Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Josie
Jane: How are things going with the hockey player?
I stare at the phone screen for a second, considering telling the truth. But complaining never got anyone promoted. And since Dane is busy with his game day routine, today has been relatively peaceful for me.
Me: It’s going well. He’s getting ready for his game tonight.
Jane: Keep me apprised.
Classic Jane. She doesn’t give compliments. Keep me apprised means I’m off the hook for now, but she could become displeased at any moment. I shove my phone back in my bag, glad I’m no longer under her watchful eye every day.
“Is this groin massage gonna have a happy ending?” a player named Tate McGovern asks as he gets on the athletic trainer’s table.
“Probably,” Gina, the trainer, answers with a shrug. “Seeing as I’m the only woman who ever touches you. Just keep quiet while you jizz in your pants, for fuck’s sake.”
Some of the players include Gina in their locker room banter; others don’t. She doesn’t take any shit from them. She said I could hang out with her in the training room, and in the hour I’ve been in here, I’ve learned a lot.
Apparently one of the Tampa players is going to get chirped at a lot tonight. They call him Smitty, and since he slept with a teammate’s girlfriend, he’s on his teammates’ and his opponents’ shit lists.
Chirping is trash-talking opponents on the ice. And from what the guys are saying about Smitty, he’ll be hearing a lot of chirps about his small dick and his back acne tonight.
“Relax,” Gina tells Tate as she puts on rubber gloves.
“How’s Dane treating you, Josie?” Tate asks me.
Everyone calls him Tater. He’s one of the friendliest members of the team, almost always smiling, unlike Dane, who’s usually scowling.
“Fantastic,” I deadpan.
“It’s not your fault, you know. He’s been a salty bastard since his divorce.”
Record scratch. His divorce? Dane used to be married ?
“When was that?” I ask.
“Uh, I think like four years ago?” He groans as Gina massages. “Damn, I feel like I should have taken you out for dinner before this.”
She scoffs. “What, to White Castle?”
“That was one time,” Tate says defensively. “It was after midnight and nothing else was open. It happened like two years ago, and my girlfriend at the time loved White Castle.”
“I’d rather eat a stale bag of gas station peanuts than go to White Castle,” Gina says, cringing. “Am I right, Josie?”
“I’d eat the plastic bag the peanuts came in before I ate White Castle.”
Gina snort-laughs. “I think we’re gonna be good friends.”
“What should we call her?” Tate gives me a puzzled look. “Jo? JoJo?”
“Call her Josie,” Gina says. “Save the nicknames for the boys.”
“You’re still not over me calling you Gina, are you?”
He pronounces it like vagina , and Gina shrugs. “I don’t care, Tater. I know you’re intellectually still in puberty, so I can see why it amuses you.”
Dane walks into the room, announcing, “My back hurts.”
“Can you be more specific?” Gina asks.
Dane furrows his brow in a textbook brood. “When I started stretching, I felt a twinge and it still hurts.”
“How do you hurt yourself stretching?” Tate asks.
“Take a twenty-minute ice bath,” Gina says. “Then I’ll look at it.”
Dane walks over to a big tub, which training assistants filled with ice earlier. He strips off his shirt and reaches for the waistband of his shorts.
“I’m out,” I say, grabbing my bag.
“You don’t want to see his bratwurst?” Tate asks, grinning.
“No.”
“Aw, is our little Josie shy? Or have you never seen a pork sword before?”
I glare at him. “I’ve seen plenty, and if you refer to yours as a pork sword with women you’re trying to get in bed, I get why Gina’s the only woman who touches you.”
“Tater’s is more like a pork pocket knife,” Dane says from the tub.
The sound of his deep voice makes me break out in goose bumps. There’s something about knowing he’s naked on the other side of the room I’m standing in right now that’s unnerving.
“You get used to it after a while,” Gina says. “They all look the same.”
I shake my head, keeping my gaze on the door to the training room. She’s still focused on the conversation, but the way my heart is racing, I’m focused on getting out of here.
I wasn’t being completely honest with Tater when I said I’ve seen “plenty” of men naked.
Two. I’ve seen two. Sex with both of them was underwhelming, and neither of them ever made me break out in goose bumps the way Dane just did with his voice.
It’s because I haven’t even been kissed in more than a year. And because I’m in unfamiliar territory here. A pro sports locker room. It’s not because I’m attracted to Dane.
He’s attractive; that’s more fact than opinion. But he ruins his good looks with his personality. I’m attracted to nice guys, not arrogant playboys.
Still, by the time I’m in the hallway outside the locker room, I feel like I’m the one who should be taking an ice bath.
“That’s how you do it, baby!” Jenn Rogers jumps up from her seat and blows her husband a dozen flying kisses, alternating hands.
Aiden Rogers just scored a goal, and his teammates huddle around him in a circle to celebrate.
Aiden’s name is announced and Dane is credited with an assist. Jenn lowers her brows and looks at me.
“Is Dane okay? He seems stiff.”
“That’s what she said,” Elena says dismissively, her fingers flying over her phone, typing out a text.
“His back is sore,” I say.
Elena sets down the phone and turns her attention back to me and Jenn. “Aaron says hotel beds are hard on his back sometimes. I find it so funny that he blames mattress firmness when he’s sore after being boarded over and over in a game.”
“Couldn’t be the boarding,” Jenn jokes. “He’s too manly for that to hurt.”
I’m sitting in a private box with around a dozen family members of players who made the trip to Tampa for the game.
“I heard you were sick on the plane,” Elena says. “I get really bad motion sickness, too.”
“Is there anything that helps it?”
“I know it sounds weird, but it helps me to eat something small before I fly. I take CBD oil, too. But if there’s bad turbulence, I get sick anyway.”
“Yeah, that flight felt like it took about twelve hours,” I say. “I’m hoping to sleep on tonight’s flight.”
“Hope you can. I’m staying an extra couple of days at my hotel with my sister, my daughter and my two nephews. My sister’s back at the hotel with the kids tonight.”
“You have a daughter?”
She smiles brightly. “Amara. Now that you’ve indicated a slight interest, I have to break out my photo slideshow.”
Elena’s husband, Aaron, is tall and blond. Their daughter is a beautiful mix of the two of them with caramel curls and big dark-brown eyes. I ooh and aah at Elena’s photos, trying not to let on how distracted I am by the conversation going on next to us.
“Of course Dane is tamable,” a woman with flawless makeup and bright red nails says. “You just have to let him have his fun and always be there when he’s done.”
“I don’t expect to be the only woman,” another woman says. “I just want to be the only legit one, you know? The one in pictures with him.”
“Exactly. I’m going to introduce you when the time is right. Just trust me.”
I look over at Jenn and Elena to see if they heard the conversation. Jenn’s completely focused on the game. Elena leans over and softly says, “We’ll talk later.”
I take Elena’s advice and eat a soft pretzel. I’m nervous about flying again tonight, but it’s inevitable. And this time, I’ll be smarter and not sit next to Dane.
The Mammoths win the game 2–1. Dane has to do interviews afterward and then shower. I’ve been sitting on the floor in the hallway outside the locker room reading a book for more than an hour when he finally walks out of the locker room.
His hair is damp from the shower and he’s dressed in a dark suit with a white dress shirt and a light-blue tie, his dress shoes shining. I feel frumpy next to him in my jeans, Vans and Mammoths T-shirt.
“Hey, Nosy,” he says in greeting.
“Hi.”
“Take this.”
He holds out his hand and I put my outstretched palm under it. He drops a little white pill into my hand.
“Dramamine. Take it now.”
“Oh.” I look up at him, surprised. “Thanks.”
“I just don’t want to get puked on.”
“Of course,” I say wryly. “I didn’t mean to insinuate you’re considerate or anything.”
He glares at me. “You’re a pain in my ass, you know that?”
“Likewise, Foster.”
His snoring woke me up last night and I couldn’t get back to sleep for two hours. Then I woke up this morning to a bathroom that smelled like a long-neglected public sewer.
Hopefully Dane will be more bearable in Boston than he was in Tampa. Somehow, though, I doubt it.