Chapter 9 #2
“Wait, do you think he’s super rich?” I asked, feeling suddenly like if there were so many people here to support, then maybe this was bigger than I anticipated by a large margin.
Jeremy peeled his eyes away from the game to look at me in utter disbelief. Kate also looked flummoxed.
“He’s a star defenseman, he was captain of his last team,” Jeremy said like I’d offended him.
“Then why would they trade him?” I asked.
“It was a big trade, the other team got like three people just for him. Columbus is in a rebuild, Han.”
“Did you not google him?” Kate asked, shocked herself. “His contract is very public knowledge.”
I had googled him, just for the image search function, but I didn’t admit this.
“He’s a millionaire,” Kate clarified. “As in multiple millions millionaire, not just one.”
I blinked at this news, not quite understanding.
Jeremy turned back to the ice, and when a mass of shouts came from around us, I turned back to look as well.
The players were around our goal, passing the puck back and forth to each other.
I tracked down the 33 and followed his movement around the other players.
“He’s staying in my basement,” I admitted to Jeremy.
“You’re making Barry Wright sleep in Grandma’s murder basement?” he said, way too loud for comfort at a crowded game where probably over eighty percent of them knew who Barry Wright was.
“He’s the one who asked to stay with me, I didn’t know he was a millionaire! I didn’t even know he was good at hockey.”
And then, as if he could hear me, Barry shouldered into another player as the puck was sent his way, then tapped the puck into the net.
The stadium erupted, everyone standing and screaming, the three of us included.
And when Barry’s teammates on the ice swarmed him excitedly, he looked right up at me.
Jeremy drove us home after the game, even though he kept asking us if we could wait at the stadium to talk to Barry.
“You’ll have at least eighteen years to talk to Barry,” I told him. “No need to start tonight.”
“Can I come over then? Since you’re making him sleep in the dungeon?”
“Not tonight,” I said, but didn’t defend the basement.
Jeremy sulked about it, but also told me to say thank you for the seats, the free food, the jersey, the hoodie he also convinced me to give him, and then to ask if we could please, please do it again sometime, particularly when playing Columbus at home.
I told him I would relay the message.
It was only an hour later that Barry showed up, using the key I gave him with the bright pink keychain to come through the back door in the kitchen, where I was already making some tea.
He was in the same outfit from earlier, but his hair looked like it had been washed since the sweaty post-game interview we saw where he was dripping, hair pushed back in a wet, sexy way that probably smelled horrible but translated to being really appealing on the stadium screen.
“Want tea?”
Barry scrunched his nose in a way that was deliriously cute and needed to be purged from my brain immediately. “Do you have hot chocolate?”
“How do you get away with eating so much damn sugar all the time? Do you have a million cavities?”
“I have a respectable number of cavities, thank you very much,” Barry said. “I just think tea tastes like sand.”
I laughed and shook my head but grabbed the hot chocolate tin and some stale mini marshmallows.
“Congrats on the star of the game,” I said. “Do you get a prize for that?”
Barry laughed and set his duffle down before sinking onto one of the mismatched bar stools.
“No prize, and I think they only gave it to me because it was my first home game.”
“You got a goal, and also an assist,” I said, repeating what Jeremy said three times in exclamation about the game.
“She knows hockey now,” Barry teased. “One game really changes a girl.”
“Well, it does when you have a twenty-two-year-old super fan giving play-by-play the whole time.” I poured the steaming water over a bag of the only pregnancy tea Kate found that didn’t taste like shit. “He said thanks for the jersey, by the way.”
“Jersey was for you, but he’s welcome. I’ll get you as many as you want.”
“Don’t tell my brother that,” I said.
His eyes dropped to the team shirt I was still wearing, then back up to my face. He opened his mouth, ready to say something, then sealed his lips shut in a tight smile.
“What?”
Barry shrugged. “Nothing.”
I glared and slid his cup of cocoa across the counter to him. “Come on.”
“I just like seeing you wear it, is all.”
Now it was my turn to close my mouth. I felt my cheeks heating and a slight smile pulling at my mouth. We were getting dangerously close to flirting territory, so I didn’t press farther, instead opting to change the subject.
“I didn’t know you were rich,” I told him. Barry laughed, a loud, crisp sound of delighted surprise. “What? You never told me.”
“Well, you never asked,” Barry said. Of course, when I met him, I assumed he was kind of rich, but like six-figure salary rich, not eight-figure contract paid out over six years rich.
Barry took a long sip of his cocoa and stood to come around the island toward me.
He reached in front of me to put the mug in the sink and ran some water to rinse it out.
I couldn’t move out of the corner of the kitchen without brushing my body against his, so I stayed still and tried not to breathe in his cologne, which was warm, spicy.
I didn’t know shit about cologne, other than when it smelled bad or was too much, but Barry seemed to have struck the perfect balance of cologne to skin ratio.
The scent of him so clean and close in my little kitchen was heady.
“You didn’t tell me you were famous,” I accused.
“I’m not famous,” he said, eyes full of humor but still on the mug he washed in the sink. “Probably not even in the top thirty most famous players in the league and only some people even know about hockey to begin with. You didn’t know who I was.”
“You’re famous to my little brother. He talked you up like you were the best thing to happen to this team in years.”
Barry shut off the water and placed the mug on the drying rack before turning his body to face mine. I was so aware of his proximity, could almost feel him on my skin.
“You were good,” I admitted.
“You sound surprised.”
“I thought being traded meant you were bad,” I whispered. His dimples pressed deeper into his cheeks, and I wanted to poke the stupid things for how cute they were.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, and when did he lean one of those big hands on the counter next to me? When did his face get so close to mine? “Will you come to another? You might be my good luck charm.”
I swallowed the dryness in my throat.
“I think Jeremy was the good luck charm. I might be your totem of bad luck. Harbinger of doom.”
“Is it bad luck if I’m not mad about it?”
We looked at each other for longer than could be seen as a normal interaction—this was veering definitely into the realm of romantic moment. Then, providence divine, my phone buzzed on the counter, startling me and pulling my attention.
I squeezed past him, my pregnant belly brushing against his side. The new distance between us was an icy bath of relief as I peered at my phone and tried to get a hold of myself.
“Jeremy wants me to tell you that you can sleep at his apartment if you get sick of the dungeon, but be warned, he has three roommates.”
“Very friendly of him,” Barry said, our moment seemingly forgotten.
I grabbed my water, feeling like I needed to scurry out of there stat before I fell into yet more flirting with my non-roommate baby daddy.
“Night, Barry,” I said.
“Goodnight, Harvey.”