Chapter 6

oh well, you win some and obviously you lose some, so now with ALL my teams out of the playoffs I guess I should have more time to write!

Chapter 6

I was just another early morning commuter with my coffee in a cup holder, listening to the sports radio guys talk about the upcoming season. I was looking forward to seeing the guys but there was something about the first practice that was eating at me. Most of it had to do with my wrist but I'd have the answer to that soon enough. The rest of it had to do with starting the whole quest for The Cup again.

They say that once you've won it, it's in your blood and you'll do anything for another shot. I think that's probably true of Tazer and maybe some of the other guys but I don't really want to go through the hell it takes to get there. Not that I don't take it seriously but I don't get the point of having money and not being able to have fun with it. Tazer's always saying there's plenty of time for that later but I figure later I might not be in any shape to enjoy myself.

Which is where I get into trouble; while Tazer's at home watching films or picking his belly button lint or whatever Captian Super Snooze does when he's not at practice or playing a game I actually go out and have a beer with my friends and somehow that apparently makes me the bad guy.

And that is exactly what I feel like when I get to the doctor's office and see the woman behind the desk roll her eyes. I'm late and the look on her face is like that's just typical of me, which actually it's not.
"I'm sorry I'm…." I begin but she doesn't let me finish.

"Go in, he'll be with you as soon as he can," she sighs and goes back to staring at the computer screen in front of her. I pause there by the desk, still thinking that I should apologize but she doesn't look up again so I don't. I find the open room and hop up on that examination table with its strip of thin, crunch noisy paper.
"Good Morning Pat, how was your summer?" the doc asks as he breezes into the room and goes directly to the small metal sink and washes his hands.

"Not bad, considering," I reply, holding up my cast. There was definitely some things I didn't get to do because of it but then he knows that. He was the one that gave me the list of don'ts.

"All for a good cause though hmm?" he smiles before turning and opening one of the cupboards and pulling out what looks like a tool my dad might use back at home. "Let's get that off and see how we did."

"Boy, am I looking forward to this." I've been sticking about everything I can down under the cast, my arm itches pretty bad.

"Looks like you haven't been slacking though," the doc adds approvingly as he unwinds the cord and for the tool and plugs it in. I smooth my t-shirt down over my abs and I do feel a little proud of my new six-pack. I hope Coach Q feels the same. "How has the arm been feeling, any pain?"

"No, not really," I reply honestly, "except for…." Normally talking about sex wouldn't make me blush but something about mentioning it in a doctor's office makes it feel weird. The doc has the saw poised above my arm and raises his eyebrow at me, inviting me to finish. "I got kinda carried away the other night in uh…bed and uh…had my hand kinda pressed to the wall and my wrist hurt a little," I admit, feeling my face start to get red. The doc nods and then ducks his head over the saw.

"You might feel a little weakness as you start using it, but you'll soon get your strength back," he smirked and then set the saw to its work.

---

I had my bag packed and I was debating if I had enough cash to take a taxi to the airport or if I should try taking transit when he walked back in. He looked at my bag and then quizzically at me. We stared at one another for a long moment and then he just grabbed my bag and took it back to the bedroom.
"You're being kind of dramatic dontcha think?" he said in a very controlled tone.

"I don't know how you even talked me into this in the first place," I countered, following him into the bedroom where he dropped my bag onto the bed. It was only then that I noticed his cast was gone.

"Because you wanted out of Buffalo," he replied in the same tone with just a hint of barely controlled fury that made his peach fuzz covered jaw clench. "Sorry," he apologized with a sigh, closing his eyes for a long moment as if he was reaching inward for control. "I didn't really mean that."

"Yeah, you're right," I admitted, "but if you're trying to imply that I'm some kind of gold digger…." He shook his head and shrugged a single shoulder.

"I actually know that you're not," he smiled but it wasn't the smile that I was used to. It was almost sad; little boy sad. It was the kind of sad that made me want to give him a lollipop, kiss him better and promise everything would be alright. It also had the immediate effect of dousing my anger. "That stuff you found…just to be clear, I know what most of those girls are interested in and I know they leave that stuff here so they have a reason to come back," he added, further throwing cold water over my simmering emotions.

"And you're okay with that?" For some reason it surprised me that he understood that these women were using him but I wasn't certain if that was a point in his favor or against him.

"I dunno, I guess I haven't really cared too much about it," he shrugged and then looked up at me from behind lashes that any girl would kill for and I began to feel like I may have been a bitch about this despite the fact that there was still a voice somewhere in the back of my head warning me that I was being played.

"You could have cleaned up," I pointed out, to which he merely shrugged again.

"I don't really do that," he replied sheepishly, the corner of his mouth turning up as he began to get the feeling he was about to be let off the hook.

"Well then you could have asked your cleaning lady to clean up," I sighed, the anger that I'd been holding onto while I'd packed had been ebbing quickly ever since he had walked through the door and the cocky smirk he was now wearing should have made it come rushing back, but it didn't.

"She won't touch that stuff," he shrugged and now I could tell he was trying hard not to go for a victory lap around the bedroom. "And up til now," he added, his smirk growing by degrees as he closed the gap between us, "I've had this bum arm…until now." He flexed his arm, displaying his bulging bicep and ropey muscle, making my mouth go dry. I didn't love him, my heart wasn't involved at all but my pulse quickened just the same. "Wanna try it out?" he asked, reaching out to toy with the strap on my tank top, running his finger underneath the strap and then letting it fall over my shoulder.

"We could do that," I replied, reaching down to cross my arms and pull the shirt over my head. His cocky grin grew into a full blown smirk and as he grabbed me around the waist, picked me and tossed me down onto the bed right beside my bag which he then pushed off the end of the bed. We both listened to it hit the floor with a resounding thud and then he smiled down at me.

"You forgive me, right?" It wasn't really a question, nor was it an apology, but then I hadn't asked for one.

"Shut up," I mumbled and ran my hand up underneath his golf shirt, pushing the cotton fabric up with it.

"No problem," he laughed, tugging his shirt over his head and tossing it onto the floor behind him before falling on me like a man who'd just walked out of the desert and was diving into a kiddie pool. There was something about his enthusiasm that made me forget to be mad.

For the time being anyway.

---

"Why not?" I listened to the silence on the other end of the line and knew that JT was trying his best to read between the lines. I could picture his face, his beady eyes all focused, making a bummy mouth.

"Because we always do it at Sharpie's," he said again, like that was going to change my mind.

"Well I'm sure before you were Captain OCD they probably had it at someone else's house so…what's the big deal?" I asked. Now I could picture him staring daggers at his phone because I'd called him a name. Finally I heard him sigh and knew I'd won.

"Fine, whatever. What do you want everyone to bring?" I almost said hot girls, knowing all it would take was for him to walk out the front door of his apartment and there'd be half a dozen hotties just waiting to catch his attention, but then I turned and watched Beth walk out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel that barely covered her and thought better of it.

"Dude I've got this, no worries," I smiled, knowing that alone would have the old worry wart grinding his teeth for the rest of the day.

"Pat if this is some kind of prank...?" he began to which I snorted and hit end on my phone. I followed Beth into the bedroom and watched her dig through her suitcase.

"You're going to have to unpack sometime," I told her, again. She didn't reply, just retrieved a pair of skimpy black lace boy shorts out of the suitcase and dropped her towel. I watched her shimmy into them. It was almost as good as watching her slip out of them. "So uh...you cook, right?" She turned, her high, firm tits staring me down and it took me a minute to force my gaze northwards.

"I can...why?" she asked slowly, eyeing me like I was about to ask her to put on a French maid's costume and ask her to serve appetizers...which wasn't such a bad thought.

"I've invited a few people over this afternoon, sort of a pre-season get together so I thought we could just grab some chips and stuff from the market." She rolled her eyes, which is what I'd been hoping for.

"These 'people'," she said, putting air quotations around the word, "are your teammates?" I nodded and she sighed again. "You can't feed them chips," she grumbled, turning back to pull a pair of black yoga pants from her suitcase and tossed a t-shirt onto the bed. "I wish you'd told me last night, this is fucking short notice so we'll have to go to a deli that can make some platters."

---

Now that I'd b put turning around and catching the next train back to Buffalo on the back burner I'd been suddenly forced into the position of having to play the perfect hostess, the smiling arm candy in a tight emerald green dress he'd insisted on buying right off of a mannequin in the window of a boutique I'd never, in a hundred years, have thought of going in. I felt like I couldn't breathe and if I kept smiling my jaw was going to ache more in the morning than if I'd spent the day on my knees in an airport bathroom.

His teammates started to arrive, lead by his tall, dark haired golly gee absolute opposite. Pat introduced the mile wide shoulders barely shoe horned into a crisp butter yellow dress shirt as Jon. From the minute he leaned forward and brushed his lips along my cheek I wanted to die, preferably beneath him, exhausted and sated.

Pat was the dime store version of Jon in every way. Pat was shorter, louder and Jon was quiet and spent most of the welcome back party acting like this was his place and making sure everyone's drinks stayed full, the canapés kept being circulated and every single wife or girlfriend knew that he thought each and every one of them was special, pretty, and that he was going to be their significant other's best friend forever.

"I can already see Pat's made a great choice," he said to me as he tipped a bottle of red into my almost empty glass. "You know he's never brought a girl back here before." I blinked at him and wondered how he could lie with a perfectly straight, yet adorable look on his face.

"He's had half the city in his bed. I've been here two days and I've found three separate earrings, two pairs of panties shoved into a drawer in the bathroom and this morning I found a file on his computer entitled 'tapped that'." He tried, really made a solid attempt to look shocked but it clearly wasn't in the captain of the Hawks to cover the disgust he felt on my behalf. When he failed, utterly, to keep his expression blank, he turned and glared at Pat, who, from across the room, just raised his glass and grinned. "On the other hand...he begged me to stay when I packed my shit." His tanned jaw unclenched and he nodded once.

"Well, there's that," he responded quietly.

"Yes, there's that," I agreed watching Pat toss another one of those basil toasts with the goat cheese and pine nuts into his mouth. I wasn't sure why I was telling Pat's friend everything, other than he seemed to care and I felt better getting it off of my chest.

"I knew something was up," Jon said suddenly, his gaze still trained on Pat who was talking and laughing with some of the other guys. "When he asked us here, I knew there was something...someone he wanted to show off."

 "Like a new toy," I said, only realizing that I was saying it out loud after the words tumbled from my mouth. Jon turned his dark espresso gaze towards me and bathed me in the light of his crooked, boyish smile.

"Us guys can be like that," he said and it sounded sincere, but I couldn't help thinking as he turned his gaze back towards his teammates that he would never do that, treat a woman like a prize won at the county fair. He put his hand on my arm and I looked down at his tanned skin overt top of my moonlight pale skin and wondered at how warm his skin was. "I'm sure he means it in the best possible way."

He gave my arm the lightest of squeezes, as if he knew exactly how to touch a woman, knew his own strength and I looked at his hand and then up at him and the thin line of his lips and wondered if his kiss would be as warm and as tender. His molten gaze held mine for a minute, a long, heated minute until I thought the only way the moment could possibly end was with him kissing me like his life depended on it, and then he was gone.

I watched him go, watched him wade into the crowd of guys and lay his hand on Pat's shoulder as if he was just greeting his friend but I saw Pat blink, saw his cocky grin fade at the edges. I wondered how many other people in this room knew those signs the way I'd begun to recognize them.

As much as I'd liked the warm, light touch of Jon's hand on my arm, I liked the way his fingers dug into Pat's shoulder more. I shouldn't have. It wasn't something a perfect hostess should enjoy but I did. I stood there and knew that he deserved it.

I stood there, mesmerized by the intensity in Jon's dark eyes and imagined that intensity directed at me. Just the thought of those dark chocolate orbs staring down at me while his massive body pinned me down made my pulse treble. There was something about a guy barely in control that made my breathless. It was the reason I always picked bad boys, guys that were trouble, guys that hurt me. It was also the reason that Pat's cocky grin had landed me in his bed and I didn't even really like him.

And now I'd felt the kind of spark, the kind of immediate animal attraction that makes your entire body tingle with electricity and I'm almost sure he'd felt it too but there wasn't a chance in hell he'd do anything about it thanks to the god damn Bro- Code that made any woman they're friends are involved with strictly off limit and the worst part was, I had no one to blame but myself.

---

I'd known he was up to something, but I hadn't expected a living, breathing woman to be at Pat's apartment. When I'd seen her, when I'd walked in the room and I'd seen her for the first time I thought she had to be some kind of model that he'd hired. She wasn't the skinny blonde with the fake tan and even faker tits that he usually went for. She looked like she'd walked out of a tooth paste commercial. Not so pretty that she was unapproachable, but not the kind of girl you'd walk by without doing a double take either.
When he told me that she'd moved in I wasn't the only one who thought he was fucking with us. Of all the guys on the team, Pat's the last guy I could see settling down but then I got pulled into her orbit, smelled the sharp tang of green apple in her hair and lavender on her skin.

Then I touched her and once I'd touched her I wanted to go on touching her.

"What are you really doing?" I asked and every face in the group turned to stare at me. I'd cut Sharpie off. I knew it. He'd been talking about something he'd done in the summer, diving or something. I hadn't been listening. I'd been thinking about her and the way that green dress look like it had been wrapped around her body like so many elastic bands. "With her...what do you think you're doing?" I asked, digging my fingers into his shoulder hard enough that I heard him suck his next breath in through clenched teeth.

"Fuck off," Pat hissed at and brushed my hand away. "Since when did you care who I dated?"

"You don't date Kaner," I pointed out, glancing over to where she was still standing, her still full wine glass in her hand watching us like she was waiting for something to detonate, like a cat trying to decide whether to attack or flee. "You do one night stands, maybe a week. Since when did you date?"

He got that look on his face that he always gets when he thinks he's done something he should get credit for, like he's just waiting to be patted on the back. I thought long and hard about pouring the beer in my hand over his head. It wouldn't have been the first time. We kind of have a love, hate relationship. Sometimes he's the best guy or at least he makes me laugh, lightens the mood when I get a little intense. Sometimes, like now, I want to punch him in the head.

"Well fuck, look at her," he suggested as he raised a glass to her. She looked flustered and turned away. He watched her go, tilting his head to get a better view of her ass in that tight fitting dress. "She's a fucking animal in the sack," he added with a self satisfied grin on his face that I was barely able to stop myself from slapping off his face.

"You got a point there Kaner," Sharpie said admiringly as he too watched her walk towards the kitchen. Until he'd been dragged to the alter recently Sharpie had been as big a man whore as Pat was always proud to say he was and just because he had a ball and chain didn't mean Sharpie didn't appreciate perusing the menu now and again.

"You see?" I sighed and shook my head. "If she's your main squeeze you don't talk about her like that." All the guys turned back to look at me, all wearing the same expression, as if I didn't know what he fuck I was talking about, or, I guess, that I didn't have the right to talk. Of course Pat took it a step further and made a big fucking show of looking around me, behind me and scratching his head.

"I don't see anyone, do you Stalby?" I aimed my most unhappy look at the big Swede who kind of chuckled and shrugged.

"No, I don't see anyone either," he agreed and then aimed a meaningful look towards the leggy brunette across the room who was deep in conversation with Sharpie's wife Abby.

"Well fuck you too Stalberg," I snapped and felt the aluminum beer can in my hand crumple. I needed air. I needed not to be here. "See you guys at practice. Eight, sharp and don't be late Kane," I added, staring down at the destroyed can in my hand.

"Whatever you say...dad," Kaner snorted. I thought he was lucky I didn't crush his head like I had the can because I wanted to. I put the can carefully on the nearest side table and ignored him, ignored the fact that they were watching me leave and probably making fun of me behind my back. Fans did that at games, it was something I was used to ignoring. That didn't mean that it didn't bug the hell out of me, only that I didn't rise to it.

"Going so soon?" Her voice was like running my hand along the softest velvet, like having a cat curl up on your lap and purr.

"Yeah," I responded more curtly than was strictly fair. I looked up into her startled gaze and felt sorry but I couldn't take it back. She was Kaner's girlfriend. She was sleeping in his bed. This was her party. "Sorry," I added more softly and then forced myself to look away, walk through the door and pull it closed behind me.

Chapter 5

totally frustrated by how the playoffs are going & I think it shows...

 I had never planned on staying in Buffalo. I’d kind of planned on backpacking in Europe or learning to surf in Australia. I should have stuck with those plans but he gave me an easy and free way out of the city. I agreed to try it, for a while, with a few conditions. 

After I‘d found out why his friends had all been sniggering behind their hands all summer, that Pat with the muscles and the all American frat boy grin was no co-ed, but was actually a big deal he thought I’d be impressed. Instead I was pissed. What I knew about hockey you could put in a thimble but that didn’t make me feel any happier about being lied to all summer. So there were going to be some ground rules, like I was going to get a job and pay rent. 

I had no idea why that made him laugh until we got to the windy city, into his big white Chevrolet SUV and into the traffic, until I had to look up, waaay up, at the glass and steel buildings that seemed to kiss the sky.  We drove along the river, past shops and restaurants and then into the underground parking of a skyscraper with a river view. 

The place I’d offered to pay rent on was a huge, swanky bachelor pad with all the toys, including a fucking brass pole at the end of his king sized bed. 

“Seriously?” I narrowed my gaze at him. He shrugged, a smirk on his face that, although I was now used to it, seemed to be begging to be slapped off his face. 

“Oh c’mon, it’s just for fun,” he replied seriously. When I didn’t smile he smirked. “It’s supposed to be a good workout?” With a roll of my eyes I opened the closet doors and found a walk in that was bigger than my entire apartment back home.

An enormous closet is every girl’s dream, except this one was filled with designer suits and a ball cap collection that I’d be willing to bet good money would rival that of any rapper’s. The shelves were stacked with t-shirts, jeans and shorts. Not that my meagre suitcase of clothes required much room, but there was hardly any to spare but the first ‘empty’ drawer I found wasn’t really empty. 

I pulled out a leopard print thong by my fingernails and turned, accusingly, towards him. 

“Must be Jessie’s,” he shrugged, as if that could be the only explanation. I tried to imagine his sister wearing the skimpy underthing. I couldn’t. On the other hand, I thought as I stood there with the tiny piece of fabric hanging from the end of my index finger, I couldn’t exactly rule out that possibility. He was close to his family, that much I’d been able to figure out as soon as I’d seen them together. There was no doubt his sisters would stay here when they came to visit and everyone has a wild side. “C’mon, drop your stuff, let’s go for dinner,” he suggested, one hand on the small of my back and the other reaching for the offending piece of fabric.

I let him take it from me and I let him lead me out of the room with the brass pole without starting another argument. There was a voice at the back of my head that I did my best to ignore that warned me that I was letting all female kind down by letting it go so easy but it wasn’t like I could just leave. I was in a strange, big city and he was the only person I knew. 

 _______________________________________________________________________

“Patrick, so good to see you again.” 

The blonde bombshell at the front of the restaurant practically fell over herself to greet me. I smiled and thanked her and tried to remember if I’d ever tapped that. I was pretty sure by the way she let her hand linger on my arm when she told us our server would be with us soon that I had. When she gave me a wink over the top of Beth’s head I was pretty sure I had. 

Had Beth noticed? I was pretty much certain she had because she picked up the menu right away and refused to look at me, or the waitress who came to the table and pretty much ignored Beth altogether. She sat on the corner of the table, turned her back on her and chewed on the end of her pen and grinned at me like she was picturing me standing at the end of the aisle. I never assume that girls are picturing me naked like they do when they look at Tazer.  Most of the time I think they’re just imagining my pay-check. Ninety percent of the time I don’t care, except Beth had never looked at me like that. Even now that she’d finally seen my place, I knew she still wouldn’t just automatically order the most expensive shit on the menu. 

“Do you think that’s sanitary, your panty hamster on the table?” I almost spit water right at her when she said it, but I managed not to, but only just. The waitress, in her tiny black skirt, narrowed her eyes at Beth who returned her gaze with equal hostility. With a roll of her eyes and a toss of obviously fake red curls the waitress slid off the table. 

“I guess you want something to eat?” Beth raised an eyebrow and closed her menu with a loud snapping sound.

“Not here. I think I’d rather eat somewhere people have manners. In fact, I think I saw a McDonalds down the street,” she added, pushing her chair back and folding the white linen napkin before dropping it onto the gold charger on the table. “Coming?” she asked, looking directly at me with a look in her eyes that made it crystal fucking clear that she was leaving, with or without me. 

“I guess we’re going,” I said, maybe too apologetically to the waitress who was now smirking at Beth. She turned to me and the smirk disappeared, replaced by one of those looks that Sharpie calls ‘the come hither’. Whatever the fuck that means.

“Oh, don’t go,” she purred, reaching out and laying her hand on my arm. They always do that when they want me. I don’t know much about chicks but that much I’ve figured out. 

For just a moment I hesitated, mesmerized by the way her white shirt gaped just a little across her chest so you could see just a hint of black lace bra underneath and milky white skin. I like women, all women. I don’t really have a preference for dark or light meat or blondes or brunettes. I just like them all. 

“Yeah, I guess we have to,” I told her, dragging my attention away from her chest long enough to pull my wallet out and dig out a five. “Sorry about that,” I told her, not that I meant it. She pouted in that whole bottom lip quivering sort of way and batted her eyelashes at me. 

“Don’t you even want my number?” she asked in this little girl Marilyn Monroe voice that girls think is sexy and I guess it can be, sometimes.

“No thanks,” I said and meant it and turned to go after Beth who was already heading out onto the street.

“Jesus why didn’t you just hump her right there on the table!” she hissed at me like a snake when I fell into step beside her. 

“I didn’t want to,” I told her, almost honestly. There had been a minute there when I’d pictured it but it went away pretty quickly. I grabbed Beth’s arm, maybe harder than I’d meant to, and spun her to face me. “All I can pretty much picture is fucking you right now.” That I meant and when she looked me full in the face she knew I meant it too. “This was a mistake. Let’s order in.” 

 ________________________________________________________________________

It felt dishonest, sneaky even, as I looked down at his boyish features that were turned towards the wall and I listened to his slow, even breaths to be sure he was sleeping deeply enough. I watched for a few minutes until I had satisfied myself that he was deep in dreamland before I slipped from beneath the covers and headed out on my scouting mission. 

Finding the leopard print panties had been one thing but whole theatrics with the waitress had been humiliating but worse than that, it had convinced me that I didn’t know nearly enough about Pat. Getting my Miss Marpole on, I headed for bathroom. 

I wasn’t surprised by the varied boxes of condoms I found there. After all, a young, red blooded male had a right to a healthy sex life....

So if I thought that why was I sleuthing in the middle of the night? What I wanted to find was evidence that he hadn’t lied about the thong, that his sisters spent enough time here to leave behind what every girl needs when she stays for the weekend; tampons, deodorant, hair product. 

The first drawer I opened had a first aid kit with only some band-aids missing and that stuff you spray on burns. The second drawer had some rolled up tensor bandages, about a dozen bottles of Axe body spray and about a dozen bars of unopened ivory soap. There wasn’t much under the sink, just the usual unopened rolls of toilet paper, some cleaning stuff and the plunger. 

The medicine cabinet had all kinds of expensive colognes, most of which seemed to be full which explained the body sprays, and the usual aspirin, Tylenol, Claritin and a bottle of Tums, mostly full. There was no Midol, or Pamprin or any of those essentially female pain killers. 

There were only two drawers left on the other side of the sink and the first was almost empty, like it was waiting to be filled with my make up bag, hair brushes and dozens of bottles of nail polish. But it wasn’t entirely empty. Shoved towards the back were two pairs of panties; one red lace, the other a white cotton bikini style. I didn’t have to do the sniff test to know they hadn’t been cleaned and put there; they were crusty and stuck together and I tossed them in the waste basket beside the toilet and slammed the drawer shut. 

Even telling myself that I wasn’t being strictly fair by being angry at him, that it wasn’t like I was some kind of virgin myself, but it pissed me off to know that he was that lackadaisical about these women that he’d just shove their things into the back of a drawer. It made me wonder when my things be dealt with in the same manner. It was disrespectful. 

It was tacky. 

Taking a deep breath I pulled open the second, and last, drawer. Again, it was nearly empty, but not completely so. There was a single hoop earring, the cheap and over sized kind that girls where to clubs. I ran my hand to the back of the drawer but couldn’t find its mate. 

These things didn’t belong to his sisters. If they had, the earring would have been returned, would even now be in some jewellery box with its matching twin. I tossed that earring in the trash with the panties and turned to the shower. I cranked the hot water on and stepped inside.

Who were these girls who had done the walk of shame from his apartment without their panties, with only one earring?  How could he have sent them out into the world like that? How could he be so crass?

I let the hot water run over me, scalding my skin and tried my best to loofah away the feeling of him grunting and groaning over me. I’d made a mistake coming here. I’d made a mistake thinking he was someone I could trust. I’d let his sisters warmth and his mother’s smile lull me into thinking he was someone other than that overly cocky college boy I’d known he was. 

Now I just had to figure out how to get myself out of here.

Chapter 4

man this hockey like every night doesn't give a girl a lot of free time so forgive the tardiness of this chapter

“I don’t think I heard you right. I thought you said he bought you a bed? Like a whole bed with mattresses and everything.” I rolled my eyes and continued to wipe down the table that had just been vacated by a group of patch wearing bikers. There was so much beer on the floor it was difficult not to leave my shoes behind as I pocketed the ten dollar bill they’d left beneath the emptied pitcher. 

“Well he’s mostly been staying at my place and neither of us has been getting much sleep....” A chorus of wolf whistles drowned out my explanation and I flipped the bird towards my work mates as moved to the next table and swept a handful of peanut shells onto the floor.  I could have argued the point but the enormous hickey on my neck that made me feel like I was back in grade ten made it impossible for me to. “I was fine with something from the thrift store but he ordered it from some la-dee-dah furniture store and had it delivered and everything,” I added, details which had impressed the hell out of me. Having always had hand me downs, a brand new mattress was a luxury beyond words to me, let alone the kind with a pillow top that had probably cost more than I’d made in six months. 

“So did you break it in yet?” Dylan asked, crudely miming taking a girl from behind and swatting her ass. I pressed my lips firmly together to stop myself from blurting out just how many times I’d shown my gratitude.

“Look at her face! She’s been riding him like she’s trying to break him in,” the other server, Hannah, called from across the bar. I turned to face the wall. I wasn’t used to being the one being teased and I felt flames licking at the inside of my cheeks. I did not, however, deny it. 

“You’re just jealous,” Dylan told Hannah, grabbing my wrist and holding up my arm as I slid my change box back onto the bar. “When’s the last time a guy you dated bought you something like this?” I looked up at the bangle hanging from my wrist, the bright white gold Tiffany bracelet with the star pendant catching the light. I’d been impressed with flowers but since then I’d gotten kind of used to being treated like I’d always imagined Cinderella must have felt like when she met her Prince Charming.

Not that I thought Pat was a keeper, despite all the lavish gifts and his flash car. I knew he was going back to whatever college he came from in September. That didn’t mean I couldn’t enjoy being treated like a princess for once in my life.

“I can’t think of the last time I wasn’t the one paying for dinner,” Hannah admitted with a sigh, dropping her rag and change box on the bar. “Of course I’ve never been lucky enough to catch a frat boy slumming it on the wrong side of the tracks,” she added with a wink. She didn’t have to let me know she was teasing, especially because I happened to agree with her. 

“So is he picking you up again tonight?” Dylan asked as he counted our change boxes into the float. 

“He is,” I confirmed, untying my apron and stashing it under the bar, exchanging it for my leather jacket and my purse. 

“Where’s he taking you?” Hannah asked, sipping on some brightly coloured drink through an equally brightly coloured crazy straw. 

“He said somewhere special but he said I didn’t have to dress up...like I could,” I added, inwardly wincing at the memory of the way the head waiter at Fiamma had looked down his nose at me and my summer dress. Pat hadn’t seemed to notice, or mind but that didn’t mean I hadn’t felt about two inches tall. 

“Speak of the devil,” Dylan glanced towards the doorway where the light had just caught his goldilocks blonde curls. My heart didn’t miss a beat but I smiled at him and the stupid popped collar on his golf shirt.

“Ready dollface?” he asked, leaning at the end of the bar and making no attempt to hide the fact that he was checking out my legs. I rolled my eyes.

“Ready,” I replied, sliding my arms into my jacket. There was no use thinking he’d help. He wouldn’t. It wouldn’t even occur to him. 

_____________________________________________________________________

“No...no, no. No way.” She shook her head and pressed her lips together in an unhappy line.

“Just tonight...there’s kind of a...a thing,” I tried to explain. My parents always did this the night I left. They’d been doing it for years and my mother would have had a stroke if I’d missed it but I had my reasons for insisting on Beth being my plus one. 

“A thing?” she repeated and glanced up at the house. There was a ton of cars on the street and in the driveway. I could hear the music and raised voices from here. 

“Yeah, a casual thing,” I insisted, reaching for her hand across the vehicle. We didn’t hold hands, much anyway, so she glanced down at mine as it covered hers’ as if it was something foreign, strange. 

“Why do I feel like I’m being railroaded?” she asked. I shrugged. I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant by that but her tone was accusatory enough that I didn’t figure I needed to. She didn’t want to go up the driveway and I hadn’t told her the truth about the party or me so, if what it was wasn’t good then she was probably right anyway.

“C’mon, it’ll be fun.” She rolled her eyes and immediately reminded me of the last time I’d said those words to Tazer the last time we went to a strip club and I talked him into going into the champagne room. I’ve never seen a guy’s face get that red before...or since come to think of it. 

She held my hand voluntarily all the way into the backyard, mostly out of fear I’m guessing, but the minute my sisters jumped me she let my hand go like I’d burned her and her wide kitten eyes got narrow...fast. 

“Hi I’m Jessie, you must be Beth!” My middle sister hugged her like she was a long lost relative and then stepped aside and let Rickie and Jacquie do the same. Beth stood there like a totem pole, staring daggers at me. I smiled back. They’re my sisters. It had to happen sometime, and besides, I knew there was worse to come. 

“We thought you’d ditched us,” my youngest sister, Jacquie gave me a dark look, her hands on her hips, trying to give me the whole tough mom thing. I shrugged again. 

“I told you, I had to pick up Beth from work,” I explained, an explanation that was clearly not good enough as all three pairs of my sister’s eyes continued to gaze sternly at me. “Betts works at a...drinking establishment that’s open pretty late,” I added, reaching for Beth’s hand, which she quickly stuffed into the pocket of her jacket. She was pissed. It was plain as day on her face. 

“Establishment? Have you been reading the dictionary again Patty?” Rickie smirked and then wrapped her arms around me. “Go say hi to mom, she’s been freaking that you’re not here,” she added in a whisper in my ear. 

“Yeah, just gonna grab a beer,” I promised and gave my oldest sister and extra squeeze. Erica wants to marry Tazer. I’ve told her that’s gonna happen...over my dead body. I do not want to be related to Captain Boring Mcyawnypants. 

Beth followed me up the stairs of the deck but she looked at every single person there as if they were a potential assassin. I looked around at my old hockey buddies, the guys from the block and a few guys form school and wondered what she had to be worried about. It was a sea of t-shirts, shorts and jeans. Her plain black t-shirt, short denim skirt and high top runners fit right in, at least they did to me. 

“Patty! There you are.” I grinned as my mother emerged from the house with a big bowl of something covered in cling film and beamed at her only son as if I’d just come back from the dead. “Pat can you put this on the table?” she handed the bowl off to my dad without even looking to see if he’d grabbed it before she let go, and then practically ran across the deck and wrapped me up in a bear hug like I had just come back for the summer, not like I’d eaten a stack of her homemade waffles that morning. 

“Hey Ma,” I hugged her back, the scent of her distinctive mom perfume filling my head. I’d miss that smell during the season, so I sucked it into my lungs now like I was taking my dying breath. “I...brought someone for you to meet,” I added as I untangled myself from her. When I turned around Beth was trying to beat a retreat towards the stairs but my reflexes and speed are not that bad off the ice either and I managed to grab her and pull her back. “Mom, this is Beth.” I didn’t need to say more. My mom should work for the FBI. You can’t hide anything from her. Not like I try, but two consecutive nights away from home and I had to tell her. I don’t know what she’d do if I didn’t tell her, but I don’t want to find out either.

“Oh Beth darling, it’s so nice to finally meet you. Patty here has been telling us all about you.” Beth shot me a look that could have withered a daisy but she let my mom hug her too. My family are huggers. 

“Uh...yeah, I’d say the same but uh...?” She glared at me over my mother’s shoulder and I realized she was wracking her brain for my mother’s name, which I totally hadn’t told her. 

“Donna,” I told her and she gave me one of those ‘you’ll pay for this later’ purses of her lips. I kept grinning. I didn’t mind being tied to the bed, even if she thought it was some kind of punishment. 

“Yeah, Donna...Pat says you’re a heck of a cook,” she added, pulling maybe the only detail I’d probably shared about my mom out of her ass. 

“Well you need some fattening up,” my mother cooed, holding her hands at Beth’s trim waist. I liked her hourglass figure, all tits and ass. Beth blinked at my mom, and then smiled. 

“Well, I could definitely eat,” she agreed and followed my mom over to the overflowing table beside the barbeque.

________________________________________________________________

“There’s something I want to show you.” The crowd had thinned out and the music turned down when Pat took my hand and lead me into the basement of his family home. I kept the palm of my hand against the wall as he lead me down a narrow staircase with no railing. Every so often my hand bumped against the sharp corner of a picture frame or ran over the soft felt of a pennant. “One more step,” he warned and took both of my hands, steadying me as I took that one last step into the pitch dark. “Three steps to the left,” he instructed as he let go of my hands, which I then put out in front of me like a zombie as I made my way, blindly, into the darkness. 

I’d taken the last step and stood, waiting for him to do something childish, or, alternatively, to run his hands over my skin and press his lips to the back of my neck where it would make me shudder but instead I was suddenly blinded by a brilliant, white flickering light that buzzed above my head. I blinked, my eyes adjusting slowly to the sudden brightness. 

I wanted to ask if someone had died as I slowly spun and took in all of the medals, trophies, and plaques that littered the shelves around the room. The entire room looked like a shrine. 

It wasn’t until I got closer, until I peered at some of the photographs mixed in with the trophies that I recognized the curly golden locks and elfin smile of the winner of most of the awards. 

Not all of the pictures were of a boy though. There were some that were newer, much more recent. 

“This is you?” I asked, pointing at a picture that looked like it was from a magazine. It wasn’t really necessary to ask, I knew his face, I’d studied it enough times, trying to feel something I didn’t feel. 

“Yeah,” he grinned proudly, puffing out his chest as he looked over my shoulder at the silver medal with the Olympic logo etched into it beside the picture of a team that did not look happy to have won it. I stared at the picture for a moment longer and then turned and shoved him backwards, both hands pressed firmly to the middle of his chest. 

“You fucking little asshole.” He didn’t so much as stumble and I hardly moved him an inch. It wasn’t nearly satisfying enough but a second shove had no more impact than the first.

“I can explain,” he began, wearing an ‘I’ve got something over on you’ grin that I wanted, right at that moment, to claw off of his face. 

“Explain that you’re that little shit that beat the fuck out of a cabbie, or that you’re kind of a big deal and you’ve made me out to be a complete fucking idiot because I didn’t know?” I gathered my arms into myself and turned away from him. I did feel ridiculous and I didn’t take kindly to being made a fool of. My face was burning for what seemed like the thousandth time that night and not least because I had been starting to like him. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, not sounding the least bit remorseful, “but I kinda liked that you didn’t know who I was, it was nice for a change,” he added, leaning his chin into my shoulder and making kicked puppy noises. I rocked my shoulder so he had to reset and took a step forward so that he couldn’t. 

“You introduced me to your family and I didn’t even know who you were,” I added through my teeth. A summer barbeque just for friends and family...I shook my head and stared at the image of in a pair of ridiculous shades leaning drunkenly against the Stanley Cup with nearly naked woman with enormous breasts draped all over him. He was giving a “thumbs up” to the camera. I wanted to break his thumb off with my teeth. 

“They loved you, if it helps,” he whispered in my ear, still sounding proud of himself, as if he had nothing to actually feel sorry for. 

“They were nice to me because they’re polite and I don’t know how you came from those nice people you...you jerk,” I snapped and turned to shove him away. I was more successful that time, making him stumble, but he righted himself immediately, the way that a long time drunk will as they fall off a curb but manage, somehow and quite miraculously, not to fall flat on their face.

“Well, just so you know, I haven’t brought a girl home in, well, a long time, so my mom is already planning the wedding” he blurted out. I stared at him, open mouthed, all the nasty names I’d just been thinking up and preparing to call him were very suddenly and completely erased from my mind. “C’mon Beth, don’t look at me like that. I want you to move back to Chicago with me. Whaddya say?”