Playing Defense (Corrigan Falls Raiders)

by Cate Cameron

  “There’s a beach through there,” he said, pointing. “But at this time of year, nobody really comes out here. Not unless Mac and Karen are looking for some alone time.” He frowned. “Which they probably are…”

  “They can get in line,” I said, surprising both of us. Then I reached over and grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him toward me as I leaned forward.

  Making out in a pickup with bucket seats was a bit trickier than you might think. Simple kissing had been fairly easy, but now that I’d been introduced to full-body contact, I wanted as much of it as I could get.

  Chris was clearly just as frustrated, and pulled away from me with a low growl, then a wry grin. “Would you freak out if I suggested we move to the backseat?”

  I did freak out, a little, and Chris clearly noticed. “Nothing you don’t want to do,” he promised. And I believed him.

  “If we move to the backseat, will you take your shirt off?” I asked him.

  He squinted at me. “Wait, you want my shirt off, or you want to be sure I don’t take it off?”

  “I want it off,” I said. It was true. I’d been feeling his broad chest for a while, and now I wanted to see it, without anything in the way.

  “Okay, yeah. If we move to the backseat, I’ll do you the huge favor of getting half naked. I’m generous like that.”

  “Is that your way of saying I’m being weird again?”

  “It’s my way of saying get your ass in the back, woman! I’m overheating with all these clothes on.”

  So I squirmed between the seats while Chris opened his door and dropped to the ground. I sat on the bench seat as Chris pulled the back door open, then casually lifted his sweatshirt and T-shirt off over his head. The truck’s dome light made his skin look cold and perfect as marble, and the shadows emphasized the definition of each muscle.

  I admit it, I stared.

  And then I got bashful. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said, as if he didn’t already know that perfectly well.

  “That’s okay. It’s all good.”

  “No, it’s not. What if I do something wrong? Something you don’t like? I mean, I don’t really… I don’t really know anything about the male body.”

  His smile was completely honest. “You know enough.”

  “Okay, yeah, but, like…”

  “Explore,” he said. He made it sound like it wasn’t a big deal, and stretched his arms out to the sides, exposing all parts of his torso. “I’m here for experimentation.”

  “You want me to experiment on you?”

  “Not, like, mad scientist experiments. But if you want to— Well, yeah, if you want to do anything that doesn’t leave permanent marks and won’t keep me from playing hockey, go for it.”

  “So, you have to help me. You have to, like, tell me if you like what I’m doing.”

  “Chances are really good I’m going to like whatever you do.”

  “But there’s some stuff you’d like more than other stuff.”

  He nodded. “Okay. I’ll give you ratings. Like, one to ten of how good something feels. One would be, like…” He frowned. “I’m trying to think of where you could touch me that wouldn’t turn me on at least a little bit. Oh! One would be touching my eyeball, or else right up my nose. Those would be ones.”

  “Ew.”

  “I know. That’s what I’m saying—don’t do those. The rest? I’ll let you know. If you want.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Or we can just, you know…make out like we usually do. That’s good, too.”

  “No, I want to learn.”

  He didn’t say anything right away, but then he shifted his weight and said, “Okay. So, are you going to invite me in? If I have to, I guess I’d be willing to lose my pants first.”

  “Get in here.” I laughed. “Pants on, please.”

  He crawled halfway in, then stopped, one foot on the floor, the other knee on the bench. His expression was almost predatory, a look that sent chills down my spine at the same time as it made my blood boil, and he tugged at my knees, dragging me flat on the seat before he settled on top of me. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered just before he kissed me. And I believed him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Claudia and I both needed challenges. Everyone else was still working on theirs, since Oliver had extended his beyond going to the first youth group meeting to actually spending some time with the guy he’d met there.

  “I want you to keep going with the math,” Claudia told me as she traced invisible lines from the back of my wrist up to my elbow, then down again. It was Thursday at lunch and we were sitting in the library, at least twenty other kids and a couple adults all in the same well-lit room, and I had never been so hyperaware of my forearms in my life. She wanted me to do math? Yeah, okay. I’d do whatever she wanted as long as she kept touching me.

  And she seemed to realize that, because she took her hand away and said, “Do you want to keep doing math?”

  “I kind of have to. The course isn’t over.”

  “You got an eighty-two percent on your last quiz, and I seriously think you should go in and argue for a couple more points. You’re caught up. You could just settle back and maintain now, if you wanted to.”

  “Wait. What are we talking about, then? What does ‘keep going with math’ mean to you?”

  She shifted around so she was facing me, which was nice, except that it took her hand even farther from my arm when she did it, which left me wishing for a bit more contact. “Keep doing extra math. Start exploring things beyond the course.”

  “Exploring extra math,” I said, trying the words out to see if they made more sense when I said them than they did when I heard them. “Why? I mean, I’m not arguing, exactly, I’m just trying to figure it out. You think the inner me is mathier than the outer me? Or…?”

  “No, not really.” She frowned. Not like she was trying to figure out what she thought, but like she was trying to figure out the best way to say it. “I just think you might want to try—” She stopped, thought for another moment, then said, “I think you might want to try trying. You know? It doesn’t have to be math, if that’s not your thing. But Karen said—okay, let me admit right from the start that Karen and I both combined still know next to nothing about hockey—but she said Tyler said you’ve been working harder in practice lately, and in games, even. She said the coach even commented on it?”

  That was true, actually. It was weird that she’d heard about it through her spy network instead of from me, but she was being so careful with her words that I didn’t really feel like I had any right to get snarky about it. “Yeah, maybe,” I admitted instead.

  She nodded. “So—I was wondering if maybe things had kind of spilled over from the math? I’m not trying to give myself more credit than I deserve. You asked for tutoring, and you did all the work. But I wonder whether deciding to try harder at math kind of—I mean, it’s kind of scary to really try at something, isn’t it? If you don’t even try, then it’s no big deal if you fail. But if you try and still fail, then you’re a failure. You did your best and it wasn’t good enough? That sucks, right?”

  I wasn’t enjoying the way this conversation was going. “We shouldn’t ignore the strong possibility that I’m just really, really lazy, right? Like, all the psychobabble stuff is interesting, but also—” I leaned back far enough to give myself room for a wide-armed stretch of relaxation. “Doing nothing is way easier than doing something.”

  “Easier, but not better,” she insisted. And damn it, she was just so—so Dia. So serious and sweet and cute and smart and, unfortunately, so likely to be right.

  “So you want me to try at something.”

  She shook her head. “No. I want you to want to try at something. Not because I’m asking you to, but because you really want to. Because trying at math paid off, and trying at hockey is paying off, and if you keep trying, at them or at something else, maybe you’ll get even more of a payoff.”

  �
��Or maybe I’ll be a failure,” I pointed out. If she was going to make up theories about me, she should at least look at all sides of the theory.

  She didn’t seem too worried, though. “Or maybe you’ll learn that failure is temporary. When you were a baby, you couldn’t skate at all. The first time you stepped on the ice, you probably wiped out. Probably a lot of times. But now you’re apparently pretty good at it.”

  “Okay, you don’t need to add the ‘apparently’ there. You’ve seen me skate, Dia. You know I’m good at it.”

  “Good enough, I guess. But not as good as you could be if you really, really tried.” Her eyes were dancing and I knew she was mostly just teasing. Mostly. But as usual with her, there was something serious going on as well.

  “So why do you want me to do my ‘trying’ at math, exactly? I mean, if you know I’m already trying harder at hockey, isn’t that enough?”

  “No, it’s not enough!” And the teasing was gone. “Hockey isn’t the whole world. I know you love it, and I’m starting to see why, but if all you ever do with your life is get really good at a single game, you’ll be missing out on a lot of important stuff. I don’t care if you do math or something else, but I think you should do something with your brain. Brains are important, you know!”

  “Why math?”

  She calmed down a little. “Because that’s what I can help you with. Because I like the idea of being able to help you. And because—” The mischief was back. “There’s a math contest next week. I checked, and it’s not too late to register if you want to do it.”

  “A math contest.” Yeah, I was back to repeating her words. But it wasn’t really helping, because they still made no sense.

  “It’s sponsored by the University of Waterloo—the school I want to go to. Rumor is that if you do well enough on the competition, they’ll fast-track your acceptance. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I’m still going to write the contest. And I think you should, too. It’d be a good sort of message, you know? Like, math isn’t just for nerds? I think you should do it.”

  “I should enter a math contest,” I said carefully.

  She squinted at me. “What are you doing? It’s like you’re tasting the words.”

  “Nice image. Very poetic.” And that was an opportunity too good to pass up. We’d been talking about me for way too long, and it was time to turn the tables. So I shuffled through the loose notes stuffed in the back of my binder until I found the sheet I was looking for. “Very, very poetic,” I said, and I handed her the piece of paper.

  She scanned it, then looked up at me. “You want…me? To do…this?”

  “I want you to think about doing it. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Obviously. But, yeah, I think it’d be cool if you did.”

  “A poetry slam.” I could tell she was trying the words out just like I had.

  “What does it taste like?”

  “Humiliation and shame.”

  I reached over and yanked the page away from her. “Don’t do it, then. I can think of something else. I can try to think of something else.” Had that been enough of a dig? Probably—Dia was pretty sensitive. So I let it go and pretended to move on. “Honestly, you have no idea how hard I’ve been working to keep the challenges nonsexual. I think you could give me some appreciation for that, at least. But, okay, also nonpoetic. Huh. I’m going to need to—”

  She snapped the sheet of paper back out of my hands, and I worked to cover my triumph while she reread it. “It’s just students,” she said thoughtfully. “High school only. And it’s in Kitchener…not like it’s in Toronto or something. It’s not that big of a deal.”

  “Probably not worth your time,” I said, and half tried to take the page back from her. I was pushing my luck, but I liked living on the edge.

  And she held on tight to the sheet. “You think I should do that Choices one again? It’s not exactly Shakespeare.”

  “It was the performance, not the words. You said them like you meant them. Really meant them. So, yeah, you could do that one again. Or a new one, if you wanted. Whatever.”

  She tilted her head and looked at me. “If I do this, you’ll do the math contest?”

  “I need more information on that. I mean… Math. Contest. Is it just a bunch of people doing math? Like, really fast, or what?”

  “There’s a time component. But mostly it’s based on your ability to solve math problems. If you get the question right, you get points. If you explain your answer clearly and accurately, you get points. Just like a math test, really.”

  “And this is something worth trying at? I mean, why do people do this?”

  “Why do people chase a little chunk of rubber around a frozen sheet of water and whack at it with sticks?”

  “For the babes.”

  She sighed. “That’s why people do math, too. You should see the math bunnies.”

  “I’m looking at a math bunny right now, and I like what I see.”

  “So you’re in, then? You’re ready to start attracting groupies in two distinct fields?”

  “You’ll do the poetry slam?”

  She looked down at the page again, and her expression was a strange mix of sad and hopeful. Wistful, maybe? “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “And you’ll think about the math contest.”

  “Nah. I don’t need to think about it. I’m in.”

  “Really?”

  I shrugged. “It tasted weird, but it didn’t taste like humiliation and shame. If you’re going to think about the poetry slam, I can do the math contest. No worries.”

  She frowned. “And you’ll really try? I mean, you won’t do well. You’ll be competing against the best math students from across the country, people who’ve been working on math for most of their lives. So you’re not doing this for the scoring, you know?”

  “I’m doing it for you,” I said. I’d have thought that was obvious.

  “No! That’s what I said I didn’t want! This is supposed to be about you wanting to try something. Damn, maybe you’re right. Maybe it doesn’t make sense for you to be spending your efforts on something you’re not really into, and not really good at. These challenges are supposed to be things you do for yourself, not for me. Are we messing up the awesomeness?”

  “You can just never be satisfied, can you?” I wanted to kiss her, but managed to hold back. “We’re not messing anything up. We’re good.” I let myself reach out and smooth the frown line between her eyes. “Stop worrying. I’ll try at the math contest because—because I don’t really hate math, and maybe I’ll like it even more if I get better at it. Okay? I want to try, just for myself. The awesomeness is unmessed.”

  “I’ll do it,” she said quickly. “The poetry slam. I’m in.” Maybe she was saying it a little too quickly.

  “Just think about it. You don’t have to decide right now.”

  “Now who’s worrying?” She raised her eyebrow at me, that cocky, daring Dia sneaking out. I wasn’t sure which of her personalities I was crazier about. Probably the blend of the two, and the contrast between them, and the way they just swirled together and made me dizzy and happy and alive.

  “Okay,” I said. “Math contest for me, poetry slam for you. It’s on.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Another weekend with Chris on the road, another near-delirious reunion, and then the almost-routine-but-still-thrilling weekdays. We met before class and at lunch for quick kisses mixed in with our studying, and then he’d come over to the house after practice for a bit more studying followed by some fairly blistering good-night kisses.

  Oliver had decided he didn’t really want to go much further with Scott, guy number one, so Chris and I went back to the youth group with him the next week and helped him pick Misha, guy number two. Karen was still working on her campaign of visible niceness, and the other sisters were adding evidence of their own awesomeness to our visual file. Ms. Coyne told Karen and me stories about her branc
h of the sisterhood, and stayed after school to help me work on my performance for the poetry slam. I’d decided to take the original Choices poem and add to it a little, but mostly we were working on the dramatics of it all.

  “Words are powerful, but voices are even stronger,” Ms. Coyne told me. And then she nagged me about my posture and my eye contact and the way I fidgeted. She was tough, but her advice was really valuable. And it made me feel better about speaking up in general, not just in a poetry slam. That’s right: getting ready for this weird event actually was making me a bit more awesome.

  Another weekend, this one with two home games for Chris. I sat next to Karen in the “girlfriends” section and tried not to feel too self-conscious about it. I learned more about the game, figuring out most of the rules except for the thing about icing sometimes being “waved off,” and really enjoyed myself. And when I went to the hockey party with Chris after the Saturday night game, it wasn’t the drunken orgy I’d been afraid of. I mean, people were drinking, and there were half-naked people of both sexes, but it didn’t freak me out. I think I was okay because Chris was there, strong and solid, next to me the whole time.

  The math contest was on Thursday, first two periods of the day. All the contestants gathered in the library and were then divided up by grade. Chris and I sat at tables next to each other, and as we checked that our pencils and erasers and calculators were all ready, I realized that I wasn’t nervous.

  I should have been nervous. I’d been nervous before the contest every previous year, and they hadn’t even counted for anything. This year, when the results might actually influence my academic future, I was totally calm.

  Because of Chris. Chris, and the new life that had come with him. And that was when my stomach started to churn. Had I lost my mind? I’d let myself be distracted by a guy?

  I felt like such a cliché. Girls only care about math because boys don’t care about them. If they get a little masculine attention, it won’t be long before they’re back in front of the mirror, preening and giggling as they make themselves pretty for the boys.