Chapter 12
TWELVE
“Did you take drugs?”
Rubbing my ear, I gape at her. “What? No! Oh, god, Denny, I’m so sorry!”
Fuck, that was the best kiss of my life and she thinks I’m stoned?!
Just being so close to her, feeling her curves, her softness, her warmth—she’s everything I knew she’d be.
And more.
Everything that I’ve been torturing myself with for close to two months has come to fruition.
Denny is the best I’ve ever had.
“If you weren’t high, then what did you think you were doing?”
My mouth works because this is worse than I expected.
I figured she’d punch me or something. Instead, she sounds hurt.
“I’m so sorry.”
Knowing I broke something, but unsure how to fix it, I twist around, shoulders hunched in shame, unable to even look at her.
Then she further decimates me: “Stop saying sorry! Does our friendship mean so little to you that you think it’s okay to humiliate me?”
Even as I’m floored by her take on this situation, I watch her go as she runs off, leaving all her stuff behind on the bench.
And I let her.
I don’t follow.
Because part of my brain’s racing at a hundred miles an hour while the rest is sluggishly crawling along.
My cock’s hard.
From a simple kiss.
But she thinks I betrayed her?
That makes my erection die.
She thinks I kissed her to humiliate her.
Thinks I chose my team over her.
Thinks that our friendship doesn’t matter.
That she doesn’t matter when she’s my—
Oh.
Christ.
She’s my fucking everything.
The realization has me freezing in place.
“Did you just destroy your relationship over a dumb favor for a teammate?”
Hearing the words out loud, I dig my thumb and forefinger into my eyes.
I wish the “favor” were the reason.
Instead, listening to her talk about nose jobs and her tits and being so sweet about Mom and hearing the hurt her parents’ dysfunctional relationship levied on her… I needed to kiss her.
And I used Alec’s bullshit demands to make it happen.
The worst part is that one kiss made me want another.
And another.
I didn’t want to stop.
I never want to stop.
An ache spears across the back of my neck, shooting over my skull. It could be the high-stick from the Connecticut forward in the second period but it’s not.
It’s because the reason I stalled on completing this trend is staring me square in the face.
Deep down, I knew.
I knew I’d want to kiss her until the end of time.
And I knew that Denny sees me as a best friend.
Nothing more.
She said the words out loud on invite-only night.
Staggering to my feet at how low I’ve sunk, I collect her things and dump them into her tote. I even pick up the discarded bottle of black nail polish so I can toss it in the trash.
Snagging the tote’s handle then grabbing my own crap, I head for the pity SUV my dad got me so I’d have to make the journey to him in the city rather than the other way around.
That, of course, is when it hits.
“I’m Denny’s ride!”
Cursing, I jump into my SUV after I’ve dumped our stuff in the trunk then pull out of the Pond’s parking lot like I don’t give a shit about losing my license for speeding.
I’m lucky there are no cops around, but there’s Denny—walking on the precarious shoulder that isn’t safe for pedestrians.
She ran from me.
I put her in danger.
But I’m about to enter a minefield because telling her she’s in an unsafe area to get her into my ride will jeopardize my balls.
Scolding myself, I slow, flick on my hazard lights, and open the window.
“God, Denny, I’m—”
“If you say you’re sorry, I will throw something at you.”
“Please, do! I’m so sor—”
“Go away, jackass,” she grates out, the words wobbly and watery.
Is she crying?!
My heart sinks. “It’s not safe out here.”
“Not safe in there either if you’re going to be a douche.”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
Can she hear the agony in my voice? The raw truth?
“Well, you did. I’m hurt. Congrats.”
“It was…” Words fail me.
She pivots so she can glare at me.
“What was it? Please, tell me. I want to understand why you thought you could treat me like that?”
I have no answer that won’t make her shoot lasers from her eyes and explode me and my ride in one go.
“Fuck.” She covers her face with her hands. “It doesn’t matter, Zach. Nothing matters.”
“It does! If it didn’t matter, you’d be in here with me where it’s safe and you wouldn’t run the risk of getting mowed down.”
Like clockwork, a truck honks its horn behind us and she jumps in response.
“I’m going too slow, Denny.”
“Speed up then.”
“I’m not leaving you out there. Not when I’m the dumbass who… You shouldn’t be in an unsafe situation because I’m an idiot.”
The truck overtakes me when I brake and she turns again, facing me full-on, letting me see the tear tracks on her cheeks. The streetlights make them gleam in an ethereal way, painting her sorrow on her skin like a watercolor.
It’s not the first time Pecan or I have been a dick. She always puts up with our shit, just like we put up with hers.
But tears?
That’s when hope stirs in me.
I know it’s fucked up when she’s crying, but those tears have to mean something.
Maybe…
No.
Now isn’t the time.
“Please, get in. I won’t talk to you if you don’t want me to. You can stay mad. You can even lay claim to the TV remote and I won’t argue if you put on an art documentary. Just, please, get in, Denver.”
When she stomps her foot, I know she’s listening to reason and my relief is immediate. But, like the wise man I can sometimes be, I don’t say a word until she growls, “FINE.”
The moment she’s clambered into the passenger seat, my lungs fill fully for the first time in minutes.
Returning to the flow of traffic, heart only just decelerating, I rasp, “I’m so sorry, Denny—”
“You said you wouldn’t talk.”
I grit my teeth rather than answer and watch as she fiddles with the playlist on the dock.
The sight eases something in my soul.
I know her too well—she won’t stay mad at me for long if she wants to fix the music.
It also means that she wants a soundtrack to our argument.
So, I brace myself for takeoff and keep quiet when Audioslave blasts through my speakers.
The streetlights and the console illuminate the interior of the cab, and if I flick a look beside me, I can see her rubbing the soft, fleshy pad of her palm with her opposite thumb once Prodigy yells at us about starting fires.
Because she only does that when she's riled up, I offer, "I can massage your hands for you later if they’re hurting again?"
"Why would I want you to touch me?"
Stung, I flinch.
She has a point.
When doesn't she?
Her parents really knew what they were doing when they named her. Denver is quite capable of freezing you out and snapping the air from your lungs.
The atmosphere in the SUV has its own rhythm. It's in time to the angry version of Gayle’s “abcdefu” and the other myriad of songs she's chosen because we share a Spotify account and she has her own 'Fuck you, Zach' playlist.
I'm lucky that it's something I seldom hear… until she plays that on repeat.
Five minutes away from home, she berates, “How could you do that to me?”
Relieved she wants to get into it, I accept that I could take her anger, but it's her hurt that decimates me and it’s leaching into every word.
My hands curl around the steering wheel, and it creaks beneath my grip. My fingers tighten until my knuckles feel like they could shatter as a million replies come to me, but not a single goddamn one of them fits what I need to say to her.
Slowly, I hiss out air, desperate to alleviate the pressure.
Back when I was a kid, I had a stutter that my perfect parent couldn't permit so I practically lived with a speech therapist, as well as a regular therapist, until they trained it out of me.
At times like these, I could stutter.
And at times like these, she knows that and she always lets me collect myself.
There are a million small things that we know about one another.
But for all that, I want to know a million more.
I want to know what that freckle on the underside of her chin tastes like.
I want to know what her perfume does to the nook between her breasts.
I want to know how her fingers would feel in mine if we walked down the street hand in hand.
"I-If—" That I stutter, despite having the time to collect myself, has me braking to a verbal halt.
Agitated, I wriggle my neck from side to side.
My mind races to find a response that she’ll accept, but I can only blurt out, "W-What if I wanted to know w-what k-kissing you felt like?"
A shocked gasp escapes her. "So you could add me to the collective bed post you and your fuckface teammates are collating? You think I don't know your reputation more than lives up to its notoriety? You think I don't see the girls that leave our apartment at all hours of the night and day?”
“You’re right to throw that at me, D.”
“No shit!”
Her anger is a wall I don’t know how to climb so I focus on the truth.
“When Mom left me behind, something inside me cracked. I had to get out of the house. Moving countries wasn’t far away enough.
” In the immediate aftermath, I abandoned the family home and moved into our shared apartment a couple months before the summer semester started.
“You know how much I was drinking. How I partied every night. It was dumb of me. Nothing let me forget my grief. My bitterness about her dying.” I rake a hand through my hair.
“When beer and late nights interfered with my game, I stopped and carried on fucking too much instead.
Tonight… the video, I need you to know they have nothing to do with each other.
"You're not a trophy," I justify, knowing that I deserve her criticism.
Not that she's ever verbalized it before.
She hasn't even rolled her eyes or shaken her head at the number of puck bunnies who cling to me when she and I hang out together.
For my interminably impatient friend, she’s been patient with me. More than I deserve. Especially if they’ve all treated her like shit.
"Well, way to go because you made me feel like one. When I was waiting for you, I literally heard Addison bragging about how big your dick is, Zach. Then you come and kiss me and film it for a stupid video?! Seriously, does our friendship mean so little to you? Answer my question this time."
"No," I grate out, pissed at Addison and at myself and at the world. But I have no one but me to blame here. "You mean everything to me, Denny. You have to know that."
"So why jeopardize what we have together?"
I want to close my eyes and hide from her question, but I'm driving and she's sitting next to me. I'm not doing anything to threaten her safety.
I know I just screwed up our friendship more than I did in tenth grade when Pecan and I hung out with Jason Dupree and Miles Lander then dumped her because bros don't have chicks that are friends.
Took me until Christmas that same year to figure out that the reason I hated classes, that the reason I felt like hurling a thousand pucks into Peek’s goalie mask at the prospect of going to goddamn school every day, was because I'd cut her out.
Never mind Pecan, who went from a solid C student to a D/F one.
She paid us back for our defection, too. Made us grovel and work our way into her good graces.
Took us four months until she let us sit beside her in class again.
God, my Denny never lets me get away with shit and I love her for it.
Even if she demands I leave our apartment, I will because that’s the least she deserves.
“Alec has spent the past few weeks collecting these d-dumb videos,” I admit. “Pecan kissed me and sent it over and I said that was my version too, but Alec wouldn’t let it go.
“I didn’t really give a fuck if he wasn’t happy, but tonight, when I walked out of the Pond and saw you sitting there, l-l-like always…
You’re always there, Denny. Always.” Tonight, she was more focused on Callan, though, and maybe that played a part in…
I’m such an idiot. “And I… I just realized that you’re the only person I want to talk about the game with.
“Every minute I'm in the locker room and those asswipes take up my time, I resent it because I want to see YOU. Be with you.
“You told me about Mom and Mel and I figured I knew all your secrets like you know most of mine. But I don’t. And I resent that. I want to know everything about you. Every little thing. Even that won’t be enough. And I want you to know everything about me too.
“Alec’s video gave me permission to do something I’ve not been able to get out of my head for w-weeks. I’ve wanted to kiss you. No trend. No dumb videos. Just me and you. Best friends, sure. But more.”
“More?” she asks weakly.
“Y-Y-Yes. This was an excuse—not to use you. But to see if my mind and body were playing tricks on me. A kiss. With justification. One that I could fall back on if… but I should have had more faith in my instincts. I shouldn’t have put us on the line when I always knew how that kiss would turn out. ”
When we approach our building, I half-expect her to dart out of my SUV once I pull up at a stoplight.
She doesn't.
She stays silent.
But that tension's still there.
I'm pretty sure it'll give me a heart attack before I can park in the underground garage.
Then, as the barrier ascends once the sensor accepts my registration, she whispers, "And how did it turn out?"
Her words have me almost crashing into the post housing the lever because my head whips to the side to gape at her while my hands swerve the opposite way.
"Excuse me?"
She stares straight ahead. "How was the kiss?"
Not for the first time since she got into the SUV, I grit my teeth. But it's not in anger or annoyance. No, it's because I need to keep a hold on my tongue.
But there are some words I can't not speak out loud.
"I-It was...” I lock my jaw. Breathe it out. Refuse to stutter. “…everything I hoped it’d be and it still wasn’t enough."