Chapter 18
Eighteen
Eloise
Hannah’s name blinks up from my phone, and something is unsettling about it. I wanted to see her, but she said she was busy. And when she texts, it’s usually to ask something that she knows will make me uncomfortable, but I’ll probably cave, anyway.
I just want to be able to support my baby sister, and if that means I have to do something that I will question for a month or two afterwards, then it’s probably a somewhat worthy cause.
Kenz nudges me, looking at my screen with some concern while we’re in the rideshare waiting to be dropped off at the hotel. I brush it off, tucking my phone away. She knows enough about my relationship with Hannah that she doesn’t have to ask questions.
“Do you want to get ready first?” Taylor asks in the quiet of the car, and it startles me out of the slow spiral of wondering what Hannah might need.
“No, you go ahead, we’ll wait in the lobby for you, and then I’ll get changed quickly,” I say, trying to ignore the way that Kenz looks at the two of us. She wants the tea. I can see the questions formulating in her eyes.
“Don’t worry about me, I’m good to go,” Kenz says, and I didn’t get a chance to look at her outfit before, but as I pull back I notice it’s a cute crop top and baggy black pants with a ridiculous amount of pockets. She looks like she’s from the early 2000s instead of now.
“I’ll be quick,” I say, smiling at Taylor.
Taylor gives an awkward smile, and I wonder whether her inability to warm up to people is a result of her not knowing how to interact with people off the ice in a friendly manner.
Does she know how to interact with people not on the team regularly?
It’s almost endearing how much she struggles with being warm upon meeting someone for the first time.
She’s more complacent and often retreats when she doesn’t know the person well.
Kenz, gratefully, doesn’t say much about Taylor’s current antisocialness, and I’m wondering how much of Taylor’s thoughts right now are also just trying to make sense of the interview with Silas.
And then the elevator.
What even was that?
I don’t realize I’m gnawing on my bottom lip, thinking about the way she looked at me, the way her eyes darkened and her cheeks pinked up as we locked into each other’s eyes.
The tension was palpable, which is insane, because she’s straight.
I should not be able to have that much tension with a woman who doesn’t want me.
But there was this morning too, the way she couldn’t stop staring at me in my suit and the little dance we did when I was trying to get into the bathroom.
Nah, come on, Eloise, there’s no way.
If I think back to some of the memes and compilations that I’ve been sent over the years. This is just the same stuff that she does with her other teammates.
She was much more touchy feely with the ex-fiancé than she was with Rosie.
Although she was photographed with Rosie more than she was with the tool. Kenz nudges me as the car stops and Taylor leaves it quickly. “You’re thinking long and hard,” she says after we thank the driver and head in.
“There’s a lot on my mind.” Her warm brown eyes are inquisitive, asking a question that I don’t know if I can answer yet.
“Right.” She smiles, continuing and very obviously not waiting until I finish getting changed. She’s so impatient. “Does this have something to do with the way you looked like you were about to devour your teammate in the elevator?”
My cheeks warm at the thought, and I know that—thanks to how pale I am—I’m red like a cherry tomato. “Maybe.”
“I thought you said she was straight?”
“She is.”
Kenz lets out a harsh laugh. “Right, straight.” I don’t correct her because it’ll just fall on deaf ears at this point.
“Kenz, please I’m going to need at least five shots to talk about this.”
Her sigh is heavy when we walk through the lobby and elevator.
Taylor’s already texted to let me know she’s on her way down.
“Ohh, do I need to be careful about being in this elevator with you? Are they your kryptonite?” she asks, teasing.
I poke her stomach in an attempt to tickle her to stop her from talking, but it doesn’t work.
She’s not as ticklish as I remember her being.
“I’m not buying you a drink tonight if you’re going to keep this up,” I mutter.
She gasps. “No, please, ravish me in the elevator, it’s your—!” she’s shouting, laughing as the door opens.
Taylor’s standing there, eyes shuttered, looking absolutely delectable in her skinny jeans and top. Her chest is bulging out of the thinly knit sweater that’s tied in two places.
I have to stop my jaw from dropping, and the door nearly shuts in my face.
Kenz has somehow been quiet for a moment, a relative moment of peace as I lose my mind looking at Taylor. I think brain matter is slowly leaking out of my ear and onto the floor.
Fuck me.
Her hair is in a ponytail that curls and accentuates her features: her high cheekbones, the freckles and the green eyes. Her shirt, which I can’t stare at for long before I start to drool in more places than one, is a steel grey that makes her eyes brighter.
She looks superhuman; her stomach is toned, and her arms look like they’re about to bust out of the sleeves.
“I’ll meet you down in the lobby,” she says, her cheeks bright red as Kenz pushes me off the elevator, around her.
“Y-yeah, that sounds good,” I stammer. I don’t know how to string a sentence together.
She brushes past and her perfume engulfs me, a wave of floral notes settling around me. I wonder if I’ll smell like her if I don’t refresh my own perfume. Taylor tucks her chin, a small lift of her lips set on her face as the doors close.
“You little slut,” Kenz groans, pulling me in the direction of my room. I blink, trying to ignore the way my stomach flutters.
“Did you say something?” I ask, grabbing my room key once we reach the door. She groans as I let her in and then stops.
“Oh, you absolute slut. One bed?”
I squeeze my eyes shut at the memory. “Oh yeah, fuck.”
“Did you plan this? Holy shit, am I the third wheel here?” she asks, eyes wide, and I groan.
I’m gathering my outfit, changing quickly into a pair of black wide leg pants and a black silky camisole.
I reset my ponytail as well, making it a high ponytail instead of low, and reset my blush and touch up my eyeliner.
I’m ignoring the way Kenz is crashing out because I don’t know how to tell her that this wasn’t my plan.
She won’t believe me.
“So I am the third wheel!” she whines. “Come on, I don’t want to be around a flirting couple all night! I wanted to go out and make out with random people and have fun, and now I’m going to be watching you two suck face.“
“We’re not, Kenz,” I sigh, listening to her rant. “Come on. You know that’s not what’s going to happen. Also suck face? That’s so retro of you, no one says that.”
I catch her eye in the mirror as I reapply my lipstick, a neutral berry colour.
They’re wide, and she juts her chin out, waiting for the answer.
“The hotel messed it up. We thought we were booked for two queens, and they gave us one bed, and there were no other rooms available. We had a pillow wall—”
She makes a noise that essentially calls me a liar.
“We did, I swear, but sometime during the night, or when the hotel staff came in to clean, it got reset.” I turn, running my hands down my shirt and legs to give myself a clean line.
To ignore the way my hands shake at the thought of Taylor and me doing more than what I know we’ve done, which is, nothing.
“I need to get you laid, because what the fuck are you thinking, lusting after your ‘straight’ teammate?” She puts air quotes around straight, and it slams into me like an anvil.
Right. She's straight.
“It’s not my fault, I swear.” Kenz’s brown eyes widen when I say that, and I get the distinct feeling that she’s suddenly very tired of my bullshit. “I promise. I’ve been working on getting over my crush.”
“The crush that is making you seem like an idiot now.”
“I haven’t acted on it at all. I was in a relationship for the last few years too. It's just… I’ve just been around her too much recently.” My stomach feels like a lead balloon is sitting in it.
“You’ve nearly kissed her twice in the hour that I’ve been with you,” she says.
My cheeks feel hot. “Nu-uh.” Her arms are crossed, pushing up her ample chest. “Come on, she’s going to be wondering where we are,” I say, turning and walking to the door.
“Eloise, you’re going to make a mistake if you don’t act on this—”
I whip around and run my hands down my legs again.
I can’t rake my fingers through my hair like usual in case I mess up the slick back I worked hard to achieve.
“I can’t act on this because she’s straight.
I’m not going to flirt with her knowing she’s straight, it would cause all kinds of issues in the locker room.
I won’t ruin my relationship with the team that kept me after I got booted from the Chill. ”
“The Chill trading you wasn’t your fault.”
My throat tightens. “Are you sure about that? Because it seems like it was my fault and only my fault. There was no reason to trade me, so for some reason, they wanted Rosie and offered me up.”
“It’s just hockey,” she says.
“Melody and I broke up, and she had mentioned that there was another woman she was interested in. Someone else on the team, I think.”
The surrounding air seems to have been sucked out of the room.
I haven’t said that to anyone. That little bit of shame—that I wasn’t enough for her—gnaws at me whenever I think about it.
“She said that she wanted to open the relationship, and I didn’t want to.
I couldn’t.” I shudder. “I didn’t want a third after we had built something that I thought was solid. ”
“Oh.”
I swallow back the knot in my throat. “Yeah, so let’s go out, get drunk, and dance the night away. Our flight back isn’t until 4 tomorrow afternoon.”
Kenz wraps her arm around my waist, and we’re in the hallway before I can blink. “Did you want to—?”
“No. I’ve got a therapist that I’m talking to about it. It’s just...” There’s a heaviness that settles onto my chest. “It’s not something I want to remember.”
“Sure. We can do that,” she says, squeezing me tightly. “I’m sorry that she was such a bitch.”
A humourless laugh bubbles out of me. “Well, it’s five years down the drain. I’ll be fine.”
“Of course you will.” The elevator still has a whiff of Taylor’s perfume lingering. How did she do that?
“You’re not seeing anyone, right?” I ask and she cackles.
“Babes, I’m as single as the day I was born. I mean,” her cheeks grow dark, “There may be someone, but they’re being a bit difficult.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Difficult? Isn’t that your specialty?”
We laugh; her dating history is long and sordid and filled with a myriad of situations that has me scratching my brain at how she got into them. “I mean, it’s not the frat guy from second year of university, but there’s some logistics that we have to work through.”
“Logistics?”
Her cheeks darken. “Yeah, teammates, brothers, friends, you know.” I’m blinking my way while processing this. “Logistics.”
“Girl, is he one of Blake’s teammates?”
She shrugs. “I’m not saying any more.”
“Does Blake know?” I press, but the doors open, and I watch her zip her mouth closed before stepping out. Rude. “Fine, don’t tell me, but we will have a discussion about this when shit hits the fan.”
“You know it,” she says, blowing me a kiss as she walks off.
Taylor sees the two of us coming in the distance, and the idea that I have to be cool with her around, dressed like she is, makes my stomach hurt.
She’s so effortlessly beautiful. “Come on Taylor, I want to know everything about you, and I’ve got just the place.
I hope you like pasta,” Kenz says, hooking her arm through Taylor’s before they walk off.
Taylor’s head is still turned to me, eyes begging for help, and I try to stifle a laugh.
There’s no help when Kenz is on a mission.