Page 8 of Six Wishes

Me: I have no idea what any of that means… What’s a wag??

I can almost feel Hunter’s frustration with me as she is typing away a reply, the little bubble with the three dots teasing me to all hell. Finally, her next text comes through.

Hunter: Dude!!! That is a picture of YOU and VAN BOYD kissing in the parking lot at Mud Duck’s!!! And it says that you are his girlfriend!!! OMG!!!

All the blood drains from my head and now I feel lightheaded. Good thing that I am close to the bed and can sit down.

“Oh my God!”

“Chlo, you okay?” Alison’s voice startles me from the shock. I forgot that she was still on the phone waiting for me to see what Hunter wanted.

“I don’t know,” my voice sounds shaky now. “Hunter says that there’s a picture of me and Van kissing on Instagram on some wags page,” I mutter in disbelief.

“You kissed Van Boyd??” Is this all she’s got to say right now? What is wrong with these girls?

“I didn’t kiss him,” I jump in, and I know I sound defensive, but I can’t help it. “He kissed me,” I mumble in a lower voice.

“Oh my God!” Alison shrieks, and I swear my ears are ringing.

“Baby, you’re gonna wake the kid up, seriously,” I hear Wyatt trying to calm her down.

“I can’t believe Van didn’t tell me that,” Alison continues like none of us said anything. She is on a mission now. “I thought we were friends. I’ve been sending him all these awesomely funny GIFs. And now I feel like I wasted them on him.”

“I told you not to talk to him,” Wyatt butts in out of nowhere, and I am assuming at this point that the call is on speaker on their end, so anything I say, I have to be prepared to say it in front of an audience of two.

“What is an H wags thing?” I cut them off because I don’t care why Wyatt doesn’t want Alison to text with Van, although I can guess.

“Oh, that’s a… Hold on,” I hear tapping on the phone, and now I know she’s googling it. I could’ve done that, I roll my eyes at the ceiling. “It is a page on Insta that posts pictures of the wives and girlfriends of the hockey players that play professionally,” Alison reads to me the description of the social media page.

“What in the world?? There was no one around, and why would they think that I was his girlfriend?” I am just flabbergasted by this entire episode.

“Who knows, people are crazy,” Alison tries to brush it off. “Besides, nobody’s going to know that’s you in that picture. I mean, I just looked at it, and I couldn’t tell.”

“Really?” I try to sound more optimistic than I feel.

“Yeah, I mean, unless they’re from around here,” she continues. “And they’ve seen you around. You really are so beautiful and tall. Hard to miss, you know?”

“Ali,” I cry out in distress. “You are not making me feel any better!”

“It’ll be fine,” she says it again like it’s no big deal, and I decide to go with that because what choice do I have? Then again, since I’ve never heard of this random social media page, I’m sure it’s not that popular, and not like we are a hockey town or anything. People know Van around these parts only because he’s local. Not like we’d know any of the other players if we came face to face with them.

“Okay, whatever,” I concede. “What assholes, though. Who does that, right? And what’s Hunter doing following hokey ass Insta pages anyway?”

“Ha, hokey hockey page,” Alison snorts, and I start laughing too.

“Ugh,” I sigh into the phone, “I need to go to bed. I’ll be good for nothing tomorrow.”

“What time is the game?” Alison has been such a great friend and came to a lot of my games so far.

“Tomorrow is just a practice game, not the actual game which is next week. The practice game is not until one, but I have conditioning really early, and I want to get some cardio in too.” I yawn into my hand just as I say it.

“I will see you then. I’ll bring Ethan, he’ll love watching you play.” I can hear the smile in her voice. Ethan was in her pre-k class for a couple of months before the school year ended, and she got really attached to him. Unbeknownst to either one of us, he turned out to be Wyatt’s nephew, and now he lives with them.

We hang up and I throw myself back on the bed and sigh. What a day, or night, rather.

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