by Mary Morano
“Yep, that about sums it up.”
“And you're not answering?”
“I have nothing to say to him.”
“Good, that’s good. He doesn’t deserve to hear a word from you after that.”
“Mm-hmm… I wish I was wearing my shirt that says, ‘Not everyone you lose is a loss—unless it’s me then you fucked up.’ I think that would be perfect.” He stares at me like I have lost my mind. Clearly, he doesn’t understand my thought process, so I explain. “You know, so I can take a picture wearing it and then send it to him!”
He barks out a laugh and shakes his head at me. “I’m going to guess by the influx of texts he’s sending you that he doesn’t need a picture to know he fucked up.”
“I’m not so sure. He really is dense sometimes.”
“Well, I don’t think he deserves to hear a word from you.”
“No, me either. Plus, I know if I talk to him, he will lay out some sob story and I’ll end up feeling bad and forgiving him. Which I don’t want to do. Honestly, this is the third or fourth time I’ve tried to break up with him. He’s just too much lately.”
“How so?” His voice is soft like he actually cares about what I’m saying, and I find myself spilling my guts before I can stop it.
“He just has been overwhelming lately. He always wants to know where I am, what I’m doing, who I’m with. When I make plans that don’t include him, it turns into a fight. Then the next day he comes to me with flowers and cries about how it’s just because he cares about me and he worries I’ll find someone else and leave him. Jess, she’s my roommate, she walked into our room last week and said it smelled like a funeral parlor. She was right, there were three bouquets in there at one time. And you know how small those rooms are! It was just too much. I was done arguing and fighting with him. I figured this was the perfect time to do it. We would be separated for a few months and he would get over it by the time school started again. I just should have waited until I got to the airport, I guess. I don’t even really understand his issue. It wasn’t like we were going to last forever anyway.”
“Why do you say that?” His voice is angry and sharp, and I don’t understand why. Although his eyes are still soft as they watch me, so I assume his anger isn’t directed at me, and with a sigh I continue.
“We have very different plans for the future. He constantly told me how my writing was just a cute hobby, not something to make a future career out of. How I wouldn’t have time for that once we got married and had kids. That just wasn’t going to fly with me anymore. I will do whatever it takes to make my dream come true. Honestly, I just have really shitty taste in guys. You can look at all my exes and see they all thought I would eventually give up writing and do something else. None of them cared how important it was to me.”
“I get that. The girls I’ve been with didn’t care about who I really was either. They only cared about what being with me did for them. For some it was the popularity that came with it, for others they thought about the future fame and money that being with a pro athlete would bring. None of them were ever meant to stick around though. They were placeholders in my life. Someone to keep me busy until the right girl came around.”
“Yeah, I could see that. I couldn’t imagine it would be as easy or as glamorous as they think though.”
“No, it wouldn’t be. NHL players spend a lot of time on the road. There are girls throwing themselves at them at every hotel. The only way a relationship could really work was if it had a strong foundation to build on. One that could weather the storms of life. They don’t understand that all they could see was what they would get out of it in the end. And we both know that you would never be happy in any life that didn’t involve you writing. You were always meant to be a famous writer, don’t settle for less.”
My heart soared at his belief in me. Even after all these years, and all the garbage that he had thrown at me, he still believed I could be someone. That meant more to me than anything else, and I felt my anger toward him thawing slightly. But there was also something else there, a pang of jealousy that I didn’t like when he had mentioned the other girls. I wasn’t an idiot, I knew he had girls practically falling at his feet, but it had never mattered before. It still really didn’t, he wasn’t mine and he would never be, but still that feeling was there. I felt uneasy at what that could mean and before we could get any deeper down this path, I hopped up and started cleaning off the table, successfully ending the conversation.
We spent a few more hours walking around the property, stretching our legs and just talking. As we walked back to the car later that day, he had his nose buried in his phone. Every few seconds he would look up at me, then back down at his phone. Then again, and again. Looking back, today was fun. When we let down our guards enough, we were able to joke around and talk, we took pictures with funny filters and posted them to Instagram. It was like I was hanging out with my old friend again. I almost forgot all the torment he had put me through over the years and the fact that I claimed to hate him, but now he was making me nervous. Maybe this was all a setup, another one of his cruel jokes at my expense. He would get me to lower my guard and then bam! There would be crazy pictures on the school’s social media platform, or something like that.
“What?” I finally ask, letting my nerves get the better of me. He doesn’t answer right away, just gets into the driver’s seat, turns on the car and opens the windows. I stand on the sidewalk, watching him while twisting my fingers with my nervousness. He gets back out of the car and walks around to join me like he has no cares in the world, before leaning back against the car in front of where I’m standing. He eyes me carefully before answering, and by the time he speaks, I am ready to jump out of my skin.
“I figured we should give it a second to air out before you get in.” He says nodding toward the car, and my heart swells that he thought of that and all the anxiety leaves as quickly as it came, only to be replaced by other feelings I don’t want to examine right at this moment. Stupid heart, we don’t like him, my head reminds me, as he continues. “I was trying to figure out what our next stop should be. I had originally planned to go to the Cushing Brain collection at Yale, supposedly there are glass jars filled with brains all over the room. But now that you’re with me, I’m thinking about changing it up.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that. I really don’t want to derail your plans; I can just go along with anything. I’m sure… brains… will be… uh… interesting?” I really do try to say that with a straight face, but considering he is laughing at me, I’m not sure I actually pull it off.
“Nah, I only planned that because I was traveling alone. I think it would be much more fun to hit up somewhere different instead.”
“Okay, where?”
“Do you trust me?” He asks, his eyes searching my face, for what I don’t know.
“Umm… definitely not.” He chuckles again. Was he trying to be serious? He spent years calling me all sorts of weird nicknames, putting flowers and candy in my lockers to make me believe I had a secret admirer, and constantly made a joke of me by pretending to ask me out in front of all his friends. Hell, he kidnapped me just this morning! Why would I trust him? He sighs deeply before looking away.
“I guess that’s fair. I was planning to surprise you, but given our history, I guess that won’t be the right move. I was thinking we could drive down to Massachusetts and get a room for the night, then tomorrow we could explore Salem for a little while. I know you’ve always wanted to see the Witch House.”
“ARE. YOU. FOR. REAL?” I screech, causing people on the street to look over at us. Lowering my tone, I start again. “Are you for real? This is amazing! I have wanted to go to Salem for years, and my parents would never agree to let me go! This is amazing! I am so excited!”
“Since seventh grade.” He says, and I arch a brow at him in confusion. “You have wanted to go since seventh grade when we studied the witch trials in American history.”
; I nod. He’s right, that was when my obsession started. I spent that summer reading everything I could about the witch trials and watching tons of documentaries and movies based on that time period. I just didn’t know he had paid that much attention to me. By that point we had already been on the outs after he had done a history project of his childhood and made sure to include tons of really embarrassing pictures of me in it, and then presented it to his whole class. My mind was struggling to make sense of this new information. Today, he seemed almost like a different person. He had been kind and even changed his plans to do things I would like. It was weird and I wasn’t sure how much I liked it. It made me feel uneasy, like he somehow had a plan to humiliate me, and I was going to be blindsided by it. So, despite my excitement about finally getting to see Salem, I was anxious about what was to come.
After a few more minutes, we get into his car. Just before he puts the car into drive his phone starts ringing through the Bluetooth on his radio. The display name flashing across his radio says Tattoo. What the hell kind of name is that? He reaches over and hits the accept button, and suddenly it sounds like we landed right in the middle of a loud party as voices and music pour out of the speakers.
“Pong!”
“Yo, Pong!”
“What up, Pong!” Multiple voices scream into the phone at the same time. What was up with them calling him Pong? Was that some nickname, or maybe it was a hockey thing? He grimaces, giving me a sideways look, before lowering the volume.
“Hey, guys, speakerphone, huh?” He laughs awkwardly.
“Yeah, man. We called to make sure you were still alive, and not in a ditch somewhere.” One deep voice calls out.
“He’s lying, we called to tell you about the insane party last night, and all the pussy that was walking around.” Another shouts, and he grimaces again shooting me a look filled with an apology as he mouthed the words, ‘The Team.’ Like I couldn’t figure that one out on my own.
“Nah, we wanted to see how you were enjoying your long solo ride.” A different voice rumbles through the line.
“Umm… let’s watch the language… I’m not exactly alone.” He says as he steals another glance my way. Not sure what he was expecting to see, but it probably wasn’t me holding in laughter at the sight of his red-tinged cheeks. He rubs his hand back and forth across the back of his neck in a nervous gesture, and I laugh even harder, no longer able to keep it in.
The voices on the other end go silent for a few seconds before all at once they start talking.
“No way.”
“Is that her?”
“How the hell did you pull that one off, Pong?”
“I’m not sure who her is, but I’m Nicole. Hi Hockey Team!” I respond quickly, as he grabs the phone and puts it up to his ear, removing it from Bluetooth. He starts mumbling threats into the phone at his friends while I continue to laugh hysterically at the fact that even his ears are turning red in embarrassment.
To give him a bit of privacy, I pull out my phone to answer Jess’s many text messages about whether I have found out if he wears boxers or briefs, or if I had an update on the hand-cock size comparison yet. When I told her that I still had no plans to find out either of those answers she sent me a crying emoji followed by an eye roll one. It never ceases to amaze me how she could have full conversations with just emojis. I turn my phone off and focus back in on Brayden’s conversation with his friends. Listening to them giving him a hard time is much more entertaining than when mine do it. They seem like a tight-knit group. I had seen them around plenty, they were always joking around and having fun. Always the center of attention everywhere they went, I guess that went along with the territory though. After a few minutes of Brayden cursing them out and telling them to mind their own business, he promises to call them later, before he finally hangs up the phone.
“Sorry, about that. They are like dogs in heat. They have no idea how to behave in public.”
“No worries, girls aren’t much different.” I tell him with a shrug of my shoulders. I silently thank God that Jess wasn’t on speakerphone when she found out I was traveling home with him. I could only imagine the things that would have come out of her mouth. “So, Pong, huh? I sense a story behind that.”
He laughed. “Yeah, we all have nicknames, mostly they come from idiotic things we’ve done during some drunken nights. It’s our own version of team building, I guess.”
“You gonna share your story?”
“I guess I have no choice now.” He tells me while giving me a look I can’t decipher out of the side of his eye. “The first party of freshman year we had a huge beer pong tournament set up. We had teams, brackets, and a trophy. I spent weeks, telling everyone how I was the master at beer pong and that trophy was going to be mine.”
“No offense, I’ve seen you play beer pong before, you suck.” I interrupt. He turns his head to glare at me and I shrug. It’s true, what does he want me to do, lie to him?
“Yeah, well I know that now. I think my hands are just too big for a ball that little, it throws off my aim or something.” He tells me while holding up one of his huge hands for me to see. Of course, my gutter-filled brain looks at his hands and once again starts to wonder if it’s true what they say about the correlation in hand size to dick size because that would really be something. Wait, why am I thinking about his dick size? Freaking Jess, this is all her fault. I squeeze my legs, hoping he doesn’t notice as the idea of seeing his dick causes my clit to start throbbing. What the hell? This is new. I’ve never had this response to just thinking about a dick before. Before I can really evaluate my body’s response, he keeps talking. “Anyway, I went on bragging for weeks. The day finally comes, and it’s best of 3 games to move on to the next round. Well, me and my partner, Tattoo, played three full games. That’s only because he was really good though. I didn’t sink a single ball. After that they started calling me Pong.”
I nod, and then ask, “Tattoo?”
He bursts out in a fit of laughter. “That is not my story to tell but trust me, it’s one of the best.”
Hmm… now I really want to know the story behind that nickname. I wonder what I have to do to get that out of him.
I smile as she sits next to me in the passenger seat staring at me. I know she wants to ask about Justin's nickname, but that’s not my story to tell. Nickname stories weren’t supposed to be told by anyone but the person the nickname belongs to. That was like a sacred rule or some shit. I glance over at her and see she’s no longer watching me but is now staring out the window. The sun is streaming through almost like it’s shining a spotlight on her. Fuck. She’s gorgeous. I wiggle around in my seat trying to make the semi I’m sporting seem less noticeable. I focus back on the road and start running through my stats from the season to try and get it under control, but it doesn’t work. This has been an ongoing problem since she got in the car this morning. One I wasn’t prepared for. I’ve never had such a strong reaction to a woman just being near me. Then she had to go and practically give a blow job to her spoon earlier. I nearly came in my pants right there on the bench surrounded by families. Not good! But hearing her moan as she wrapped her pretty pink lips around that spoon. Fuck! And the way she twisted her tongue around it. Shit. I’m not going to make it to Florida without being inside of her. The thoughts of her perfect pink lips wrapping around my cock play through my mind, and it does nothing to help the situation in my pants.
I force my mind back to the thoughts of her idiot ex. I can’t wait to get my hands on that guy. I wonder if he’s still around campus. I bet I can get the guys to pay him a visit if he is. I’ll have to remember to have them look for him when I call them back tonight.
Seriously, what the fuck had that guy been thinking? He’s lucky it was me who found her and not some creep. The thought of what could have happened successfully causes my boner to deflate as anger pulses through my veins. With my hands tightly clenched around the steering wheel threatening to break it into pieces, I think
back to seeing her walking down the road this morning. I didn’t know it was her at first, just some random girl walking down a highway with a very bright yellow suitcase trailing behind her. I stopped because that’s how I was raised. I couldn’t leave a female out there knowing all the bad things that could happen. I may tower over her, but my mother would still beat my ass red if I did nothing to help. Then the girl spoke, rambling on about serial killers or something, her voice shot a bolt straight into my heart and before she even turned around, I knew it was Nicole, and I was pissed. Why the fuck was she walking down a highway? After she told me how her ex had left her there, I was even more pissed. I had to turn up the volume of the radio and stew in my thoughts before I said something that would turn her anger toward me.
Shortly after that she fell asleep, and I realized that I had a golden opportunity. She wasn’t planning on driving home with me, but I knew she wouldn’t get a flight for at least a week. So, once I made sure she was really sleeping, I pulled over and dialed her mom’s number. I knew both our mothers were on Team Bricole, as they called it. So, I wasn’t surprised when I explained the situation and she told me to skip the airport and just keep driving since it was safer if we were traveling together anyway. Cue the eye roll here because I’m sure she was thinking along the same lines as I was, and it wasn’t about my safety. Before she hung up, she told me to be safe and have fun, and I’m almost positive she said it with a wink, because it came out the way I would expect it from the guys and not her mom. But whatever at least I had her support.
Now that Nicole was basically stuck with me for the next few days, I needed to do everything I could to make her see I wasn't the same idiot from high school. At some point, I knew I would have to apologize to her for the shit I did, but I didn’t think now was the time to do that. I figured she wouldn’t even believe me if I told her now. So, I had to wait for the right time. I wasn’t exactly sure when that would be, but I was great at reading situations on the ice, so I would imagine this would be no different. I would know my opening when I saw it and then I would run with it.