4. Bridget
brIDGET
Earlier this evening, I was altering a large hockey goalie’s trousers while watching videos of various actors being interviewed while holding puppies.
Then I started watching Jaws. Then I allowed Penny to drag me to The Penalty Box and in walked the goalie.
Now I’m watching Jaws in the large hockey goalie’s living room with him.
The only way this night could get better is if five puppies suddenly show up.
Okay, I can think of one other thing that could make this night better.
This rental house is, indeed, awesome. Bright and modern, with a big sectional sofa and a big-screen TV. Big, big, big. Everything’s big here except me.
We’ve both been drinking iced tea—he said he shouldn’t have alcohol in case he has to drive me home tonight.
I appreciated the consideration as much as the hint that I might not be going home tonight, but I am quite certain he’s abstaining because of his upcoming photo shoot.
He is incredibly good looking but not a pretty boy, so I find it endearing that he’s prepping for it like this.
But then again, he is a New Yorker for most of the year. I can’t forget that.
We’ve been sharing popcorn. He’s been holding the bowl on his lap, and I’ve been reaching into it.
I’m sitting to the right of him on the sofa, so I know his Bobby Orr isn’t directly under the bottom of the bowl, but my fingers have gotten really close to that thing today and I’m starting to think it would be rude if I didn’t get a little more hands-on.
We’ve reached the part in Jaws where Quint and Hooper are comparing scars, and Craig says, “When I was fifteen, a girl in Seattle invited me to her house to watch movies after school and she said I could choose whatever I wanted. So I found this on Netflix. When it got to the part after this, Quint’s speech about the USS Indianapolis, she got so scared she turned off the TV, and I was so mad I just left. ”
“I mean. I know I should side with a sister, but that monologue is mesmerizing—how dare she? They had an outdoor screening of this at Waterfront Park a few years ago, and I couldn’t even convince the guy I was seeing at the time to go. So we didn’t.”
“I went to that,” Craig says. “That was the night I met a woman who was deeply unimpressed by hockey. Which was kind of refreshing at first, but I took her out for a drink after and she spent the whole night trying to convince me to start an RV-rental company with her and her brother—who she put me on a FaceTime with. And instead of trying to convince me to work with them, he gave me shit for playing for New York because he lived in Boston.”
“That’s adorable, but I got that beat.”
“Oh yeah?” he says as he places the popcorn bowl on the coffee table.
“Ohhhh, yeah. There’s this musician/mushroom farmer who’d been trying to get me to go out with him for months, and I finally said yes.
He was dead set on taking me to a new restaurant in Vancouver.
Only I don’t think he had ever actually driven down to Vancouver before, because he got lost on the Coquihalla Highway.
” Craig snorts. “He didn’t believe in using GPS apps and refused to listen to me when I tried to tell him where to go, so I just shut up and let him deal with it. We drove for four hours.
“He finally found a gas station, and we ate hot dogs for dinner—which I was honestly fine with. Except then his car wouldn’t start,” I say.
“So he started crying and blaming me for making him nervous—also fine. I get it. I’m incredibly intimidating.
He called a tow truck to bring us back to Kenton.
And it turned out the tow truck driver was a guy I had broken up with half a year ago, and apparently he wasn’t as cool with it as he’d led me to believe.
He spent the entire drive trying to get me to explain how it was possible that I’d gotten over him already.
But the good news is those guys are now total besties and I only run into them, like, every other week. ”
By the end of my tirade, I realize my legs are now somehow stretched out across Craig’s lap.
How did this happen? Did he carefully and gently place my feet up on the couch like he carefully and gently shut the passenger door to his car earlier tonight?
Or was I yammering so much that my legs were like, Okay, we’re gonna have to take control of this situation before the mouth ruins everything for all of us.
“First of all,” Craig says as he massages my bare feet, “I would like to have a word with both of those guys. Secondly—last year when we were in LA, one of my teammates begged me to go on a double date with him and this girl he really liked and her sister. The sister kept doing Stories on her Instagram about things I said and what I ordered, and then she’d read the comments to me at the table.
And one of the comments was from the girl I was supposed to meet up with that night but forgot.
” He covers his heart with one hand. “I am deeply ashamed about this, because I never forget about dates.”
“Except that one time.”
“Except the one time. But in my defense, that woman turned out to be kind of a pill. She did a video about being at the bar I was supposed to meet her at along with a screenshot of the Story my friend’s date’s sister posted and tagged me.
And that was the last time I ever went on a double date.
It was also, now that I think of it, the last time I went out on a real date. ”
“Really? Because the lost-crying-car-breakdown-gas-station-hot-dog-guy was my last official date too.” I reach for my nearly-empty glass of iced tea and say, “I’ll drink to your shitty dates!”
Letting go of my feet, he picks up his glass and says, “I’ll drink to your shitty dates.”
We clink glasses, polish off our iced teas, and both return our glasses to the coffee table at the same time.
My hand brushes against his. He taps the remote, lowering the volume of the movie, then places that big hand of his on my thigh.
The movie, even though it has reached a part that’s hard to ignore, fades into the background as movies often do when two attractive young people are sharing a sofa.
Craig Bowman is very attractive, but he seems older than twenty-four to me.
His blue eyes are wise and so attentive.
His body is large and fit and capable. But his hands.
He puts his hands through a lot. He’s got one arm draped over the back of the sofa, but he’s lazily stroking the back of my neck and staring at me.
Not in a creepy way—it’s bold and intense.
I can’t quite look him in the eyes yet, so I study his hand.
Dragging my fingertips from his veiny forearm down to his fingers, I stroke the palm of his hand with my thumb.
The skin on his hands is so callused. More so than all the guitar players I’ve been with.
“I noticed something about your hands when I was measuring your shirt sleeves today,” I say quietly.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“Well, two things, actually. You flex your hands a lot.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And the pattern of calluses on your hands are different.” I turn the palm of his left hand up and trace my fingers around the edges. “The palm of this hand is smoother than the right. But the fingers have calluses. This is your glove hand?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And your right hand…” He slides his hand across my shoulder and down my arm to place it face up in my lap. It sends a delicious shiver down my spine. “This is the hand you use to hold the big pad thing?”
“The blocker.”
“The blocker. You have so many calluses along your palm here. Is this where you grip the stick?”
“Mm-hmm.” His voice is getting deeper. He’s very good at controlling his body and his breath, but I sense that he’s getting ready to loosen his grip on that self-control soon, and I am all for it.
I read fabric and garments. I read how bodies move through the world by the stress points on their clothes.
But I can read Craig Bowman’s hands too.
They tell a story of his career and dedication—every practice, every game, every season.
And I want those hands all over me. Not over my clothes; I want to feel those calluses drag across every inch of my bare skin.
I’m no puck bunny, but I get it now. I get why women go nuts for hockey players.
I want this. I watched him walk away from the shop this morning in sweatpants, and it looked like there were two helmets fighting for position on a built-in shelf on his upper thighs.
I need to get my hands on those magnificent gluteals.
He slides his hands up my thighs to my hips, my waist. “Does Pressed and Blessed have a policy about not getting intimate with customers, Miss Cross?”
I blow out a laugh. “My dad practically begged you to date me this morning—what do you think?”
Exactly like he did in the fitting room when I landed in his lap, Craig effortlessly lifts me up by my waist and maneuvers me so I’m straddling him. This time I’m a traditional cowgirl. Yeehaw.
He leans in, lips so close to mine they’d touch if I tilted my chin up a centimeter, and he says, “I think you’re cool, and I’m really into you, Bridget. But I don’t do relationships, okay?”
Wow. This man is cut from a different cloth as the rest of the guys I’ve fooled around with.
But he’s definitely not someone I’d date seriously.
But he is for sure someone I need to attempt sex with.
For science. But I also need to make sure he understands who he’s dealing with.
Even though the way he’s massaging my hips might bring me to orgasm.
“Excuse me, are you friend zoning me? Is that what’s happening?”