Him

by Sarina Bowen

  Her grin turns into a giggle. “He sounds like fun.”

  “He was. And then he wasn’t.”

  “What happened?”

  I fold my hands behind my head, trying to appear casual despite the wave of discomfort sliding down my spine. “I don’t know. We were always competitive. Our last summer he challenged me to a contest...” I stop, because I never tell Holly the really personal stuff. “I don’t know what happened, exactly. He just cut off contact with me after that summer. He stopped responding to my texts. He just…fired me.”

  She kisses my neck. “Sounds like you’re still mad.”

  “I am,” I surprise myself by saying.

  If you’d asked me yesterday whether there was anything in my past that bothered me, I would have said no. But now that Ryan Wesley has parked his nutty ass back in my consciousness, I’m all churned up again. Goddamn him. I really don’t need this going into the toughest two games of my life.

  “And now you have to play him,” Holly muses. “It’s a lot of pressure.” She’s rubbing my hip now. I’m pretty sure she has some plans for the two of us involving a different kind of “pressure.” She’s looking for round two, but I don’t have the time.

  Catching her hand in mine, I give it a quick kiss. “Gotta get up. Sorry, babe. We’re watching tape in twenty minutes.” I swing my legs over the side of the bed and turn for an eyeful of Holly’s curves. My friend-with-benefits is sexy as hell, and my dick gives a little twitch of gratitude for the fun we already had.

  “Shame,” Holly says, rolling onto her back invitingly. “I don’t have class until this afternoon.” She runs her hands up her flat stomach and onto her tits. With her eyes locked on me, she gives her nipples a flick then licks her lips.

  My dick does not fail to notice.

  “You are evil and I hate you.” I grab my boxers off the floor and look away before I get all boned up again.

  She giggles. “I don’t like you at all, either.”

  “Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that.” But then I clamp my lips together. Six weeks before graduation, it’s unwise to start even a playful conversation about how much Holly and I like each other. We’re strictly casual, but lately she’s been making noises about how much she’ll miss me next year.

  According to Holly, it’s only forty-three miles from Detroit, where I’ll be next year, to Ann Arbor, where she’ll be in med school. If she starts wondering aloud whether there are any apartments for rent halfway between those cities, I don’t know what I’m going to say.

  Yep. Not looking forward to that conversation.

  Sixty seconds later I’m dressed and heading for the door. “Are you cool letting yourself out?”

  “Yeah, it’s fine.” Her laughter stops me before I can turn the knob. “Not so fast, stud.”

  Holly gets up to kiss me goodbye, and I make myself stand still for a second and return it.

  “Later,” I whisper. It’s my standard goodbye. Today, though, I find myself wondering if there are other words she’s waiting to hear.

  But when the door closes on her, my head is somewhere else already. I sling my backpack over one shoulder and slip out into a misty April morning. Five days from now I’ll be on the east coast, trying to help my team clinch the national championship. Man, the Frozen Four is such a rush—I’ve been once before. It was two years ago, and I was the backup goalie instead of the starter.

  I didn’t play, and we didn’t win. I like to think those two things are related.

  This time it’ll be different. I’ll be waiting between the pipes, the last line of defense between the other team’s offense and the trophy. That’s enough pressure to freak out even the chillest goalie in college sports. But the fact that the other team’s star center is my ex-best friend who abruptly stopped talking to me?

  That is whack.

  I meet a handful of my teammates on the sidewalk as we all approach the rink. They’re laughing about somebody’s antics on the bus last night, joking and shoving each other through the glass doors and into the gleaming hallway.

  Rainier did a massive rink renovation a few years ago. It’s like a temple to hockey, with conference pennants and team photographs lining the walls. And that’s just the public area. We pause in front of a locked door so that Terry, a junior forward, can swipe his ID past the laser eye. The light flashes green and we push through to the opulent training area.

  I haven’t said a word to anyone yet, but I’ve never been as much of a smack-talker as the rest of them, so nobody calls me on it.

  In the team kitchen, I pour myself a cup of coffee and grab a blueberry muffin off the tray. This place makes me feel like a spoiled brat, but it’s useful when I’ve overslept.

  Ten minutes later we’re watching tape in the team video room, listening to Coach Wallace’s analysis. He’s at the podium wearing a little mic that amplifies his voice all the way to the back row. But I can’t hear him anyway. I’m too busy watching Ryan Wesley dart across the ice. I see clip after clip of Wes passing through the line of defense like smoke, creating scoring opportunities out of nothing but ice shavings and quick wits.

  “The number two offensive scorer in the nation, the kid has balls of steel,” our coach admits grudgingly. “And enough foot speed to make his opponents look like my ninety-seven-year-old granny.”

  Shot after unlikely shot flies into the net. Half the time the on-screen Wes doesn’t even have the good manners to look surprised. He just glides onward with the grace and ease of someone who’d practically been born with steel blades under his feet.

  “Like us, Northern Mass woulda made it to the finals last year, but they were hampered by injuries in the post-season,” Coach says. “They’re the team to beat…”

  The footage is mesmerizing. I’d first seen Wes skate the summer after seventh grade. At thirteen we all thought we were hot shit just for attending Elites, the world-class hockey training camp in Lake Placid, New York. Hear us roar—we were the best of the ragtag players on our club teams back home. We were the kids to beat during pond-hockey pick-up games.

  We were mostly ridiculous.

  But even my punk-ass junior-high self could see that Wes was different. I was a little in awe of him from the first day of my first summer at Elites. Well, at least until I discovered what a cocky bastard he was. After that, I hated on him for a bit, but being assigned as roommates made it difficult to keep up my hatred.

  Six summers in a row, the best hockey I played was against the sharp-eyed, steel-wristed Ryan Wesley. I spent my days trying to keep up with his quick reflexes and his flying-saucer slapshots.

  When practice was over, he was even more of a challenge. Want to race to the top of the climbing wall? Ask Wes. Need a partner in crime to help you break into the camp freezer after hours? Wes is your man.

  The town of Lake Placid probably heaved a sigh of relief each August when camp was through. Everyone could finally go back to living normal lives that didn’t include seeing Wes’s bare ass in the lake every morning for his daily skinny-dipping sesh.

  Ladies and gentlemen: Ryan Wesley.

  Coach drones on at the front of the room while Wes and his teammates do their magic on-screen. The most fun I ever had at a rink was with him. Not that he never pissed me off. He did that hourly. But I can honestly look back on his challenges and taunts and see he’d made me a better player.

  Except for the last challenge he issued. I never should have accepted that one.

  “Last day,” he’d taunted me, skating backward faster than most of us could skate forward. “You’re still afraid to take me on in another shootout, huh? Still whimpering over the last one.”

  “Bullshit.” I wasn’t afraid to lose to Wes. People usually did. But it was hard to shut out a shootout, and I already owed Wes a six-pack of beer. Trouble was, my bank account was drained. As the last of six kids, sending me to this fancy camp was all my parents could do for me. My lawn-mowing money had already been spent on ice cream and contraband.
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  If I lost a bet, I couldn’t repay.

  Wes skated a backward circle around me so fast that it reminded me of the Tasmanian Devil. “Not for beer,” he said, reading my thoughts. “My flask is full of Jack, thanks to the beating I gave Cooper yesterday. So the prize can be something different.” He let out an evil laugh.

  “Like what?” Knowing Wes, it would involve some sort of public display of ridiculousness. Loser sings the national anthem while hanging brain on the town dock. Or something.

  I set up a row of pucks and prepared to shoot them. Whack, went the first one, just missing Wes as he went by in a blur. I set up my next shot.

  “Loser gives the winner a blowjob,” he said just as I swung.

  I missed the fucking puck. Actually missed it.

  Wes cackled, skidding to a stop.

  Jesus Christ, the guy was good at fucking with my head. “You’re hysterical.”

  He stood there breathing hard from all that fast skating. “Think you can’t win? Shouldn’t matter what the prize is if you’re confident.”

  My back felt sweaty all of a sudden. He had me in an impossible position, and he knew it. If I refused the challenge, he won. Yet if I accepted, he had me rattled before the first puck even flew my way.

  I’d stood there like a moron, unsure what to do. “You and your mind games,” I muttered.

  “Oh, Canning,” Wes had chuckled. “Hockey is ninety percent mind games. I’ve been trying to teach you that for six years.”

  “Fine,” I’d said through clenched teeth. “You’re on.”

  He’d hooted through his facemask. “You look terrified already. This is gonna be rich.”

  He’s just fucking with you, I’d told myself. I could win a shootout. Then I’d turn the mind games back on him—I’d refuse the prize, of course. But then I could hold the fact that he owed me a BJ over his head. For years. It was as if a cartoon light bulb went off over my head. Two could do mind games. Why had I never realized this before?

  I’d lined up one more puck and shot it with great force right past Wes’s arrogant smile. “This is going to be a piece of cake,” I said. “How about we have this shootout, wherein I kick your ass, right after lunch? Before the end-of-camp scrimmage?”

  For the briefest moment his confidence slipped. I’m sure I saw it—the sudden flash of holy shit. “Perfect,” he said eventually.

  “’Kay.” I scooped up the last puck off the ice and flipped it in my glove. Then I skated away whistling, as if I didn’t have a care in the world.

  That had been the last day of our friendship.

  And I never saw it coming.

  At the front of the room, a new reel is playing, this one highlighting North Dakota’s offensive strategy. Coach is no longer thinking about Ryan Wesley.

  But I am.

  3

  Wes

  Boston’s skyline comes into view from my bus window well before I’m ready.

  It’s a mere ninety minutes from Northern Mass to TD Garden. The Frozen Four is always played at a neutral rink, but if anyone has a home-ice advantage this year, it’s me. I’m from Boston, so playing in the Bruins’ arena is my childhood fantasy come to life.

  Apparently it’s my jackwad of a father’s fantasy, too. Not only is he pumped up to invite all his asshole colleagues to my game, he can look like a hero on the cheap. He only has to spring for a limo, not a charter flight.

  “You know what I like best about this plan?” Cassel asks from the seat next to me as he flips through the itinerary our team manager passed out.

  “That this event is like the puck bunny world headquarters?”

  He snorts. “Okay, sure. But I was just going to say that they’re putting us up at a nice hotel, not some sleazepit off the interstate.”

  “True.” Although the hotel, whatever it is, won’t be nearly as grand as my family’s Beacon Hill mansion a few miles away. I’d never say that, though. I’m not a snob, because I know opulence doesn’t stamp out ignorance and unhappiness. Just ask my family.

  We spend the next half hour snarled in traffic, because that’s just how it is in Boston. So it’s almost five o’clock by the time we’re finally unloading the bus.

  “The gear stays!” our student manager shouts. “Take only your luggage!”

  “We don’t have to schlep our gear?” Cassel yelps. “Baby, I’ve arrived. Get used to this treatment, Wes.” He elbows me. “Next year in Toronto you’ll probably have a personal assistant to carry your stick around for you.”

  It feels superstitious to talk about my NHL contract before the Frozen Four. So I change the subject. “That’s awesome, dude. I love it when another guy holds my stick.”

  “Teed that one up for you, didn’t I?” he asks as we grab our duffels off the sidewalk where the red-faced driver has tossed them.

  “Sure did.” I let Cassel enter the revolving door first just so I can grab the door by its handle and trap him inside.

  Stuck now, Cassel twists around to give me the finger. When I don’t let go, he turns away and reaches for his belt buckle, setting up to moon me and whatever slice of Boston happens to be walking past the hotel on a windy April Friday.

  I let up on the door and give it a shove, smacking him in the not-yet-bare ass.

  Ah, hockey players. You really can’t take us anywhere.

  Then we’re in the shiny lobby. “How does the bar look?” I ask.

  “Open,” Cassel answers. “That’s really all that matters.”

  “Truth.”

  We find an out-of-the-way place to stand while we wait for the team manager to sort out the hotel rooms. But it’s going to be a while. The lobby is busy and getting busier. Our end of the room has a distinctly green-and-white color scheme, with our Northern Mass jackets everywhere.

  But on the other end of the room another color catches my eye. It’s orange. Specifically, the orange and black of another team’s jackets. They’re filing through the same doors we just entered, shoving each other and generally acting like testosterone hounds. It’s all very familiar.

  And then the room tilts a little as my gaze locks onto a sandy-blond head. I only need the oblique view I’ve got to recognize the shape of his smile.

  Fuck me. Jamie Canning is staying at this hotel.

  My entire body tenses as I wait for him to turn his head. To look right at me. But he doesn’t. He’s too engrossed in conversation with one of his teammates, laughing at something the guy has just said.

  He used to laugh with me that way. I haven’t forgotten the sound of Jamie’s laughter. Deep and husky, melodic in a carefree kind of way. Nothing ever kept Jamie Canning down. He was the epitome of go-with-the-flow, probably because of his laidback California upbringing.

  I hadn’t realized just how much I’ve missed him until this very moment.

  Go talk to him.

  The voice in my head is persistent, but I silence it by wrenching my gaze off Canning. With the colossal amount of guilt lodged in my chest, it’s now become even more evident that I need to apologize to my old friend.

  But right this second I’m not ready. Not here, with all these people around.

  “It’s fucking Grand Central Station in here,” Cassel mutters.

  “Dude. There’s an errand I need to run. Come with me?” I form this idea on the fly, but it’s a good one.

  “Sure?”

  “Back door,” I say, nudging him toward a nearby exit.

  Outside, I realize how close we are to Faneuil Hall and all the touristy crap they sell there. Perfect. “C’mon.” I give Cassel a tug toward the first row of stores.

  “Forgot your toothbrush?”

  “Nah. I gotta buy a gift.”

  “For who?” Cassel hefts his duffel higher on his shoulder.

  I hesitate. I’ve always kept my memories of Canning to myself. Because they’re mine. For six weeks every summer, he was mine.

  “A friend,” I finally admit. “One of the Rainier players.”

&nb
sp; “A friend.” Cassel’s chuckle is low and dirty. “Trying to work out how to get laid after tomorrow’s game? What kind of store are you taking me to?”

  Fucking Cassel. I should have left him in the crowded lobby. “Dude. It’s not like that.” Even if I wish it were. “This guy—Canning, their goalie—we used to be tight.” I reluctantly add, “Until I wrecked it by being an ass.”

  “You? Who woulda guessed.”

  “I know, right?”

  I scan the row of storefronts. They’re full of the Boston tourist crap that is usually invisible to me: toy lobsters, Bruins pennants, Freedom Trail T-shirts. Something here would definitely fit the bill for what I have in mind.

  “C’mon.” I wave Cassel into the cheesiest store and start scanning the shelves. Everything is garish as hell. I pick up a bobblehead doll of Paul Revere and then put it down.

  “These are funny,” Cassel says. He’s holding a box of Red Sox condoms.

  I laugh before I think better of the idea. “True. But that’s not what I’m looking for.” Whatever I choose, it cannot have anything to do with sex. We used to send each other all sorts of gag gifts—the dirtier the better.

  But not this time.

  “May I help you?” The sales girl is dressed in colonial garb, complete with the bosom-squishing flouncy dress.

  “Sure you can, doll.” I lean against the counter in the cockiest way possible, and her eyes open a little wider. “You got anything with kittens on it?”

  “Kittens?” Cassel chokes back a laugh. “What the hell for?”

  “His team is the tigers.” Duh.

  “Sure!” Miss Betsy Ross perks up at the request, probably because this job is boring as fuck. “One sec.”

  “What’s the deal?” Cassel tosses the condoms down onto a table. “You never buy me prezzies.”

  “Canning and I were summer camp friends. Tight, but we only saw each other for six weeks a year.” A very intense six weeks. “You have friends like that?”

  Cassel shakes his head.

  “Me neither. Not before, and not since. But we didn’t speak during the year. We texted, and we sent the box.”