Wicked Winters: A Collection of Winter Tales

by Lucy Smoke

  Me: Good. Had a study session with a friend, getting some food now.

  Clicking out of his message I swapped over to Stephanie.

  Stephanie: Hey dollface, are we still doing dinner tonight? Could totally use a romcom night.

  Me: Sure are! I should be done with my research soon. Meet back at the dorm?

  My phone buzzed with a message from Christian.

  Christian: I hope you were studying something other than PSY101, I’ll be crushed if I wasn’t invited :p

  Me: Crushed huh? Well rest assured, it was a different subject.

  Bubbles instantly appeared, so I waited for his reply.

  Christian: Well in the interest of making sure I am invited to all future PSY101 study sessions, want to be my study partner for finals?

  I was just able to reply with a yes before Justin came back carrying two giant mugs full of something steaming. I quickly locked my phone and slipped it back in my bag and cleared the table of his bag in time for him to place the mugs down.

  I leaned forward and sniffed appreciatively. Tomato soup, yum.

  “I hope you like tomato soup. I saw it on the menu this morning when I grabbed our muffins.” Justin pulled out two spoons from one pocket and a couple of napkins from the other. He nervously adjusted his beanie, which I found incredibly endearing.

  “I love tomato soup, especially on cold days, it just warms you right up. And this is the magical place that you got those awesome muffins from? Mine was so good,” I replied as I reached for a spoon.

  “Yeah, I usually stop by here when I walk into campus. Something about the fresh air with a warm coffee.” Justin stirred his soup and blew on it. For such a big guy he was so deliberate with his actions. My gaze travelled over his shoulders and down to his hand that held his spoon so delicately, like he knew he was too big for the standard sized cutlery and needed to treat it gently. He didn’t really seem to be the type to do anything impulsive or rash. And he was so thoughtful, every girl’s dream guy. A protector.

  We sat there in silence while we ate, just enjoying the moment. Every now and then, I would catch him watching me with a look of concentration, like I was a puzzle he needed to solve. I would just smile, and he would smile back. It occurred to me that I had to be incredibly gentle with how I approached this one. The possibility that I might scare him off made my stomach clench. I was definitely not going to analyze why. Nope.

  Finishing off the last of my soup, I barely restrained myself from running my finger around the inside of the bowl to scoop up the last smears. Dabbing my napkin against my lips, I finally stopped staring at my bowl with a sigh and looked up at Justin. “Thanks for the soup; it was delicious. I can’t believe I didn’t know about this place. I’ve lived here for two and a half years and had no idea it existed.”

  “You just haven’t been hanging out with the right people,” he replied, with a cheeky smile as he leaned back in his chair, done with his soup too.

  “Oh, and I take it you are the right people?” I teased back.

  A superior look crossed his face, even as humor made his eyes bright. “Yep, sure am. Hang out with me more often, and I’ll show you all my favorite places.”

  I laughed back at him, but in my head, I was analyzing each of his words. Did he just ask me out, again? Interested but not too interested.

  “I’m not sure anywhere could beat this place, but I’m happy for you to continue to impress me.” I smirked back at him.

  He just laughed as he grabbed his backpack. “Okay H, I have to go. I need to hit the gym and do a few things with my team this afternoon. Thanks for helping me study today. Still up for another session on Wednesday?”

  “All good, and yep totally up for another session. See you then.” I smiled up at him. He waded through the crowd, turned, and waved just before he headed down the hallway and out of view.

  I turned back to my empty soup mug and sat there staring at it for a second. I was starting to question myself about this whole situation. I mean, if I had met Justin or Christian, or even Vinnie, outside of my research for the Puck article, would I be genuinely interested in them? Was using them to intentionally get into the Puck Games the right thing to do? Would it have mattered if I was genuinely interested if all they were after was to give me a score?

  I really needed girl time with Steph.

  13

  Hayden

  Saturday 2nd December – 23 days until Christmas

  “Sugar, unlock the door for me before I drop all this food,” Steph called through the door as I hurried out of the bathroom with my hair still wrapped in a towel from my shower.

  “Coming,” I called back. Unlocking the door I pulled it open, instantly reaching forward to grab whatever hung precariously, which just so happened to be pizza. I saved the boxes and leaned in for a fancy air and cheek kiss. Something Steph had done to me since the day we first met back in junior year.

  “Thanks hun, I really thought I was going to end up leaving road killed pizza across our door,” she replied gratefully as she readjusted the bags hanging from her wrists.

  I stepped back, making room for Steph to enter. “At least that would’ve made for an interesting article. Student cracks under the pressure of final exams, makes sacrifice to the gods on dorm room door.” I moved one arm across the imaginary banner I could see in front of me.

  Steph let out a light laugh at my antics, used to my journalistic dramatics, and put her grocery bags on her desk at the end of her bed. I placed the pizzas on my desk and went to help her unpack the ice cream and wine, putting the ice cream in the freezer section of our mini bar fridge. Steph had turned twenty-one about three months ago, and even though we had both been drinking since junior year, she now felt the need to have a bottle of wine whenever she organized an official dinner between the two of us. Something about Southern hospitality requiring guests not to turn up empty handed. Not sure how that applied when it was in her own dorm room though.

  As she cracked open the wine, I grabbed some glasses from on top of the bar fridge. “So, how are you doing with the whole Puck Games thing?” I asked, genuinely concerned about her. She’d barely been checking in for the past few days and we hadn’t really crossed paths long enough to have a proper chat.

  She took a deep breath and looked up at me. Her eyes still held an edge of hurt, but now there was a little of her usual fire burning in them. Lips quirked up in an attempt at an amused smirk, “I’m doing okay. I’ve met more hockey players in the last few days than I care to ever meet again. I can even spot them at a distance now. Some are polite about it, asking me for coffee, but others just come right up to me and ask me if I want to increase my Puck score with a quick session in a supply closet. Seriously, who does it in a supply closet?” She flipped open a pizza box and aggressively removed a piece of pizza, almost dragging all the toppings with it.

  “Wow, calm down there, your soapbox is stealing all the toppings,” I chided her as I approached with a knife to fix the situation. “And what do you mean they are all approaching you?”

  Were Justin, Christian, and Vinnie chasing Steph? While they were all talking to me? Surely not…

  “Oh, you know, the majority of the second and third string players. Some guy by the name of Edwards is incredibly persistent, but James has been with me almost constantly, walking me to and from classes. It’s seriously helping with the whole situation. They are less interested in approaching me if I am with another guy,” she replied as she moved to sit up near my pillows, with one hand hovering under her slice so she didn’t drop any bits.

  My relief at no first-string players having approached her should have set off alarm bells in my head; however, I chose to ignore that and focused on a pertinent detail Steph had let slip.

  “So, you and James have been hanging out a lot lately, huh?” I prodded as I grabbed my own slice, careful to keep my tone as neutral as possible. I backed up to the foot of my bed and sat down, tucking one leg under me as I faced her.

>   She wasn’t even phased by the question. “Yeah, he’s been a real sweetheart. I’ll have to find a way to thank him when all of this dies down.”

  I just sat there staring at her. She didn’t know or was choosing to ignore that James liked her, and knowing Steph, it was more like she was completely oblivious to James’ crush. Steph always went for the athletic bad boys.

  I remembered this one time she had been crushing on one of the track team guys. It had taken me two pints of ice cream and a bag of chocolate chip cookies to find out that he’d broken her heart when he told her he played for the same team as her.

  Sometimes, her naivety made me physically shake my head at her. I loved the girl to pieces and would do anything for her, even if that meant getting myself entered into the Puck Games.

  “Hun, you know that James isn’t just being a gentleman right?” I asked gently as I lowered my slice without taking a bite.

  “Of course he is! James is a true gentleman, Hay.” She gestured for me to pass her the pizza box. I turned around and grabbed the box, placing it on the bed between us. We’d eat it fast enough that it wouldn’t mark my quilt.

  I put my slice of pizza on the lid side of the box and gave Steph my full attention. She met my eyes as she took a bite into her second slice.

  “James has a massive crush on you. That’s why he’s chaperoning you around,” I stated bluntly. Sometimes, Steph just needed the facts laid out straight for her.

  Suddenly, I was up and standing beside her, thumping her on the back as she choked on her mouthful of pizza. Once she had her breath back, she reached for her glass of wine and took an extra-large swallow.

  “Whh... what do you mean, James likes me? He doesn’t like me, I would know if he did,” she replied with tear-filled eyes; coughs still racked her tiny frame, and her blonde curls went haywire with the jerky movement.

  I sat back on my side of the bed and reached for my slice again. “Exactly that. He’s had a crush on you for about two years, ever since he joined The Press. Think about it hun. You two met in your first-year economics class, and a guy who has no athletic or journalistic interests whatsoever signed up for the sports section of the paper, the only position available at the time, a paper you happen to be on. As soon as Beth graduated last year, James moved his stuff so that he was sitting at the desk next to yours. Everyone at The Press can see it. Massive. Crush.” I stared at her, letting her see my sincerity.

  She just sat there a little shocked for a moment, but then I saw her brain ticking over, remembering all the little interactions they’d had over the past few years. That time James had brought a cupcake into The Press with a single candle for her birthday. The time he’d stayed back with her late into the night editing a joint story they’d done together.

  Her mouth slowly opened to form an O as the penny dropped. I reached across the pizza and patted her hand as I took my first bite. She had all the facts now, she just needed to decide what she was going to do with them.

  “So, enough about you, onto me. My research into the Puck Games is going okay. I have three possible sources to getting more information,” I told her as I continued to work my way through my first slice.

  “Three? Who are they? Other Pucks?” she asked me, as she sent me a grateful look.

  “The first-string forwards,” I confessed, not exactly sure why I felt so embarrassed.

  I swear she would have choked on her food again if she’d had a mouthful.

  “All of them? How did you meet them all? I know you interviewed that Vinnie guy, but the other two?”

  “Just the Universe fiddling in my affairs, really. Christian is in my PSY100 class, you know the one I’ve been putting off since first year? Apparently, he was doing the same thing. And Justin signed up for a TutorAid, and I got the message. I honestly had no idea that they were both hockey players until Thursday afternoon, when they all messaged me after they had training.”

  “Oh my goodness, what did you do?” Riveted by my story, she had left her slice of pizza hanging from her hand.

  “I just played it cool and kept replying to all of them as quickly as I could. I have no idea if they all know about me with each other or not, but something tells me they don’t. They haven’t dropped each other’s names or brought up the Puck Games. I just have this really weird feeling that everything isn’t as it seems. I actually wanted your advice on something.”

  “Ask away, I am a fountain of advice!” she replied with a little flair of her hands to emphasis her fountainess.

  “Okay well, today I was wondering whether or not I would actually be interested in any of them if I had met them not knowing about the Puck Games? I mean, Christian and I started a silly note passing session yesterday. He asked me if I missed him, and now we have a study session planned together. Justin brought me a muffin earlier and then took me out to lunch to his favorite cafe. We even had two moments, but I backed down from both. And then Vinnie, he honestly seemed bummed when I pretended that I’d given him the wrong number and he was messaging a random, and now we have what I think is a date after the hockey game tomorrow. They all seem to be going to a lot of work, too much if they just want to get laid. So, I’m wondering, if they’re sincere about liking me, if it’s wrong for me to be using them to intentionally get entered into the Puck Games?” I blurted out and then covered my face with my hands.

  The silence stretched so long that I peeked through my fingers to look at Steph.

  She merely blinked at me, then held up a hand and ticked off her fingers one by one. “I have questions. One, how did they all get your number? Two, what do they look like? Three, do you think you’d be interested in them if you didn’t know about the Puck Games, and four, what were these moments?”

  For the next little while, I told Steph everything that had happened so far while we finished off our pizza and a second glass of wine. I even showed her the team picture I had saved to my laptop for the article. She’d pointed out each of the players that had approached her so far, causing the knot of concern in my chest to disappear when she didn’t point out my guys.

  Err, the guys. Not my. They weren’t mine.

  She kept interjecting with questions, and I did my best to be honest, but it was hard since I genuinely wasn’t sure what the truth was when it came to how I felt, how they felt, and what they each knew about me. The not knowing if they all knew about me with each of them was killing me.

  After a moment, Steph nodded to herself. “Okay, so to me, I think you should continue on your path.” I went to protest, but she held up a hand. “Hear me out. Let’s say there was no Puck Games article, and you had just met these guys randomly. From what you’ve said, I don’t think you would’ve shut any of them down. And right now, none of them have come out and asked you out on an actual date. Sure, they’ve all made plans to see you again; that’s exactly what Damian did with me. I think you should assume they don’t know about each other since they haven’t even mentioned their roommates’ names to try and catch you out. I think that if you get yourself into a position where a kiss is on the table, you should definitely take it since I know for a fact you actually have to have sex with a hockey player to end up on the board. And I think we need to find another Puck, someone who knows the rules. We are flying blind here, and if we could get some more information, we’ll be able to come up with a better plan. You have two tickets to the home game tomorrow, right?” Steph asked.

  “Yeah, Vinnie got me some media passes,” I replied, relief coating me as I felt the tension of the situation leaving me as I let someone else make the hard decisions for me

  “Excellent. Well, I’ll come with you and be your wingwoman, that way you can’t get yourself into any trouble, and I’ll be able to give you an unbiased opinion on Vinnie at least.” She finished with a head nod, as if she had sorted out the whole situation and the topic was closed.

  Which I guess, she sort of had, and it sort of was. Hmmm…

  “You know, James has a media pass
for the entire season, maybe we could meet up with him?” I offered with a sly smile, ready to have the spotlight taken off me and my problems.

  Steph blushed adorably, jumped up to reach for her laptop, and proclaimed, “Movie time!”

  14

  Hayden

  Sunday 3rd December – 22 days until Christmas

  "Okay, so we’re looking for Bay L," I informed Steph as we walked away from the ticket office, navigating our way through all of the fans, most of which wore Boston Eagles jerseys. A few supporters wandered the corridors but not many. Everyone rushed around, heading to the bathrooms or to the food and drink kiosks. The whole place had a hyped-up atmosphere, people having to shout to be heard over the top of the pregame entertainment and the general noise of having several thousand people crammed into an enclosed space.

  "Well, I propose that we find our seats, and then, I'll go find us some snacks," she replied as she linked arms with me, slightly dragging me in her wake as she pushed through a group of people who had stopped to have a conversation in the middle of the walkway. Why do people do that? Move to the side so that you don’t congest traffic!

  I was doing my best to ignore the fact that Steph had curled her hair and been extra careful with her makeup before we left our dorm since she was politely ignoring that I had done the same thing. Clearly, she was interested in pulling James’ crush out into the light. I just hopped they didn't break each other’s hearts. Myself on the other hand? I was just making sure I looked my best so that I could work my source to get the best information for my article.

  At least, that's what I kept telling myself.

  We found Bay L and headed down to Row 5. Just as we got to our row, Steph unlinked arms with me and adjusted her beanie and blonde curls.

  "How do I look?" she asked me; her eyes drilled into mine.