Page 10 of One Pucking Chance

“Second in goal,” I tsk. “This is it. I won’t need another shot. Get your Hail Mary play ready.”

With seconds left in the video game, this touchdown is a must to break the tie. My football avatar throws the ball, and the angle is perfect as it lands in the receiver’s hands across the goal line. I toss the controller onto the sofa and raise my arms in the air. “That’s how you do it!”

Max grumbles and plops onto the couch beside me. “This game is rigged.”

I chuckle. “Just because you don’t win doesn’t make it rigged.”

He points toward the TV. “It does when my lineup was clearly better. I had the better team.” He lifts his phone and checks the time. “Don’t you have to go soon?”

“In about an hour.” I shrug.

“I still don’t get it. How do you know she’s going to show? I still can’t believe she was inches away from you for hours yesterday, and you did nothing.” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“She’ll show, and I told you, my normal methods weren’t going to work on her. She’s not some puck bunny jumping at the chance to get a night out with a Cranes player. I had to read the room, and I could tell that my usual way of doing things would backfire. Annalise isn’t like other girls.”

He scoffs. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“You saw her face. She had no idea who any of us even were. My position on a professional hockey team didn’t win me extra brownie points. I’m sure guys flirt with her all the time, and she’s over it. She signed up for the event to raise money for breast cancer awareness and fill that karma bucket of hers, not to leave with a date. She no doubt has A-list celeb pretty boys bowing at her feet. What could a tatted-up hockey player offer her? You know? Nah.” I shake my head. “She had the upper hand. So I had to read the room and offer her something she didn’t expect.”

“Confusion?” Max grins.

I flatten my palms against my thighs and stand from the sofa. I look over my shoulder at Max and raise a brow. “Intrigue.”

“I don’t know.” Pressing his lips together, he shakes his head.

“I guarantee it’s going to work.” I turn to face Max. “Look, she goes back to her trailer and thinks,What does he mean, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’? He’s not going to see me tomorrow.”

Max holds his hand, his finger and thumb touching in the ‘A-okay’ sign, and he clicks his tongue. “Your Annalise Sterling impression. Perfect, man. Spot-on.”

I flip him the finger and return to my normal voice. “The point is, I did the unexpected, which is something I’m sure she’s not used to. Guys fawning all over her is surely a daily occurrence. But a guy just walking away? That’s undoubtedly new. I guarantee she thought about our brief interaction all day, replaying it in her mind while trying to figure out where she gave me the impression that she’d go out with me. The whole night from me coughing spit all over her face, to horribly flirting, to making plans without any indication from her that she’s remotely interested in said plans—it’s all over the place.” I swipe my hands, palm up in front of me, “Causing intrigue. Making her think and wanting to figure me out enough so that she’ll go against her better judgment and spend a couple more hours with me today, if only to put the questions in her head to rest. And that is when…” I pause in dramatic fashion. “I get her to fall for me.”

“You’re either the biggest idiot in the world or brilliant. It’s just hard to believe that you had the girl of your dreams sitting next to you, and you just walked away, leaving it to chance. I didn’t expect it.”

I nod. “Nor did she, and that’s why it will work.”

Max claps his hands together and stands from the sofa. We collect our snack dishes from the afternoon of gaming and make our way to the kitchen. We clean up, loading the dishwasher in tandem like a happily married couple. I’ve had several roommates in my life, and Max is the best. With our salaries, we could each afford to get our own home, but living by myself in a big house seems lonely. Renting a kick-ass bachelor pad with Max is much more my speed. Thankfully, he feels the same.

As an extreme extrovert, I never thought of myself as lonely. But just recently, when I genuinely think back to my childhood, I know I was. An only child raised by a young single mother who worked all the time left me to my own devices more than was probably healthy for proper development.

Max retrieves a dishwasher soap pod from beneath the sink and opens the little compartment on the dishwasher door.

He groans, pulling out the remnants of the old pod. The different colorful soaps have vanished, leaving just a slimy plastic shell. Holding it up, he turns his mouth down in a frown. “Every time I pull this out, it reminds me of a used condom, and it grosses me out.”

I smack his arm. “Gross, dude.”

“Well,” he scoffs, swinging the drippy plastic in front of my face, “don’t tell me you didn’t think the same thing.”

“I didn’t, but I definitely will be now!” I feign a gagging motion. “Maybe we should switch to powder soap.”

“That or get someone in here to fix the latch of the little soap door so the thing falls out and all of it dissolves.”

“Plastic doesn’t even dissolve,” I state.

“I don’t know. It’s like a special plastic.” He shrugs, still holding the soap condom in front of my face.

I take a step back. “Oh my God, throw that away already!”

He laughs and tosses it into the garbage before placing the new soap pod into the dishwasher, closing the door, and starting the cycle.

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