Chapter 14 Harlan
FOURTEEN
HARLAN
MARCH
I could do this. I could look Chef in the face.
Chef had caught me in something of a compromising position, or rather, she caught my dick in one.
Before she came over, I was setting up the kitchen for my lesson and debating whether I was actually mean to her or if it was all just good-natured teasing.
All our little fights raced through my mind.
How stubborn she was. How her cheeks would flush when I got under her skin.
How she also had this soft side that was unbelievably confusing.
The next thing I knew, I was hard. And it wouldn’t fucking go away. I knew I didn’t have long before she showed up, and I have a decent amount of windows open to the street. The most private spot I had on the first floor was the wall right when you entered my kitchen.
I really could have used some lube. Having as many piercings as I did down there, it was nice to have a smooth ride. I scanned over the ingredients I’d pulled out for my lesson and—nope, I actually was above buttering my cock. I did have limits.
I spit on my palm and got back to it. Only the images in my head weren’t memories of wild nights with an ex or random fantasies.
It was her.
What the fuck was that perfume Emma wore?
Did she buy it at Brats’R’Us to torture me?
Emma would resort to chemical warfare if she knew it would make me crazy.
Her scent erupted into my face when she held onto my shoulders in the Amarillo parking lot—fuck, was I really beating it to memories of Amarillo Steakhouse?
Which was worse: jacking off to thoughts of your coworker or jacking off to thoughts of a moderately-priced suburban chain steakhouse?
No matter. I’d learned a long time before to not judge whatever fantasies bubbled up. Brains are brains. Bodies are bodies. And Chef Emma was a certified hottie.
Add poet to my list of attributes. And right as I was preparing for release, the doorbell rang.
I growled out a string of cusses. I felt like a perv finishing while she was outside my house.
I shoved my dick back into my pants and tried to come up with something, anything, to make it not completely obvious what I’d been up to.
I failed. She saw it. I saw her see it.
But we had to get past this somehow. We had fourteen lessons to go. And we still had a whole lot of seeing each other at work.
What’s a boner between friends? We were two adults. We could handle this. For all she knew, I was watching porn and lost track of time.
Scratch that. I’m not sure that makes it better.
So when I got into work before our Sunday afternoon game against Colorado, I looked all around the dining room but only found Miguel at the cooking station. I was pretty sure Emma’d been avoiding me, and it really wasn’t my intention to creep her out. I needed to make amends.
You know what puts things back together, even if it’s at a snail’s pace? Small talk. Small talk can fix all ails.
“Heya, Chef,” I called into the kitchen as I went by.
“Hi,” she called over her shoulder, walking toward the back of the kitchen.
“Starting to warm up outside,” I said, staying behind my designated floor tile like the well-behaved student I was.
“Yep,” she said, short of breath while she slipped mitts on her hands to get a pan from the oven.
“Hey, I’ve been meaning to text you. You left your knife roll at my house.”
“Did I?” she asked. “That’s my backup anyway. You can just leave it there. I’ll use it next time I come over.”
Well, at least that meant she was coming over again and hadn’t completely filed me away. “You don’t need it for the cooking school?”
She scrunched her nose and muttered a soft “shit.”
“I’ll bring it by. Or,” I scratched my head and felt suddenly on the spot, “I can bring them into work?”
She gave me a grimace of a smile. “Whatever works. If you’ll excuse me.” She let out a loud, “Corner! Hot pan!” as she went out.
The puck slid under my leg pad and into the net. “Dammit.”
My ass was about to get pulled.
I stood, swiped the puck out of my net, and whipped off my helmet, tossing my hair. I grabbed my water bottle and squirted some on my face, in my mouth, and down my back. Why was I frazzled by fucking Pittsburgh? Everything felt off, and for no good reason.
I’d been having the best season of my life, and it kept getting better. But on this night, I was falling apart. No one was talking about it, but we were all thinking it: keep this up and we could go all the way.
We’d been to the playoffs the year before and lost in the second round. Granted, it was the Rusties’ first time making it in over a decade, but in hockey, if you didn’t make it all the way, you didn’t make it.
And if we didn’t make it this time, it was going to be hard for me to think it wasn’t my fault.
I wanted to throw my gear. Break my stick. Sink my teeth into leather. I settled for grinding my teeth on the league patch in the neck of my jersey.
I shook my head looking up at the score. That was the third goal this period to get past me. The game was now tied 4-4.
I could blame it on our defense. Garner and Lindberg had been playing like absolute shit lately, but the rest of the team had been limping them along. But blaming them didn’t change my current situation.
There was a set of season ticket holders on this end who always consoled me after I let one past me.
I heard their gentle pats on the glass to the right of my goal.
But I also heard another set of slaps. I looked up while grabbing my water bottle to find Emma, softly pounding the glass.
She mouthed, “You got this,” and tapped her temple. I could hear her words from my kitchen.
Clear your head.
I hadn’t been pulled in my whole time at the Rusties. I didn’t want my first time getting pulled to be in front of Emma. Hell, she was probably only out of the kitchen this late in the game because she heard I was struggling.
The last time I got pulled was in the AHL, and our coach laid into me.
You should have had that.
What happened on that goal?
How could you let that get past you?
Memories of that moment replayed on my darkest days.
But Emma’s words hit me again. What needs to happen next?
Shake it off.
I took a lap around the goal, thinking the very mature thought that maybe if I didn’t look at the bench, I couldn’t get pulled.
But I was an adult, and I had to face the music. A quick glance at the bench showed Coach waving me in and Cordero getting his helmet on.
I was pulled.
I skated to the bench and bumped Cordero’s fist on the way in.
“We all have games like this,” he said.
“Do better than I did,” I mused.
I didn’t know whether to feel encouraged or more embarrassed. I slumped down on the bench and removed my helmet. Our equipment manager put out his hand to take the helmet and offered me a ballcap, the standard for the benched goalie. I put it on and tugged it as low as it would go.
I’d been pulled but I wouldn’t hang my head, not with an arena full of people expecting me to do just that.
I also wouldn’t look to see if Emma was still watching.
I didn’t want to know. A new line went out for the post-goal faceoff at center ice, and Sorrento scooted down next to me. He clapped a hand on my shoulder.
“That takes guts, man. You worked hard for us.”
I clamped my jaw as a rush of heat went to my eyes. I gave a slight nod but kept my gaze fixed on the ice. It was the nicest anyone had ever been to me when I sucked. My team had every right to be mad at me, but they just . . . weren’t. Not outwardly, anyway.
Okay, maybe I needed to know if Emma was still watching. And she was, one arm folded over her chest with her hand fiddling with her necklace. Her gaze met mine and she gave me a soft smile, then lifted her hand to pat the glass, a gentle sort of “it’ll be alright.”
Chef and I fought like cats and dogs, and honestly, I liked that aspect of our friendship.
But her soft side really threw me off. With a single pat, she made everything inside me feel lighter again.
Miguel appeared behind her and she turned her head as he got her attention.
She grimaced and hurried toward the kitchen.
I don’t know how long she’d been there watching, but it didn’t matter.
Emma showed up for me.
And when I got back to my stall between periods, there was a piece of tape stuck to the wall.
The tape Chef used to label things in the kitchen.
It was her address.
I already had it. It was on the invoices she issued for our lessons. I’d used it to send Dave of Dave’s Pools and Spas her way and to check that Dave’s hot tub would fit on her patio. I could have gone there on my own with that knowledge.
But now, I had something new.
Permission.