18. Russ
CHAPTER 18
RUSS
There is zero fucking chance I’m watching a rom com with Shannon, her husband, my fake girlfriend, and an audience of my teammates and their better halves.
Fuck. That. Noise.
It’s bad enough that Emery is now on a mission to performatively prove to Max that I’m in love with her or something like that. I want to drag her aside and stage a break-up. Or at the very least, just tell her to cut it out.
It feels like this weekend is happening in slow motion around me, and I hate the feeling of not being in control.
So I’m taking control.
Emery growls and thumps me on the chest as I make the pronouncement that we’re watching Shoresy. I spin her around and point her to the bar cart. “You’re in charge of the cocktails tonight, kiddo.”
She stomps to the fridge and grabs a bottle of beer. “Voila. Your Sudbury Special, sir. And I’m not skating with you guys tomorrow, because Cutting Edge takes priority.”
I put a deliberate amount of chill on my response. “That’s fine.”
She doesn’t pick up on the vibe, though, and when we all pile onto the couches in the viewing room again, she manages to arrange everyone in the blink of an eye so we’re sitting next to Shannon and Max.
The massive couch still isn’t big enough for the four of us.
I shift in my seat as the episode starts.
Immediately, the room starts laughing along as our favourite minor league hockey player chirps his way through reffing a junior game.
Shannon is as into it as anyone else. It’s nice to watch her laugh. And it’s hard to pretend not to watch her.
Emery pats my knee and leans against me. Pretend with me instead, she projects.
I don’t want to, but I slide my arm over her shoulder, anyway—and my knuckles graze Shannon’s shoulder on the other side.
She jolts, and then holds still, the soft muscle now firm against the back of my fingers. But she doesn’t pull away.
I flex my hand, straightening out my fingers. Touching her from knuckles to fingertips. Warmth pours up my arm as she laughs with the next joke, shaking gently.
Grinning, I relax.
And when Shoresy talks about liking mature women, Shannon claps her hands and pushes her elbow into Emery, clearly delighted.
When he says he’ll be so good to the woman he’s pursuing, she turns pink and bites her lower lip.
Fucking adorable.
She deserves a man who will pull her close and repeat the line for her enjoyment.
What she gets, instead, is a pissed-off husband who starts whining about minor league players as if Shoresy is some real person who couldn’t make it to the NHL, and not the figment of a clever writer’s imagination.
Beside me, Emery shakes her head a little, then pushes herself off the couch. “Anyone want a beer?”
She counts hands, then disappears.
My arm, no longer having an Emery to rest on, is back on my end of the couch, and a sharp awareness of the space between me and Shannon prickles as the characters on the show argue about being less slutty in order to give their team everything they have for the rest of the season.
She glances sideways at me as Max turns and yells to our teammates, “Pay attention, titfuckers.”
Shannon laughs and winces. Her preppy-assed husband doesn’t sound right at all quoting Shoresy like that, and everyone in this room knows that.
But under the chorus of cheers and laughs, I can say, “It’s not being slutty, by the way.”
Shannon shifts closer. “What’s not?”
“The thing I need to give up.”
“You aren’t struggling to give up the idea of hammering ass all season long?” she asks lightly, quoting the show in a mocking way.
I didn’t say that, exactly. “Not with more than one person. Not with puck bunnies.”
She lifts her shoulder in a don’t care shrug. “Okay.”
From the back of the room, Malik bounds forward and slides onto the couch on the other side of Max, pushing him into Shannon…and Shannon into me.
Emery returns, handing out beers, and just takes Malik’s empty seat on the upper back right couch next to Roan.
The scene changes on screen, but I’ve stopped following. All I can feel is the press of Shannon’s thigh against mine, from our hips all the way to where her knee is, just short of my own.
Her arms are crossed in front of her body, and her husband is right on the other side of us.
I can’t move. I can’t touch her any more than I am.
This is exactly what you need to give up , I try to tell myself.
But it’s never going to happen.
As the hockey players on the screen have to grapple with the question of what they will do, and what they will give up, to be the best team in their league, I am forced to admit that I will not, cannot give up my one-sided affection for this off-limits woman.