With the party easing towards its conclusion, I wound up standing with the dates. There was Amy, our new captain Trevi’s girlfriend, and also our goalie Orsen’s date, whose name I had not caught.
“Who are you here with?” Orsen’s new little friend asked me.
It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten that question. I opened my mouth to explain that I wasn’t with anyone, but catty Amy beat me to the punch. “She’s here with everyone,” she snickered.
Lovely. Amy was one of the girlfriends who’d never liked me. “I’m the team manager,” I explained. I wouldn’t dignify Amy’s cattiness by getting irritated.
“Oh,” the newcomer said. “That must be exciting.”
“I hear that it is,” Amy practically hissed.
I tried not to roll my eyes. A lot of the girlfriends didn’t know what to do with me. They didn’t like how often I saw their boyfriends naked. They didn’t like wondering if I’d ever been naked with their boyfriends. The price of being me was that my reputation often preceded me. As a matter of fact I had hooked up with Trevi once, before he’d met Amy. But it was so long ago I didn’t even remember the details.
The Amys of the world pissed me off sometimes. But tonight I kept my cool, because you can’t let the mean girls win. “It’s a great job. The bench is the best seat in the house for the games,” I said. If anything should bother the girlfriends, it was my game-day privileges. Because hockey was awesome and they were missing out.
A few feet away, Trevi and Orsen were deep into an argument about the Bruins’ prospects this year. “You can’t say that there’s a hole in their lineup,” Orsen argued.
“You’re right.” Trevi chuckled. “It’s more like a gaping void.”
“Boys,” I jumped in. “The gaping void is here.” I held up my empty beer bottle. “Who wants another?”
“I’ll get ’em,” Orsen said. “Coach’ll probably kick us out soon, anyway. It’s almost ten.” He strode off toward the beer table.
“What’s shakin’ Bella?” Trevi asked, draining his beer in preparation for the next round.
“The usual. Trying to get the freshmen settled in. Trying to pick a topic for my senior thesis. How about you? Is it true that the Blackhawks are taking a look at you?”
Trevi grinned. “They’re lookin’. Doesn’t mean they’ll kneel down and pop the question.”
“I’ve got a good feeling about it,” I told him with a friendly squeeze of his arm. Amy’s face contorted, as if she’d swallowed something bitter. But I was excited about his prospects whether she liked it or not. There were several scouts circling the team. My guys had made a lot of headlines last year, finishing the season in the number-two slot in the country. The NHL was definitely going to be snapping up some of them.
See? Everyone had a plan but me. Or, if not a plan, at least they had a dream.
“Hey guys!”
I turned my head to see one of my former dreams walking into Coach’s yard. Michael Graham was the second guy I had ever really fallen for. And — because I had a perfect record for romantic disaster — the second one to break my heart.
“We missed you at practice today,” Trevi said, speaking aloud what I had been thinking. “Don’t know why you had to take up sports writing when I could use you on the blue line.”
My favorite ex-defenseman just grinned. “I had a blast today.”
“Doing what?” I stood on tiptoe to give him a kiss on the cheek, careful not to lean in too far. I didn’t want to get trapped in a memory. The feel of his skin against mine was a craving I’d struggled to overcome.
He gave my back a friendly pat before continuing. “I spent four hours on the river with the crew team. I thought I was just there to watch, but one of the heavyweights had a knee that was bothering him. So the captain said, ‘Dude, get in here. We’ll show you what crew is all about.’” Chuckling, Graham grabbed his stomach. “Fuck. Rowing is hard. My abs will never be the same.”
Not too long ago I would have offered to kiss it and make it better. Unfortunately, somebody else had that honor these days. I plastered a smile on my face. But my heart gave a little swerve, because the guy just looked so freaking happy.
Gone was the broody Graham I used to love. He’d been replaced by this lighthearted creature who was almost unrecognizable to me but for the familiar bulky muscles and his icy blue eyes. The Graham I’d known hadn’t smiled at everything that moved. He was dark and a little jaded, like me. But these days he was practically glowing.