Chapter 6
FEE
Mac doesn’t take me home once we leave the party. Instead, we end up at a diner a few blocks from my apartment. I order tea and a muffin, and he orders a full breakfast with orange juice.
“Did I do okay tonight? Did you have fun?” Mac asks.
“Yeah. I had a good time. You did great with the thirsty girls.” I focus on adding a packet of sugar to my tea and try not to think about how good it felt to have his arm around me, or how much I liked his body pressed against mine when he danced with me, or the thrill it sent through me when he threw me over his shoulder all caveman style, in front of girls who like him, and carried me out of the party.
“Thanks.” He smiles, then tacks on, “I had a good time, too.”
“Way to go setting boundaries,” I add. This feels like a post-first-date debriefing. I shove down the disappointment. I knew what I was getting myself into when I said yes to this arrangement.
He ducks his head. “Throwing you over my shoulder at the end wasn’t too much?”
“It was unexpected, but a great touch.” In more ways than one. I can still feel his hand gripping my thigh.
“Okay, good.” His shoulders relax. “Honestly? It was nice to be able to say I have a girlfriend.”
I swallow down my conflicting feelings. “It takes the pressure off, I’m sure.”
“It really does.” He flips a packet of sugar between his long fingers. “I’m trying to up my hockey stats this year.”
“Is everything okay?” He’s mentioned this more than once.
He sighs and stacks the creamers in a pyramid. “I’m having a shaky season. Which happens, but Chase is killing it, Gage is on his game, Brody is basically a savant. And I’m over here trying to pull it together. I need to find a way to fix the problem.”
“Your stats aren’t bad.” I would know with how much I watch him during games.
“They’re down from last year,” he confides. “It’s the wrong trajectory for being called up after graduation.”
“I’m sorry. But you have lots of time left in the season to get them up. I’m here to listen if you want to talk through strategy,” I offer. “I might not be a hockey player, but I understand the game.”
His smile shifts to chagrin. “I’m sure you get enough hockey talk with your family and the rest of us. You don’t need my hockey problems, too.”
“I don’t mind, though,” I assure him. “Like it’s not my thing, but I’ve spent a lot of time in arenas, watching my sisters play and coach, so I understand how hard it can be when you’re up in your head about things.
It can’t be easy when you see your friends slaying and you feel like you’re not.
It’s hard not to compare yourself. I’m sure it’s no different in the pros.
Like everyone wants to have a career like Roman’s, or Alex Waters, and especially Kodiak Bowman. ”
“That guy is going to break every scoring record out there,” Mac says with genuine awe.
“I know, right? His stats are out of this world. But I can’t imagine what that pressure must be like for him. We all believe he’s at the top of his game and then he levels up again. But there’s a ceiling, and eventually he’ll hit it, and someone new will come along and surpass him.”
“It’ll probably be Brody,” Mac says.
“Or maybe things will shift, and it’ll be you one day,” I offer.
“That’s literally the dream.”
“Let’s send it into the universe so you can manifest it,” I suggest.
My phone dings on the table, signaling an alert that one of my favorite fanfics has updated.
“Is that Cammie’s story?” Mac tips his chin to my phone.
“No. It’s by a different author.”
“Do you read a lot of those?” Curiosity laces his tone.
Our friend group knows exactly what Cammie writes.
In her first year, a girl who had a crush on Chase decided a good way to get back at Cammie for dating the guy she wanted was to out her fic name.
It backfired spectacularly, though, and now Cammie is semi-famous on campus thanks to her steamy why-choose romance.
I shrug, my cheeks heating. “I have a few favorites. I beta read for Cammie, but there are a couple other authors I enjoy.”
“I read a little bit of Cammie’s stuff once. It’s uh…not what I expected.” Mac taps on the table, cheeks turning pink.
“She looks sweet, but her mind is filthy.” I focus on my tea and try not to replace Aragorn and Legolas with two versions of Mac in one of the scenes I helped her edit recently.
“What about you, do you—”
“I have a morning glory muffin and the lumberjack special!” Our server slides our plates onto the table in front of us, cutting him off mid-question.
I wouldn’t be honest with him anyway. Not right now. Because the answer is yes, my mind is just as filthy.
But Mac is only my fake boyfriend. We’re just friends. And unless something changes, there won’t be any special benefits in this arrangement.