Chapter 21
twenty-one
. . .
Ceci
“The shipment is coming! The shipment is coming!” Bex bounces on her toes and claps her hands.
“Okay, but you can’t talk like that in this city,” I tease. “Paul Revere remembers.”
She slows to a stop, shooting me a dirty look. “Spoilsport.”
“Sor-ry.”
She snorts. “No you’re not.”
She’s right. I’m not.
I’ve been in a weird mood for the last week.
Aidan and I have gamed nearly every night, and on the evenings we don’t, we’re messaging back and forth.
He’s had two nights off, but he hasn’t suggested we meet up now that he’s back in town.
After the way he bailed the first time, I can’t bring myself to initiate again.
Things are different now. I know they are. We’ve put that to bed. But I still can’t trust him. Not completely.
He’s supposed to come in today for the helmet fitting, and I’m low-key dreading it. Bex doesn’t need to know anything about our online friendship. Will he be overly familiar? Will he pretend he doesn’t know me?
If he pretends not to know me, I think I might cry. But I also don’t want to invite questions into how we know each other—or just how well, either.
It’s had me all aflutter all afternoon. Even Nick bringing me and Bex lunch isn’t enough to calm my frazzled nerves.
A knock on the door has me jumping out of my skin. Bex shoots me a weird look as she unlocks the door, and then a gaggle of hockey players enters our office.
Mark Easton and Adam Sinclair are the two alternate captains.
They’re followed in by Sven Larsson. Easton and Larsson are both married with kids, and from hanging out with their wives a bit, they seem to be nice enough dudes.
Certainly not the stereotypical toxic, alpha, asshole jock.
The three men are accompanied by Nick, who looks at his fiancée like she hung the moon.
Which… she kind of did. She’s that fantastic.
And then Aidan steps through the door, and it’s like all the air has been sucked out of the room. My vision tunnels until all I can see is him. My heart skips a beat, and my stomach swirls, and fuck, what is this reaction?
He looks good in a pair of dark gray joggers and a gold Grizzlies long-sleeve with his number and a C on his chest, a backwards Bulldogs hat covering his red hair.
His body wash smells like citrus and cedar, and even though we’re across the room from each other and he’s not even looking at me, I want to go to him and inhale his skin. Kind of creepy.
But he’s not looking at me.
Aidan shoves his hands into his pockets, drawing my attention to his waist, and then lower to where the crotch of his joggers pulls tight over his groin. If I squint, I can almost see…
No. Not going there. Heat rises in my cheeks, and I force my gaze back to my computer monitors as Bex talks to the guys about the helmet and checks the fit on each one.
I press my lips together, pointedly staying out of it. My job is to code the sensors, monitor the results, and convey them to Bex. That’s it. That’s all. I nod to myself, like it’s been decided. What the decision is, I’m not sure.
Bex spends a good half an hour with the five hockey players, going over all the details. When they’re finally done, they file out of our office. As he walks by, Aidan shoots me a grin, and my heart skips a beat.
Fuck.
I… I think I like my best friend.
When Hailey invited me to join the wives and partners to watch the game, I expected there to be a lot more questions about why I was there. In actuality… nobody seems to notice. Or care.
All of the women here are wearing their partners’ jerseys. Even Hailey, who used to only wear her brother’s name and number, is now wearing Ryan’s.
I have the weirdest desire to wear Aidan’s sweater. We’re not friends like that, but I want to claim him in front of all these women and the thousands of fans in attendance. I want him to belong to me, and me to him.
Maybe one day…
Instead of dressing down for the game, I’m wearing a floor-length black gown with gold sequins and black-and-gold stilettos. Let it never be said that I’m not a supporter of the team.
They always ask me why I wear ballgowns to book club, and I laugh and say it’s because I have the gown, so I might as well wear it. But the truth is, I’m reveling in this new body of mine, this new version of myself, this idealized me, that is different from who I was before.
I liked who I was before.
But I was unhappy too. And now I love the skin I’m in.
Bex is wearing a pencil skirt and heels with Nick’s jersey, and Vanessa has on leggings and combat boots.
There’s a wide range of fashion choices, and I absolutely love that nobody bats an eye at my needing to feel a little extra fabulous right now.
It’s my battle armor. There is nothing I can’t do in a ball gown and fuck-me heels, except maybe run a marathon. It makes me feel powerful.
And the way the Spanx suck in my gut, force my shoulders back, and make my boobs look amazing… yeah, that’s not half bad either.
Beside me, Hailey crochets while she watches the game, and on my other side, Bex obsessively checks her work tablet for any updates from the helmets.
I cover her screen with my hand. “Chill.”
She glares at me, but I can see the anxiety in her eyes. “I love that you think there’s even a remote possibility of that happening.”
“There will only be data if something happens, and gawking at the screen doesn’t help.”
She opens her mouth.
“Watch the game, cheer for your man, and wait until the game is over to check the data.”
“Intermission,” she counters.
I sigh. “Fine. But put it away until then.”
She lifts her chin, and I almost think she’s going to defy me, when she crumbles and shoves the tablet into her tote bag.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if something happens to him,” she whispers.
Halfway through last season, Nick took a big hit that resulted in a concussion—a bad one. It scared her enough that she had to resign as the team’s concussion spotter because she couldn’t stand to watch it happen again.
And now we’re working together on a safer, more protective helmet that will give us data in real time about the severity of head impact.
Hopefully.
I have every confidence in us. I’ve worked on the code for over a year, and I’m sure I’ve got the kinks worked out.
The team is about to hit the road for a quick trip to Dallas and then Austin, and they’re taking our helmets with. Bex is traveling with them this time, just to make sure everything works appropriately. They invited me along, but there’s really no need for me to attend. Even though I’d like to.
Traveling with a professional hockey team? Talk about a dream come true. As a sports nut, it’s all I could ever hope for.
But as a person… all I want is to travel with Aidan. And that’s not part of the deal. We’re not publicly friends. It would be weird to hang out with him.
Even though he’s the only one I want to spend time with.