2. Kate
KATE
The bastard didn’t even blink.
He’s just standing there with a cold, wet face, holding his stick with one hand, his helmet under one arm, staring down at me.
“I got here first,” I say, casually removing my earbuds.
Totally unaffected by him. Am I impressed by his athletic build and strong body?
Sure. Do I recognize that his thick, dark blond hair, intense pale blue eyes, and somehow-always-perfect-amount of scruff on his stupid handsome face are attractive?
Yes. To other people. But he’s not my type.
Does his Texas drawl awaken something primal inside of me, especially when he’s being a dick?
Absolutely, darlin’. The primal urge to slap the cocky grin off his face.
Do I find his stillness and determination to focus all of his attention on me attractive even though I know his knee must be throbbing right now? Yes. Fine. Yes. I do.
Do I have to keep my weird urge to lick his wet face in check? Also, yes. And I will keep it in check. Because he’s an idiot male person who would mistake face-licking for a desire to have sex with him and not the inconsequential tick that it actually is.
Mary Wollstonecraft said, I do not wish women to have power over men but over themselves. I have power over myself. Me. Only me.
“Why didn’t I see your shitty Jeep in the parking lot?” he asks in his gruff voice.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I got an Uber because Simone is in the shop again. She needs a new alternator.”
“You need a new car.”
“You need a new personality.”
“You need to get off my ice. I have it booked from six to seven. Me. My name. On the schedule. Confirmed with Ms. Percy.”
“I emailed her yesterday to confirm that it was still booked for someone else, and she didn’t respond. Therefore I took a chance.”
“Well, it’s still booked for me. Hence you must leave. I’ve gotta warm up and do some drills.” He finally turns to lean his hockey stick against the board behind him. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
Crossing my arms in front of my chest, I can’t help but laugh when I realize he’s wearing his Icebreakers jersey.
To the rink for solo practice. For beer league.
I honestly love that logo. It’s a cartoony overflowing beer mug with two crossed hockey sticks behind it.
So cute. Do I find his determination and dedication to recovery and excellence impressive?
I do. Endearing, even? Okay, yes. Hot…? “If you hate that logo so much, why are you wearing it at six a.m. when only Ron the Zamboni Guy is going to see it?”
He leans in and says, “Because I know how to commit to things and people, Red.” That one short sentence is laden with subtext. “And if I don’t want to commit to something, I let people know it instead of waiting for things to change or doing things behind people’s backs.”
The rims of my eyes are burning. The tip of my nose starts tingling.
My stupid lower lip is trembling. Bastard.
Ever since high school, Adam Foley has hated Phoenix and Phoenix hated him, but it’s just plain shitty to bring up his betrayal at six fifteen in the morning on the rink.
Too soon. Phoenix only moved to Toronto three months ago, and I only found out about the girl he moved in with six weeks ago.
That was below the belt, and I can see in his eyes that he knows it.
I manage to swallow the lump in my throat and say, “That is the most beautiful self-aggrandizing statement I have ever heard from a twenty-eight-year-old curmudgeonly asshole who won’t shut up about things that bother him.”
“And yet you’ve never heard me say a word about the person who bothers me the most, now have you?” He doesn’t break our hate-fueled locked gaze as he dons his helmet. I can still see his blue eyes through the visor.
He skates off, and I turn to watch him go. His first few strides are stiff, but he’s hiding it well. Well, he’d be hiding it well from almost anyone but an ice-sport movement coach like me. Unfortunately, I can tell he’s compensating.
Also…I can’t see his butt, but I’m aware of what’s under those layers of gear. Twin hills of absolute professional dedication. Even when he’s not a professional anymore.
Without looking back at me, he says gruffly, “You can stay if you keep out of my way, Red. Just try not to get too distracted.”
I open my mouth to respond, but he’s already turning to skate backward, facing me now, that insufferable half smile doing exactly what he intends it to do.
“I work better with an audience.” He winks.
How dare he. I do not pay attention to him because I like watching him, I study him for anthropological reasons. I am not and will never be his audience.
I stayed, and I skated my best program in months out of spite.
But it had nothing to do with him. I mean, the spite had everything to do with him, but I didn’t stay because of him.
I stayed because I came to skate and I wasn’t going to let Ms. Percy’s lack of email reply or Foley’s insolence stop me.
“That was some fine skating you did today, Red,” he says as he exits the men’s locker room.
He’s shouldering his hockey bag, the strap cutting across his chest, and carrying his stick.
Even weighted down by all that gear, he has a spring in his step after the excessive and totally unnecessary face-off footwork he practiced.
“Guess you work better with an audience too.”
For once, I don’t even dignify him with a response. I’m on my way to the front office to have a word with Ms. Percy. “Why are you following me?” I ask, hearing him behind me.
“Well, I’m about to have a word with our friend Ms. Percy—same as you, I imagine.”
“First of all,” I say, speeding up as he catches up with me, “Ms. Percy and I have a professional relationship because I schedule movement-coaching classes with clients here. Secondly, just stop talking to me.”
“Top-tier banter, Red. Always a pleasure.”
The lights are on in the administration office, and Ms. Percy is behind the counter, typing at her personal laptop.
Ms. Percy has been running this office since I was in grade school, and she’s always writing something in a secret document on her laptop.
She usually closes the laptop whenever people are around, but forgot a few times when I was in here.
I spied words like thrusting and pulsating and corona.
I asked her about it once when I ran into her at The Cosmic Cup, and she just grinned and said she has an exhilarating hobby that brings in extra money to fund her home renovations.
She’s my hero.
Except when she doesn’t reply to my emails.
Entering and trying to shut the door in Foley’s face, I greet her with, “Good morning, Ms. Percy. I just wanted to ask if there’s a specific time that I should email you by on a weekday to ensure that I’ll get a response about next-day early-morning scheduling.”
She holds up her finger without looking up and then continues typing for a few seconds. “What’s another word for pebbled?”
Oh God. “Umm…”
“Cobbled,” Foley offers confidently.
“Hard,” I say. “Just go with the basics.”
“What?!” he spits out. “That makes no sense.”
She glances up at me, over her wire-rimmed glasses, and smirks approvingly.
I get a thumbs-up for that. She types a few more words and then shuts the laptop.
“Right. You’re here to complain because you showed up at six a.m. even though that slot was booked by someone else.
And you”—she eyes Foley and says—“are here to complain because that’s what you do. ”
That cracks me up.
“I’m here to ask what’s the point of booking a timeslot if other people are going to show up to ruin my solo rink time?”
“And yet I saw the two of you on the rink together, happily doing your own things. So it seems to me you agreed to let Miss Pogue stay. Which is what both of you have done every time the six-a.m. slot has been accidentally double booked or when there’s been confusion about the booking over the past decade.
” Ms. Percy opens her laptop again and motions for us to leave her alone.
“I have to get another five hundred words in before the peewee parents show up. Now, scoot!”
And that is how she’s ended every interaction she’s had with the two of us since I was sixteen.
“I’m gonna get this on the agenda for the next city council meeting,” Captain Frownypants mutters. “The Kincaids are rich—why can’t they upgrade the scheduling system?”
“Oh my God.” I roll my eyes as I very kindly hold the door open for him.
“You literally just complained about the same thing.”
“I didn’t complain. Did you hear me complain? I asked a very polite, straightforward—”
“Passive-aggressive.”
“—question, like a grown-up who understands we’re getting the most affordable slot of the day and Ms. Percy isn’t getting paid enough to deal with this crap.”
“Good point. I’ll petition to get Ms. Percy a raise and a better scheduling system for the arena.”
When we reach the exterior doors, we both push them open, but his gigantic bag knocks against me.
“Excuse me!”
“I was opening the door for you,” he says. “You want a ride home?”
My brain freezes for a second. “What?”
He looks back at me as he pulls his knitted beanie down over his ears. He’s such a wuss when it comes to cold weather, but damn it, he looks good in a beanie. “Would you like me to drop you off at your place? Since your shitty old Jeep is in the shop?”
“She isn’t shitty, and no, I don’t want you to drive me anywhere. No.” I pull out my phone and open up my Uber app.
“You want to stand out here for fifteen minutes when I could get you home in five?”
“How do you know it takes five minutes to get to my place?”
“Calm down, Red. I was guessing.”
My Uber—there are only three Uber drivers in Kenton—is indeed fifteen minutes away. I close the app and say, “He’ll be here in five minutes, and I’ll go back inside.”
“Okay, Red. Don’t say I never tried to do something nice for you.”
“Okay…” is my astonishingly witty response, because I’m too busy watching him walk away from me.
That behind is an argument I do not have a counter to.
“See you at the charity auction, darlin’,” he calls out without looking back at me. “Maybe I’ll bid forty bucks on The Shrew Crew, since it’s for charity and all…”
“You couldn’t afford us!” I reply, sounding 100 percent more flirtatious than I meant to.
“Careful, Red,” he says as he opens the door to his truck. “That almost sounded like an invitation.”
“It definitely sounds like you want it to be an invitation, Foley” is my comeback, which—shit—sounded like I was flirting again.
I hurry into the lobby so I can’t hear his response if there was one.
Whatever. I wasn’t flirting. He knows I wasn’t flirting. I’ll just give him extra shit on the next episode. I have no doubt he’ll give me plenty of reasons to.