Hockey Is My Boyfriend: Part One

by Ting, Melanie

  “Kelly, that’s so screwed up.” But he kept chuckling away.

  “She thinks I’m too possessive, so get ready to hear the offer straight from the horse’s mouth. Or should I say the ho’s mouth?”

  “Oh, someone’s getting jealous,” he teased me.

  “I’m not jealous, I’m mad.” I didn’t get exactly why I was so angry. Maybe it was because she thought that he might be interested. Was there something about me that made people think that Phil wouldn’t be completely satisfied?

  “Why are you all upset? She’s a joke.” Phil was finally getting serious.

  “It’s not just Ada. Everyone says how surprised they are that Phil Davidson is dating me. Or they keep harping on the fact that you don’t go out with girls for very long. I get pretty tired of people saying how surprised they are that we’re still together. Like I’m not enough for you.”

  I didn’t mean to say all that, but I guessed it was something that had bothered me for a while.

  “Kelly.” He hugged me hard and then held my face in his hands. “Don’t let a stupid girl like that ruin our weekend. You get that it’s different between us, right? Different than everyone else.”

  I looked up and him and nodded. Usually I thought so, but it was nice to have him confirm it. He kissed me gently on the lips and then on the nose and forehead. He tilted my face up to look at him.

  “I love you, Kel. I’ve never said that to anyone before.”

  Whoosh.

  It felt like all the air had gone out of the room.

  Dinner was a bit of a blur. Phil spoke to Dave, so he started helping in the kitchen instead of me. That was a good idea, because I shouldn’t have been left alone in a room with Ada and a knife. We ate dinner and talked, but all I could think about was what Phil said to me. Phil loved me. We weren’t in a relationship with a firm end date; we were in something bigger than that. I could relax and let my feelings be whatever. But how did I feel? And when he said, “I love you” to me, he probably expected more of a reaction than a completely stunned look.

  After dinner, I would have preferred to be alone with Phil, but we had already been antisocial the night before. Originally I was looking forward to hanging out with everyone, but with Ada around nothing was fun. We ended up playing board games. Ada kept trying to sit near Phil or be on his team. Phil easily deflected all her moves; clearly it wasn’t the first time he’d had to deal with something like this. He seemed to be using me as a human shield: pulling me into his lap, touching me, and kissing me. Finally, Dave commented on it.

  “What is it with you guys? Usually you’re totally normal, but this weekend you’re straight out of The Notebook or something.”

  I groaned when he said that. We had sat through that movie with Dave and his last girlfriend, Jamie, a few weeks ago. It had been ridiculous. For starters, the older actors looked nothing like Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams. The whole thing was a sapfest from start to finish, with holes in the plot you could drive a truck through. But Jamie had cried like a baby, and even Dave got a little misty, although he denied it.

  Not surprisingly, Ada piped up that The Notebook was her favourite movie. I was beginning to think she was deliberately put on this planet to drive me insane. Finally, I felt like it wouldn’t be too rude to go to bed. Samira looked tired, and even Ada had slowed down her constant blabbing. Phil and I walked up to our room and went right to bed.

  “Is the door locked?” I asked him as I snuggled under the duvet. I had skipped the t-shirt tonight, and I liked the crackling heat his body gave off as I wrapped myself around him.

  “Yup. Nobody in…or out.”

  Tonight he wasn’t slow or patient. Phil was on me with an intensity that was almost scary. He barely touched my body, only spreading my legs to find if I was wet enough to enter and then he was inside me, his cock filling me and setting my nerve endings alight. He was rough and wordless, but I got him, I understood why he was doing this. He had opened up to me, he had been sensitive and vulnerable and I had said nothing in return. So he was fighting his soft side, I could feel it, see it in his tensed face and the way he didn’t watch my face or my reactions. He thrust in and out with relentless force, but I met his every movement with my own. I could feel him speeding up, but I wanted to come with him, so I reached down and started touching myself. He grunted, and then pushed my hand away, replacing it with his own skilled fingers. He pulled the wetness from inside me and then roughly worked my clit until I cried out. His eyes were closed, but the sound of me coming seemed to set something off in Phil. He thrust hard a few more times, and I felt his trembling inside me as his whole body convulsed.

  He fell away from me onto his side of the bed. I lay beside him, feeling his come running down my thigh, but also feeling an emptiness inside. We were connected completely when we had sex. Everything I felt about Phil came bubbling to the surface, and it was okay now. I could relax and feel what I wanted, because he was in love with me.

  “Phil, what you said before….”

  He interrupted me, “Kel, don’t worry about it. You were feeling so down, I wanted to make you happier. I know we’re probably not in the same place, it’s not a big deal.”

  “No, it is a big deal. I want to tell you, I love you too.”

  His face was stern. But when he heard me say those words, he broke into a sunny smile. For a moment he looked exactly like the little boy I met in a hockey dressing room years before.

  39

  Lightness

  Charmaine, Karen, and I were all at April’s house for a sleepover. She had dubbed it “The Last Girl’s Night Ever” because we would be going our different ways soon. Karen was leaving Monday for her holistic animal care college in California. I’d be going to Montréal in two weeks.

  “It’s been ages since we’ve all been together,” Karen declared. “Let’s get caught up.”

  “I broke up with Danny,” April announced.

  “Why?” Karen wondered. Danny was staying in Vancouver, so there was no overt reason for them to split. Unlike me and Phil.

  “I don’t know; things were kind of boring.”

  “Hmmm,” said Charmaine in a neutral way. All of us were probably thinking the same thing: no kidding. Danny Russo was not exactly a rocket scientist. April liked guys who were good-looking, period.

  April continued, “Even the sex. You’d think with a body like that, he’d be a decent lover, but I wasn’t even getting off half the time.”

  “Well, that’s your own fault,” I said, absentmindedly. I was having a flashback to my incredible time with Phil at Whistler.

  “Excuse me?” April asked.

  “Guys can’t always tell if you’ve come or not,” I explained to her. I couldn’t believe I was telling April something about sex. “So if he finishes, and you haven’t come, you tell him so he can get you off another way.”

  All three of them were looking at me in shock. Karen’s mouth was open, April’s eyebrows had disappeared into her bangs, and Charmaine was blushing right down to her neck.

  “So, this is what Phil does?” Karen croaked.

  I nodded. “It’s what he told me to do.” I figured everyone did it because it only made sense. She wasn’t going to make me explain the other ways, was she? I started blushing too, but I was sure I wasn’t red as Charmaine. A boiled lobster wasn’t as red as Charmaine.

  “Um, apropos of nothing at all, Phil’s staying here and going to U.B.C. right?” April asked.

  “April, you can’t date your best friend’s ex. It’s the girl code,” Karen scolded her.

  “I don’t want to date him. Just one night! Puhlease.”

  Karen shook her head. “No, April.” Then she turned to me, “You guys are splitting up, right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, when I go. It’s sad but we’ll be too far away.” Then I added, “But I think we might get back together next summer.”

  I didn’t tell them the rest, because Phil had only hinted at the future, and it was dumb to
imagine four years ahead. But it was comforting for me to think we weren’t completely over.

  “So, in the meantime, you’re free to go out with other guys?” Karen wondered.

  “Sure. But I don’t think I will. Yuck.” I couldn’t imagine anyone as perfect for me as Phil.

  April squinted at me. “Let me guess, Phil knows you feel like this, but he’s going to party it up—at least until next summer.”

  “Uh, let me guess, you have another opinion,” I replied. It suddenly occurred to me that between April and Phil, I had bossy best friends.

  “Well, yeah. It seems like a double standard. Montréal’s going to be exciting. French-Canadian guys are trés hot. You should go out too! You need to think about what you want rather than what Phil wants for you.”

  Even the idea of going out with other guys was making me queasy. Not as queasy as the idea of Phil going out with other girls though. I realized what I really wanted was not to break up at all.

  “I want us to stay together,” I declared. I was inspired by April’s speech, but in the opposite way of what she intended.

  “Really? Well, I guess you should tell him that,” she said slowly.

  I grimaced. “Phil believes that long distance can never work. That we’d just end up in a bad split. But I know I could do it.”

  “Charmaine and I can keep an eye on Phil here,” April offered. But it wasn’t like I could keep him on a leash; he would do what he wanted.

  “But he’s right,” Karen chimed in. “Long distance is tough. I’ve tried it with guys I met in Cali, and it’s never lasted more than a month.”

  “Yes, but you’re not the Romeo and Juliet of Seycove Secondary,” April said.

  “Um, didn’t they both die?” asked Charmaine.

  Karen laughed. “She just means they’re the perfect couple. But is that enough?”

  I held up a hand. “Stop! All this is way too much for my brain to process. I wish I were staying here for university, that would make things simple.”

  Charmaine nodded. “I’m really looking forward to U.B.C., and actually participating in normal social activities.”

  “I don’t know how you went this long without dating at all,” Karen said.

  “Me, either.”

  “Her grades are a testament to what can be done if you’re not all hormonal,” April joked. “I sacrificed A’s for the knowledge that guys can be idiots.”

  “No kidding,” I said. “Karen, how in hell did you go out with Dave Vanderhauf for so long? The guy is a pervert.”

  Karen laughed. “He’s not that bad. He’s a lot of fun, but he’s not the kind of guy you can depend on.”

  “There’s a type of guy you can depend on?” April wondered.

  “Actually Char,” Karen said. “You’re the perfect person to judge. Like a neutral scientific observer, or something. Do you think guys are dependable?”

  Charmaine looked very thoughtful and finally passed down her judgment. “I would say that most of the boys we know are very young, and probably not ready for anything serious.” She paused and glanced at me. “But I would also say that some guys change completely when they meet the right girl.”

  “Are you talking about Phil and Kelly?” April asked.

  “Partly,” she answered. “It’s something I noticed, there are certain people who seem to be searching for something and when they find it, they are happy. Like Cameron, he had a crush on April for so long, and it was obvious to everyone that it would never happen.”

  April groaned at this point. Charmaine laughed and continued, “Then he met a girl at a Waterloo meet-up this summer. I know her and she is nothing like April, but he is very happy now. It’s as if his devotion to April was a fantasy relationship, a holding pattern that he had to go through so he was ready for a real relationship. He is much more confident already.”

  “Wow, Charmaine,” I said. “You’re so smart about all this relationship stuff. You could be one of those advice columnists.”

  She laughed, “Yes, those who can’t, teach. Well, I had to do something at all those events when I wasn’t mingling like the rest of you.”

  The conversation mercifully moved on to Karen’s travel plans, but my wish started to reverberate in my brain. What if I did stay here? Then Phil and I wouldn’t have to break up when everything was so perfect. And from what April and Karen were saying, Phil was a pretty unique guy.

  I guessed that going to Whistler was a turning point for me. Maybe I had never trusted Phil completely, or more likely I had never felt confident enough to believe that he could really care about me the way I felt about him. His reputation had loomed over our time together. Well, it wasn’t only his rep. I had seen him with his girlfriends for so long, and I felt like I didn’t know that guy at all. The guy who was so casual with women, so cool and uncommitted.

  There was this one time—ages ago—I had gone to his house to pick up my hockey bag. This girl was just leaving. She was pretty, but her face was all messed up with emotion. Her skin was blotched with red and her eyes were teary and smeared with black makeup. She ran right into me, muttered sorry, and then got into her car and peeled out. I was torn as to whether I should even go inside at such a bad time, but I wanted my gear. But the really weird part was that Phil was completely normal. He didn’t seem upset at all. I couldn’t understand that, how only one person could be feeling everything. But I knew zippo about relationships then.

  Suddenly—staying right here in Vancouver—seemed like the right choice. It wasn’t only Phil, but my friends and family that I’d miss as well. After all, my mom was right: hockey wasn’t going to be my job or anything. I could go to school here, and we wouldn’t have to split up just when things were so fantastic. I had spent so long with Phil in my life, and this was the best time ever.

  As usual, I hadn’t thought everything through. Why would someone who hated change go so far away from everything she cared about? To some extent, that was Phil too; he had really encouraged me to pursue the opportunity. How sweet he was, always thinking of what was good for me. But he thought that hockey was my number one priority. And maybe that was beginning to shift.

  I had to admit, all summer I had been extremely excited about the whole McGill hockey experience. But lately, it was offset by how nervous I was starting to feel about moving to a whole new place and leaving everything here.

  Maybe this was crazy, there was no way I could switch schools so late. I had already declined my U.B.C acceptance. When we went upstairs to get snacks, I pulled Charmaine aside to ask her advice, since Karen and April might suspect something.

  “So, Charmaine, I was talking to someone at work who wanted to switch to U.B.C. now. Is it too late?”

  “This late? She must be a terrible planner.” Charmaine looked incredulous.

  “Well, uh, it was a family thing. Her mom’s not well, so she decided to stay in Vancouver. Anyway, she got accepted originally, but turned it down.” I was a terrible liar, but luckily Charmaine was too nice to notice.

  “I’m not really an expert on admissions, but I suppose they might make a humanitarian exception. Since she doesn’t need residence, that helps, but it’s really dependent upon the program. She could never get into something competitive like engineering or the business school now.” She kept shaking her head. “Someone told me that during the first few weeks there is a lot of flux. People quit and change courses. She might be able to start part-time and switch to fulltime.”

  I groaned inside. I could not go part-time instead of fulltime; my parents would flip.

  “Okay, that’s great info. I’ll pass it on her.” I paused and then asked her something else I’d been wondering about. “What makes you think that it’s different for Phil, with, uh, me?”

  I had changed subjects so quickly that Charmaine looked blank for a moment. Then she recalled our earlier relationship talk and smiled widely.

  “Oh, that’s easy. It’s his face.” She motioned towards her mouth, “Phil’s
natural expression is quite stern, not frowning, but his mouth is a straight line. Maybe a little intimidating if you don’t know him already. He reminds me of an eagle or hawk.”

  That was a perfect description. He was like an eagle: stern and watchful. Phil observed everything, and so did Charmaine. “But with you, he has a lightness. He smiles more often and looks more relaxed. A hawk on holiday,” she laughed.

  I felt ridiculously happy when she said this. I was definitely turning into the goofy girlfriend I swore I’d never be, and the worst part was that it didn’t even bother me.

  40

  Kelly Takes Charge

  After I got home from the sleepover at April’s, I had a ton of stuff to do if I was going to go to U.B.C. Most of all, I could hardly wait to talk to Phil in person, so in the late afternoon I biked to the private club where he lifeguarded. Since I wasn’t a member, I couldn’t go inside, but I knew he’d be off in a few minutes. I waited by the front doors, listening to my iPod. The afternoon sunshine felt nice on my face, and I closed my eyes and relaxed.

  “Kel?” Phil materialized in front of me. He was wearing an official red t-shirt, board shorts, and flip flops. He wore sunglasses and a few smudges of zinc oxide on his nose. “What are you doing here?”

  “I brought you a drink,” I said, holding out the cold drink I’d brought in my pack. Sadly, it wasn’t that cold anymore.

  “That’s nice, thanks a lot.”

  Phil opened it and tilted it back. I watched his Adam’s apple moving as he drank and looked at his long fingers holding the can, thinking how hot he looked. Yup, I had officially crossed over to the sappy side. He finished drinking and wiped off his mouth, then he leaned in and kissed me. His lips were warm and tasted like orange juice. I heard giggling, and when I opened my eyes, two young girls were walking by and watching us.