Chapter 16
Sixteen
Olivia
While Brody bangs around the kitchen getting us something to drink, I quietly snoop through his condo. I slink around the
living room like a snake, stretching my neck to get a glimpse into his bedroom and bathroom. His place is practically empty.
There’s a cold echo every time he makes a noise, and his furniture still smells like a warehouse.
While his decor is charmless, his gameplay was full of charisma tonight. But the tension on the ice was nothing compared to
my internal struggle beneath the mascot head. That guy was on Brody’s ass all night laying dangerously dirty hits, uncalled-for
slashes, and one final bush-league cross-check. I wanted to scale the boards, put him in a headlock, and drag him to the penalty
box myself. Classless play; someone was bound to get hurt. I’m not one to condone violence, but since the refs weren’t going
to do anything about it, Brody did what needed to be done. And now so am I: patience, restraint, and observation—until the
moment is right.
I’m not learning too much about Brody from my current surroundings besides the fact that he hasn’t lived in this condo very long.
The stack of moving boxes piled in the corner tells me he’s taking his time to settle in.
There are no family photos hung on the wall or heirlooms on display.
It’s like an apartment showroom in here with his unremarkable stock furniture.
While I consider snooping through his bathroom, there’s commotion in the kitchen.
Brody’s phone starts ringing as the microwave whirs. Gray smoke seeps from the humming appliance and circles the ceiling.
The smell of campfire hits my nostrils and I approach to help. With his phone ringing in one hand, Brody throws open the microwave
door. A thick cloud of smoke releases into the air as he pulls out a blackened bag of popcorn.
“Great.” He drops the steaming bag in the sink. With one hand, he stuffs his now-silent phone into his pocket, and runs the
other under the tap.
“Can I help with anything?” I hover on standby.
He smiles for me. “No, no. I’ve got it all under control.” I’m shooed back into the living room while he moves around the
kitchen at a frantic pace, searching through his drawers until he pulls out a lighter.
Brody returns with two full wineglasses and a lit candle. As Brody sets my glass down on his coffee table, his phone begins
to ring again. Frazzled, he accidentally knocks the glass on its side. The red wine splashes against the mahogany hardwood
flooring. Had this place been more furnished, a rug could have been stained. We both scramble to clean it up. By the time
I flip the glass upright on the table, it’s empty.
“Oh, come on,” he says to himself, and rushes back into the kitchen for a towel.
On his hands and knees, he’s desperate to soak up the spilled wine.
Nothing is ruined, but his body is tense and there’s no sense of relief once the mess is cleaned.
“I didn’t get it on you, did I?” He looks me over, ready to rub me down with the dirty dishrag.
I grab his hand and pull him onto the couch beside me. “What’s going on with you? You didn’t play badly enough to warrant
a full mental breakdown. In fact, I’d say your little fight at the end of the game is what sparked your teammates to get their
heads out of their asses and shoot the damn puck. You were kind of responsible for that win even from the locker room.” I
rub his shoulder, trying to ease some of the tension.
“You really catch a lot of the game from Five-Hole Donuts, don’t you?” He lets go of the rag. “It’s not the game that’s throwing
me off. It’s a text I got before I went out on the ice.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. On cue, his phone rings, and he
pulls it out of his pocket. Before I can get a look at the name on the screen, he ignores the call. To occupy his trembling
hands, he pours half his wineglass into my empty one.
“Seems important.”
“It’s not. It’s just my dad.”
“Oh, no. Is everything okay with him?” I try to swallow my eagerness with a sip of wine.
I study Brody. Watching like I do when he’s on the ice. Looking for any weakness, any bad habits. He’s worn tonight—in the
face, but also in spirit. He stares in a trance, with his wineglass just shy of touching his lips. It’s a familiar feeling.
In hockey, we call it a bad bounce and I can’t stand to see him fumble any longer.
“What do you normally do after a bad game?” I ask, changing the subject.
“Sulk . . . Read . . . Play video games . . .” He glances down at the TV console stacked with every gaming system available.
“Fire it up then. What are we playing?” I grab a controller off the coffee table and get comfortable on his couch.
“Really?” He sets his drink down.
“Scared to lose?” I ask playfully.
“Look at my face, Olivia.” He points to the already darkening bruises he refuses to ice. His cheek is pink and puffy, and
his lip is swollen red. His injuries aren’t bad enough to make me wince, but he looks vulnerable enough that I want to kiss
them better. “Do I look scared to lose?” His eyes narrow.
We spend the next hour and a half working our way through all his favorite games. What his new apartment lacks in homey decorative
touches it makes up for in gaming setup: dedicated shelving for multiple gaming consoles, custom-made controllers organized
by color, and a state-of-the-art sound system to transport us right into the action. Finally, after beating him in several
Mario Kart races, Brody convinces me to play EA SPORTS NHL 26. Hoping to cheer him up, I let him take the first couple games.
“One more—winner takes all,” he says.
“What’s the wager?” I might have blown those first couple games on purpose, but I can’t turn off my competitive side completely.
There’s no off switch on the Hinckley genetics.
“Bragging rights, obviously,” he says, getting the next game ready.
“Boring.” I pretend to yawn.
“Fine. Since you’re the life of the party, what’s your wild idea?”
“Loser has to do a striptease.” It was the first suggestion that popped into my mind. I honestly said it as a joke, but when
Brody smiles his signature cocky grin and I see those beautiful canines, I realize that I have to try to win this game.
Brody takes a deep breath and stretches his neck side to side. “My biggest game tonight. You’re on.” He extends his hand and
we shake on it.
I blurt out a nervous laugh as I avert my eyes down toward my controller.
Looking into Brody’s eyes is like staring at the sun.
I know I shouldn’t, but his irresistible glow sucks me in, and I risk the irreversible damage.
My cheeks heat up and turn the same color as the tiny drop of wine pooling at the bottom of his empty glass. I press Start.
He might be a playable character in the video game, but while he’s been practicing on ice, I’ve been practicing with the controller
in hand. The poor guy never stood a chance.
He drops the controller on the coffee table and throws his head back with a long defeated exhale. “I knew you were throwing
games on purpose.”
“Nothing anyone hasn’t seen before,” I say, sitting back on the couch with my freshly topped-off wineglass in hand, ready
to bear witness to his second performance of the night.
“Should I put on some music? Maybe some Hozier?”
“Are you trying to make me cry?”
“You’re right.” He fumbles with his phone until The Weeknd is blaring through his apartment. “Is this okay?” He sets his phone
down. The tension is as hot as the song selection.
“Less beaking, more streaking.” I’ve got to keep things silly or else I’m going to blush.
“That’s not helping.”
“Quit stallin’, get those pants a fallin’.”
“Are you done?”
“Time’s wasted, get naked,” I say, practically shouting over the music. He gives me an emotionless glare—unamused . . . or
nervous. “I’m done,” I add.
Brody starts swaying to the bass and thrusting his hips into the open space around him.
He’d make an excellent Hula-Hooper. The sight of it causes me to do a spit take with a mouth full of wine.
It burns coming out my nose. I throw my head back in an unfiltered cackle.
As I refocus on Brody and his moves, I’m hit with the dizzying realization of how drunk I feel from the glass I had while we played video games.
He stops with the cheesy Magic Mike moves and rips his shirt off over his head with one swift tug. My laughter evaporates. He takes a step toward me and starts
unbuttoning his pants. I swallow what’s left of the wine in my mouth with a hard gulp. The back of my throat burns, but I
hardly notice.
Brody props his leg up on the coffee table, opening himself up to me in new and exciting ways. I’m mesmerized by the sharp
cuts of his body. His muscles flex with every thrust. Revenge has never been so sexy. Or smelly—that campfire smell again.
I look to the kitchen but there’s no gray smoke circling the ceiling. The popcorn bag was tossed out in the hall almost two
hours ago, but the smell is undoubtedly back.
A high falsetto shriek from Brody pulls my attention back to his bulbous crotch. He’s no longer posing sexily or trying to
seduce me, because his pants caught fire in the lit candle and the flames are burning up his leg. He’s stomping his legs around
like he’s Dance Dance Revolutioning for his life, trying to extinguish the flames.
“What do I do? What do I do?” he says.
While he burns, I do exactly what you’re supposed to do in an emergency: I scream and panic. With a throw pillow in hand,
I begin beating him senseless. Most of my blows hit Brody in the face. “I don’t know!” I shout. “What’s the saying, drop it
like it’s hot?”
“Stop with the pillow!” he says, absorbing blows with his already-bruised face.
I look down at my hands and find that the pillow has now caught flame like a torch. Is everything in this house soaked with gasoline? I frantically toss it onto the couch, where the flame grows, using the cushions as kindling. Brody stiff-arms me out of the
way and waddles over to the kitchen sink like a pirate with a wooden leg.
The fire alarm in his apartment starts beeping loudly while we both harmonize our screams with its piercing wail. Water shoots
out of the ceiling sprinklers in a ferocious downpour. I’m positioned directly under a nozzle with my head tipped back and
my mouth open. A sensation similar to being waterboarded occurs as the water shoots down onto my face and into the back of
my throat. I begin to choke violently. Through blurred vision, I see Brody reach the sink and extend a leg up.
I’m quickly at his side, rushing to help him with the faucet. The water extinguishes his leg in seconds with a loud sizzle
similar to bacon on a hot frying pan. Brody lets out a moan of relief, the type of sound I thought we were heading toward
when he started dancing.
He winces, pressing his eyes shut. “Is it bad?”
I look around his apartment. The ceiling is still raining down on us and everything is soaked. His entertainment system is
destroyed, our wineglasses are shattered, and broken glass is sprawled across the living room. Puddles form on the hardwood
floors. There’s a hole burnt in the middle of Brody’s coffee table and half his couch is melted. It looks like we’re in the
middle of a natural disaster.
“Noooo,” I lie. “I think if you get a really big fan in here and add a bit of paint, your apartment will look good as new.”
Water beads down my face, but it’s the least of my concern.
“No, my leg! How does my leg look?” Brody reaches to pull up his pant leg, but it’s melted off. He winces.
I lean in, holding my breath. His leg is hairless, and his ankle is already bubbling into a welt. I pull back. “We should go to the hospital.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
I place a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I think you’re in shock.”
“Please, I’m a hockey player. I’m fine.” Brody brushes my hand off and leans in for a look. A shriek louder than the beeping
alarm projects from his mouth, and his eyes roll into the back of his head. He goes ghost white in the face before finally
toppling over like a rag doll into my arms.