It’s weird as fuck. Andy isn’t really the type to contemplate silently. He thinks out loud. He comments. He jokes. I don’t think he even realizes how much he speaks and how funny his self-deprecating humor is.
An hour of driving and we reach the Thundering Falls trail. I’ve been before. It’s not really a backbreaking hike, more like a stroll through the forest, but it’s beautiful, and when I asked Andy if he’d ever been here, he just raised his brow at me as if to say, “Hike? Me? Seriously? No. Duh.”
The thing about Andy is he doesn’t like to try new things, which is why he protests going to the gym (which he secretly likes now) and teaching (which he excels at). He just needs a little push to get going, so I’ve decided to nudge him a bit from time to time because, let’s face it, the guy needs to loosen up a bit to show everybody what a great person he really is. The world should give me a pat on the back for exposing everyone to the awesomeness that is Andy Carter.
Andy mutters something as he gets out of the car.
“Pardon?”
“I’m praying to the patron saint of hikers to make my inevitable death as painless as possible,” he says as he bends down to lace his boot, giving me a magnificent view of his ass. It takes a certain kind of talent to look hot in hiking gear, but Andy definitely pulls it off.
I distract myself with getting my backpack out of the trunk. “It’s a trail suitable for kids.”
He stops. “You’re serious?”
“As a heart attack, and coincidentally, people who have suffered one find this hike a breeze.”
Andy’s lips twitch as he tries to glare at me. He throws a twig at my head but misses.
“I’m not sure if I should be offended or amused that you think I have the endurance of a heart-attack patient.”
“I also said kids,” I protest. “Kids are notorious for having lots of energy. Shit, a three-year-old can be crazy active. Who knows, maybe this trail is so hard that only somebody with the energy levels of a toddler can complete it successfully?”
“I guess we’re about to find out,” Andy says as he picks up his own backpack and starts walking.
We’re here early for a Saturday, so there aren’t very many people around. The trail gets more foot traffic after people have consumed their pancakes and enjoyed their coffees. There aren’t many of us who’d be out and about at seven on a Saturday. We’ve had to postpone our weekly hike twice already because Andy went home last weekend, and the weekend before that, I’d volunteered to take the camp kids swimming. But today we finally managed. The weather is perfect, except for maybe the early morning chill, but I figure once we get moving, it’ll be all right.
I like Vermont. It’s crazy different from New York, but in a good way. I like the nature and the fact that there aren’t people everywhere. I like the fact that people are friendly but reserved and not overly invested in everybody else’s lives.
I like the seasons. Even mud season is fine with me, since I haven’t had the misfortune of getting my car stuck in the mud yet. I love the snow and winter weather just as much as the summer. Summer in the city gets old really quickly. The heat is oppressive when you’re surrounded by concrete and glass. Here, though, summer means a soft breeze cooling my skin and the sun caressing my cheeks. Mild summer nights and swimming in lakes. It’s kind of perfect, to be honest.
I imagine I look like an idiot as I half walk, half skip down the raised wooden walkaway. There’s a goofy smile on my face that I can’t seem to get rid of, and in all honesty, I’m not trying that hard. I freaking love nature and being outside.
“You look way too perky for this hour of the morning,” Andy remarks as he walks next to me. For all his complaining about physical activity, the guy isn’t that out of shape. In the three weeks we’ve been going to the gym together, he’s graduated from his five-minute runs, intercepted with bouts of walking, to a solid five miles. He still complains and makes snarky comments left and right, but ninety-five percent of the time, those are just because Andy’s being Andy. Plus, I enjoy the sarcastic remarks a lot, so the mornings Andy is at home and not working out with me are straight-out boring.
“What can I say, I like mornings,” I say.
“Did you, by any chance, happen to be that nightmare child who insisted on getting up at five every day?” he asks with a smirk.
“You know it, but my parents didn’t mind. They thought it was great. Start the day early, get a lot done.”
“That’s literally the worst family motto I’ve ever heard.” Andy shudders in disgust.
“I take it you like to sleep in?”
He nods. “It’s genetic. We’re night owls, all of us. My mom did her best to get us on a semi-normal schedule while we were in school, but I function better after ten o’clock in the morning.”
“You have a big family?” I ask.
“Depends what you call big. There’s my mom and dad and I have two sisters and three brothers.” He grins as I gape at him.
“That’s a lot of kids,” I finally manage. I’m an only child, and I’ve always wanted a brother or a sister, but my parents said one was enough. Six is a lot, though.
“Tell me about it. It would be halfway understandable if my parents had had five sons or five daughters in a row and just kept trying for a boy or a girl, but those lunatics just seem to like kids,” he says with a smirk.
“Even after experiencing the toddler years and teenagers slamming doors and being unreasonable and smug as fuck?” I ask. Not that I know a lot about the hardships of having a toddler from firsthand experience, but I can imagine raising a child is a shitload of work.
“Yup, go figure. Apparently my older sisters used to throw temper tantrums like somebody paid them to see who can make more noise, them or a jet engine.”
“And yet, your parents decided to keep reproducing,” I say with a laugh. It’s clear Andy loves his family a lot, but the trademark self-deprecating humor is still firmly in place.
“To be fair, after Cecilia and Emily, it was my turn to make an appearance, and I was a delight. Still am. No wonder they had two more after me. Too bad Ryan and Landon were so much trouble that Mom and Dad opted out of having more kids.”
“Six kids wasn’t enough for you? Was the house too quiet?”
“Hardly a quiet moment from morning ’til late at night,” Andy says cheerfully.
“Are you close with your family?” I inquire. I’ve already admitted to myself that I’m more than a little intrigued by everything about Andy, so I file every new morsel of information away to add to the overall picture of Andy in my mind.
“To an unhealthy degree. I told my mom about my first kiss the next morning it happened.”
I let out a startled laugh. “Why?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t have a lot of friends, and awkwardly smashing my lips against Molly Burk’s seemed like a great accomplishment at the time, so I had this incessant need to brag to somebody. My dad and Ian were on a fishing trip, and Mom was the first person I saw that morning. Of course, that story earned me a lecture about respect toward women and not a hearty congratulations like I was expecting, but you live and you learn, I guess. She still hasn’t heard about my first kiss with a boy. I’m saving that baby for a special occasion.”
Andy smiles at me. A lock of hair falls over his eye, and I have to stuff my hands into my pocket so I wouldn’t do something stupid, like push it away from his face.
“Do you miss them?” His family sounds very close and just plain lovely. I can’t imagine having so many people in your corner. Like your very own tribe. My relationship with my mom and dad is mostly just strained. Love from my family has always seemed conditional, and I don’t think it could ever be this effortless as Andy makes it seem.
“I visit often enough, so I can’t say I pine for them,” he jokes. “I miss spending time with them from time to time. We have these board game nights that get crazy competitive. Used to have them every couple of weeks, but now it’s cut down to Christm
as and Thanksgiving and such.”
“Is that why you chose a school close to home?”
Andy scrunches up his nose, which I’ve learned is a sign that a topic makes him uncomfortable. He hesitates before speaking. “College is expensive, and with six kids, it just wouldn’t make sense to add the extra expense of living out of state. It would have been even better if I could have lived at home, but a two-hour commute would be a bitch.”
I don’t know what to say to that. Money’s never really been a problem. My parents instilled a strong work ethic in me, and they’ve always stressed the age-old money doesn’t grow on trees wisdom, but paying for college or hockey or camps has never been an issue. Andy’s confession makes me feel bad for complaining about my parents so much because, for all their faults, they’ve given me everything I’ve asked for.
“What about you?” Andy asks. “Big family?”
“Nah. It’s just me and my parents.”
“Are you close?”
It’s my turn to shrug. “We love each other in our own way, but they don’t like hockey. They want me to take over my dad’s finance consulting firm. He’s very successful. Lots of important clients.”
“You sound like the idea thrills you about as much as eating dog food for the rest of your life would.” Andy is so blunt in his assessment. No pussyfooting around the topic for him, but it’s liberating to talk about it straightforwardly, unlike how I talk about it with my parents.
“The prospect of an office job bores me to tears,” I confess. I think about what I just said and can’t help but smile. “Wow. I’ve never said it out loud. Feels kind of nice.”
“I imagine it’s a point of contention between you and your parents?”
“We’ve been arguing over it since I was about fifteen. We had a compromise. Sort of. I played hockey in college, but I majored in finance, so we had a truce of sorts. But now I’m the assistant coach, so it’s starting to sink in that I might not be heading in the direction they’ve planned for me.”
Andy purses his lips as he keeps giving me speculative glances.
“What?” I ask.
“I have a question, but I don’t want to bring up bad memories.”
“Ask, and I’ll tell you if I don’t want to talk about it,” I say, even though I already know what he wants to ask.
“Why did you stop playing?”
Bingo.
I wait for the bang of sadness that usually follows when somebody brings up my doomed hockey career, but it’s not there anymore, which makes me pretty damn happy. Maybe it’s a sign that I’m on the right path?
“I have a heart condition,” I say in answer to Andy’s question. “Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.”
To my surprise, he doesn’t look confused by the name of my diagnosis. “Thickening of the heart muscle,” we say in unison, and I laugh, which is something I’ve never done before when my heart problem has come up.
“That must have sucked,” Andy concludes succinctly.
“Kind of,” I agree. “I’ve been dreaming of the NHL since I was ten, and then that dream died in a matter of seconds. It took some time to get used to it.”
“But then they offered you the assistant coach’s position?”
“Yeah. It came out of the blue, but Coach Williams said he thought it’d be something that’d suit me, and he was right. I love it.”
Andy beams at that like he’s truly happy for me, and it feels fantastic. Nobody has supported me like this before. My former teammates seem to think being an assistant coach is a shitty substitute for an NHL career, and my parents hate that I still live and breathe hockey.
As if reading my mind Andy asks, “But your parents still don’t approve?”
“They don’t consider it a real career, I suppose. I still haven’t told them I’m not going to take over Dad’s business. They keep making those statements, like, after you’re done with school, you’re going to be so happy when you have a job and don’t have to scramble to make a living like a lot of your peers will. I need to just man up and tell them, but they’ll be so disappointed, and I don’t relish being the fuck-up of the family.”
“Must be rough.”
“You have no idea.”
“None whatsoever. My parents are super supportive of everything I do,” he says, and as per usual, the unexpected thing that comes out of Andy’s mouth makes me laugh out loud.
“I can’t believe you just said that. Rubbing your great family in my face like that.”
“What can I say? I’m a shitty friend.”
I bump my shoulder into his as I shake my head. “No, you really aren’t.”
His smile is barely there, but I can hear it, clear as day, in his voice as he says, “Well, I hope you’ll be singing the same tune when I sell that information to your parents for the big bucks.”
“I trust you,” I say. I mean to say it as a joke, but as the words leave my mouth, I realize that it’s the God’s honest truth. I do trust Andy. Trust him enough to speak freely in front of him. Trust him not to laugh or belittle me for my decidedly first-world problems. Trust him to keep the things we talk about between us.
Andy’s cheeks flush as he looks down at his feet. “Thanks pal,” he says and bumps my shoulder with his fist. “I trust you too.”
He stops so suddenly that I walk another couple of steps before I even realize Andy is no longer next to me. I turn around, only to see him standing in the middle of the trail. His eyes are fixated on the horizon, but there’s that vacant look in them that tells me he’s not really seeing anything around him. “I trust you too,” he repeats as if talking to himself. He cocks his head to the side, and for the longest time, he stares at me with a strange, intense look in his eyes.
“Well… good,” I say as I trudge back to him. A picture of my face could be in the encyclopedia entry for perplexed.
“No. You don’t get it,” Andy says, his gaze burning with intensity. “I trust you.” He looks like he’s just solved a problem worthy of the Nobel Prize.
The perplexed thing still stands.
“That’s nice. Are we going to keep going or…?” I take a step away, ready to get moving again, when Andy grabs my hand and pulls me to a stop.
His eyes are glittering in the sunshine. “Have sex with me,” he blurts.
I take an involuntary step back out of sheer surprise, but somehow, in my state of shock, I trip on a protruding rock. My arms flail and the next thing I know, I’m about to land on my back. I try to stay upright, but fail, and instead of falling on my ass like a normal person, I stumble forward.
Andy has stepped toward me to help, but that only means that in a flail of limbs and bodies, we crash together, and I take him down with me. Andy falls on his back with an oomph, and I land on top of him.
“Oh shit,” Andy says.
That sounds about right.
13
Andy
Oh shit is right.
Law lies on top of me. I feel dizzy and lightheaded, but not in a good way. More like I just had my breath knocked out of me by a two-hundred-pound hockey player.
“Ouch,” I mutter as I slowly lift my hand and try to rub the back of my head. There’s a nice lump already forming from smacking it against the walkaway.
Law lifts his head and looks at me.
He’s so close.
I can see the green of his eyes. I never noticed how long his lashes are. I could probably count all of them if I wanted to. His nostrils flare as he breaths in, and I can feel the short puffs of air move over my cheek as he exhales.
Law’s gaze is on me. I don’t think anybody has ever watched me with such intensity. His tongue slips out as he licks his lips, and I groan. The lightheaded feeling is quickly transforming into something much better.
I can feel my body reacting to Law’s proximity. He’s heavy and wide and covering me like a big, warm blanket. I definitely like that. My dick swells in my pants, which is both good and bad. Good, because I’m trying to get him
to sleep with me. Bad, because I don’t know how Law feels about that. If I’m being honest with myself, it seems like him losing his balance and almost faceplanting on the ground might not be a sign that he’s on board with that plan.
“You’re heavy,” I say. I’d love to stay just like this, me on my back and him on top of me, but I really think we should talk before I start rubbing my cock against him. I mean, it’s basic courtesy.
“Shit! Let me help you.” Law scrambles to his feet and grabs my hand to pull me up, but I wave him off. “I’m really sorry.” He looks all frantic and alarmed. It’s kind of adorable, which is a weird thing to think about somebody as big as Law, but there it is. Maybe I have a concussion, and that’s why I’m having these crazy thoughts?
I push myself to a sitting position, lean my back against one of the poles that is on the side of the walkaway, and tilt my head back to look at Law. “Spending time with you is becoming a hazardous hobby. First a nosebleed and now this.” I try to lighten the mood with a joke, but Law looks like an honors student who’d just gotten caught smoking weed and is now terrified about it going on his permanent record.
“Do you feel okay? Maybe we should go to the ER. I’ll call 911.” I grab his hand before he can go searching for his phone. He willingly lowers himself to the ground next to me.
“I’m fine. Just got my breath knocked out of me for a moment.”
“You sure?”
“That’s a resounding yes.”
“Okay then.” He still sounds like he’s about to start looking for his phone again at the slightest hint of something being out of the ordinary.
“I’m fine,” I assure him once more, but it’s hard not to be amused by his concern.
He nods and finally seems to relax. Neither of us makes a move to get up even though we’re sitting on the ground, but my ass is already numb, and Law doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to move either, so I settle in.
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