Him

by Sarina Bowen

  I glance at the glass in Wes’s hand. He’s drinking something fizzy—Coke, from the looks of it. No, root beer. He’d always preferred root beer. And obviously his coach gave him the same no-drinking spiel.

  Wes raises his hand in the air, and the waitress abruptly turns in our direction. He points at his glass and she nods as if commanded by God to do his bidding. Wes flashes her a smile, his favorite currency for favors. And I notice another flash of metal.

  His tongue is pierced. That’s new, too.

  Annnd now I’m thinking about his tongue. Jesus fuck. And the last four years of silence between us suddenly make a bit more sense. Maybe there are drunken antics capable of wrecking a friendship.

  Or maybe that’s crap, and if we’d stayed friends we could have gotten past an hour’s worth of stupidity a long time ago.

  Meanwhile, it’s really too warm in this bar. If that waitress brings me a root beer, I’m going to be tempted to pour it all over myself. And the silence between my ex-friend and I is growing longer by the second.

  “Crowded,” I manage. Just barely.

  “Yeah. Need a pull?” He offers me his glass.

  I take a greedy gulp and our eyes meet over the rim. His confidence has slipped a millimeter or two. His gaze asks a question. Are we going to make it through the next half hour?

  Swallowing, I make a decision. “Shame the Bruins got punished by the Ducks last month.”

  I see the flash of arrogance return at lightning speed. “That was a fluke. And a terrible call in the third. Your wing tripped over his own duck feet.”

  “With a little help from your D-man.”

  “Oh, fuck that. Twenty bucks says the Ducks don’t make it past the first round this year.”

  “Twenty is all you’re willing to bet?” I gasp. “Sounds like you’re afraid. Twenty and a YouTube video proclaiming my greatness.”

  “Done, but when you lose, you make that video in a Bruins T-shirt.”

  “Sure.” I shrug. And just like that, the night gets easier.

  The waitress appears with two glasses of root beer and a hungry smile for Wes. He slips her a twenty. “Thanks, doll.”

  “Let me know if you need anything,” she says, overselling it by a shade. Christ. Hockey players don’t have a lot of trouble getting laid, but my old friend obviously enjoys his pick of the litter. She’s hot, too. Great rack and a sweet smile.

  He doesn’t even spare a glance at her perfect ass as she sashays away.

  After she disappears, Wes opens his arms and grins at the group of hockey players standing around him. “Shit, we’re just a bunch of pussies, aren’t we? Root beer and ginger ale on a Friday night. Someone call the cops. We need a game of darts or something.”

  “Table hockey!” someone calls out. “Saw it in the game room.”

  “Cassel!” Wes thumps the guy standing next to him. “Who won our last game, anyway?”

  “You did, you prick. Because you cheated during the shootout.”

  “Who, me?”

  Everyone laughs. But my mind snags on “shootout.”

  Of course it does.

  5

  Wes

  The college sprang for an executive suite at TD Garden, a fancy-ass private box with a gleaming floor-to-ceiling window that overlooks the arena below. The celebratory bottles of Dom that had been delivered, however, were courtesy of my shithead father. The prick is riding the high of our win as if it had been him out on the ice this afternoon—I even heard him bragging to one of his buddies that he was the one who taught me that triple-deke move I used to score the winning goal in the third period.

  Bullshit. The old man hadn’t taught me a damn thing. From the moment I was able to hold a hockey stick, he threw money at coaches and trainers and anyone else who could groom his only son into a superstar. The only credit I’m willing to give him is that he’s really fucking good at signing his name on a check.

  Canning’s team is on the ice now, facing the same pressure we did earlier. Coach has allowed us each one glass of champagne. We’re playing in the finals tomorrow night, and he wants us sharp. He doesn’t have to worry about me, though. I’m sipping on a root beer. Not just as a fuck-you to my dad, but because my stomach is in knots as I watch the game, and alcohol will only make it worse.

  I want Rainier to win.

  I want to face Canning in the finals.

  I want to pretend I still don’t have feelings for the guy.

  I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with two out of three. Because I can’t pretend I’m not still into him. Seeing him again last night made that impossible.

  Fuck, he’d looked good. Really good. All golden-boy California hotness, big and blond and sexy as fuck. With those soulful brown eyes—surprising on a blond guy. It’s an understated sexiness, though. Jamie Canning never flaunted his looks in all the time I’d known him. Sometimes I think he’s not even aware of how goddamn attractive he is.

  “Oooooh shit,” one of the seniors crows as a Rainier player delivers what might be the hit of the week.

  It’s a clean check, but it makes the opposing player bounce off the boards like a rubber ball and sprawl face-first on the ice.

  Rainier is in it to win it. They’re playing aggressively, all offense, all the time. I don’t think Yale has taken more than a dozen shots on goal, and it’s already well into the third. Canning stopped all but one, and the one he let in was a total fluke of a shot, smacking off the pipe to provide Yale with a rebound the center slapped right back in. I could practically hear the hiss of the puck as it whizzed past Canning’s glove, just a nanosecond too fast for him to swallow it up.

  The score’s tied now. 1-1, with five minutes to go. I find myself holding my breath, willing Rainier’s forwards to make something happen.

  “Your man Canning is rock steady,” Cassel tells me, taking a dainty sip of his champagne like he’s the fucking Queen of England.

  “Cool under pressure,” I agree, my gaze glued to the rink. Yale’s left wing just flicked a lazy wrist shot that Canning easily stops, his body language almost bored as he keeps possession of the puck before passing it to one of his wings.

  The Rainier players tear past the blue line, going on the attack.

  But my mind is still on the last goal attempt, the way Canning faced off with the Yale player. I can’t even count how many times I was in that exact position, flying toward my buddy, slapping bullets at him.

  Except the last time we faced off, I was the one in the net. The last barrier standing between Jamie Canning and a blowjob.

  I like to think I didn’t let him win on purpose. I’m a competitor, always have been. Didn’t matter how much I wanted Canning’s dick in my mouth. Didn’t matter that if I won, I knew I’d have to let him back out of the bet. I’d defended that net with everything I had. Maybe?

  Because when that puck flew past me, I can’t deny a part of me had been thrilled.

  “With that said, I wouldn’t bawl my eyes out if they lose,” Cassel says. He turns to grin at me. “I know he’s your BFF and all, but I’d feel better going up against Yale’s goalie than cool cucumber down there.”

  Cassel’s right. Canning’s the bigger threat. Those weaknesses he’d had back in the day? Gone. He’s a fucking rock star now. No wonder he got the starting job back.

  Even so, I don’t want him to lose. I want to see him in the finals. I want to see him, period. And I’ve experienced crushing defeat before—if his team chokes, I know he won’t be up for hanging out, catching up, reconnecting…

  Sucking each other off?

  I banish the thought. I don’t fucking learn, do I? The last time sucking entered the equation, I’d lost my best friend.

  It’s funny—I’m sure everyone has something they regret saying. An insult they’d hurled someone’s way. A confession they wished they could take back. Maybe, I don’t know, an insensitive joke they wish they hadn’t told.

  The one sentence I regret? “Let’s watch some porn.”
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  There was no turning back once I uttered those four words, and I can’t even fully blame the alcohol, because a few sips from a flask does not a drunken idiot make. I knew what I was doing. What I was coaxing Canning into. I was collecting on the damn bet, which is so fucking ironic, because he’d won. The prize was his, except it wasn’t. It was mine. Because I’d wanted to touch him more than I’d wanted my next breath.

  I still remember the shock on his face when I loaded the porn site on my laptop. I chose a tame scene—tame for me, anyway. I set the laptop on the mattress, then sprawled on the bottom bunk as if I had no care in the world.

  For a long moment Canning didn’t move. I waited, tense, while he decided whether or not he was going to sit next to me on my bed, or climb up to the top bunk. Without looking at him, I passed him the flask. I heard him gulp. He swallowed on a sigh, then parked his ass beside me.

  I didn’t risk a look at him for several minutes. We lay on our backs, passing the flask back and forth as we watched two dudes double-team a busty blonde on the screen.

  “How would you compare your technique to hers?” Canning cracked himself up with this quip, his stomach shaking even as he looked at the laptop.

  To him, it was just the latest amusing result of our competitive shenanigans. He was going to lord it over me, the way we always did with each other.

  But to me, it was no joke. I’d just spent the last year trying to accept my increasingly obvious attraction to men. The bumbling loss of my virginity to a chick during junior year had been a pretty big red flag. I hadn’t been attracted to her, but I’d needed to try it. To be certain. I’d barely been able to get it up, and even then, I’d managed only because I was thinking about…

  Canning. I thought about Jamie Canning.

  I’d been crushing on my straight best friend for a long time. But I couldn’t tell him that. My only move here was to play along.

  “Well, I’ve always been good at stickhandling.”

  Jamie snorted. “Only you could be cocky even about this.”

  “I always tell you, Canning. No fear. No matter what.”

  God, I was such a jackass. Because fear wasn’t even part of the equation. All I had was a pure, aching desire as I lay there beside Jamie. Last year I’d enjoyed a couple of drunken make-out sessions and a hand-job exchange with a guy from school. But even then, I hadn’t been one hundred percent sure.

  Lying in bed next to Canning? I burned with certainty.

  On the screen, the blonde was moaning like crazy. Spit-roasted and loving it. Canning went quiet for a while. I lay there, trying to keep my breathing even. But I couldn’t resist sneaking a peek at his crotch a minute later. And then my breath hitched, because holy shit, he was hard, a long, thick erection straining beneath his athletic shorts. I was sporting the same visible boner, and I know he saw it. He probably thought it was the porn. Hell, that was the only reason he was turned on.

  Not me, though. My dick throbbed for him.

  Beside me, he swallowed roughly. “Interesting pick, Wesley. Considering the stakes. I’m not gonna force you to blow me.” He grinned. “I’d rather bask in the glory of knowing you finally wrote a check you couldn’t cash.” Then he rolled his gorgeous eyes at me, and it only made my skin burn hotter.

  “What,” I said, hoping he couldn’t hear the rasp of lust in my voice, “You think I’m too chicken-shit to blow you?”

  He turned his chin to meet my eyes…

  “Fuck yeah!”

  Our team captain’s shout jerks me out of my trip down memory lane. The whole arena is in an uproar, fans screaming as the scoreboard lights up and the screens mounted all over the place flash the word GOAL! in huge yellow letters.

  My stomach drops like a sack of bricks when I realize who scored.

  Yale.

  Fucking hell. Yale scored, and I’d been too distracted to see it. It’s 2-1 now, with a minute and a half to go.

  “I spaced out,” I tell Cassel. “What just happened?”

  “One of the Rainier D-men took the stupidest penalty I’ve ever seen.” He shakes his head in amazement. “Idiot just handed Yale the win.”

  No, they haven’t won yet. There’s still time for Rainier to regroup. Still time, damn it.

  “Your boy didn’t stand a chance on that power play,” Cassel adds.

  My gut twists harder. Say what you will about Yale, but they lead the NCAA in capitalizing on power plays. Every time we played them this season, Coach uttered one grim sentence before we left the locker room—“You wind up in the sin bin against Yale, you lose.”

  I pray those words aren’t prophetic, that Rainier can come back from this, but my prayers go unanswered.

  The final buzzer blares through TD Garden.

  And Rainier loses.

  6

  Jamie

  We lost.

  We fucking lost.

  I’m still dazed as I trudge down the chute toward the locker rooms. The mood all around me is somber. Suffocating. Nobody is playing the blame game, though.

  There’s no anger directed at Barkov, who tripped the Yale forward for no comprehensible reason—the guy didn’t even have the puck.

  There’s no recrimination toward our defense, who inexplicably fell apart during that power play.

  And there’s no accusation aimed my way, for not being able to stop that last shot from lighting the lamp.

  But, inside…I blame myself.

  I should’ve stopped it. I should’ve dived faster, extended my arm farther. I should’ve hurled my body on that damn puck and not let it get anywhere near the crease.

  Numbness sets in. I’d been bummed my family didn’t make the trek from Cali to watch me play. Now I’m grateful they didn’t see me lose. Except on television. Along with a few million other people…

  Damn.

  Back in our hotel room, I find Terry sitting on the bed, clicker in hand. But the TV is off, and he’s watching a black screen.

  “Um, Terry? You okay?”

  He looks up fast. “Yeah. Just…” The sentence dies an early death.

  The next several days are going to be just like this. I can see it now. We wanted so badly to be the ones who brought this title home to Rainier. It would have proved to our families and the college that all these years of sacrifice were worth it.

  We proved nothing.

  “It’s still the winningest season in thirty years,” Terry says slowly.

  I flop onto my bed. “Is winningest a word?”

  “Not if you’re us.” We both laugh. But his laugh ends on a sigh. “That was my last game, Canning. My very last one. I’m not an NHL recruit like you. Three months from now I’m wearing a suit and sitting at a desk.”

  Shit. That’s really grim.

  “For fifteen years I’ve been a hockey player. As of a half hour ago, I’m a junior associate in the investment banking division of Pine Trust Capital.”

  Jesus. And now I’m hoping our hotel room windows aren’t the kind that open, because I’m half afraid he’s going to step out onto a ledge. Or else I will. “Dude, you need alcohol and a girl. Like, yesterday.”

  His chuckle is dark. “My cousins are on the way over here to pick me up. There will be drinking and titty bars.”

  “Thank Christ.” I roll over to study the pebbled hotel room ceiling. “You know, there’s a very real chance I never play a single NHL game. Third-string goalie? Detroit might as well make a bench to my ass’s exact measurements. If I’m lucky they’ll let me play backup to their farm-team goalie.”

  “You’ll still have the jersey and the puck bunnies.” His phone rings and he swipes to answer. “Born ready,” he tells the caller. “I’ll be right down.” Then to me, “You coming with?”

  Am I? I definitely need a drink. But at the moment, my back is plastered to the bedspread. “I’m not ready,” I admit. “Can I text you in an hour, see where you are?”

  “Do it,” he says.

  “Later,” I call out as the door
clicks shut.

  For a little while I just stew in my own misery. My parents call my phone, but I don’t pick up. They’ll be awesome, as always, but I don’t want to hear nice, encouraging words right now. I need to feel bad. Get drunk. Get off, maybe.

  There’s a firm knock on the door and I haul my sorry ass up to answer it. Probably a teammate, ready to help me with the getting drunk part of tonight’s activities.

  I yank the door open to find Holly standing there, her face smudged with orange and black paint, a bottle of tequila in one hand and limes in the other. “Surprise,” she says.

  “Jesus, Holls.” I laugh. “You said you weren’t coming.”

  “I lied.” She gives me a big grin.

  I open the door wider. “You’ve never had better timing in your life.”

  “Really?” she challenges, pushing past me. “Not even the time I got you off in the bathroom of the train right before our station stop?”

  “Okay, maybe then.” I am so happy to see her it’s not even funny. Distraction is what I need, and that’s what Holly and I have always been to one another.

  She gets down to business, cutting limes on the hotel table with a knife she’s pulled from her purse. Do I know how to pick my friends, or what?

  “Glasses,” Holly orders over her shoulder.

  I think I could go straight for the bottle tonight, but for her sake I look around, finding a pair of them on the console by the TV. I plunk ’em down and she’s pouring before I know it.

  “Here.” She offers me a glass and raises another in the air. “To kicking ass and getting over our disappointments.” Her wide blue eyes study me, looking for something.

  “That’s a good toast, pal,” I murmur. “Thank you.” When I touch my glass to hers, she grins like she’s won something tonight. That makes one of us.

  “Bottoms up, hunk. Then I’m stripping you naked.”

  I like the sound of that. The tequila slides down, and then I let her stick a lime in my mouth. We’re both chuckling and sucking down the sour citrus flavor. Then I give her a nudge onto the bed. I’d like to freaking unleash all my tensions on this smiling girl, but I take a deep breath. Holly is kind of a peanut and half the time I’m worried about crushing her.