Chapter 23
TRICK
“Look who’s here!” Pammy says with unnatural cheer as she throws open the door. I’m about to throw on my jacket and go to the Whit for lunch with the team. I only came to the apartment after class for a quick nap.
When I turn and see Fifi walking in the door, dressed in pale pink right down to her fuzzy earmuffs and matching fuzzy vest, I automatically start salivating.
“Shit.”
Her brilliant grin falters.
Double shit.
“No—I’m…you’re a vision, like out of my dreams.” I meet her as she ventures into the living area, with Pammy trailing behind her, mouthing an apology.
She must have set this up thinking she was doing a good deed.
“I know you’re supposed to eat with the team, but I brought your favorite take-out and thought maybe you could skip—”
“Smells great.” I slide my arms around her, giving in to the temptation to kiss her. “Food smells good too,” I whisper.
“Is it okay for you to miss your team lunch? We did before, and I’m taking a quick break from my marathon session with Professor M. The new project is working out even better than the original. It’s totally different and so original and all inspired by you—”
“You can stop rambling, Fifi. It’s okay.” That’s a lie worth telling. Coach Zabra will make me pay for missing lunch again even if I had a legit excuse. I’m not the only guy who misses meals, but he doesn’t hate them the way he hates me.
“It’s my fault,” Pammy says. “I thought you both could use a short break, and I knew you’d want to see each other.”
“You’re a sweetheart, Pammy,” Fifi says, touching her arm.
“It’s true. Thanks for the surprise.” Although I wish she’d warned me. I might have been able to come up with an excuse for Zabra.
But the scent of Fifi and her food pushes all thoughts of my evil coach from my head, and all three of us sit on the couch to eat our steak and cheese subs at the coffee table.
Fifi tells us about Darcy’s latest social media blitz. “Ricci and Nina posted comments that she’s a lying gossip, and to combat her storyline, they’ve reposted pics of you with other girls.”
“Where’d they dig those up?”
She laughs. “Easy, they contacted all their friends who were glad to share their pics of them with you, mostly kissing.”
Pammy searches IG for anything related to me and gets a long stream of posts with me and various girls overwhelming the hockey posts.
“This is crazy,” she says, giving me her phone.
After a quick look, I hand her phone back because there’s nothing there more than PG rated, and pics of me with random coeds is the last thing I want to see right now.
Not when I’m with Fifi. My discomfort is unsettling.
I put a hand on her knee—not sure why, but the move re-settles me.
“All the social media attention is making me nervous,” Fifi says.
Things are getting extra complicated, but I don’t share my doomsday thought. Instead, I hug her.
“Let’s concentrate on eating.”
She almost laughs, but gets a ping on her phone. I want to tell her to ignore it, but she’s too quick to check it.
“I don’t believe this. It’s George texting me.”
“George, the guy your Dad set you up with?” Tension strangles me so tight I put down my sub, no longer interested in eating as I watch her frown while she reads the text.
“What does it say?” Pammy asks.
I don’t want to know, but I need to know, and I take a deep breath, reminding myself she doesn’t care about this dude. I suck at self-coaching because I’m still as tense as a prizefighter when the bell rings.
“He’s asking me to go to the Winter Snow Ball with him.” Her voice is incredulous, and she looks up at me.
Pammy says, “Maybe you should accept his invitation. If you went to the Snow Ball with George, it would create lots of new social media gossip and appease your dad and Vincent.”
“No fucking way.” I glare at Pammy so hard that her smile disappears like it was never there, and she shrinks back.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so harsh.” Shit. I unfist my hands.
Fifi says, “I understand your point, Pammy, but I don’t want to involve yet another innocent person in our big secret romance. I’d have to lie to him, and it would be mean to lead him on. I couldn’t tell him the truth; he’d definitely tell my dad. They seemed like old pals.”
She’s rambling, so I put an arm around her for reassurance. “Plus, there’s the fact that I would beat the piss out of him if he touched you.”
She grins at me. “There’s that.”
I don’t think she’s taking my threat seriously. Lucky thing she won’t need to find out how fucking serious I am.
“Give me your phone.”
“Why?” She hands it over to me as she asks.
“I’m going to answer his text for you so there won’t be any misunderstanding about where he stands.”
“That’s not necessary, Trick. I can handle—” She tries to grab her phone back, but I easily keep it out of her reach with my spin move.
“No, you can’t. You’re too nice. You don’t get how the male mind works. The idea of possible sex with a hot girl needs to be shut down with an ironclad move so final that their cock shrivels up for a week. Or more.”
“Ew,” Pammy says, putting her hands over her ears. “That’s harsh.”
“Sorry.” I hand the phone back to Fifi, who wears an expression halfway between annoyed and amused. “Not sorry.”
“This is a side of you I haven’t seen, Patrick,” Pammy says.
“Don’t worry, Pammy. This is his jealous side, and I doubt there’ll be too many occasions for—”
“You mean no occasions, don’t you?” I arch a brow, and she laughs at me. I’m about to grab her and show her who’s boss by tickling her most sensitive spots when a knock at the door stops me.
Pammy jumps to her feet. “I’ll get it. I have no idea who it could be.” She sounds worried.
I resume eating the last bite of my sub when we hear Pammy open the door and then say loudly, like she’s on stage trying to project, “Kathleen, what a surprise to see you here.”
“Fuck.” I jump from my chair and drag Fifi to my room and shove her inside, giving her a quick kiss before I shut the door in her shocked face.
Then I turn and run into my sister standing in the kitchen. Fuck. I wonder how much she saw.
“Kathleen—”
“Where’s Fifi? I thought she’d be here,” Kathleen says as she leans on her cane, awkwardly removing her coat and hanging it on the back of the nearest chair.
“What?” It’s all I can think to say.
Pammy is silent, looking between us, her face growing redder and hotter than a chili pepper.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. In fact, I’ve been reposting the Instagram pics of you and Pammy and ignoring the ones with you and Sofia.”
“You called her Fifi?” How the hell does she know I’m with her and worse, knows my nick name for her.
“Your cute pet name for her was in one of the comments by a chick named Darcy.”
“Shit.”
The bedroom door bangs open, and Fifi emerges, her expression a mixture of apology for Kathleen and anger, which I hope is all about Darcy the Devil and not the fact that I shoved her into my room.
“I think that chick is possessed,” I say as I intercept Fifi, putting an arm around her partly to cheer her up and partly because that’s where it belongs. It’s like my arms have a mind of their own when she’s around, automatically claiming her.
“Hello, Kathleen. I’m sorry for lying to you and for all the secrecy.” Fifi looks Kathleen in the eye until my dear sister lets her off the hook and smiles.
“I understand completely. It’s a Tricky situation.” She winks, grinning at me, and I roll my eyes.
“Did you bring any cookies?”
Pammy shakes her head. “You have the appetite of a commercial-grade garbage disposal.”
Kathleen nods her agreement. “Right? It doesn’t take long living with a food reaper—my name for him—to notice the problematic appetite.”
“I know.”
“Hey, focus—the cookies?”
“Yes, I brought you cookies.”
Fifi says, “So that’s it? No drama?”
Kathleen moves to Fifi in her awkward gait, leaning only slightly on her cane, and opens her arms. She steps from my one-armed hug to Kathleen.
“You have my support,” Kathleen whispers with emotion in her voice.
“Thank you. You have no idea how much that means to me.” Fifi’s whole body relaxes with relief as Kathleen lets her go.
“In the meantime,” Pammy says, “What do we do about all the Instagram gossip about you and Trick? If Kathleen found it, it’s only a matter of time until others from your hometown see it, and then it could get back to the rest of both your family members.”
“You have a point.” It kills me to think what I’m thinking, but I don’t want our families finding out about us through gossip.
“We could buy some time,” I say. “if I’m seen at the Snow Ball dancing with Pammy and pics of us get posted.”
“Yes,” Kathleen says, “but not a lot of time. You’ll need to come clean sooner than later.” She’s using her sisterly warning voice that I’m too familiar with. The annoying thing is she’s usually right.
Fifi nods her approval, and the idea is cemented as a promise.
I’ll be seen at the Winter Snow Ball dancing with Pammy. And we’ll have to tell our parents that we’re… something… in the very near future.
Which means we’ll need to figure out what we have. We’ll need to talk about our feelings.
“See you at the game,” Kathleen says.
“Not if I see you first,” I say back more out of habit than anything.
She laughs. “Right. No worries.”
I’m next to leave because the game coming up weighs on me. The urgency to perform at the next level has never hit me so hard.
There’s a reason this game has my attention. Our opponents, the Algonquin U Bears, are number one in Hockey East.
And we’re number two.