by June Winters
“So what are you saying?”
“I'm just curious. Like I said, I thought I could pick up on something between you two. Really seemed like you liked a girl for a change.”
I gave a laugh. “Dude, what are you talking about? I like a lot of girls.”
“But you know what I mean.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please. I don't have time for that.”
“You know, Beau, I've been around this league longer than you. And I've seen a lot of guys like you over the years. The one thing I see a lot of? Once all the partying starts to get old, you'd be surprised how many guys settle down with an old flame from back home. It used to surprise me, but it doesn't anymo—”
I cut him off right then and there. “Jesus, Hunter, what the hell are you even talking about? Always with the 'it's time to settle down' crap. Not everyone wants to be all happily married like you, dude. Can't you get that? I love being single. I love partying. I love getting to fuck whoever the hell I want, whenever I want. And unless you're saying it's a problem for me on the ice, like it was for you back in the day, I don't wanna hear about it anymore.”
He went silent. I stripped down to my boxers and headed for the shower. Yeah, I liked her smell, but it was time to say goodbye.
I buried my head under the shower-head and let the water rain down my head, my neck, my back. I grabbed a bar of soap and washed her off me.
But a second later, that awful, churning mash of loneliness in my gut returned. My heart began to pound, and my lungs shriveled into a horrifyingly tight ball.
I felt like I couldn't breathe and my heart was about to explode.
Fuck. Another anxiety attack.
I leaned against the tile and waited for it to pass.
God damn it. Why does this keep happening?
Chapter 12
Aftermath
Camille
I knew from the very second I woke that I'd slept in. Worse yet, my temples throbbed with a head-splitting hang-over.
Holy shit, I slept in, and I'm supposed to be opening the bakery for our big day.
I opened my swollen, sensitive eyes and discovered the other reason I was super fucked.
I'm in Piper's bed? Oh my God—last night—oh no—
It wasn't just a bad dream. I'd actually fucked Beau last night. In Piper's bed.
Guilt and shame flooded my bloodstream. Panic, too, as I launched out of bed and discovered the horrifying evidence: Piper's bed sheets were stained with our sex fluids, like a chalk outline documenting the scene of our crime.
You could tilt your head, study the pattern, and know exactly what had happened. The sprawling outline of my scandalous wetness told you where exactly I'd gotten fucked, and the shameful fact that I'd been very aroused. The splatters and streaks of cum that Beau let fly everywhere, shooting far across the bed, sure suggested that he'd enjoyed himself, too.
I slapped my forehead. Oooooh my God. I am so dumb.
Scrambling, I picked up my phone. Sure enough, the battery had died, and that's why my alarm hadn't gone off. I plugged it in for a quick charge, and the clock showed 9:00 AM.
Fuck. We're supposed to be open right this very minute.
I took a peek outside Piper's bedroom door. She was still snoozing on the couch.
Thank God she sleeps like a hibernating bear.
I whipped the tainted bed sheets off the mattress and hurriedly made her bed with a set of clean sheets. Hurrying, I threw on my dress—only to see myself in the mirror and remember that Beau had shot his stupid, sleazy cum all over that, too.
God damn you, Beau!
I rifled through Piper's closet for a fresh change of clothes.
Then I bundled our dirty sex sheets and last night's clothes in a plastic bag—I'd have to get those dry-cleaned and sneak them back into her closet next time I was over.
It was time to go. I had to hurry.
I gave Piper, sleeping so peacefully and innocently, a frown as I passed by.
“I'm so sorry,” I whispered, knowing in my gut that I was the most rotten friend in the world.
***
I made it to Velvet Bakery an hour after we were scheduled to open.
A line of people stood outside the bakery, scratching their heads with confusion and muttering. They double and triple-checked their copy of the Times article, to make sure they had the right time.
“I'm sorry!” I announced as I hurried to the front of the line and unlocked the door. “I'm so sorry, everyone! I had some troubles this morning. I still need time to get set up.”
Judging by the disgruntled rumblings, the crowd was not pleased.
“Well how long is it going to take?” someone asked.
“At least an hour,” I said, biting my lip—but I knew an hour wouldn't even be enough. “Actually, you should probably come back in two.”
“Two hours!” a man griped. “We've already waited for one!”
“I know. I know, and I'm so sorry. I overslept.”
“Overslept?” a woman guffawed. “That's a good excuse … if you're still in high school.”
God, if you only knew the half of it, I thought.
“You're right,” I sighed. “It's not an excuse. All I can say is that I'm so sorry.”
She threw up her arms, tossed her copy of the Times to the sidewalk and walked off. “Forget it. Good luck with your business.”
***
When Piper walked in at noon, she gasped.
The bakery looked like a bomb had gone off in the kitchen. Dirty pans everywhere, spatulas strewn all over, mixing bowls tossed this way and that, an inch of flour covering every surface, random spills lingering dangerously on the floor.
“Camille …?” she asked, cautiously. “How, um, did it go?”
“I did my best,” I said, broken down and defeated. I fought back the tears. I refused to cry. “I'm so sorry, Piper. I screwed it all up.”
“What happened?”
“My phone died. I woke up late. I got here and there was a line of people circling the block. Now I completely destroyed any of the hype that article might have generated for us …”
“Shit, man.” She hugged me. “We'll bounce back. Don't sweat it.”
“Aren't you furious with me?” I asked.
In a way, I needed her to be mad at me. After the way I defiled her bed, my guilty consciousness demanded punishment.
But she shrugged it off and immediately started helping me clean instead. “Nah. What's the point of that? Anger doesn't solve anything. And like I said, we'll bounce back. We wouldn't be the first business to have a terrible opening day, you know. Look on the bright side! At least there was a lot of interest.”
“You're not mad? At all?” I asked, disappointed.
“No, but if you wanna make it up to me, I've got a few things I'd like explained.” She grinned mischievously, and I knew I was caught.
“Oh?” I mumbled.
“Yeah. You can start by telling me what happened last night.”
“What about last night?” Lord knows why I was playing dumb, but I was.
“Let's see. The last thing I remember is sitting in that booth with Beau's teammate. Then I woke up on my couch. I mean, how the heck did I ever get back home? You know how I am when I fall asleep: the ol' immovable force. Someone big and strong must have helped carry me up there.”
I stammered. I wasn't sure how to tell her.
She continued. “You told me you slept in, and yet here you are, dressed in my clothes.”
My cheeks smoldered with a heat.
“Then, for some reason, this morning I noticed that my bed sheets had been changed. It's almost like room service visited my apartment last night!”
“I fucked Beau in your bed last night, okay!” I suddenly blurted out.
The two customers we had still sitting in the shop peeked up from their lemon cake and gave me a disturbed stare.
Piper grinned, her eyes rolling in the back of her head with amusement. “Duh. An
yone could've figured that out, Cammy. I have to say, though, I was almost sure you'd deny it.”
I lowered my voice. “But aren't you mad at me? Aren't you disgusted that I defiled your sacred love-making space?”
“Sacred love-making space? Please. When was the last time I found anybody worth loving? Honestly, I'm just glad my mattress finally got to see some action.”
She let out a whimsical sigh.
“I can't believe you're not even upset. Even I think what I did is reprehensible.”
“If you grew up on a commune like I did, you'd be used to it. People were always fucking.” She gave a small shrug of her shoulders. “Can't even tell you how many times I walked into my room and caught people doing the deed in my bed. Saw some weird scenes in my youth, man. Whatever you and Beau got up to in my bed? Guarantee you, wasn't half as freaky as the stuff I've seen.”
“Can I make it up to you, somehow? Ask for something and I'll give it to you. It'd make me feel a whole lot better.”
“Hmm.” Piper stroked her chin. “Let's just say you owe me one.”
Whew. That made me feel better. “Deal.”
She ran the dishwasher, and the appliance's hum grew between us. Piper stepped closer and asked me under the machine's droning, “So how was it? The sex, I mean.”
“The sex was great.” I rolled my eyes. “Everything else was not so great. He left immediately after. He made up some excuse about having a curfew.”
Piper wagged her finger at me. “No, that's actually true. That little cutie Jack Cameron told me about it.” She covered her mouth and tittered. “I call him little but you saw him—he's enormous, isn't he? But he's so sweet and adorable. Anyway, Jack told me they have a midnight curfew on game-nights.”
“Really?” I was surprised to learn that Beau was telling the truth … but it didn't make up for everything. “He still acted like a prick once he got what he wanted. I can't believe I was so stupid to give it to him.”
“But you said it was hot, right?”
I admitted with a groan, “Yes.”
“How'd it even happen?”
I told her how Beau and I had relentlessly teased and insulted each other all night. I told her how the sight of Beau tossing her sleeping body over his shoulder, as if she weighed nothing, roused some pathetic part of myself that wanted nothing more to submit to him. I told her how I never would've thought I'd let him kiss me … but how I not only let him kiss me, I all-too-happily kissed him back in the cab.
I told her that my submission was exactly what he sought, too. He riled me up, until I insulted and disparaged him—only to have him reach his breaking point and sternly put me in my place. I told Piper what a sad but undeniable thrill swept over me when I submitted to his power and obeyed his lewd commands.
I told her how surprised I was to discover the sinful side I had hidden inside me. I was the type of girl who made my past boyfriends wait until absolutely no one else was in the house before we made soulful, passionate, and respectful love. But with Beau? Apparently, I was the type of girl to loudly fuck a guy in her friend's bed—screaming, grinding, wailing, the bed loudly banging against the wall—just daring someone to catch us.
“It was a miracle you didn't wake,” I told her.
I was the type of girl who, having disliked giving blow-jobs her entire life, was suddenly all too happy to spit and gag on Beau's cock. Beau, of all people.
I told her that the night with Beau had scratched an inch I never knew I had.
Piper fanned herself. “Damn. That sounds hot as hell, girl.”
“Sure. But it's not enough. See, I might have been dumb enough to sleep with him. But what I'm not going to do is romanticize that night and make it out to be anything more than it was.” I picked up a cupcake and, using a spatula, scraped off the cream on top. “See, with Beau, this is all you get. The cream. Hey, everyone loves cream, right? But try living off of cream, and only cream.”
I thrust the vegan cream at Piper's mouth, but she batted my hand away with a look of disgust. “No thanks. I don't have to taste Beau's metaphorical cream to grok what you're saying.”
“He's an empty disappointment.” I smeared the cream back on the cupcake. The treat was ruined now, but I held it up to my face and eyed it hungrily. “I want a man with substance.”
Piper giggled, slightly uncomfortably. “Sure thing.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You're shocked I fucked him, aren't you?” I asked.
“Uh. Not at all. Haven't you been listening to me? I knew this would happen.”
“How?”
“Damn, Camille. It was so obvious from the second he walked in here! Why do you think I kept pestering you about it? You two looked at each other like you couldn't wait to rip each other's clothes off and screw. Now, I never would've imagined that you'd do each other in my bed, but hey. Something had to give.”
My cheeks went warm.
Piper noticed and giggled. “Don't feel bad. Anyway, I'm glad y'all fucked.”
“Uh, why?”
“To get it out of your system! Now maybe cooler heads will prevail.”
“Pff. I don't think so. I won't be seeing Beau again.”
Piper flashed the two tickets to the hockey game. “Oh yes you are.”
“Piper. No. I loathe the very idea of Beau Bradford. I can't be in the same building as him! No way am I going to that game.”
Piper lit up with a devilish smirk. “Oh really? Because I'd like to cash in that IOU you just gave me a minute ago.”
I huffed. “You'd really do that to me, Piper?”
“Yes. Yes I would.” Piper beamed. “And you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because you fucked a guy in my bed. You do the crime, you do the time, Cammy!”
She strutted off, giggling to herself.
Sigh. Guess I don't have a choice …
Chapter 13
Game Day
Beau
With an hour and a half to go before the game, the team was suiting up in the dressing room. Guys were cracking jokes and throwing insults like always—but for once, I wasn't part of it.
Iggy was the first to call attention to it.
“Hey Beau! The hell's the matter with you over there?”
“Huh? Nothing.”
“Never seen you be so quiet in my life.”
I waved my hand at him. “Ah hell. Piss off.”
Vinny piped up. “Hey, whatever happened between you and that chick you went to high school with?”
The boys who'd been at the club with us last night all grumbled their comments:
“Hey, yeah, I liked her!”
“She was pretty hot, not gonna lie.”
“You don't deserve her, Beau, she's outta your league!”
“Pretty sure her friend dug Jack, too!”
(I took a quick peek over at Jack. His cheeks flushed and he hid his embarrassed smile.)
“You guys are like school girls,” I said with a shake of my head. “Anyway. I've got these.”
I grabbed the two boxes of cupcakes from Camille's bakery from my stall. I passed one box to my left, and one to my right.
“Camille made these. But be warned: they're vegan. If you turn into a hippie or something, don't blame me.”
“Vegan?” more than a few guys grumbled.
But I watched as the box went around the room, and the boys weren't scared off by the vegan desserts. Instead, almost every guy took a cupcake, took a cautious bite, and then ended up tossing the rest of the treat into their gaping mouths.
“Hey, damn, that's actually really good!”
“Right?” I asked, breaking into a huge smile.
“Wait, so your girlfriend made these?” JT Kiernan asked.
“She's not my girlfriend.”
“Beau just wishes she was,” Hunter, on my right, quipped.
I slugged Hunter's shoulder. “Whatever, man.”
“So did you grudge
-fuck her or what?” Vinny, on my left, asked.
I gave him a shove. “I don't kiss and tell.”
The room went up with raucous laughter.
“You don't kiss and tell?” Jack Cameron asked. “Since fucking when?”
The fact that it was the silent rookie Jack that called me out? The room laughed even harder.
A heat grew under my jersey, under my pads, spreading all over me. I knew I was turning bright red. I don't know why I was so bothered.
The truth was, ever since last night, I'd felt out of sorts. My anxiety attack hadn't quite ended. I didn't know what the fuck was wrong with me, but I was starting to worry something might actually be wrong with me. What if that pain in my heart wasn't just anxiety—what if I was about to have a real heart attack or something?
“Aw, look at Beau,” Vinny said, cutting in, clasping his hands under his chin and obnoxiously batting his eyelashes. “The ladies man finally has a real crush.”
Iggy cut in. “He just better hope he didn't fuck his chances up by jumping into the sheets with her first, right? Seems like every girl he sleeps with ends up hating his guts—”
I jumped up from the bench and started yelling.
“Would you guys keep your noses outta my fucking business for once? We're supposed to be hockey players in here! Not a bunch of goddamn drama queens!”
It's not often a dressing room full of professional athletes ever goes quiet. The only time that rarity happens is after a really embarrassing loss. The kind of loss in which there are no positive takeaways. No highlights, no goals scored, no good moments, nothing to be proud of—the entire team played like shit.
So the stunned silence that followed my outburst told me that I just looked like a huge jackass.
Everyone blinked at me. They looked like they were hoping this was a joke. That I might strike a funny pose and say, ta-da! Got ya! Wouldn't it be weird and awkward if I actually had snapped like that, but for real?
But, of course, that didn't happen.
I stormed out of the dressing room, nearly blowing the doors off the hinges in the process.