39 #2
I moan, “Are you going to say it back?”
He pushes all the way in. “I am.”
I grab his face and whimper, “I want to hear it.”
He thrusts into me. “I love you, Kylie, unfortunately.”
I push him.
He laughs. “Unfortunate for me, because I can’t fucking think about anything else.”
I let my hips meet his. “That’s good news for me.”
I pull his face to mine and kiss him. Our hips keep meeting over and over.
I whisper against his mouth, “I love you, Nash.”
He kisses me. “I fucking love you, Kylie.”
His fingers rub circles on my clit, and I’m already squirming, climbing and reaching my climax. He works hard until I’m trembling, and he comes with me.
Afterward, he pulls me onto his chest and kisses my face.
Tuesday, I have class until four and Nash’s first home game at seven. I spend the entire day useless.
It’s a nonconference thing, some school called Rubin that nobody I’ve asked has heard of, and it’s on a Tuesday, which Nash says happens a couple of times a year and everybody hates.
He’s been weird since Sunday. Not bad-weird.
Quiet. He ate the exact same breakfast two days in a row, and he’s been sleeping with his phone face down.
At five-thirty, I’m putting my earrings in and Tessa’s at her desk.
“Come with me tonight,” I say, looking at her through the mirror.
“No, thanks.”
“Come on, Tess. You came out to the football game.”
“That was a mistake,” she says.
“We had so much fun, Tess,” I moan. “We could seriously be best friends if you just came around. You’re so much fun. Why are you always hiding in here?”
She shrugs. “I made myself a promise to focus on college when I got here, so that’s what I’m doing.”
“Tess,” I deadpan. “There’s a difference between focusing on college and letting it be your whole life. You’re here. You don’t need to study as much as you are.”
I get my boots on and stand in front of her desk until she has to look up.
“I don’t understand hockey,” she says.
“Neither do I.” I really don’t. “Stop making weird excuses and just come.”
“It’s a school night.”
“Exactly. It’s not a weekend. It’s just two hours.
There’s a scoreboard that tells you when it’s over.
” I put my hands together. “Kenzie’s coming.
Paige’s coming. There’s a thing where they clean the ice in the middle, and we have time to talk.
Everybody just sits there and watches it, and I need somebody to be sarcastic about it with me, because Kenzie has Bianca, and Paige’s been really weird. ”
She looks at her laptop for a second. “One hour,” she says.
Yes!
“Two.”
“One.”
“It’s three periods, Tessa. One hour gets you a period and a half—”
“Fine,” she says, and shuts the laptop.
I squeal and hug her.
The rink is about two-thirds full, which Kenzie says is good for a midweek, and the student section stands for the entire first period.
Warmups are warmups. They skate in circles and shoot, and somebody’s always the last one off the ice. Nash comes past our end twice and doesn’t look up either time.
Paige says, “He’s not going to wave at you?”
I say, “Thanks for reminding me.”
But it’s not personal. I’m not mad.
Then the lights go down for the announcements and come back up, and they line up for the first faceoff. Nash is at center ice with his stick across his knees. He wins the draw in about a quarter of a second. And then he’s just—vicious.
That’s the only thought I’ve got as I watch him across the ice.
He plays the first period like he’s mad about something.
He’s hitting people. He finishes a check in the corner in the first two minutes that puts a Rubin defenseman into the boards so hard the glass shakes in front of the people three rows below us.
He doesn’t even look at the guy afterward; he just takes the puck and goes.
He talks the entire time. He’s got his mouthguard in, and he’s saying something to somebody on every single shift—to the guy lined up across from him, to a teammate, to a Rubin forward he skates past on his way to the bench.
Halfway through the first, somebody catches Koda high along the boards, and Nash is there before Koda’s back on his feet.
He gets a glove in the guy’s face and a fistful of his jersey, and they’re chest to chest. The refs are already coming, and Nash says something with about four inches between them, and then he lets go and skates away with his hands out.
Kenzie says, “Oh my God.”
Paige says, “He’s going to get thrown out.”
He doesn’t get thrown out. Nothing even gets called.
The whole time, I’m standing up with my hands over my mouth, and my heart is racing like I’m the one he’s fighting.
I should probably be concerned about this.
I know about his temper. I know exactly what it costs him.
I sat next to him in a plastic seat while he watched a whole game in a suit with his jaw locked, because of it.
But this isn’t that, and even I can tell it isn’t.
This is just him at work.
Jesus Christ, that’s my boyfriend.
It’s 1–1 in the second when there’s a stoppage down in our end for a puck over the glass.
They all just skate around while the officials sort it out. Nash is at the dot already, bent over with his hands on his knees. Koda’s getting a drink at the bench. And Rafe drifts along the boards below us, close to the glass, turning slow circles with his stick in one hand. Then he looks up.
Rafe skates to a complete stop at the sight of us.
“Is Rafe looking at us?” Bianca says.
“Why would Rafe be looking at us?” Kenzie says.
He’s not looking at us. I follow his gaze, and it goes past Kenzie and past Paige and lands two seats down on my right.
Tessa’s looking at the ice with a dead stare, and the hair on my arm stands up.
Rafe taps his stick once against the glass. Just once, flat.
I look back down at him, and Rafe looks angry.
“Tessa,” I say.
She turns to me, that look she had a second ago gone. “Yeah?”
“Do you know Rafe?”
She shakes her head and shrugs with an easy expression. “No.”
I look back down. He’s still staring at her.
“Not at all?” I ask, looking back at her.
“Not at all,” she says.
The puck drops, and Nash wins it. There’s a scrum on the boards, sticks and two other bodies, and for three seconds nothing happens, and then Nash comes out of it with the puck and everybody else doesn’t.
Rafe starts a fight in the middle of it. Gloves drop, and Nash is still moving the puck, not realizing what’s going on behind him. The guys start piling on each other. Nash and Koda get there fast, pulling guys off Rafe. Rafe goes after another guy.
I look at Tessa.
She looks at me. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Neither do I,” I say.
They win 3–1. Koda does something with his stick that gets him yelled at by his own bench.
When it’s over, they do the thing where they line up and tap the goalie’s pads, and then they raise their sticks to the student section, and Nash finds me in about a second and a half.
He doesn’t smile. He just looks at me, taps his stick twice on the ice, and follows his team down the tunnel.
We wait in the concourse by the trophy case with everybody’s families.
Tessa leaves. She got her hour and then some, and she says she’s got a lab at eight, so she hugs me goodbye, which she has never done, and she’s gone before I can say anything about it.
The guys come out with wet hair, in their team jackets, bags over their shoulders. Koda comes out first and gets swarmed by four people. Rafe comes out and goes straight past all of us and out the doors into the parking lot without stopping.
Nash comes out last, the way he always does.
He’s got a fresh cut across the bridge of his nose.
“You,” I tell him, “are a fucking asshole.”
“What?”
“On the ice. You’re an asshole on the ice.”
He looks down at me, and something happens at the side of his mouth.
“You like it,” he says.
I nod with a small pout.
He gets his hand around the back of my neck and kisses me, and I get a fistful of his shirt and don’t let him go for slightly longer than is appropriate.
“Your nose.”
“It’s fine,” he says, and takes my bag off my shoulder and puts it on his own.
The doors to the parking lot open, and the wind comes straight in, and I’m in a long-sleeve and nothing else, because I didn’t bring a coat. Again.
Nash looks at me for one second. He drops both bags on the concrete, unzips his, and pulls out his practice jersey.
“Arms up.”
“Nash—”
He shoves it over my head. For a second I’m in the dark inside it, laughing, and it smells like him and the rink, and then my head comes out the top with my hair full of static. It hangs past the middle of my thighs.
KENNEBECK, across my shoulders.
Everybody pushing past us toward the parking lot sees it. The name, the number, the guy who sat out Friday in a suit and put a Rubin defenseman into the glass tonight. That’s what they know about him.
I’m the only one who knows what’s under his jersey.
And now I’m under it, too.
He picks up both bags, and we go out through the doors into the cold with everybody else.
On Thursday, there’s a pre-Halloween party at a house two streets off campus with a porch full of people in coats, and I get Tessa to come to that, too.
It takes me two days and one direct appeal to her sense of obligation. She says an hour, and I jump for joy, because I’m thrilled she’s coming.
It’s a good night from the second we walk in.
Bianca’s found people she knows. Kenzie is telling everybody about the empty-netter.
Nash gets handed about nine congratulations in the first ten minutes about Tuesday’s game and hates every one of them.
By eleven, he’s on the arm of a couch in the front room with me half on his lap, and his hand keeps ending up under the back of my sweater.
Rafe’s in the kitchen doorway with a cup, doing what he always does, which is stand somewhere and be unimpressed. He’s talking to Koda. He’s talking to a girl. He’s completely normal. Except he knows exactly where Tessa is at all times.