Winging It (5 page)

Chapter Eight

Toby

I’d left a ticket for Nat at the arena box office. Not that she really needed one—almost all the ushers and ticket takers were kids from school, so I could have just told a couple of them to let her in. The Raiders are a big deal for Corrigan Falls, but we’re one of the smallest markets in the league—things really aren’t too formal at the rink. Still, it seemed like a nice touch to make sure Nat had an actual ticket.

I wasn’t quite sure when I’d started worrying about “nice touches” in all this. Like, I was trying to be the best fake boyfriend I could be?

Weird, and an unnecessary distraction from what I
should
have been paying attention to. The season was winding down and we were well placed for the playoffs, but every game still counted. And of course the scouts were always watching. Even if they weren’t there in person, they’d check out the stats and the highlight reels. We weren’t in the big league yet, but we were in the last step before we got there, and the pressure was pretty high.

So I shouldn’t have been looking up into the stands during the pregame skate, worrying about why Nat’s seat was still empty. And I shouldn’t have headed back to the locker room wondering if I’d get busted if I tried to pull out my phone to send her a quick text. No, none of that should have been in my brain. Hockey, hockey, hockey. That was what I needed to think about.

And I almost made it. I wasn’t starting that game, so I went straight to the bench for the anthem, and I managed to keep myself from craning my neck around to check Nat’s seat. But Winslow was on the ice, and I saw him look up, grin, and then look back down at me with an exaggerated eye bulge.

Well, damn. I had to look, and when I did? Nat was there, sitting right next to Dia, Winslow’s girlfriend, and Nat looked…she looked like herself, but somehow a bit
more
. Like, she always had long brown hair, but usually she had it pulled back, and that night it was loose, falling kind of wavy over her shoulders and around her face. And her eyes were always deep and intense and her skin always looked healthy, but somehow she seemed to have a little extra glow to her right then. I don’t know. It was hard to describe, but I knew she looked beautiful.

She saw me looking and waved, and I smiled back, and then one of the trainers whacked my helmet and told me to get my mind back on the game, so I made myself turn around. The game. Right. Hockey. On it.

It got a little easier to concentrate once I was actually on the ice, especially since a defenseman from the other team was chirping and slapping at me whenever he got the chance. I used my energy to stay cool and didn’t have time to look up into the stands.

Except the next time I got off the ice, I realized Tyler MacDonald was watching me a bit too closely. Which made no sense—other players got after us all the time, and he knew I wasn’t a hothead. Unless…

I turned around again, and it all came clear. Nat was still in her seat, and Dia was still beside her. But Scott was there, too, crouched down beside Nat, giving her his best fuck-me smile.

I felt like every muscle in my body went onto high alert. Scott was moving in, Nat was smiling back at him, welcoming him…and I was stuck on the other side of a Plexiglas wall, watching it all happen.

“Focus on your game,” I heard Tyler say from beside me. “Besides, he’s your cousin, right? He’s just being friendly.” I guess my silence made it clear I wasn’t convinced, because after a pause Tyler said, “You don’t need to trust him—you just need to trust her. Who cares if she’s talking to someone else, as long as she’s leaving with you?”

I turned back to stare at the ice. Nat
wasn’t
leaving with me. She was going to her own game, and she hadn’t seemed too enthusiastic about the idea of me going over to meet her there. Maybe she was hoping Scott would show up instead.

Damn it, I’d signed up for this. I’d agreed to Nat’s stupid plan, I’d lied to my teammates to set up her story, I’d kissed her in the damn driveway—

Someone slapped my back, and I realized it was a line change. I kicked my legs over the board out of force of habit, made it onto the ice in time to catch up to the play, and took a pass from Christiansen without even thinking about it. I’d made it about one step before I saw the blur approaching from the corner of my eye and just managed to drop the puck back to Winslow before I got hit, hard into the boards. The same damn defenseman who’d been chirping at me before.

“Late hit, you dumb fuck,” I yelled at him as we pulled ourselves back to our feet. It was technically true, but he’d been lined up for the hit before I made the pass and would have had a hell of a time pulling out of it. I was in no mood to be fair about it, though.

There was half a second when I thought he might stick around and start something, but the play was still on and he chased after the action. I found my spot on the ice, followed the play, and then that same defenseman crashed into Winslow, only this time he got his stick up. It hit Winslow in under his visor, high on the cheek, too damn close to his eye, and rocked his head back with the impact.

There was a whistle, but I barely heard it. It took me three strides to get to the defenseman, and my gloves were off halfway there. He saw me coming and dropped his own gloves, but I got a grip on his jersey and drove in with my other fist, catching him in the chin. I got one more good hit in before he recovered from that first one, two or three more while he was swinging back at me, and then the linesmen were on us, dragging us apart.

The defenseman hadn’t landed a square punch, but my head was still ringing as the linesman skated me over to the penalty box. Winslow glided over behind him and handed me my stick and gloves, his cheek already swelling a bit from the hit. “You fighting for my honor, Coopsy? That’s really sweet.” He looked over at the team bench then back at me, his forehead wrinkled. “But I don’t think Coach is going to think so.”

No, Coach wasn’t going to be impressed. I wasn’t a fighter, usually, not unless there was no way for me to get out of it. I saw the ref announce the penalties, saw I was getting dinged as the instigator, and couldn’t disagree with the call. I’d started the fight. Hell, yeah, I had.

I made it about thirty seconds before I turned to look up into the stands. Nat was staring down at me, frowning like she was trying to figure out what I’d been thinking. And Scott was in the seat right next to her, leaning over, his arm resting on the back of her chair. He smiled at me, smug and gloating, and it was just as well I was off the ice for a good chunk of time, because the way I felt right then? I’d have started another fight, just as soon as a player looked at me the wrong way. I’d have punched a stranger when really I wanted to punch my cousin.

I didn’t let myself look up into the stands for quite a while after that. But when I finally did, I wished I hadn’t.

Both seats were empty, and neither Nat or Scott was anywhere in sight.

Chapter Nine

Nat

Scott had insisted on coming to my game. I’d warned him that it would be nothing like the Raiders, and he’d snorted and said, “Thank God.” My gear bag was already at the community arena—one of the perks of reffing there was access to their storage—so it was an easy walk away from the glamour and toward the bare cinder-block construction of my second home.

“Do you and Toby ever play together?” Scott asked after I’d picked up my gear bag, holding the storage room door open for me like I was some sort of movie star. Then he gave me his flirty grin and said, “Hockey, I mean. Do you ever play
hockey
together?”

I was smooth enough to pick up on the innuendo but not nearly smooth enough to do anything with it. “We used to be on the same team,” I said instead. When in doubt, go for the facts.

“When you were little kids, right?”

“Not that little. We were Minor Bantam.” He gave me a blank look, and I said, “Thirteen. We were on the same team when we were thirteen.”

“Really?” We were at the locker room now, and I dropped my gear bag and waited for the response I knew was coming.

It’s changed recently, but back when I was going through the system, we started body checking in Peewee. That’s when you’re eleven years old. People who thought it was cute that I’d played hockey with the boys when we were all little suddenly got uptight when they found out I’d been checking with them for a couple years and holding my own. I waited for Scott to imply that I was butch or that my mom had been reckless to let me keep playing.

But he surprised me. I guess he probably had no idea when youth hockey players start body checking, and he was more interested in something else, anyway. “So did you, like,
get changed
with the boys?”

“Oh my God!” I was that weird kind of disgusted where you’re laughing at the same time. “Is that all you ever think about? We weren’t little kids, but we were young enough that it’s totally gross for you to be trying to make it sexy.”

“What, thirteen?” He stepped back a bit and looked me up and down. “Trust me. If you were playing hockey with thirteen-year-old boys, they were having sexy thoughts about you.” He wrinkled his face in mock disappointment. “But I’m getting the impression they weren’t actually seeing anything. You
didn’t
all change together?”

“No,” I said, and I smiled. He was…I don’t know. He was
Scott Dakins
. Maybe I should have thought he was sleazy, and I guess I kind of did, but it didn’t feel wrong with him. Like he was a junior version of Hugh Grant from
Bridget Jones
—
another
movie my mom and I had watched way too many times. Sleazy, but so over-the-top, so charming about it that he seemed like he was making fun of himself. And he made me feel like I was part of some exclusive club, people who were smart enough to realize that he was just joking, or at least
mostly
just joking. The rest of the world might get uptight about silly little social rules, but he and I were cool enough to laugh them off. And he didn’t seem like he was going to stop anytime soon.

“So when you go behind this door now,” he said, pointing to the locker room, “you
will
be getting changed. You’ll be stripping right down, behind such a thin, thin door, with me right here on the outside, and you inside with—”

Well, it was okay when he was sleazy with me, but I didn’t like him thinking about my teammates that way. Not because I was jealous, but because—I don’t know. Because I’d signed up for this, but they hadn’t. “I’ll be inside with about twenty other women, and most of them are old enough to be your mother and tough enough to beat the shit out of you. So watch yourself.”

He looked startled for about half a second then grinned. “Damn. I like forceful women.”

“No, you like your cousin’s girlfriends.” I hadn’t meant to say it. I couldn’t believe it had come out. But there it was. I remembered Dawn’s theory that it was best to play hard to get, and now that I didn’t have any choice decided I’d better follow her advice. “So you should probably back off a little, okay?” And then I somehow had a flash to the future and realized how much easier the eventual reveal could be if I laid some groundwork ahead of time. “If you’re only interested in me because of Toby, you should back off a
lot
.” There. He couldn’t say I hadn’t warned him.

His startled expression lasted longer this time, but when he smiled at the end of it, it still seemed genuine. “I guess you’re right. I
do
like my cousin’s girlfriends.” And then it was like I was frozen in place as I saw him leaning in. Slow and relaxed, like everything was fine, everything was casual, but when he pressed his lips to my cheek, it was down low, practically on my jawline, my
neck
, almost, and there was just nothing at all casual about a boy kissing me there! The kiss only lasted a second, but he didn’t pull away very far before murmuring, “I like Toby’s girlfriends because even though he’s a total loser in most ways, Toby has
excellent
taste in women.”

He stayed close for another moment, long enough for me draw in a shaky breath and get a good whiff of his aftershave or cologne or whatever it was. Then he leaned a little farther away and shrugged, looking way more casual than I wanted him to. “We should do something after your game. Just the two of us.” He looked around as if realizing for the first time exactly how dingy the place was. “We should go somewhere a bit nicer, probably. Right?”

I stared at him, waiting for my throat to unclench so I could give him an answer, and I was still waiting when I felt a strong hand grab my arm. It was Marta, Lisette’s mom, who played goal for us whenever she could make it to a game. “Time to get inside,” she said, pushing the door open beside me and tugging me through. Once I was safely inside, she reached back and lifted my gear bag like it was light, which I guess it was for someone used to carrying goalie equipment, and turned around to drop it at my feet. “We have a game to play,” she told me. Then she frowned. “A game
on
the ice, not whatever you’re doing with those boys.”

“Mom,” Lisette whined, giving me an apologetic look. “I’m going to stop telling you things if you can’t keep out of people’s business!”

“No, it’s okay,” I said quickly. The team dynamics were a bit weird because of the wide age range, but we generally tried to leave all our outside relationships outside, making ourselves just teammates in the locker room and on the ice. Teammates and, in a weird, limited way, pretty good friends. “I appreciate the rescue,” I told Lisette and Marta—and I guess the rest of the team, since they were all waiting to hear what was going on. “I wasn’t sure how to handle that.”

“Any time a boy is saying or doing something you don’t want?” Marta said, raising an eyebrow at Lisette, cuing the response.

“Tell him to stop,” Lisette replied, her voice bored, as if she’d repeated this too many times.

“And if he doesn’t stop?” Marta prompted.

“Make a scene. Yell at him, yell for help, and if none of that works, kick him in the balls.” Lisette rolled her eyes at me and added, “Don’t worry if he’s the most popular boy in school. Don’t even think about the trouble you might be causing in your boyfriend’s family. Don’t consider that you might be overreacting, or that no other boy might ever talk to you if he finds out you throw a fit as soon as a guy says something you don’t like. No, just make a big stink, right away. There’s no possible problems with that advice.”

It was kind of a relief to be able to say, “It wasn’t like that. He wasn’t harassing me or anything. It was just…it’s kind of complicated.” Everyone was still watching me as I shrugged out of my winter jacket and sat down to work on my boots.

But finally Marta said, “Okay, fine. We can worry about that later. For now…we need a starting line. Who’s got lots of energy tonight?”

And from there, it was just another women’s league hockey game. We’d already played the other team three times that season and we’d made some good-natured rivalries, so there was a little trash talk mixed in with the plans for the adults to meet for drinks after the game, and I made a few good shots and it was fine.

That was all. Just fine. When the game was over we went back to the change room and I had a quick shower and got dressed. I wasn’t beating myself up about any missed chances or big mistakes, so I guess that was nice, but I wasn’t congratulating myself on any great plays, either. When I’d been playing with the boys, I’d finish a game so physically and emotionally drained that I’d usually just drag my skates off and stagger out of the arena still wearing all the rest of my gear because I was too tired to go through the trouble of getting changed. When I got home, I’d collapse on my bed and call Toby and we’d go over the game, play by play, and I’d work my way out of my equipment as we were talking.

I’d better not mention that last part to Scott; he’d turn it into me undressing for phone sex, for sure. But there hadn’t been anything sexual about it. Toby and I had both just loved the game, and even when our bodies were too tired our brains had still wanted to play.

Yeah, Toby was—

Toby. Scott.
I bolted upright on the bench.

Toby had said he might come by after his game and catch the last bit of mine. But there was always a huge crush after Raider games, fans and puck bunnies and reporters and scouts and coaches all swarming around the players, so probably Toby wouldn’t have been able to get away. He wouldn’t be up there in the concrete bleachers right at that moment, staring at Scott, looking for a fight…just like he’d been looking for a fight in the Raiders game…

“I gotta go,” I said, way too loud and directed at no one in particular. I jammed my feet into my boots and didn’t bother lacing them up. My gear bag slowed me down, and I thought about leaving it behind and coming back for it later, but there’d be another team using the locker room soon and hockey equipment is expensive. I needed to take care of mine.

So I lugged it along with me, out the short hallway until I was standing by the rink, and I stopped for a moment to look around. It didn’t take me long to find them: the arena was practically deserted, but everyone who
was
there was looking in the same direction. Shit.

Toby and Scott, standing chest to chest, staring each other down.

All because of my stupid, stupid plan.