2. nick
NICK
SO MUCH PAIN
“Tallulah Walker is a succubus.”
I had only one question.
What the fuck is a succubus?
None of my teammates in our hockey group chat knew what I was talking about. I had to look it up. I spent an hour scrolling through articles about the history of succubi—female demons who seduce men and suck the life force out of them.
Seriously? Suck the life force out of them? Was this a death by premium blowjob joke? From Tallulah Walker, of all people? What the fuck did this mean? Why was Tallulah labeled a succubus? Did she personally pick that out as a nickname?
I stayed up for hours thinking about it. It was the universe’s sick joke to ruin my sleep schedule.
The rest of Tallulah’s paper was basically blank from the shitty printer. Only two words meant anything to me, Tallulah—Succubus. A tease of a paper that haunted me, the words flashing behind my eyelids like neon signs. I saved it in my notebook, out of sight from prying eyes.
It’d been two days since she crashed into me and her succubus nickname was all I could think about.
It was messing with me and my drills at practice.
I hit another puck towards the net, and Fridge blocked it with ease, scoffing at my attempt. “What bullshit was that?”
“You’re too big,” I shot back. “How am I supposed to get past a brick wall?”
“Go again.”
I snorted. “Fuck you.”
“Do better next time.”
“Is that what every girl you’ve fucked has told you?”
I’d played with Fridge long enough to know when he grinned beneath his helmet. He was grinning ear to ear, his laugh echoing through the rink. We were just messing with each other.
Today was supposed to be an easy practice, something we did to stretch our muscles after winning the Gulf Coast Championship.
Usually, I’d welcome a practice like this, but not today.
An easy practice meant way too much brain activity.
I couldn’t keep down the questions about Tallulah’s succubus title.
Or…Tallulah herself. I couldn’t keep her out of my head.
Ever since last June…
Fuck.
I glanced at Fridge, forcing my attention back on the puck.
Fridge was my best friend. Even though I’d transferred from Minnesota and he’d transferred from Florida, we’d run into each other at the same hockey camps.
Our years-long friendship had been easy to keep up long-distance.
We’d always meshed well together. There was me, the class clown, the fuckboy on any team I signed on, and Fridge, the all-too-serious goalie, rolling his eyes at my antics.
Then we transferred to Marrs University together and the casual friendship became more than that. We relied on each other. Kept each other accountable.
Until…things changed.
There was a rift between us Fridge didn’t know about.
We left the rink to stroll across campus, summer was just around the corner. You could taste it in the air, see it in the changing trees, the campus was lit up with anticipation. No more finals, no more homework, no more bullshit.
I pushed open the door to Gianna’s, the best on-campus food by a wide margin. It was only two o’clock but the place was packed, an ongoing “fuck, we made it!” celebration. Laughter was everywhere, bottles clinked.
“I can’t believe you’re still going to Canada,” Fridge admitted in line, purposely loud over the sea of voices.
“Are you going to miss me?” I joked.
“Yeah. You’re the only non-idiot around here.”
That wasn’t true. I lapsed into silence, pretending to read the menu overhead.
Part of me wanted to tell Fridge the truth, to have it out there and let it be done with.
I’d never been a guy to keep secrets before.
Especially one as big as this. But I’d kept the secret for almost a year now, and it’d grown its own defenses, hard and impenetrable inside of me.
I was a fucking idiot. This last year had proved I was as stupid as every hockey player I’d ever taunted in the locker room. Every teammate who decided to set fire to his life because he couldn’t get over some girl.
Now? I understood how tempting those matches could be.
“Nick?” an indignant voice demanded. Some guy in a beanie with a pair of headphones wrapped around his neck glared at me. “Nick Kurosawa?”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Dude, not today.”
“You slept with my girlfriend!”
I had no idea who this guy was. Couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup. Besides that, I hadn’t fucked anyone since last June. I couldn’t believe he was confronting me for something that no doubt happened in my first few weeks at Marrs. It took him a year to get mad about it?
“The past is in the past,” I told him, irritated. “My condolences.”
“My girlfriend and I broke up because of you—”
“Oh, fucking spare me,” I said with so much venom, I surprised myself.
I wasn’t pissed that this shithead was confronting me at Gianna’s. It was more complicated than that.
Now that I stepped back from being a playboy, there were patterns I’d never realized before. Those girls I used to mess around with had used me as much as I’d used them.
I used them because I wanted sex and nothing serious. They used me because they wanted a guy who put more than two minutes of effort into getting them off. Someone to pay attention.
When their boyfriends inevitably confronted me, cheating wasn’t the issue. They were mad their girlfriends used me as a stepping stone to leave them. That’s what it boiled down to.
This fucking asshole wasn’t confronting me because I slept with his girlfriend, he was confronting me because she realized she deserved better.
And I was angry over it. Angry because he had a girlfriend, someone who loved him, and he let her get railed by some hockey player because he was doing fuck all to keep her.
Fucking jackass didn’t know how good he had it.
Angry, yes. And if I was honest with myself, jealousy curled my words, making me clench my fists.
“She sucked me off so she’d have an excuse to break up with you,” I snapped.
“You fucking asshole!”
“Nick,” Fridge warned. “I don’t want to get thrown out of Gianna’s because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants.”
“Hit me or shut up,” I told the guy.
They guy hesitated too long. With a shake of his head, he left for the door. “Fuck you.”
Last year, I would’ve laughed, but things were different now. There was nothing funny about it anymore. Karma had metaphorically whooped my ass in an alleyway, and I’d been paying the price ever since.
I never realized how much it could hurt.
How much I could hurt.
Fridge grabbed me by my arm. “He was going to punch you—”
“I was being an idiot,” I muttered. “I don’t know why I provoked him.”
“What’s going on?”
For a moment, I held in my answer, debating what to say.
“I’m…kind of nervous about Canada,” I admitted, and that was the truth. “I’ve gotten really comfortable at Marrs. Comfortable with our team. I’m nervous about making the switch, even if it’s just for the summer.”
“So don’t go. Fuck Tomasini’s minor league. Stay in Houston.” Fridge gave a good-natured shrug. “What’s Canada got for you?”
The two-word answer was on the tip of my tongue.
Your ex-girlfriend.
Fuck. No. I held it down, forcing myself to stay silent. Instead, I gave a bullshit excuse, and Fridge must’ve bought it because he started talking about the summer classes he’d signed up for.
While he debated between teachers for a morning class, I nodded, distracted. My mind was elsewhere. I remembered my summer classes last year. Those classes had changed everything. I never, ever expected to meet her.
Tallulah Walker.
I could remember the first day I saw her. Blushing, shy Tallulah explaining her class transfer to our professor. Her pretty sky-blue headband over her dark hair, her eyes sparkling from the sun through the windows.
I’d watched her walk to the only available desk in the room, two spots away from me. I’d wanted to say something. I had to say something. But I couldn’t.
It’d been a hard realization.
For the first time in my life, I was tongue-tied around a girl.
I couldn’t say a single word to her. Not in the minutes before class, not during our small groups where she barely spoke. The crush building inside me was bizarre. I waited for it to go away. For me to return to normal, to laugh it off.
It didn’t vanish, it just grew stronger.
Careful to stay inconspicuous, I hung around the student paper’s office to bump into Tallulah.
One day, I gathered the courage to ask her where some of the buildings on campus were.
She gave me directions I already knew, a blush coloring her cheeks, and I held on to that conversation, planning to ask her out. To approach her in class.
“Hey, you’re the first girl I’ve ever felt breathless around. I can’t tell if I have a crush on you or if I’m having a premature heart attack. Want to catch a movie?”
That conversation never happened. Tallulah arrived at the rink to write a piece about the hockey team. I watched from the ice as Fridge made a move on her, made her laugh, and I felt my heart crack.
I was going to talk to her, but she left for a family trip and Fridge asked her out for real when she came back.
I used to think pain was when I dislocated my shoulder during a game. Or when I chipped a tooth in a freak puck accident. Or when I was washed out of the Winter Olympics team two years ago.
That wasn’t pain.
Pain was watching Fridge kiss Tallulah in the parking lot after their date.
That was pain.
I threw up in a trash can outside, and when Fridge returned to our dorm, I had to pretend to be pumped for him.
I didn’t want to hurt Fridge, and I didn’t want my past to haunt me. I was famed for sleeping with someone else’s girlfriend, especially before a hockey game. I was the playboy. The homewrecker. The fuckboy. It was ink under my skin, something I couldn’t wash off.
So I waited for Fridge and Tallulah to break up.
Waited. Waited.
Painfully waited.
Dread crept in as I realized they weren’t going to break up.
The pain was ever constant. It never dulled.
Never faded. Every day the wound felt fresh, and I struggled to hide it.
And Tallulah was…Tallulah. The more I got to know her through my best friend, her kindness, how tender she was with everybody, her warmth, how soft she was inside and out, the more the crush hurt.
I didn’t know what to do. The decision paralyzed me.
For the first time, I was scared to hurt someone. Either of them. Both of them.
When they broke up in January, it was the first real breath of air in my lungs. It was the opening I needed—to finally take that chance.
Tallulah announced that she’d won an internship opportunity to report on the Summer Olympics in Toronto, Canada. While everyone else congratulated her, I made plans. I emailed the Toronto Blades, to see if they were interested in having me as a left winger for their summer league.
From May until early August, I had a centralized goal.
I wanted Tallulah.
I wanted her more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.
And this time, I wouldn’t fuck it up.