Rites of Passage

by Catherine Gayle

  “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” I said, “but you might have a fever or something. You feeling okay?” I reached up with the back of my hand to feel his forehead.

  He swatted my hand away. “I’m talking about both of you having HIV, dummy. I’d think it’s kind of nice for you to find someone else who has it. I’m sure it makes some things easier.”

  Like sex. He didn’t have to say that part. My mind filled it in. “How’d you know he has it?” I asked.

  “The video they showed. Apparently the whole world knows now. After his accident, once he recovered, they held a ton of press conferences and shit. Broke it all down for everyone—not just that he has it, but how the rest of the league shouldn’t have to worry about getting it from him. I somehow doubt that they’ve all read up on it and believe the facts, you know?”

  Wasn’t that the truth? It struck me how unfair it was for Drew. Yeah, he’d talked about it that day in the support group, but the reality of his situation hadn’t really sunk in for me until right now, sitting at work with a bunch of my coworkers—most of whom had never met Drew—but they knew tons of personal details about his life and health. How many other people around the world also knew that one little fact about him and then assumed they knew everything there was to know?

  With all of these thoughts swirling through my head, there wasn’t a chance I’d get any more work done on my sketches until the game was over. I closed the book and put my pencils away so I could watch the rest of it. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Rick smirking in a told-you-so sort of way.

  I didn’t care, though. I wanted to see what Drew was all about.

  Because now, it mattered to me.

  He mattered to me.

  And I needed to figure out what to do with that realization.

  DREW HAD ON a dark gray pinstripe suit, a checked shirt in various shades of blue, and a bold red tie and pocket square when he walked into INKredible Ink an hour or so after the game ended. It shouldn’t have all worked together, but it did.

  Maybe too well.

  I’d never seen him in a suit before—usually, he was in some sort of athletic gear—but it definitely worked well on him. The jacket emphasized his broad shoulders, and the dress pants hugged his butt and thighs so tightly it had my mouth watering, and I could barely hold on to the bubblegum-pink pencil I’d been using.

  Rick, Dagger, Billy, and the guys all crowded around him, shaking his hand, saying, “Hell of a game,” and generally fawning at his feet. I let them have this moment so I could pull myself back together again. He took it all in good humor, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out he was searching for me through the crowd of my coworkers.

  My whole body tingled with awareness when his eyes landed on me and he smiled. It should be illegal for a man to have such a potent smile and wield it while wearing a suit like that. It could make a woman’s brain go foggy.

  Okay, it was making my brain go foggy. Maybe other women wouldn’t go gaga over him the way I did.

  Once an appropriate amount of time had passed with him being nearly pawed by the guys, Drew made his way to my side and took up the seat Dagger had been in earlier. He looked down at my sketchbook and grinned. “Color, hmm?”

  The rest of the guys gradually went back to what they’d been doing, cleaning up their work spaces or sketching out a custom design like I was, but their excitement was bouncing off the walls of the shop. It wasn’t every day that people like us got to meet someone famous, so I tried not to let their enthusiasm get to me. And I hoped it wasn’t bothering Drew. He seemed to be taking it a lot better than I was, though, which wasn’t surprising.

  He took everything a lot better than I did.

  I tried to shrug off Drew’s weighted question, even though I knew he’d think it was as big of a deal as Rick did. And I supposed it was a big deal for me to be working in colors again.

  Recognize your victories was something my therapist was always telling me. Celebrate them. They might seem stupid and inconsequential right now, but I promise you they’re not.

  “For a special client,” I finally said, glancing up to meet Drew’s eyes.

  “What’s so special about this client?”

  Everything, I thought to myself. But that wouldn’t tell him anything, so I tried to do better. “Her grandmother died from breast cancer long before she was born. Her mother died of the same thing when she was really young. So she got tested and learned she has the gene, and she had a full mastectomy as a precaution.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, wow is right.”

  He traced a finger along part of the outline. “And she wants this because…”

  “These things all symbolize strength, hope, and beauty. She wants to see something that reminds her of those things when she looks in the mirror. When she’s older than either her mother or her grandmother lived to be.”

  “Powerful stuff,” Drew murmured.

  And he was right. It was powerful. Whitney was choosing to take her life into her own hands, to move forward with purpose and determination instead of letting life drag her under.

  Doing this tattoo—and spending time in her presence—might prove to be more cathartic for me than it was for her. Kind of a strange realization to have at a time like this, but there it was, dangling in front of me like a carrot. I just needed to reach out and grab it.

  The same as I needed to reach out and grab what I wanted with Drew. Because here we were again, and he was asking me about my life—my day—and I still wasn’t doing anything to get to know him. I was sitting back and allowing him to show me how much he cared about me—and yeah, I had just this second realized that was what he’d been doing all along, showing me how much he cared, which hit me like a hammer to the head—and I wasn’t doing a damned thing to reciprocate.

  That had to stop. Now.

  “Mind if I cut out early tonight?” I asked Rick, closing my sketchbook and gathering up the supplies I’d brought out.

  Drew reached over to stop me from putting everything away. “You don’t have to leave work early. I don’t mind waiting for you.”

  But that wasn’t the point. The shop was still technically open for another half hour, but at this point, there wasn’t a single customer in the place. No reason we all needed to stick around, especially if we wouldn’t take on anything but the most basic of tattoos due to time constraints. “I’d rather go ahead and leave,” I said. “I want to talk to you.”

  With that, Drew’s eyes went wide, but he nodded.

  Yeah, he was shocked that I wanted to talk to him. Right this second, he was probably running everything through his mind and convincing himself that talking was a euphemism for jumping into bed. But it wasn’t. Maybe before, but not this time.

  “Can I?” I asked Rick again.

  Rick just shook his head and rolled his eyes.

  I took that as permission to get while the getting was good.

  “Two minutes,” I said to Drew, but the instant I’d started packing up my things, the other guys had swooped in to get a piece of him again. He was so busy soaking up the praise from my coworkers that I doubted he heard me. By the time I returned with the backpack I was carrying in lieu of a purse, he was holding court, standing in the middle of the lobby and surrounded by the lot of them.

  “Yeah, Coach wanted me to shake off the butterflies. I wasn’t expecting to play until the second or third game of the preseason. These early games are usually about letting the coaches see how the prospects are developing and who’s ready to make the jump to the big club. They don’t put in too many vets early on. They just want to get our skating legs back under us while at the same time minimizing opportunities for injuries.”

  “You didn’t look like you had any butterflies,” Dagger said, sounding more excited than I’d ever heard him before.

  Maybe I should bring Drew around more often. But then again, I wasn’t sure Drew wanted to deal with this level of fangirling all the
time. Not that they were girls, but I didn’t know the appropriate term for when guys got their inner fangirl on. But seriously, if Dagger was getting this into it…

  “Fucking killed them,” he said. “Two goals!”

  “I got lucky on that first one,” Drew said. “And the second was a gift from the Avs goaltender. He shouldn’t have tried to play the puck himself. He might as well have wrapped that one up with a bow for me.”

  “Speaking of getting lucky,” Dagger said quietly, looking my way with a wink.

  Heat rushed to my face, but I didn’t think Drew noticed because Billy was pushing forward for his turn to bask in Drew’s presence.

  “Dude, so what was that fight about? Higgins just went off. Like, he hard-core lost his shit on that motherfucker.”

  Drew raked a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I don’t really know. I wasn’t out there on the ice, so there’s no telling what was behind it.” But the look in his eyes told me he did know. And whatever it was, he was still embarrassed about it. That hadn’t been a figment of my imagination earlier.

  I elbowed my way through a few of the guys, because they weren’t giving Drew any space to breathe, and I wanted to get out of there with him. Now.

  His face lit up when I reached his side.

  I hooked my arm through his. “Let’s go before Billy starts drooling on you or Rick changes his mind.”

  He didn’t need any further encouragement. We left to a chorus of less-than-savory catcalls from the other tattoo artists present. As we turned the corner into the parking lot, Dagger poked his head out the door and shouted, “And I meant it, too, Ravyn! The guy deserves to get laid tonight.”

  Thank goodness we’d already reached Drew’s car, because I stopped cold, pressed my eyes closed in utter mortification, and groaned.

  Drew just laughed. “So I take it you guys watched the game tonight?” He opened the passenger door and waited for me to get in.

  I nodded once he climbed behind the wheel. “Dagger turned it on after Rick filled the guys in about who you are. They’ve been giving me hell over you all night.”

  He started the engine and put the car in reverse, then flung his right arm across the back of my seat to back out of his parking space. His fingers danced on the top of my shoulder, making me ache for more. “You’re kind of hot when you blush, you know that?”

  “Don’t get used to it. I don’t blush much.”

  “Maybe I should work on making you blush more often.”

  “Maybe you should.” I bit my lower lip as he braked to shift into drive, shocked with myself. Since when did I flirt?

  He winked. “I like it when you bite your lip, too. Makes me think about doing the same.”

  “Maybe you can when we get back to your place.”

  He put on the brakes, coming to a full stop, and raised a brow. “Are we going back to my place tonight? I mean, I assumed we were, but—”

  “We are,” I cut in. I’d even brought a toothbrush, some pj’s, and a change of clothes for in the morning, because I didn’t want to make him take me home in the middle of the night if there wasn’t any good reason to. “Unless you’d rather not. I mean, I know you have to leave for the road trip tomorrow—”

  “I want you at my place,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it. “I always want you at my place.” But then he moved his arm so he could drive, leaving me to sift through what he truly meant by that. Because it sounded like he wanted me to move in with him or something.

  I sulked at the loss of contact even though my plan for tonight wasn’t to get him into bed as fast as we could possibly get there. But whether I wanted to get to know him or not, his touch was entirely too addictive. The next few days without having him around would be rough.

  “I missed most of the game,” I said, trying to figure out how to start up a real conversation with him. This was more awkward than I’d expected, which was saying something. I’d never been much of a conversationalist. “Rick got my attention sometime in the last quarter and got me to come out with the rest of the guys.”

  This shouldn’t be so hard. We’d been sleeping together for weeks, so it should have been a natural thing to sit and talk about how the day had gone. But that couldn’t be further from reality.

  “Last quarter?” Drew said, laughing.

  “Aren’t there quarters? Or is it just halves like in soccer?” I racked my brain, but I was almost positive Rick had said it was the last quarter.

  “There aren’t quarters or halves in hockey,” Drew said. “We play three periods.”

  “But what do you do for halftime?”

  “We don’t have halftime. There’s an intermission between each period.”

  “How does a sport not have a halftime?” I asked, completely bewildered. I’d grown up in a tiny town in Middle-of-Nowhere, Oklahoma, where everyone played football or basketball. This didn’t compute to me.

  But Drew laughed and started explaining it. “Well, hockey is a Canadian sport, you know… We do things a bit different up there.”

  “Clearly.”

  “Maybe you should come to one of our games sometime,” he said, turning from the parking lot onto the road. “Or all the time. I mean, I know you’ve got to work, so maybe you can’t come to all of them, but whenever you want. Any time. I’ve got tickets I rarely use, unless someone from my family is visiting. I usually end up donating them to charity or giving them to one of the guys who has a lot of people in town. And I’m sure you could hang out with London or some of the other girls during the games. London could explain things you don’t understand. She used to play hockey, back before her injury.”

  He was oblivious to my jaw hanging slack, acting as casual in asking me to come to his games as if he were suggesting that eating three square meals a day is generally good advice.

  I’d been so upset with myself over not trying to get to know him, and I was so worked up about it that I was nervous, but here he was, inviting me into his life like it was the easiest thing in the world. Like it couldn’t be more natural. And I supposed it was the natural course of things since we’d been sleeping together for a month.

  He came to a stop at a red light and glanced over at me. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to—”

  “I want to,” I cut in, and he grinned.

  It was kind of a cocky grin, which made me melt. Because I’d been the one to put it there. I’d given him a reason to smile like that. And now I needed to make sure he truly understood what I was saying.

  “I don’t just want to come to your games,” I said, hoping beyond hope that I didn’t screw this up. “I want to get to know more about you. Your life.”

  I felt like an idiot saying this, like I was back in middle school and trying to talk to the boy I had a crush on, but everything coming out of my mouth made me seem like the biggest dork in school. All I needed now was a scrap of notebook paper to write I like you. Do you like me? Check yes or no, and my mortification would be complete.

  But Drew didn’t laugh in my face or make fun of me. He just turned to me and said, “Good. Because I want to get to know more about you, too.” He was acting so calm and collected, like there wasn’t any good reason for me to be nervous. “So you watched some of the third period?”

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to shove my anxiety into a corner of the closet that was my mind. “Saw your second goal. And that fight…”

  The light turned green, and he took off again. “You don’t sound like you enjoyed the fight.”

  “It’s not that. I just— I kept thinking about Carter seeing his dad like that. And then I wondered if you fought much, and how I’d feel watching you in a situation like that, and—”

  “I don’t fight,” Drew cut in. “Not if I can help it, at least.”

  I nearly choked on the deep breath I took then. “You don’t?” Who knew I was so worried about him fighting that I couldn’t breathe? But there it was. Right there for me to face and to figure out what it meant.


  There’d been a lot of things like that lately.

  “Not something I think is a good idea. I mean, you saw how both of those guys ended up bloody. Seems like a dumb chance to take on my part.” Drew checked his blind spot and eased into traffic on the highway.

  “But what if someone tries to force you into a fight?” My voice came out as a squeak. “I mean, that guy came up swinging.”

  “That’s where it gets tricky,” Drew said. “I mean, they can do that and run the risk of taking a steeper penalty, but I’m still in a fight at that point. Which is what leads to things like Bear throwing down with that asswipe tonight.”

  “How do you mean?”

  He shrugged, but a massive ball of tension took up residence into his shoulders. He looked like he was hauling around a much bigger burden than I’d ever noticed before, and I didn’t like it. He’d done so much to help me to bear the weight of my own burdens, but I didn’t have the first clue how to help him with his.

  I wanted to reach up and knead the tautness away, but he was driving, so that wouldn’t work out too well.

  “Tell me,” I pleaded instead. When we got to his place, I could give him a massage and work the knots out. For now, I settled with reaching for his hand and twining my fingers through his.

  He sighed, and it seemed like some of the heaviness left him on the exhalation. “It’s exactly what I was afraid would happen,” he said after a too-long pause. “This is one of the reasons I seriously thought about retiring, about not coming back for this season, or ever. A few of the guys on the other team were chirping at me all game about how I had no business putting everyone in the league at risk by playing.”

  “What?” Why would people do that? I hadn’t exactly told the whole world about my diagnosis, but the few people who did know weren’t treating me any differently than they had before. Rick, Shannon, Dagger…they all acted like it was no big deal.