Page 1 of From Fling to Ring

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TYLER

There she is.

Only, ‘she’ is the last ‘she’ on earth I want to see at this moment. Or, probably, ever.

My gut churns, which is beyond lame because I probably have one-hundred fifty pounds and at least twelve inches on this woman. I could seriously pick her up with one hand, yet seeing her here tonight makes my dick shrivel, and my libido, previously quite healthy, dry up like spilled water in the desert.

Does the way this woman keeps showing up wherever I go qualify her as the dreaded s-word?

Stalker.

That might be a shitty thing to call a person, but when someone you used to date keeps showing up in your life, what the hell else is it?

I look at my buddies Rake and Jonas for support, but they’re busy talking through Rake’s last-season injury, and how it will or won’t impact his upcoming season.

Not that they’d give a shit about my little problem, anyway. They always tell me to be more selective about who I date. Easy for them to say. They found their soulmates—their term, not mine.

It sucks when a relationship gets to this point. Not that it happens often. But when it does, it’s ugly, messy, and in my case, has the potential to be very public.

I grab an overcooked shrimp off the tray of a passing server and chase it with my third Singha beer. The catered food at this place is always a crapshoot, but at least they can’t mess up the beer.

I look around the old-school San Francisco restaurant, likely decorated ages ago with some well-meaning person’s interpretation of Southeast Asian chic. Large, lazy fans flap from the ceiling, interspersed with random red and gold lanterns. The requisite faux balcony high up on one wall screams ‘colonial’ feel, and fraying rattan chairs and wilted potted plants make up the rest of the scene. The San Francisco Aftershocks holds a couple low-brow events here each year, reportedly because the owner of the restaurant knows the owner of the team and thinks they’re great friends, or something like that. We don’t ask questions. We just show up.

This particular team event is behind the bar in an area cordoned off for privacy, which is really just attracting more attention than anything else. And in spite of the ceiling fans, the air is filled with the testosterone of a team of fired-up pro hockey players and the lethal combo you get when you add alcohol to the mix.

Seriously. Our PR rep, the diminutive Vince Vincent, is running around like a frantic babysitter, trying to make sure no one does anything stupid. We’re to save any and all of our bone-headed aggression for the ice.

Which is fair.

It feels good to be back with the guys. Sure, I see Rake and Jonas on the regular, but the rest of the team pretty much scatters in the off season. People have lives to live, children to raise, vacations to take, and family to visit. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I kind of miss them when we’re all blown to different corners of the earth.

These guys, they’re all right. There isn’t a single one of them I could say a bad thing about. It’s really the best part of being on a team, the “family” part of it. Not that I would say a wuss thing like that to any of the guys.

So my potential stalker, Daphne, and I went our separate ways a few weeks ago. At the time, it seemed like she took the news well. It was amicable and friendly, funny even, at least I thought so by her shoulder shrugs and giggles.

I never said I was much for reading women.

She was a nice enough person, and to be honest, I had no major complaints. It’s just that we didn’t have anything in common, and with the opening of hockey season looming, I knew I’d have little to no time to devote to a relationship I wasn’t really into anyway. I explained this to her in more diplomatic terms, of course, and she agreed. Hell, I thought we were on the same page, and that she was sick of my half-assing it when it came to hanging out.

There are some things you just can’t fake.

Besides, she had all sorts of complaints about me. She didn’t like my shoes. She thought it was weird that my favorite ice cream was vanilla. And it really drove her up the wall that I didn’t use emojis in our text messages.

I had trouble ‘expressing myself,’ she told me.

Seems to me I did her a favor by calling it quits.

Right?

But this moment, at our Back to the Season team party, dressed to resemble someone headed for the stripper pole—no offense to strippers—does not bode well for me. Plain and simple, it’s not cool that she just shows up here like she was invited or something.

Speaking of which, how does she even know about this shindig?

Lots of people get invited to stuff like this, not just team members and their partners. We have coaches, managers, back-office folks, the owners, friends of friends—but not someone who used to date a team member.

That’s pretty fucking far from ordinary.

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