6. Chapter 6
Cody
Thank God my parents' house is only seven miles from campus because if Doyle asks me one more time if I'm okay, I might break his nose.
All I need right now is quiet and my dog.
Especially after sitting through fifty minutes of Professor Demir's lecture, where I stopped trying to keep up at the twenty-minute mark because the words coming out of his mouth weren't matching the ones landing in my notes.
The last half hour of class had me drawing a stick figure getting checked into the boards.
Blue is on me the second I push open the front door.
Eighty pounds of muscle and slobber slamming into my legs, his whole body wiggling so hard his backend nearly takes out the entryway table.
His nails click against the hardwood, and he shoves his blocky head straight into my thigh, tail whipping back and forth.
I drop my bag and crouch. “Hey, buddy.”
He licks my entire face—chin, cheek, forehead, then goes for my mouth, which is disgusting, but I let him do it anyway because it’s better than anything else that's happened this week.
I wrap both arms around his neck and bury my face into the warm fold behind his ear. “Missed you.”
“Cody, is that you?”
“Yeah, Mom.”
She comes around the corner from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel before pulling me into a hug. “Didn't expect you today.”
I bend and kiss her cheek. “Just need some quiet.”
She scans my face, letting a beat pass before she steps back. “Hungry?”
“Ehh.”
She quirks a brow.
“Okay, I am.”
“I'll make you something.” She smiles, then heads back into the kitchen.
Blue follows me into the living room, his body pressing against my leg.
I drop my backpack next to the couch, toss my keys onto the coffee table, then toe off my sneakers before flopping onto the couch.
Blue hops up beside me, which he's technically not supposed to do, and rests his massive head on my lap.
Mom comes back with a glass of apple juice and sets it on the coffee table. “How was practice?”
“No practice today. Preseason rules. Coach only gets us eight hours a week.”
“Well, you've got a few hours of quiet before Davis gets home.” She glances at Blue, eyes narrowing for a moment before looking back at me. “Your brother has been insufferable. Apparently, seventh grade is the beginning of the end of his social life.”
I huff a laugh, shaking my head. Last week, my little brother almost cried because someone made a group chat without him.
“Rest, sweetheart. You look tired.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
She walks back into the kitchen. After taking a long sip of the juice, I lay back and shut my eyes, running my fingers along Blue’s fur. My breathing slows and my body sinks deeper into the cushions.
I could use a nap.
Blue shifts, adjusting his weight, and one of his paws drags right across the bruise on my thigh.
I hiss, and his head pops up, ears perking like he thinks he did something wrong. “You’re fine, buddy.”
It's not his fault some asshole twice my size tackled me into the dirt. That bruise and the two on my ribs and the one across my lower back—they’re all from the same guy. Same one who wrapped his hand around my throat.
My jaw clenches.
If I ever find out who those assholes are, I'm breaking every finger on both their hands, starting with the one who grabbed my hair and yanked my head back.
That wasn’t even the worst part, though.
Nope.
It’s the fact that I got hard.
Not a little. Not some half-assed adrenaline spike that went away once the danger passed. No. A full-on aching erection. Even when I was fighting.
Yeah, okay. My dick started to fill when I saw Cindy getting railed against a tree. But when those two pressed in on me—one dick against my ass, the other shoved against my mouth—I came.
No one even touched me.
I press my palms into my eyes hard enough that I see stars.
Adrenaline. Had to be.
What other excuse is there?
I’m not into guys, never have been. Would’ve figured it out by now if I were, right? I mean, Knight has walked around the locker room naked. Sure, I checked out his piercings once, but only because I was curious about the hardware.
It’s not like I stood there admiring his dick. Didn’t even give it a second thought.
I scrub both hands over my face, groaning, then reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. There are a few missed texts from Doyle, but I don’t have the energy to deal with him. I scroll through social media for a bit, then open Google to look up why my body reacted the way it did.
Honestly, I should just put the whole night behind me. I’m lucky that I got out of there. It could have been so much worse. Those two guys could have . . .
I shake my head. “Not going there.”
The first thing that pops up. Fear kinks.
Great.
Let me just add that to the list. Dyslexic. Too competitive. Takes the same girl to the same restaurant every two weeks and thinks he's killing it. Can't tell when he's being cheated on.
And now, gets off on being scared.
Like any girl’s going to sign up for that.
Blue yawns so wide his jaw cracks, and I can count every one of his teeth, then he puts his head back down and sighs like he's the one having a bad week.
“Yeah,” I mutter. “Same.”
I toss the phone aside. Time to stop thinking about the past. After shifting Blue off my lap, I sit up to dig through my backpack for my Macro textbook and the notes from Demir’s lecture. If I’m going to be pissed off, might as well aim it at something that’ll eventually help me.
Except my notes look like they belong to someone else. Half the words are abbreviations I don't remember making up, and the rest trail off mid-sentence, where Demir moved to the next slide before I finished writing.
“Agg. D = C + I + G + something. That's what I've got. An incomplete formula.” I follow the arrow I drew, but it points at nothing. “And is this word nominal or national ?”
Great job, idiot. Real useful.
Sighing, I flip open to chapter three. Maybe I can make sense of the nonsense I wrote.
There's a section on aggregate demand in bold, so I press my finger under the first line and read out loud.
“Ag-gregate demand repre . . . represents the total quantity of goods and services demanded across all levels of an econ—economy at a given overall price level and in a given time . . . period.”
I take a breath and look at it again. Total quantity of goods and services. Okay. All levels of an economy. Got it. At a given overall price level and in a given time period.
What the fuck does that mean together?
I read it again, slower, my finger under each word. “Aggregate demand represents the total quantity of—” My eyes jump a line, and I'm suddenly in the middle of a sentence about equilibrium that I didn't start. I drag my finger back up to find where I was.
Doesn’t help. Even though I can say every word on this page out loud, I can't make them mean anything together.
Brayden would've had this chapter done by now. My older brother probably would’ve even quizzed himself for fun. Meanwhile, I’m going for my fourth attempt with my finger under every word, and the textbook is winning.
“This is fucking bullshit.” I close the book and put it on top of my bag along with my notes. Lying down on the couch, I pull Blue against me and press my face into the back of his neck. “I fucking hate how stupid I am.”
He licks my arm.
My breathing stutters, and I sniffle, squeezing Blue tighter. “Love you, buddy.”
“Cody, here’s your . . . Blueberry, go place.”
He lets out one of his dramatic huffs, slides off the couch, pads to his bed by the window, circles once, then drops.
Mom sets a plate on the coffee table with a turkey sandwich, cut diagonally, and chips on the side.
I sit up, clearing my throat. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Mhm.” She sits on the arm of the accent chair and folds her hands. “Are you okay?”
I nod.
“Cody?”
“Broke up with Cindy.”
Her face softens. “Oh, sweetheart. I'm sorry.”
“Me too.”
She reaches over and squeezes my knee, the pressure warm and steady. “If you want to talk about it, I’m here.”
I look away and poke at the chips on the plate. “Not right now.”
“Okay, well, eat up.”
“Yes, Mom.”
She squeezes my knee one more time, hand lingering for a moment before she leaves the room.
Blue is already snoring in his bed, one leg twitching. The house is quiet, and the sandwich looks good because Mom's sandwiches are always the best, even when she acts like she just threw it together.
I take one half and bite it, exhaling through my nose.
This past weekend was a reset. That’s it. A way to cut out distractions I don’t need anymore . . . like my ex-girlfriend.
Now it’s back to what actually matters.
Earning First Team All?American. Owning my ice time. And proving to Toronto I’m ready for the Leafs, not a stint in the AHL.
Nobody on that ice is going to ask me to read a paragraph out loud or take notes faster. Out there, it's just my legs and my stick and getting the puck to where it needs to go.
Out there, I don’t have to be anything other than exactly what I am.
The guy who gets back up.
Every. Single. Time.