Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Felix
I can’t believe I told Ari, the man I wanted to crawl all over and hump into sweaty satisfaction right there at the arena, that I’m going through puberty and experiencing “hormonal surges.” Ugh.
I wish I’d just left instead. Getting up and walking out like a diva would have been better than this.
I’ve spent the whole weekend wondering what Ari thinks of me now.
He was fine during the game and didn’t treat me any differently—that I noticed, anyway.
I even managed to explain things to him, and he asked some intelligent questions, especially about the differences between the human games and ours.
I’m not sure yet if we’ll convert him to the life of a hockey fan, but he can at least follow most of the game now, and he seemed to enjoy himself.
But I spent the whole of those three endless hours breathing in the scent of him and hyperaware of his body heat just inches away from me. Arena seating isn’t known for being spacious, and every time our arms brushed, lust would surge through me. It was fucking exhausting.
It’s also something I need to stop thinking about, or I’m going to have some explaining to do at Sunday dinner with my family.
They might all have sympathy for my puberty symptoms, but my parents have rules about “appropriate dinner table behavior,” and me squirming with arousal isn’t going to meet their standard.
Squaring my shoulders, I pull out my phone and bring up my saved compilation of sad clips from movies.
It’s a surefire way to change what my hormones are doing to me—no hard-on can stand up to forty-five minutes of movie misery, starting with Bambi and The Lion King, working through The Fault in our Stars, P.S.
I Love You, Brokeback Mountain, Old Yeller, Marley and Me, The Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, and finishing up with Dead Poet’s Society.
Guaranteed boner killer.
“Hello?” I call as I let myself into my parents’ house. When I first moved out, I went through a phase of ringing the bell, but Mom didn’t let that last too long.
“In the kitchen,” Dad replies, and I close the front door and make my way to the heart of my childhood home. So named because it’s where Mom hangs the photos she collects of literal hearts. It’s not as weird as it sounds—she’s a cardiothoracic surgeon, so hearts are kind of her special interest.
“Hello, family. The favorite son has arrived.” My declaration is met with jeers from my siblings and rolled eyes from everyone else. Mom comes forward with arms outstretched to give me a hug, then pauses and studies my face with suspicious eyes.
“Have you been crying?”
Yes. Like a colicky baby. That’s what happens when you watch a compilation of some of the saddest movie moments of the past fifty years. “Of course not. I have allergies.”
“You do not,” Dad contradicts. He’s standing by the stove, staring into a pan with a perplexed expression on his face.
That probably means whatever he’s cooking is going to be inedible.
He’s a neuroscientist with an actual Nobel Prize, but he’s never been able to manage cooking a simple meal. “You have no allergies at all.”
“Are you sure? Maybe I developed them as an adult. Is something burning?”
He yelps, drops the wooden spoon he was using to prod at the contents of the pan, and grabs the oven mitt, yanking open the oven door with his other hand. My oldest brother sighs and goes to help.
“Quick, while they’re distracted,” Mom whispers. “Were you crying? Is something wrong? You can talk to me about anything.”
Uh, no. I’ve talked to my mom about a lot of things, some of them intensely personal, a lot of them embarrassing, but I’m not telling her that an hour ago I had a raging erection that wouldn’t go away no matter how much I jerked it.
“I’m fine,” I promise her. “I cleaned this morning and forgot to wash my hands before rubbing my eyes.”
Her brows draw together, and then she leans in closer, as though to check that my eyes are okay and no worse the wear after potential exposure to chemicals. I suffer it patiently, because if I don’t, she’ll grab me by the scruff of the neck and hold me in place. Once a mama cat, always a mama cat.
Finally, she steps back with a nod and a chiding, “You should be more careful.” I agree, kiss her cheek, and then go to say hi to Dad, stepping over my nephew, Riley, who’s sprawled out on the floor in shifted form, along the way.
At seventeen, he only started shifting relatively recently, and like all of us at that age has been spending as much time as he can in cat form.
Stopping between Dad and Jory, my brother, I glance down at the charred but also somehow raw mass in the baking dish on the counter. “What did that start life as?”
“Pork roast,” Jory replies, while Dad sighs mournfully. “Pizza or Mexican?”
“Indian,” I counter, but it’s almost drowned out by my sister yelling, “Chinese!”
“One day,” Dad mutters, “I’ll get the oven fixed.”
There are smothered snickers behind us, and Jory and I exchange a smirking glance.
Nothing is wrong with the oven—we all took turns cooking when we were growing up, and the only one who had problems was Dad.
Sometimes Mom, but that was mostly because she’d put dinner in, then get a call from the hospital and forget about it.
By the time we sit down to dinner an hour later, the warm comfort of being with my family has dispelled the last of the sad-movie vibes.
I pile my plate high with enough food to feed two humans, secure in the knowledge that there’s enough for me to have seconds—possibly thirds—and dig in.
For a few minutes, there’s zero conversation, only polite eating noises.
Then Riley—in his biped form again—says, “Hey, Uncle Felix, my friend Ty said he saw you at the hockey on Thursday. How come you didn’t invite me?”
Oh, great. Just what I wanted to talk about. “How come you miss some of my games if you like hockey so much?”
As I expected, he groans in a way only teenagers can manage, making it sound like I’m the most unreasonable being in the world. I bite back my smile. I don’t expect him or any of my family to come to my games, but I like making a fuss about it sometimes.
On cue, he bursts out with, “That was one time! I said I’d hang out with my friend before I realized what night your game was. When are you ever going to let it go?”
“There’s nothing to let go,” I say with an innocent shrug. “You’re not required to come to my games. It’s not like the support of my family would mean anything to me.”
My sister boos and throws her napkin at me. “Oh, please. Like you’ve ever wanted our support. You’ve always just done your own thing. Damn youngest child.”
I smirk. It’s true; I am the quintessential youngest child, both utterly spoiled and also left alone to do what I wanted without the intense supervision my siblings—especially Jory and Greta—were subjected to.
By the time I was a teenager, my parents were phasing out of the child-rearing part of their lives and kicking their careers back into high gear, so I basically came and went as I pleased.
It’s how I ended up being a professional athlete for a woefully undervalued league in a niche sport that’s often looked down on by educated professionals.
My family is stacked with overachievers—aside from Mom and Dad, who are both noted in their fields, there’s Jory, who’s made some incredible breakthroughs in medical research; Greta, who’s a high-profile attorney within the community; and Kyle, who’s the youngest person ever to have designed a skyscraper in this city.
They’re building it at the moment, and every time I drive past the site downtown, I’m tempted to stop and put up posters of him when he was seven and liked to pick his nose. I’m pretty sure it’s my brotherly duty.
Anyway, on paper, I’m the slacker of the family.
None of them think that, but I’ve gotten enough surprised looks when I’ve met their colleagues and friends to know that other people see it that way.
I don’t care, though—I’m still young. I haven’t even reached halfway through my first century.
I’m going to play hockey and enjoy it for as long as I want to, and then I can consider what other careers might interest me.
“Soooooo,” Riley says, proving that teenagers are, in fact, annoying, “how come you didn’t tell me you were going to the game? I like the human league. Maybe I would have gone with you.”
Jory’s nearly a hundred years older than me—a result of the extremely limited fertility in the community, probably not helped by my parents’ insistence that they not have more than one dependent child at a time—so I’m a lot closer in age to his son than I am to him, and Riley and I hang out a lot.
The age difference between us is roughly the same as it is between me and Kyle. I like it.
But that does mean it’s unusual for me to not invite him to go to the hockey with me, so now I have to talk about the night I was hoping to not think about for the rest of the day.
“It was kind of work related,” I explain.
“The DEA is collaborating with the team to get more elves and dragons interested in hockey, and I volunteered to help their representative understand the sport. I was at the game with him and some other people from the DEA.” I can’t resist slipping that in.
Not only is it a good distraction, it’s also fucking cool.
Nobody in my family can claim to know elves socially.
“No way,” Riley says. “Really?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“Well, I’m proud of you, Felix,” Mom declares.
“I know you’ve been worried about the impact puberty has been having on your career, but the fact that the team is letting you be their representative to the DEA shows that you still have their confidence.
You can’t be doing so badly at keeping your hormones under control. ”
I glance down to hide my wince, then paste on a smile.
There’s no need for her to know that I’m not actually an official representative, that team management and Coach have no idea I’m doing this, and that Coach has me on an informal trial.
“Some days are better than others,” I admit, “but I think I’m not doing too badly.
” It’s as close to a lie as I’m willing to get.
I just don’t want to talk about my hormones and the mess they’re making of my life right now.
“Since you didn’t invite me to the game this time, maybe you could make up for it by taking me another time,” Riley suggests in a wheedling tone. “My feelings were really hurt, you know.”
“Riley,” his mother chides. “Don’t be a brat.”
“Yeah, Riley,” I echo, then wink at him. Taking my nephew to a hockey game is no hardship.