you later, Kelly. Be good.” He slammed the door and we took off. I watched Phil disappear in the side mirror and then exhaled.

  “What’s his problem?” Nicklas wondered.

  “No idea,” I replied. Well, I did know but I didn’t want to get into this whole deal. I had already defended Nicklas to Phil, and I knew how well that went.

  “Probably jealous. He thought he was hot shit back in Bantam, but now he doesn’t even play rep.”

  I couldn’t let that go. Phil had been a better hockey player than Nicklas when we played together, and he was still excellent. “Well, that’s because he didn’t try out for rep. He could have made it.”

  “That’s what all the guys say that don’t have the jam to try out.” Nicklas looked over at me with a frown. “Did you used to date him? Is that what this is all about?”

  I shook my head. “I never dated him. But we are good friends.”

  Nicklas shrugged and seemed to forget about the whole thing. I was still bothered though, because I could see how upset Phil was. Here I had been looking forward to seeing my boyfriend and now I felt sorry for Phil. Life was so confusing.

  “Where are we headed?” I asked as we made our way onto the Upper Levels Highway.

  “I thought we’d go to my house and hang out.”

  His home was very modern. It was huge and high up the mountain with a wide view of downtown Vancouver. What I really liked were all the open spaces. Not too much furniture, mainly teak tables and chairs with white fabric. There were golden wood floors with shaggy rugs, mostly cream-coloured, but a couple of bright orange ones too. I decided on the spot that if I ever had my own place this would be how I would decorate it. Nicklas shrugged when I asked him about it.

  “It’s Swedish modern. Lots of places look like this in Sweden. I prefer my dad’s place.”

  His dad lived in a condo downtown, but I hadn’t seen it. Nicklas seemed to have some issues with his mother. He hardly ever talked about her and never mentioned his stepfather, even though I was pretty sure they came to all his games. I really didn’t get into the whole parent thing with him. Truth be told, we didn’t spend a ton of time talking.

  We went to the kitchen to get a snack, and Nicklas grabbed a note off the fridge.

  “This day keeps getting better and better.” He put an arm around my waist and pulled me close. “Melinda’s out running errands, so we’re alone here.” He kissed my neck, which tickled. I squirmed and he wrapped his arms tighter around me. “Let’s go up to my room, baby.”

  We walked up the wide plank stairs to his bedroom. I felt a tightness in my stomach, but I wasn’t sure if that was due to nervousness or because I had actually wanted a snack. Nicklas was holding my hand and grinning. No nervousness for him. I was so dozy about everything, but he was always sweet and patient with me.

  He opened the door to his room. It didn’t look like the room of any teenaged guy that I’d ever seen. First off, it was completely, spotlessly neat. I didn’t know if that was due to Nicklas or Melinda. Secondly, it was huge, you could practice stickhandling in here. My room was the opposite: tiny and packed with stuff like books, sports equipment, and childhood treasures. Everything here was white: the walls, the desk, the chair, the dresser. The only colour in the room was from the wood floors and a framed blue screenprint above the bed. I kept glancing at the bed, which looked so big and prominent. It was queen-sized and low to the ground with a puffy white duvet.

  “Nice room,” I said. The queasy feeling in my stomach increased.

  “Nicer now that you’re in it,” he said. He lifted my chin, and his mouth covered mine in a wet, messy kiss. I put my arms around his neck and kissed him back. This was what I had missed.

  Nicklas guided me over to the bed and manoeuvred me onto it. He kept kissing me, but his hands were busy. He took off my shirt and my bra and then took off his shirt as well. Our exposed skin felt extra hot wherever we were touching. I could finally get a good look at him since we weren’t in the back of his car.

  His skin was smooth and really pale, and my hands looked tanned against him. When I touched his pale pink nipples, he had a sharp intake of breath; then he smiled, leaned in, and kissed me hard. He pulled back slightly to lick my lips, like he was tasting me, and then licked down my neck right to my nipples. Holy shit, that felt amazing. He bent his head down and sucked one nipple, and I think I actually moaned out loud.

  Nicklas took my hand and put it on the front of his grey dress pants. I could feel his cock inside, and it felt really hard and kind of pulsing. I had seen guys before, like my brother or teammates, but they were never sporting erections like Nicklas.

  “Take it out, Kelly. You got me so hard, and now you’ve got to help me.”

  Help him, like help his erection to escape? Okay.

  I undid his belt and unzipped his dress pants and his cock was kind of pushing out of his boxers. Nicklas yanked down his clothes, and his cock popped out. His hair down there was a darker colour than the blond hair on his head. His cock looked nice and smooth, kind of like a Greek statue thing.

  “Touch it.”

  All right, but I wasn’t exactly sure what to do here. I put my hand out and stroked his cock. Nicklas groaned. I started petting it, like I would a cat, but this didn’t seem right.

  “Wrap your hand around it,” Nicklas told me. I did that. “Now move your hand up and down. C’mon Kelly, get into it.”

  “Sorry. I’ve never done this before.”

  “What? You’ve never jerked a guy off before?”

  “No, Nicklas, I thought you knew. I’ve never done anything before.” Embarrassed, I let go of him.

  “Really?” He sounded pretty happy about this. I was worried that he would hate that I was so inexperienced. “So you’re a virgin, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you’ve never done anything? At all?”

  “Well, I kissed a guy in grade ten.”

  “That’s it?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s weird because you seem so hot and into it to me. But whatever, it’s cool. I’ll tell you what I like, and then we can do it, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  He took his clothes off completely and I checked out his whole body. His quads were pretty big, probably from hockey.

  “Now Kelly, where were we?” Nicklas reached out for me and starting kissing me again, which relaxed me. He ran his hands over my bare back and then cupped my breasts, which felt so good. I kind of wished we could make out like that for a while, but Nicklas was guiding my hands down. His co
ck was really hard, but the skin there was so soft. He didn’t say anything, he just kept making out with me and then put my hands where he wanted them: one on his cock and the other on his balls.

  As I touched him, I felt kind of powerful because everything I did caused a big reaction in Nicklas. His eyes were closed, and he groaned loudly when I moved my hand up and down. He liked a lot of pressure, which was weird to me because I thought he would be more sensitive down there. He put my hand over the head and got me to go faster with the other. Suddenly he arched his back a little and groaned really loudly and started to come in spurts into my hand. We lay together for a couple of minutes afterwards, and then I grabbed a Kleenex and cleaned up.

  So… now what?

  Nicklas checked the time and started pulling on his clothes. “We better get going, somebody’ll be home soon.”

  I started getting dressed too. I felt funny inside though.

  13

  Boyfriend Inspection

  April had been bugging me about meeting Nicklas. All the things she had heard about him were making her extremely curious. The trouble was that we basically ran in two different circles. April, and usually me, were part of the whole Seycove Secondary crowd and went to parties in our neighbourhood. Now that I was hanging out with Nicklas, we went to parties with his hockey buddies all over North Van and also with his friends from private school in West Van.

  So I figured out a night that he had a game at Ice Sports and I had a game after him. April could come to the rink with me and meet him in the half hour overlap between those two events.

  April pulled up in my driveway, and I was all ready. I ran out and stuck my hockey bag and sticks in the back of her mom’s VW Golf, and then I hopped in the passenger seat.

  “Okay, let’s go!” I said cheerily.

  April turned off the ignition.

  “What, in the name of all that is ugly, are you wearing?”

  I looked down. “Oh, this? This is my team tracksuit. It’s not too attractive, is it? But we have to wear it to every game, you know, because we’re a team.”

  “Team Totally Hideous! And are you wearing a sports bra again?”

  “Duh! I’m playing hockey, which is a sport. Therefore, sports bra.”

  “Okay, but aren’t we meeting your boyfriend first? A boyfriend who is allegedly one of the cutest guys on the North Shore?”

  “Yeah, but he knows why I have to dress like this. Besides, who can look sexy in a track suit?” Some clothes were for real action, not getting some action.

  “Have you never seen Victoria Beckham? For starters, you could get a suit that fits a bit tighter. Okay, let’s go to your room.” She started to open the car door.

  “What? April, this is not a makeover situation. Everyone else on the team is wearing their track suits so I have to wear mine too.”

  “Oh Kelly, and if all the other girls were jumping off the bridge, would you too? Do you know how eight-years-old you sound? Don’t worry; I won’t make you change completely, only a bit.” She saw I was hesitating. “Quick now. It will go faster if you obey me. Have I ever steered you wrong?”

  “Yes, what about when we drank Hard Lemonade at the grade seven Grad?”

  “Okay, but that was not a fashion decision. I am never wrong about fashion.”

  Ten minutes later we were back in the car. I looked ridiculous in my opinion. April had safety-pinned the tracksuit in some weird way, so that it was now tighter at the waist and bust. I was wearing a push-up bra and a low cut tank top underneath a strategically unzipped jacket that I wasn’t allowed to zip up any higher. Luckily she hadn’t made me change from my running shoes into hooker heels, because I could not have lugged my hockey gear into the arena. Not that I had hooker heels, but who knew what April might pull out of her purse.

  “I’m probably going to get a chest cold,” I complained.

  “Nicklas will love it. He’ll leave the rink with you imprinted on his brain, and isn’t that what we all want?”

  We were at the rink early despite the mini-makeover, and we sat in the lobby waiting for Nicklas. His teammates started drifting out, and a lot of them stopped to chat, probably because April was with me. They had demolished a team from South Delta, and everyone was feeling good. Nicklas finally came out with his best friend on the team, Mark Shelton III. Don’t even get me started on people who give their kids the exact same names as themselves. My mom felt it showed a complete lack of imagination as well as a huge ego. She was very creative, and if she weren’t Irish I might have been named Moonbeam Ocean Tanaka. Anyway from what I had seen, she was right: Mark was a snob and a bore.

  Nicklas looked incredibly hot, as usual. Rep teams always wore suits to their games, but he looked better than everyone else. He told me he got his suits downtown at Harry Rosen Menswear, which was way more expensive than any place around here. I was pretty sure that April would flip.

  “There he is,” I said to April, as he came down the hallway on the other side of the glass doors.

  She had this incredible skill of looking without appearing to look. Obviously she missed her calling as a spy.

  “The blond guy, in the charcoal grey Hugo Boss suit?”

  I’m sorry, how did she know what kind of suit he was wearing from 100 metres away? I wouldn’t know unless he took his jacket off and waved the label in front of me. And then I’d probably be too busy wondering what he might take off next.

  April let out a puff of breath. “Oh my God, he’s absolutely gorgeous. And you won him in a bet?”

  “I didn’t win him in a bet; we started dating on a dare. Anyway, you like?”

  “Oh, I like,” she purred. “Kelly, this is just the right guy for your first time.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “So hot! No wonder you can’t keep your hands off him.”

  “Okay, let’s keep all this girl talk to ourselves when we actually meet him.”

  “I can be discreet! Let’s hope I don’t drool though. You are a lucky, lucky lady.”

  Nicklas and Mark came up to us. “Kelly! Did you see my goal?” asked Nicklas.

  Uh oh, bad girlfriend. “Sorry, I only got to the rink a few minutes ago. I’ve got a game here too, but I came by early to see you.”

  “Ahem,” April interrupted.

  “Oh sorry. Hey Nicklas, Mark, this is April Lachance.”

  “Hello, April, nice to meet you.” Nicklas smiled politely, but then he turned his attention back to me. “Kelly, you’re looking really good today.”

  He dropped his hockey bag, moved in to hug me, and slipped his hands inside my track jacket. He grabbed my waist and pulled me in for a kiss. As he brought me closer, he moved his thumbs up to touch the sides of my breasts, but nobody could tell from outside the jacket. Apparently tracksuits could be sexy. But when he touched me, my nipples got hard, which was pretty embarrassing.

  I wasn’t really into PDAs. Sure, we made out in the car, but doing it in front of everyone was different. So while Nicklas was kissing me and secretly feeling me up, I was uncomfortable. When I finally broke away from him, I should have known that we would have an audience, besides April and Mark. On my right, coming from the rink, was Dave Vanderhauf. He was looking at us and smirking, and he had totally noticed my headlights were on. On my left, Laura Armstrong and her pal, Kelsey Homeniuk, were walking into the arena, along with—drum roll—my coach, Peter Miller. Argh!

  Nicklas was oblivious. In fact, he was saying something about going to his car for a little privacy, but I had to get ready for my game.

  “Gotta go,” I said to him. “Game time.”

  “Yeah, c’mon, Nicklas,” Mark whined.

  “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” Nicklas seemed disappointed he wasn’t getting to explore the dark reaches of my tracksuit.

  “Sure, see ya.” And then I turned to April, “Thanks for the ride. Never taking your fashion advice again.” She smiled sweetly back at me.

  “Nicklas, aren’t you going to stay and
watch our game?” asked Laura, who apparently never gave up.

  “Got to go and hit the homework,” he replied, without actually looking at her. “Let’s go, Shell.” And they left in a cloud of Armani cologne.

  My coach looked at me without any expression on his face at all. “Let’s do some laps of the arena before the game. Get the rest of the team organized.”

  I guessed he’d seen it all before.

  14

  Wreck Room

  “Are you coming over to watch the Canucks game on Thursday?” Phil asked me, out of the blue.

  We hadn’t said two words to each other since he slammed the door of Nicklas’s car. In the old days, we watched games together anytime we were both free, because I had no cable and a tiny television. My parents had decreed that too much television stunted creativity. I had no creative skills at all, which you would think blew that theory out of the water, but my little brother was creative so it was a wash.

  “Um, I've got practice until 8:00, but I could come over afterwards.” I hadn't really planned on watching the game, but this seemed like a peace offering so I thought I should accept. I missed hanging out with Phil.

  “Okay, I'll see you whenever.” Phil seemed ultra-casual.

  I drove home after practice and took a quick shower. I debated wearing a pair of my new jeans, but I decided that Phil probably wouldn't even notice, so I pulled on some yoga pants with a t-shirt and a hoody. With April's lectures echoing in my head, I applied lip gloss and mascara, miraculously not poking myself in the eye. I walked to Phil's since it wasn't raining too hard.

  Downstairs at Phil’s was the perfect place to hang out and watch the game. It was a traditional wood-panelled family room with striped couches and wood side tables. Not dark, since the house was built on a slope, and there were sliding glass doors to the outside letting in sunlight.

  Thanks to his mom, the room was completely orderly, antiseptically clean, and fully stocked with drinks and snacks. His dad was into the latest technology, and it seemed like every time I went there, the TV was bigger. Plus the couch across from the TV was ginormous; It had to be since Phil, his older brother Ray, and his dad were all over 6 feet and his mom was about 5’10”. When I sat there it felt like land of the giants: if I scooted my butt to the back of the couch, my feet would not touch the floor.