Chapter 47 – Jaxon
FORTY-SEVEN
JAXON
I keep my promise to Grant. After we get back from Cincinnati, Jordan tags along with me to one of his games.
Later that week, Beck asked me to pick up Madeline from practice. I ended up arriving early, skates in hand to skate around with her afterward. It didn’t take long for the Mountain Lion’s coach to wave me onto the ice for help running practice.
“Is it true you’re dating Jordan?” Grant huffs out the question, skating a circle around me.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Madeline.”
Across the ice, the girls’ team is practicing. Madeline looks as uninterested as a ten-year-old could be. If she were playing soccer, she’d be the one picking dandelions.
“Madeline?” I question.
“She saw you two”—Grant looks both ways, cupping a hand to his mouth and lowering his voice—“kissing.”
“Ewwww,” I grimace, my nose scrunching.
Grant points at my cheeks. “You’re blushing!” Then he groans. “You are dating her. Did you even give her my birthday card?”
“I did.” And she laughed, a full belly laugh, when she found the circle yes or no question at the bottom.
“I wouldn’t have asked her to be my girlfriend. Bro code, Jax! I thought we were besties.”
“We are.” I pass him the puck. He misses but scurries after it. “I should’ve told you about Jordan. I’m sorry.”
“I accept your apology.”
“And I thought you liked Zoey?”
“I do.” A toothy smile curls at the corners of his mouth. “Can I try center when we scrimmage?”
“As long as your Coach won’t mind.”
Coach tells him yes, cueing me in that Grant will end up asking to go back to be on the wing. Grant’s also ambidextrous. Everyone has been working on stick handling, but with him specifically, Coach asked me to focus on switching hands and shooting from either side.
A whistle blows from center ice. Boys and girls skate, circling around their coaches. Grant and I skate, he grabs the back of my sweatshirt, laughing like a lunatic as he glides behind me.
Every practice ends with a co-ed, thirty-minute scrimmage. Teams are randomized and each kid picks a penny out of a bag. Sometimes the thirty-minutes are start-stop and instructional, sometimes we just let them play.
Today, they let them play. It ends two-to-one, and I can’t help but smile when the winning goal is scored by a girl, and she turns, sticking her tongue out at the boy she beat to take the shot.
We circle up again for announcements. Hands in, the same little girl leads our team on three, before kids skate off to the boards where parents are waiting.
Grant blazes by me. “Your girlfriend is here.”
I spin around, finding Jordan leaning on the boards.
He goes right to her. I can’t read his lips, but whatever he says has her head dropping back in a laugh. Jordan gives him a high five as I skate over to them.
“Carmichael.”
“Greene.”
“What are you doing here?” I push a strand of blue hair behind her ear. She’s been wearing her hair down more or half-up, always some form of a braid.
“Cafe was slow, so they let me go early. I ran into Beck and he mentioned you were picking up Mads and thought we could skate together.” Jordan flips my hat around. Her fingers tickle the nape of my neck. “Didn’t expect to find a hot coach on the ice.”
“Hot, huh?”
“Don’t push it,” she teases.
Within the hour, all of my roommates have joined us. We’re playing a game of MOOSE, the hockey version of HORSE that Jordan, Cooper, and Sutton grew up playing.
Xanie and Elliot are here too.
Across the ice, Jordan’s laughing with them and I think I fall more in love with her.
“This shit smells.” I pick up the bottle of dye. Door open, exhaust fan on, and another portable fan propped up in the corner of the bathroom, and it still reeks in here. “Your hair doesn’t smell like this normally?”
“I wash my hair.” Jordan stares at me in the mirror. “With shampoo. Plus, the dye gets rinsed out.”
“That makes sense.” I take the bottle, squeeze it on a section of hair, then work it in with my hands. The entire task itself isn’t as complicated as I expected.
We spend the next twenty minutes laughing, touching up a spot I missed, cleaning her forehead, then mine, before the dye coats her hair.
I set the timer as Jordan hops up on the counter. Knees fall open around my thighs. A treacherous glint shines bright in her eyes.
“Don’t get any ideas,” I warn.
“Seriously?” She pushes out her bottom lip. “It would be like the bleached tips, but blue.”
“Not gonna happen. I barely survived you giving me frosted tips. If it weren’t for your hands on me, I would’ve cried.”
She rolls her eyes at me, pretending to reach for the bottle. I slide it out of her reach, then confiscate her hands, placing them on my waist.
“How do you feel about next weekend?” we both ask at the same time. “You first.”
“Nervous, maybe a little scared.” Jordan dips her head, tone shifting like she’s embarrassed. “We can’t lose.”
I push her chin up with two fingers. “We will.”
“We could lose the rest of our season, but this one…I need this one.”
“Can I say something you might not like?”
“You do a lot.”
“That’s because you’re cute when you’re annoyed.
You get this—yeah, that. The corners of your eyes crinkle when you roll them at me.
” I caress her cheek, careful not to get any more dye on myself.
“If we do lose,” I get real with her, “because it may happen. I know I said we’d win, and I wholeheartedly believe we will, but if we don’t, it doesn’t define what you’ve done this season.
Doesn’t take away from everything you’ve proven and accomplished.
“You made the men’s team. You earned your spot on the first line.
You lead the team in shots on net. You lead the conference in assists.
You, Jordan Carmichael, did that. More important than your stat line?
” A small smile starts to blossom on my girlfriend’s face.
I start telling her about the little girl who stuck her tongue out after scoring.
“You know what she said to me after practice?”
“What?”
“She growled like a grizzly bear, hands as paws, then said she wanted to be like you when she grew up. Eight-years-old, with an attitude I imagine you also had at her age, and you inspired her. Coach Lang’s girls, Madeline,” I add, knowing there’s more.
There are always kids in the crowd sporting her jersey.
“You’re showing them that being told you can’t do something or that you aren’t good enough is meaningless. You inspire them, and you inspire me.”
Jordan kisses me softly; two words pressed into my lips. “Thank you.”
“Being nervous is okay, though. Anything you’re feeling is valid, just don’t forget who you are in the midst of it.”
“I won’t.” She kisses me again before leaning back. “How are you feeling? Seeing Luka and your mom?”
Sure enough, on our way back to Jordan’s dorm, Mom called.
Intentionally, this time, requesting my presence at dinner the night before our game.
We’re playing Wisconsin at a neutral site—something about the chiller in their arena not working, and ours is being used by the figure skating team—in Chicago.
I told her I’d need to run it by Coach, which she understood, and then I said I’d be bringing my girlfriend—who’s hand was on my thigh, comforting and secure, during the entire call.
Mom sounded surprised to hear I had a girlfriend, which means Luka didn’t tell her about the fall carnival.
After I hung up, I apologized for volunteering Jordan for a night of torture without asking. She shook her head no, reassuring me that she wanted to be there.
I haven’t thought much about seeing them though.
I still don’t like Luka. My dislike only growing finding out he was the one who hurt Jordan, oblivious to the incredible girl he had.
And with Mom. For years, I’d try to convince myself I was over her lack of affection and attention. Deep down, I knew I wasn’t, but after the last time she called me, stepping back and registering everyone I have in my life, I think I finally stopped caring.
Jordan listens as I tell her this. Fingers combing through my hair. “You inspire me too,” she says as I finish, coming to the conclusion that I feel no which way about seeing them next week. Especially with her at my side.
I lean in and kiss her. We make out till the dye alarm goes off.
“What’s next?”