Shoot Your Shot

Chapter Twelve

Twelve

Lucy

Cooper is hosting an open mic at his coffee shop, Brewed This Way, a Lady Gaga–themed café by day and event venue by night. I arrive a bit behind schedule but make it before any of the performers hit the stage. Maya is already helping Cooper behind the counter serving guests coffee and tea while I quickly weave through the crowd to help them.

“Look who finally showed up,” Cooper says, maneuvering past me with a hot coffee in hand.

“I know, I’m sorry. I’ve been MIA so much these past couple of weeks between this stupid mural and the tattoo shop.” I have yet to tell my friends about the night I spent with Jaylen or the bad luck that ensued, and I’m hoping my full-coverage foundation keeps the secret I’m hiding under my bangs.

“It’s all good. We were beginning to worry you ran off with someone and joined a cult after you left the club on Cooper’s half birthday,” Maya says as she refills cups and lids on the count-er beside the espresso machine. She’s so busy that she hasn’t looked over at me yet.

“Give me a bit of credit. I would never do that again.” I take someone’s espresso order and head over to the machine to make it.

“What happened to your forehead, Lucy?” Maya gasps. My cover is blown. She reaches for my bangs, but I narrowly dodge her hand.

“Ohhh,” I say, bringing my fingertips to my fresh scar as if I forgot it was there. “It’s really nothing. I was taking Sailor to the vet last week and she scratched me slightly while I was putting her into the travel carrier.” I hand the waiting customer their drink.

“Are you okay? It looks really bad.” Maya pushes my hair aside and gets a close look. Cooper stops by to check out the gash too. It’s healing nicely. I got the stitches out a few days ago, and the bruise is mostly only yellow now.

“It looks bruised. Why is it bruised?” Cooper says, leaning in close to my face.

Guess I need to invest in a better full-coverage foundation. “Back up, Dr. Grey,” I say, turning into the espresso machine to hide.

“What’s going on? You aren’t trying to start another fight club again, are you?” Maya spins me around.

“Roller derby team! I was trying to form a roller derby team. And no—if you must know, I got hit in the head with a hockey puck at work,” I say.

“A puck? Weird things happen in tattoo studios.” Cooper shakes his head.

“The mural I’m painting is for the Rainiers. I got hit by a rogue puck my first day on the job.”

Cooper shrieks, his interest in my injury piqued. Maya gives him a dirty look, and a few guests turn to stare. “That’s amazing! I love hockey.”

“Since when?” Maya asks in disbelief.

“Since I grew up in upstate New York and was obsessed with the captain of my high school’s hockey team. We sat beside each other in English, and I needed an excuse to talk to him. I could tell you anything you’d want to know about the 2017–2018 Buffalo Bisons,” he brags.

“What happened?” Maya asks.

“Not much, really. Horrible season for the Bisons.” Cooper pouts sympathetically.

“No, not the hockey team. With you and the captain?” she asks.

Maya and Cooper continue to banter with each other, but I have little motivation to get them back on track. The less they know about my night with Jaylen the better. Even though the whole thing was very casual, and there are no lingering feelings between us, I know how it looks. It looks like I’m distracted again, so distracted that I took a puck to the head.

Cooper sweeps nonexistent hair behind his ear bashfully. “Unlike the 2017–2018 Buffalo Bisons, I knew how to score,” he says proudly.

“Nice.” Maya scoffs before she excuses herself to introduce the band while Cooper and I hang back behind the counter.

Maya works in the nonprofit sector for Seattle Pride and is responsible for hosting these charity artist showcases once a month at the café. This place looks like a MUNA fan club meeting, which makes sense considering Maya knows just about every lesbian in town. It’s the lesbian three degrees of separation; behind every well-functioning society is a well-connected chain of lesbians getting shit done.

“These women make all their own instruments out of ethically sourced wood. The violinist collected her own hair for years to string her bow,” Maya says in a whisper as she leans back against the counter next to us. The band begins their set.

“What the fuck is ethically sourced wood?” I lean over and whisper in Cooper’s ear.

“When I ride my bike over to a hookup’s house rather than drive,” Cooper says with a smirk.

As the band settles into their set, the door chimes open and standing in the doorway is none other than Jaylen fucking Jones. He quickly realizes he’s walked into the middle of a concert and creeps awkwardly toward the counter. I practically flinch at the sight of him.

Cooper goes rigid. Jaylen is now standing in front of him, but Cooper isn’t even blinking. I worry he’s having a stroke, but then suddenly he starts talking. “Oh my god.” His voice trembles.

I step forward to intervene. “What do you want?” I ask, already annoyed.

“Lucy, be nice to my customers. Do you know who this is?” Cooper pushes me back behind him.

I walk around the counter and drag Jaylen outside by the wrist. “What are you doing here?” I ask once we have a bit of privacy. The last thing I need is him turning up when I’m around my friends. I don’t need another lecture from Maya, especially when I don’t deserve it.

“I was walking home from the club and I saw you in the window. I live up the street. Is that okay? Should I move?” he asks.

I presume he’s being sarcastic, but he’s so well-mannered that it might be a real offer. His hands are buried in his pockets as he looks down at me. Even in his own neighborhood Jaylen has this permanently lost look on his face.

“You just so happened to see me in the window?” Seems made-up considering I’m at a café while a band named Bedrock Butch plays environmental folk for a bunch of queer people. I look like every other bitch here tonight.

“Fine. You posted about this event on your social media. You should really be more careful giving out your location like that. Someone creepy could see it and show up unannounced.”

“You hear yourself, right?” I lean back to look through the front window and check to see what Maya and Cooper are doing. They both watch us from a distance whispering, but when they see me look their way, they immediately avert their eyes and pretend to make drinks.

“My friends don’t know that we hooked up. They think I’ve dedicated myself to shifting my focus from relationships to work, so I can’t have you showing up here unannounced and potentially saying something stupid to convince them otherwise,” I add.

Jaylen doesn’t flinch let alone dissuade. He seems as optimistic as ever when he says, “Lucy, I need you to be my good-luck charm this season.”

“Like that!” I snap. “That is exactly what I was worried about. Absolutely not. It was a one-and-done situation.”

“Come on, good things happen to me when you’re around,” he pleads.

“And I get hit in the head with pucks and soaked with nasty chain-store coffee. Shove a horseshoe up your ass and call it a day. I’m not interested in dating right now. We had this talk already.” I cock my head over my shoulder to peer through the window again, knowing my friends are growing suspicious. They’re helping a customer, but Maya periodically peers up at me.

“It was one puck. And it’s not dating—I’m not interested in dating either. I’m interested in winning hockey games and securing a multiyear contract at the end of this season with the Rainiers.”

His rationale feels like a bit of a stretch. I’ve been called a lot of things by men, but lucky is a new one. I don’t fully trust that he isn’t a bit interested in rekindling our bedroom connection from the first night we met. And if I’m being honest with myself, I’m a bit offended if he isn’t.

I don’t give him an answer; I don’t even say anything. This isn’t a good idea. The closer Jaylen gets to me, the harder it is to resist him. It’s easy to hate him from a distance as I stare at the fresh scar on my forehead every morning in the mirror. But when we’re face-to-face, I think about asking him to kiss it better. It’s a feeling I need to repress. I don’t need to get involved with some big-shot hockey player when all Jaylen does is distract me from work.

“Think about it. I can give you a ride to work, or get you tickets to a game. All I’m asking is that I get to see you for a minute on game days. Or at least a good-luck text.” He smiles a sleazy-car-salesman grin. His face strains to maintain his optimistic attitude while I give him nothing but an expressionless glare in return. “Maybe a FaceTime on road games,” he adds, pushing his luck.

I groan.

“We’ll start with home games,” he says. He grabs me by both shoulders and squeezes my arms in his big hands. “Will you at least think about it? The whole city will be thanking you by the end of the season.”

I groan a bit louder, and longer. “This is a really weird ask. And I’ve had a guy ask me to step on his balls before.”

“Well, I definitely don’t want you to do that. But I’m happy to hear you’ll think about it. I’ll be seeing you at the rink very soon.” He pats me on the shoulder and takes off up the street. I’m just thankful he doesn’t try to hug me goodbye, which seems like an invasive Midwestern thing he would do.

When I return inside the café, both my friends greet me with crossed arms, popped hips, and tapping toes.

Maya is the first to speak. “Seemed like a pretty passionate conversation.”

Cooper gasps as if he’s heard someone say Lady Gaga’s Chromatica was a flop. “That night, when you disappeared from my party. The next morning you sent me a text saying you slept with someone with abs like Batman’s batsuit.”

“I knew it!” Maya shouts.

A few people turn and shush us, scolding us like loud schoolchildren in a library. Cooper drags us each by the hand into the back storage room. I’m trapped, surrounded by napkins and coffee beans and two friends who want an explanation.

“Cooper, I told you that in confidence and under the influence of a minor concussion. I didn’t know he was a hockey player. I thought his incredible physique was the result of a very disturbed obsession with CrossFit. It wasn’t my finest moment, but he told me he was only in town for one night, and now he’s everywhere I look—even this café.” I slump down onto a stacked box and hang my head between my knees. Suddenly I have a throbbing headache.

“I can’t believe the biggest bust in NHL history busted inside my bestie.” I’ve never heard Cooper so proud of me before.

“Technically he also busted on me,” I say from my toppled-over position on the box. I run my hands through my hair and take a deep breath. I pull myself together and get up off the floor, ready to continue defending myself against dating accusations.

Cooper picks up his phone and hastily taps away at the screen. “His Wikipedia doesn’t report any racist, homophobic, or sexual assault incidents. That’s great, right?”

“The bar is literally in hell for men,” Maya says. Maya peers over Cooper’s shoulder at his phone. “Check his Instagram followers. I bet it’s all hot Instagram models wearing some trendy fast fashion company.”

“Look at this post.” Cooper shoves his phone in my face. It’s a photo of Jaylen holding two muscular arms full of kittens at an animal shelter. The caption reads: “They might have nine lives, but they’re waiting for you to give them a shot at one good one.”

I let out a loud, agonized groan and collapse back down on the box.

“What a slutty post. What a whore,” Maya says. She isn’t wrong; as far as male thirst traps go, volunteering at an animal shelter is about as straight to the point as they come.

“The comments are desperate. ‘Can I take you home?’ ‘I wish my kitty was in your hands.’ ‘Ruin my life, Jaylen.’” Cooper is taking great pleasure in conducting this digital background check. Even more so than the time I matched with a disgraced YouTuber on a dating app. I did not subscribe.

“Guys, it’s not like that at all—I’m not interested in him. It was a one-night thing. I’m so focused on work and this mural because once I pull this off, I’m going to ask Sam for an apprenticeship,” I say, hoping to speak it into existence. “Plus, Jaylen’s not looking to date either. He’s mentioned it almost every time we’ve talked.”

“If he’s not interested in you, then why did he show up here? I highly doubt he’s into environmental lesbian folk music,” Maya says, crossing her arms.

“He could be. He carries a metal reusable water bottle around the rink with him,” I say.

Maya gives me that look, the one where she’s silently screaming realllllly through a closed mouth, and I cave. “He wants me to be his good-luck charm,” I blurt out to get it over with. It sounds even more ridiculous coming out of my mouth than it did out of Jaylen’s.

“Is that a sex thing?” Cooper says, peering up from his phone.

“I didn’t ask. I just told him no.” The pins and needles itching the bottom of my feet tell me it’s time to get a grip and pick myself up off the floor.

Cooper and Maya speak at the same time.

“Good,” Maya says, finally unlinking her arms.

“You should do it,” Cooper encourages.

Their words tug me in opposite directions like an angel and devil on each shoulder.

“Athletes take their superstitions very seriously, but I can think of a lot worse things than being a hot hockey player’s muse.”

I wave Cooper off. “I’m not indulging Jaylen’s neurotic behavior. I don’t have the capacity to worry about his career when mine needs all the attention it can get.”

“Come on, the next act is up soon.” Maya wraps an arm around me—and much like my special friend in high school did—she drags me out of the closet.

“Please don’t be another song about preserving farmlands,” Cooper whines, dragging his feet behind us.