Chapter 12 Penny
Penny
“Five, six, seven, eight!”
Layla counts us down and, as a team, we walk onto the ice, waving our poms at the crowd. Yes, walk in tennis shoes, not skates. Why? Because dance, which isn’t really an answer, but also . . . very much is.
Over the sound system, the announcer shouts, “And here’s to the flyest cheerleaders in the league, our Ice Hawkettes!”
There’s a few “ca-caw” callouts that break through the roar in my head, but beyond that, I don’t hear the crowd as we take our starting positions.
It’s showtime, and whether they’re ignoring us in favor of ordering a beer from one of the vendors that walk the arena or laser-locked on us, it’s all the same to me. It’s time to work . . . and work.
I didn’t always want to be a cheerleader.
Once upon a time, I was a figure skater who lived, breathed, and dreamed of spins and jumps.
While Dominic would practice hockey on one end of the rink, bragging about how he’d be an NHL pro one day, I’d be at the other end, pretending I was the star of Disney on Ice when I was young, and later, imagining that I was competing at the Olympics.
Unfortunately, only one of us took it as far as we dreamed, which is why there are people in the audience tonight wearing my brother’s jersey number.
I might’ve gone further if it hadn’t been for the coach I had the year I turned fourteen, who was strict to the point of abusive, and by the time my parents figured out why I was suddenly stressing about the puberty-driven changes to my body, the damage had been done to my love of the sport.
But I still loved many aspects of figure skating, like the choreography, the movement, and the performance.
So I found a way to turn the body that was deemed too short and too curvy for figure skating into a plus by becoming a cheerleader in high school.
There, I focused on power and projection, precision and passion, and with my background, I was a force to be reckoned with.
When Dom got drafted into the pros, my parents and I went to all his games, and I had another brilliant idea when I saw the cheerleaders.
They were the best of everything I love—dance, cheer, and skating—and a new dream was born.
When he got traded to the Hawks, I secretly tried out and became a Hawkette the next year, and this is my third season with them, making me one of the veterans.
The music starts, and we begin to move as one, our well-rehearsed routine flying by in what seems like warp speed.
At the same time, it’s slow motion, the movements automatic, letting me simultaneously smile and wink and engage with the audience in front of me, demanding their attention and working hard to keep it.
Somehow, I manage to do it all without stumbling a bit on the slippery ice.
In my regular life, I’m a disaster waiting to happen, tripping over my own feet and attracting drama at every turn, but when I’m performing, nothing can stop me and I ooze confidence in every step.
It makes no logical sense, but I’ve long ago given up on figuring out the hows and whys of it, and just appreciate that I haven’t eaten ice in the middle of a performance . . . yet.
Too quickly, since I don’t want to leave this graceful zone of existence, the last note plays, and we hold our ending pose for a beat, letting the applause sound out before we start waving and clapping our poms together.
I see a little girl in one of the lower sections waving back excitedly and give her an extra-big smile.
We carefully make our way to the gate, lining up for the player announcements and entrances as the announcer starts down his roster.
He begins with the visitors, calling out the Vortex players, and above us, on the jumbotron screen, the guys’ pictures and stats appear.
As they pass us by, we clap politely, keeping smiles plastered on our faces, though there’s a fair amount of racket in here, as their fans have shown up in force.
Then it’s the Hawks’ turn, an entirely different experience. Our smiles are real, the claps proud, and the fans go nuts, chanting players’ names and banging on the glass in front of them.
“Dominic Lee!”
As my brother passes me, I chirp out, “No mercy, Dom!” He flashes me a cocky grin as he turns to skate onto the ice backward, mouthing no mercy here as he thumps his chest. He’s such an arrogant bastard, and though I can’t roll my eyes at his antics when I’m on the ice, he knows exactly what I’m thinking.
“Griffin Mahoney!”
I flip my attention back to the monster entering the rink.
With there being a solid foot of difference between our heights, Griffin always towers over me, but when he comes toward me with an extra couple of inches from his skates and several inches wider from the shoulder pads, I feel tiny.
But the quick side-eye he shoots my way has me feeling ten-feet tall and bulletproof because the fire in that look is new.
Not cold. Not annoyed. Not dismissive. Nope, I might not be a body language pro who can decipher men with pinpoint accuracy, but that look was .
. . something I don’t have a name or label for.
And while I’m considering buying one of the fancy thermal label makers to organize my work at home, I probably shouldn’t make a cute pink tag that says “Honey” on it because . . . it’s still Griffin.
And he hates me. Right?
Except that look wasn’t one of hate, right?
Maybe a day with me has led him to succumb to my considerable charms. And I don’t mean my boobs, which are great but were covered in a T-shirt yesterday for our Tour de Pawn.
I mean maybe, after years of trying and a few more years of saying, Fuck it, he’s finally decided to like me.
Or at least, not hate me, which is nearly the same thing in my book.
Are we becoming friends?
The idea doesn’t seem as preposterous as it did a few short days ago.
“Good luck, Griffin!” I cheer, happy to have made some progress with the brute.
He flinches, and I swear I see his chest rise sharply like he sucked in a breath. It takes me a second to realize my mistake and correct myself. “I mean, good luck, Honey!”
I can’t help but grin at the progress we’ve made.
Three measly days ago, he was glaring at me like he wished I hadn’t invaded the pregame dinner at Pro-Bowl.
Now, we’re on a first-name basis, and I even used his nickname, which sounds dangerously close to an endearment.
Maybe by the next time we see each other, he’ll actually call me Penny without it sounding like a curse word. It’s a new goal, I decide.
I don’t get to plot that out any further than deciding the colors of the friendship bracelet I’m going to make him—obviously Hawks black and gold—because it’s time for the players to warm up and for the cheerleaders to either get up to our stage area for game-time performances or to put on skates to join the crew that clears the ice during breaks.
Cheerleaders rotate between the roles, taking turns either performing or doing shovel skates, and tonight I’m headed up to dance for the whole game.
“I hate you, you know that, right?” Layla whispers once we’re clear of the ice and the crowd and can be ourselves for a moment instead of our cheer-sonas.
I jerk my eyes her way. “What? We’re besties. Like this, you and me.” I cross my fingers and immediately drop my pom, of course kicking it straight into a security guard’s booted foot. Making a sound of suffering, I mutter an apology as I quickly bend down to grab it, never missing a step.
“You hang out with two of the hottest guys on the team all the time. Eating dinner with them, going to the gym with them, sitting on the couch to watch Bachelor Island with them.” Between the blissed-out smile, lovestruck eyes, and awestruck tone, she makes it sound like I’ve got a MFM throuple going down on the regular.
A laugh escapes hard and loud at her very wrong assumptions. “First of all, they don’t watch Bachelor Island. Second of all, one of those hot guys”—I pause to stick my tongue out and gag—“is my brother. And the other one is like a brother. That’s all kinds of ick.”
She tilts her head, her brows fighting their Botox to furrow as she stares at me.
“What?”
“I’ll give you that Dom is your brother. But Honey? He doesn’t look at you like any brother I know. He looks at you like he wants to devour you. Did you hear that grunt he let out when you called him Griffin?” Her eyes roll back, her lashes fluttering. “God, I bet that man is a beast in bed.”
“La la la la la,” I intone, covering my ears with my poms. “Seriously, I wouldn’t know. Now or ever. And if you find out, please don’t tell me. I don’t want to sit across the table from him at Pro-Bowl and pretend I don’t know that he sweats like a wildebeest when he has sex.”
She purses her lips like she’s imagining that.
And totally unprompted and unwanted, a vision pops into my mind—of Griffin hovering over me, his teeth gritted, his neck muscles popping out, and his eyes locked onto mine as he thrusts into me deep and hard.
There’s not a bead of sweat in sight, just pure, raw sex appeal.
I shake my head, wishing I could unsee that image because it is dangerous . . . and stupid . . . and pointless.
We’re barely becoming friends, like on the tippy-tappy fine line between forced acquaintanceship and friendship. So there’s zero need, like negative need, for me to have even one little dirty thought about Griffin.
“Of the two of us, I think you’re the one more likely to get that answer.”
“Huh?” I almost missed what Layla said, but in the time it takes me to question her, what she’s implying registers, and I act quickly to correct her. “Don’t. Be. Ridiculous.”
“Okay. If you say so.” There’s a glint in her eyes that says her words and her thoughts on this don’t match up at all.