Chapter 10 Sprinkles And Side Quests
SPRINKLES AND SIDE QUESTS
KNOX
Irarely take five-minute showers, but I’m sprinting out of the locker room like the fucking place is on fire.
I need to know what Staten and Leif were talking about.
I’m thankful that my teammates had my back tonight, otherwise we wouldn’t have scored that final goal in the last period.
The Mustangs’ winning streak sees another day.
I’ve never been distracted on the ice before.
I’ve been conditioned to always leave my personal baggage at the rink’s entrance.
Tonight, though, I let my already-complicated feelings jeopardize my one goal in life: to make a name for myself in the hockey world.
I should’ve seen that defenseman coming, and I’m going to pay for my mistake tomorrow when my muscles protest every little movement.
I texted Staten—her phone number acquired after our tutoring session—to meet me outside the locker room. I think she’s starting to regret giving me phone privileges, and that girl has been as skittish as a stray ever since I trusted her and opened my big, fat mouth in the library.
Panic burbling in my gut and further scaffolded by the complementary nerves that always appear following a Staten sighting, I nearly ram right into her when I swing the door open and come pinwheeling out.
I’m used to her personality lighting up every room she steps in, but strangely, everything about her tonight seems…
dim. Small. So translucent that she’s bordering on invisible.
She looks like a mirage wobbling up from hot asphalt, or the fuzzy silhouette of a quickly forgotten dream wandering the purlieus of a sleep-deprived subconscious.
“Hey, hi,” I greet, trying to suppress the unruly excitement in my voice.
Read the room, Knox.
Staten’s mouth is carved into a frown, and her arms are wrapped around her midsection, offering herself comfort that I’m more than ready to extend.
Fear strangles my throat in its icy clutch, as if it has a debt to fulfill.
Granted, she’s never usually happy to see me, but she looks like she just got the news that her childhood puppy didn’t really run away to Aunt Rosie’s cattle ranch. Her eyes fixate on the toes of my worn sneakers, and she refuses to even hazard a glance at me.
I wouldn’t classify myself as a particularly protective person, but something inside me, in this very moment, turbocharges and launches me into guard dog mode. “Staten, are you okay?”
Maybe this will go down in my history of bad ideas, but I breach literally all the rules of our contract by sweeping her into my arms, more than prepared for the chastising that threatens to cudgel me.
To my utter surprise—and relief—her small arms squeeze me back, confirming that some part of her, is, in fact, still alive. She feels so delicate in my embrace; I just want to wrap my arms around her and sink through the earth’s crust like it’s nothing but molasses.
“What’s wrong? Talk to me,” I whisper, stroking the length of her spine, silently cursing when she doesn’t tear through the crash barricade keeping us apart.
Something treacle-thick hangs in the air above us, like an answer that can’t be phrased.
God, I’d give anything for her to just let me in all the way, but the sad, sad reality that excavates a crater in my chest reminds me she doesn’t owe me anything.
In fact, our acquaintanceship shouldn’t go beyond tutoring hours.
I’m half-expecting her not to say anything, so color me shellshocked when she hinges that metaphorical door open just a sliver—enough to lodge the tip of my shoe in. She gives me an inch, and I don’t ask for a mile.
“Leif and I…got into a fight,” she laments, the quietest pre-sob hiccup wracking her frame.
They got into a fight? Shit, it wasn’t about me, was it?
Don’t be so self-centered, dude. Not everything is about you.
I know it’s in both of our best interests for me to stay levelheaded, but I can’t help the growl that sits hot and heavy in the back of my throat, my anger eddying into an unnavigable whirlpool. “What did he say to you? Did he hurt you?”
Oh, I’m gonna kill him if he hurt her. The desire was already there, but if I have a reason? Leif Kennedy won’t ever play basketball again.
She doesn’t care to remedy my rage. She doesn’t care to answer me at all, really. Her fingers just curl against the back of my slightly damp shirt, as if to anchor herself in the veneer of my own unsteadiness.
“We’ve never fought like that before.” She sniffles, force-feeding me every ounce of her pain, and my belly sours in an automated response.
I feel fucking sick. My plan has already backfired, and we’re only at stage one. I wanted Leif to realize how great Staten was, not drive a wedge between them.
I pull back gently, my hands smoothing down the outside of her arms. “I’m so sorry,” I console, my heart capering with a wounded gait. The shower should’ve cooled me down, but heat still combs through my muscles.
Staten shakes her head. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to fix things.”
The loudening of voices behind me has me scooting Staten out of the way as we narrowly dodge a pack of my teammates exiting the locker room, completely oblivious to the turmoil that befalls the girl who tries to please everyone but herself.
I can’t imagine the emotions she carries on a daily basis.
I’m out of commission when I get too comfortable with the most superficial of feelings.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask, my fingers still clenched around her limbs. Touching her is a balm that slows my galloping pulse—that whets the carnivorous appetite of my wrath.
Not a peep.
I want to respect her boundaries, but I also have this terrible fix-it gene that rears its head in the worst situations.
Staten blows out a pent-up breath, readying herself as if she’d just stepped foot inside a confessional, sacred wood caked in sin, abandoned pews stewing in the mugginess of a secular summer.
“I just want to forget about him. I want to stop thinking about him,” she reveals.
Is it wrong that a little part of me loves that conclusion?
Muzzling what I’m sure is about to be some egotistical comment waiting to dismount off the diving board of my tongue, all I do is nod in understanding, mentally fossicking through a list of possible distractions that would reap the best Leif-free diet.
A light bulb goes off in my head, and I let my arms fall away. “There’s a taco truck that’s always parked down the road on Friday nights. Why don’t we grab a bite and walk around campus? It could get your mind off things.”
Honestly, I could n’t care less about what we do as long as I get to spend time with her.
Her brows furrow like carne asada is another word for “trap.” “Isn’t it a little late for dinner?”
As if to very loudly disagree, my stomach lets out a monstrous growl that echoes in the hallway, and I cringe. “Sorry, I’m always starving after a game.”
Staten’s lips unsheathe a faint smile, accompanied by a butterfly-inducing chuckle. “I could be convinced. If a sweet treat is involved.”
“That’s it?” I exclaim.
A noncommittal shrug. “I’m a simple girl.”
You’re anything but.
“Deal. Name your price.”
“A double scoop of caramel cookie crunch from Marianne’s.”
I’m so happy that I could break out into a jig. A jig. That’s like the unmanliest thing someone could do.
Knowing that she’s prone to changing her mind, I grab her hand before doubt can roost. “Staten, you can have as many scoops as you want.”
The air is sopped with the wintry bite of everlasting night, a lone streetlight illuminating the darkened ribbon of road where shadows play between the foliage of dogwood.
The buzzing bulb overhead strobes, attracting moths to a gilded North Star.
The street is pretty desolate despite the packed attendance of the hockey game, and Staten and I take advantage of the privacy, parking our butts on the weathered curb by the eye-catching food truck.
The concrete is cold—little deltas lush with weeds resulting from Minnesota’s pressurized temperatures—and the sky is a star-glutted shawl of obsidian.
Pulled pork melts between my molars, my fingers gripping the ever-loving life out of my soft taco, and a landslide of pickled onions, chunky salsa, and shredded cheese slops onto my paper plate.
My sated stomach thanks me in silent gratitude, not minding the influx of food that catapults down my gullet.
I’m pretty sure there’s sour cream all over my mouth, but I’m too comatose to care.
Staten, with more decorum in her pinky finger than I have in my entire body, picks at her chicken quesadilla like she hasn’t committed to eating it.
I do admit that I’m not always the brightest bulb in the chandelier, so when I realize that I need to read the street curb and try to save some framework of the conversation, I lower my cumin-rich missile.
I forget to close my mouth as I chew, and the words come out butchered. “I’m sorry he was being such an ass,” I mumble.
A frown frosts over her lips. “It’s not your fault,” she dismisses.
“It might be.”
I know it’s not appropriate to be thinking this in any capacity—or not right now, at least—but the reddened tip of her windbitten nose is adorable.
She crinkles it in confusion. “What do you mean?”
And suddenly, my hard-earned food isn’t sitting so well anymore.
I abandon my third taco, unsuccessful in attempting to dethrone the guilt that reigns over my mind.
I’m not one to ever admit my own faults, but every time I catch a glimpse of Staten’s perpetual kicked-dog look, it bludgeons my heart into an unrecognizable mush of blood-soaked tissue.
Swallowing, I reply, “I just mean that I kind of made things super complicated between you guys without consulting you first.”