Chapter 13
Sara
“Okay, I think I’m a sex addict now.”
We’re snuggled up in my bed, hours later, after a break for snacks and another careful round of hot monkey love.
“I told you. Best sex of your life.”
I chortle. “You’re not wrong.” I push up to look him in the eyes. “Can we do this again?”
“I’ve created a monster.”
I grin. “Maybe. But hey…you’re learning things from me. I can learn things from you.”
His eyebrows pinch together. “What am I learning from you?”
“That the best-laid schemes of mice and men go often askew.” She pauses. “That’s from a poem, by the way.”
“I thought it was a book. I think I read it in high school. Of Mice and Men.”
“No! I mean, yes, but that’s where the title comes from. The Robert Burns poem.”
He smiles lazily and strokes my hair. “What’s the poem?”
“ ‘To a Mouse.’ ”
“Do you know it by heart?”
“No. But I can read it to you.” I grab my phone off the nightstand and find a version of it. I read it to him, hoping he’s not jerking me around—I know he’s not really into poetry. But a couple of glances at his face tell me he’s paying attention, his gaze intent on me. When I finish, I lower my phone. “I guess it sounds cliché—everyone uses that phrase. He’s talking about life being unpredictable—human life and animal life. Humans can reflect on the past when things didn’t go as planned, and we can anticipate the future. But we’re all vulnerable to forces beyond our control.”
After a moment of silence, Josh murmurs, “Wow. That’s…yeah.”
I let the silence stretch on because he seems to be thinking. Then I say, “But back to the sex thing.”
A bark of laughter bursts from his lips. “What?”
“I’m teaching you about life being unpredictable. And you can teach me about sex.”
“Hmmm. A mutually beneficial arrangement. Although, to be totally honest, I gotta say I think I benefit just as much from teaching you about sex.”
“Well.” I slide back under the covers. “Maybe I learn from teaching you that life is unpredictable. Having a plan isn’t a bad thing. Maybe I need to plan more.”
“Let’s plan this.” And he rolls me under him.
* * *
—
“We might have overdone it.”
As I roll out of bed and try to stand Sunday morning, my thigh muscles scream in protest.
“Shit.” Josh rushes over to me. “Are you okay?”
“I will be. You’d think all those workouts at Ignite Cycle would have prepared me for sex. I’m so disappointed. I think I’ll ask for my money back.”
“Witch.” His lips twitch, but his eyes are serious. “Really, though. That was a lot for…”
“My first time. I know, I know.” I wave a hand. “But I really liked it and I’m not always good at delayed gratification.”
“Not many people are when it comes to sex.” He kisses my nose. “I don’t think I could have said no to you last night.”
I beam a smile at him. “I like that.”
Sex isn’t just fun…it’s power. Who knew? Well, pretty much everyone, I guess.
“I wish I didn’t have to go.”
Josh has a game today, an early game at six, so he needs to be at the arena even earlier than usual.
“Same.” I wrap my arms around his neck. He’s already dressed, but I’m not. “But I’ll watch your game. While I sit on ice packs.”
“Jesus. Don’t do this to me.”
“I’m kidding. I’m fine, really.” I feel great, in fact!
Other than the fact I won’t see him for a week, between both our schedules. Maybe it’s for the best, though…it will give my hoohaw a chance to recover.
I move away from him and grab my fluffy robe where it’s draped over the chair. I head out of the bedroom and he follows, patting my butt.
We pause at the door for goodbye smooches.
“We’ll talk next week,” he says, after a long, sizzling kiss.
“Yeah.” I let him out with both sadness and a delicious contentment.
I finally did it! I cashed in the V-card. Not that it was weighing on me or anything. I was honest with Josh—I haven’t been waiting for anything. I’m happy I found a guy I really like, someone I really wanted to do the deed with, who wasn’t freaked out about it. And…wow. Can I just say, sex is awesome?
I limp back into my living room and fall onto the couch.
Or should I say…sex with Josh is awesome? Because I have a feeling it’s not always like that.
Oh yeah…the reason I’m feeling so great isn’t just because I finally had sex. It’s because of Josh. It’s because of how much we laughed last night at bad poetry. How he tried so hard not to be bothered by a spontaneous change in plans and to see the positive in it. How he was so thoughtful about my first time, even though I had to set him straight on a few things. How he accepts that women can love sex as much as men and not be sluts. And how he listened to me reading Robert Burns.
I slump back into the cushions, beaming a huge smile at the ceiling. Yeah, I really like Josh Heller.
Chapter 14
Josh
Sunday night is the first game I’m on the power play with Bergie, JBo, Brando, and Millsy, a.k.a. Easton the Traitor. The Bruins don’t get a penalty until the second period, and the game is tied, one–all.
Our new coach wants me to keep shooting the puck. “It doesn’t have to go in,” he tells me. “Just be a threat.”
I can do that. I’ll do better than that. I’ll put it in the goddamn net.
The Bruins haven’t figured that out, though. They’re all over Millsy and Bergie, and I get a great look at the goal from the point. With JBo a big presence in front of the net, their goalie has no hope of stopping my blast. The red light glows, the horn sounds, and the crowd roars. I lift my arms in the air and my teammates all jump me to celebrate the goal. My first power play goal. Only Millsy’s congrats are a bare tap on the shoulder.
Well, fuck him. We’re a goddamn team.
We skate by the bench to bump gloves with the rest of the guys, and the penalized Bruin glides glumly across the ice to return to his own bench.
I’m grinning as I sit on the bench. With JBo on one side of me and Bergie the other, I grab a bottle of Gatorade and hold it in front of Bergie’s mouth. He opens and I squirt some in, then turn to JBo, shoot some into his mouth, and then some into mine. “There,” I say. “That’ll keep the goals coming.”
“Millsy.” JBo takes the bottle and tries to squirt some into his mouth, but Millsy shakes his head.
“Oh no,” I say. “Don’t be an asshole right now. We just scored. Drink the fucking Gatorade.”
He stares at me for a couple of seconds, then scowls, grabs the bottle, and squeezes a purple stream into his mouth.
I roll my eyes and turn to watch the face-off at center ice. Is he fucking pissed because I scored and he didn’t? Jesus Christ.
My anger gets my adrenaline going and my next shift, I’m buzzing. When D’Angelo gets a breakaway, I chase after him, skating my ass off, and with a sweep of my stick I knock the puck off his blade just as he’s about to shoot at Gunner. The crowd, noisily cheering me on as I raced, erupts even louder in approval. Then when Bridges has the puck and he’s crossing the center line, I skate in on him and hit him. Off-balance, he goes down hard, losing the puck. This causes another huge cheer from our fans as well as a little unrest among the Bruins, and a couple of them come at me, one guy dropping his gloves. “Fucking asshole!” he yells at me. “Let’s go!”
“That was a clean hit, fuckface!” I’m not getting sucked into a roughing or fighting penalty for doing it. M
y mitts stay on my hands.
The refs join us to make sure things aren’t escalating, but I skate away knowing I’m going to be punished my next shift on the ice.
Sure enough, it’s not long before Currie, a fourth line winger who’s known as their enforcer, hammers me into the boards behind the net. It’s a fucking late play. I have barely a second to prepare myself and I drop to my knees, pain radiating through my body, all my breath knocked out of me. I’m okay. I’m okay. That could have been a fucking disaster, but I’m conscious and I don’t think anything’s broken. I stay down, trying to get my breath back. The whistle blows and fuck yeah, he’s getting a penalty.
The guys all swarm around me to see if I need help.
“I’m okay,” I wheeze, pushing to my feet.
Robby greets me at the bench. “You okay, Hellsy?”
“Yeah, yeah.” I shake my head. “I’m good.”
“Didn’t look like you hit your head.”
“Nope.”
The league watches for that and if it looked like I had, I’d be heading down the tunnel to get checked out, but I’m good.
It’s time for our power play unit again. Fuck yeah.
The Bruins still aren’t getting it, still aren’t respecting me. This time when I get the puck and shoot, JBo, planted in front of the Bruins’ net, tips the puck in for another goal. I shout and stretch my arms wide, skating toward him to grab him in a hug. “Fuck yeah! Nice tip in, dude!”
The Bruins are pissed now, but we’re up three–one, and that’s how the game ends, a nice home win for us.
The locker room is filled with pumping music. Our team DJ is Bergie and I learned quickly nobody else touches the music. Right now, our win song is “Wow” by Post Malone. I fucking love this song. I bop my way over to my stall in the corner, arms up, and get high fives from Gunner, TK—our backup goalie—and Wendy, who sits next to me.
Jammer points at me, arm extended, and starts dancing too. He has better moves than me, but that’s okay. I’m feeling so fucking fantastic tonight I don’t even care if I’m making a fool of myself. Everyone’s laughing, but they’re not laughing at me, we’re all just high on the win.
The music changes to a rap song, but only a few seconds in, everyone goes silent.
I blink and jerk my head to look around the room.
“Fuck!” Bergie jumps up and runs over to the computer. “Fuck, sorry guys. I thought I deleted that one.” He stops it, shaking his head, and quickly starts another song. This time it’s AC/DC “Thunderstruck.”
“What’s that about?” I ask Wendy.
He grimaces, swiping a hand over his dripping face and hair. “We had an, uh, incident…with our last coach. So we all voted that we shouldn’t play music that uses that word.”
“Riiiiight.” Shit, I remember hearing about him using a racial slur against Jammer. “Respect, man.” I nod.
“If it weren’t for Millsy, we might still have an asshole coach.”
“Millsy?”
“He was the one who finally had the stones to do something about it.” Wendy shakes his head.
Huh. I take off my jersey.
I saw my name on the whiteboard out in the hall listing players to be available for media tonight. Guess that’s what happens with a smoking-hot power play and a goal, which turned out to be the winning goal, and an assist. So I mop off my sweaty face with a towel and answer their questions. “I’m just trying to give the guys the best options I can. If that means shooting the puck in to give them more options, that’s what I’ll do. My goal is to open as much space for them as I can.”
After I’ve showered and changed, I walk the few blocks from the arena to my hotel. Tomorrow morning, I have a one-on-one meeting with Coach Shipton, which he’s doing with all the guys. Then I’ll pack my stuff. Tuesday is the hospital visit the Bears have set up for me, Murph, Axe, and JBo. I’m looking forward to that as much as I look forward to taking a slap shot to the nuts. But it must be done. Wednesday morning, we fly to Chicago, then Raleigh. When I get back late Saturday night, that’ll be my last night in this damn hotel.
In my room, the first thing I do is take off my suit and put on a pair of sweats and a hoody. I turn on the TV to watch some hockey highlights and prop myself up on the bed with a pile of pillows.
Wendy’s comments about Millsy push back into my head. How he was the one who did something about their coach.
I guess I’m not surprised. He was a leader on the Warriors when we were kids. Not the captain, but still a leader. The guy who wouldn’t let the hazing shit happen to me when I joined the team, a year younger than him. I never forgot that—how he stood up for me. And I joined with him on that the next year.
I close my eyes, regret for our lost friendship sweeping through me. Shit.
After a moment of nostalgia, I grab my phone. The first thing I see is Sara’s text congratulating me on the win.
You played fantastic! Sex must be good for your athletic performance.
I grin, my melancholy falling away, and tap in a reply. You know what that means…
What?
I need sex before every game. Not that I’m superstitious or anything.
How am I going to come to your away games??
Good question…we need to figure that out. We can just go with the home games for now.
LOL
Now I’m thinking about sex with Sara. Damn, that was hot. It was spectacular. It was also…shit, I don’t know. I’m getting all caught up in that virginity thing again. But it did mean a lot to me that it was her first time and she wanted to do it with me, and it seemed like it was pretty good for her. Okay, I’m being modest. She was wrecked. In a good way.
How are you feeling? Sore?
Yeah. But it’s kind of hot. Every time my muscles twinge, I get turned on.
I groan. Christ. You’re killing me.
Really, I’m fine.
You’re fantastic.
♥
We end the text convo with a promise to talk tomorrow.
I drop my phone on the bed and close my eyes. Yeah, she’s fantastic. So honest. Sure, she gets distracted and sometimes it’s hard to follow her conversation when she randomly throws out questions about what my perfect day would be. But she’s so real and sweet, it’s impossible to be mad at her for dragging me to that poetry reading or making me do the bumper cars on ice. I like how she’s so self-aware—she knows she does those things. She apologizes. And she laughs at herself. Like that joke about Botox when her lips were so swollen she could barely talk and she had no blood pressure. She’s fun. I think I’ve forgotten what fun is.
Just stopping to look at that church last night…it’s a church, not something I set foot in very often anymore. But it was beautiful, the old stone glowing in the dark. Little moments like those…I need to appreciate those more.
I really do like her. But…I also need to be careful. I didn’t plan to have a new girlfriend before I’d even moved into my new apartment. I didn’t plan to have a new girlfriend at all. I knew I’d have to focus on hockey to get me through this huge disruption in my life. Hockey’s the one thing I can count on. Relationships are risky. Going out with Cora didn’t feel risky, I guess because I honestly didn’t care that much. But Sara…feels risky. What I need is stability. Routine. I need to work hard so I can forget about my past. And I don’t mind being alone.
I was annoyed when she asked that question—what’s something you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time but haven’t done? Of course I was thinking about Millsy. And then she asked why I haven’t talked to him about it.
I could have done it. I’ve seen him occasionally over the years; we play in the same league. But I’m not exactly going to chitchat at center ice during a warm-up to ask him why the hell he never cared enough about me to come see me or even call me wh
en I was a bunch of busted-up bones.
I could have done it since I’ve been in New York.
But like I said…it doesn’t matter anymore. That was a long time ago.
I really like Sara, but digging into shit like that, shit I don’t want to think about never mind talk about, is way too personal.
So I need to be careful.
Chapter 15
Sara
“So I think that now that you’re so incredibly popular, it’s time to change up your image a bit.”
I stare at Harper. “Excuse me?”
Did I hear her right?
She smiles. “I have a couple of clothing brands that are interested in making you their brand ambassador. We need to talk about what the best fit would be. One of them is Tryst.”
I nod. “They have beautiful clothes. But aren’t they for…older women?”
Harper rolls her eyes. “By older, you mean my age?”
Eeep. “I don’t mean you’re old! I just mean older than my fans.”
“Let’s be real, Sara.” Harper leans across the table in the coffee shop we’re in. “You are getting older. Your image right now isn’t going to serve you well when you’re thirty years old. Tryst has a more sophisticated appeal. Maybe it’s time for you to be more…polished.”
I consider that. I guess she has a point. But this doesn’t feel right to me. “So you’re saying I should start changing into a thirty-year-old now?”
She laughs. “You kill me!”
I smile weakly. “What are the other clothing brands?”
“Genuine People. And Monrovia.”
Now I’m interested. “I like both of those!”
I can see Harper’s not as excited as I am. “We need to meet with them to talk about details and their vision.”
“All of them?” I make a face. “Can’t we just rule out Tryst? That’s not really my style.”
“I think you should hear them out. Have another look at their clothing. You might find that it suits you more than you realize.”
It feels like a waste of time to me, but I reluctantly agree for her to set up meetings with all three companies. Two of them are in Los Angeles, so we’re going to have to fly there for a few days. I love L.A., so I’m okay with that.
You Had Me at Hockey (Bears Hockey) Page 12