Page 31 of Zero Pucks

“I doubt it. I normally don’t blurt that stuff out. I don’t want random, super-hot strangers to think I’m a complete loser.”

He started to laugh, but it cut off quickly. “Wait. AmIthe random, super-hot stranger?”

“Um. Yes?”

He looked like I’d just told him every day this year was Christmas with an unlimited budget. “Wow. Okay. I see why I married you.”

“Uh…”

“Never mind. Ignore me.” He drummed his fingers on the table, then said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Anything.” I owed him that, at least.

He tilted his head to the side. “Now, my vision isn’t the best”—he waved his hand at the eye with the visible scarring over the cornea—“but you look…young.”

I flushed. I got that a lot. Too much. A few weeks ago, someone from the electric company had come to my door to talk about a rate increase and asked if my parents were home. I tried to grow a beard once, but whatever came in was patchy and hideous, so I quit trying.

“I’m sorry,” he said after my long stretch of silence. “I shouldn’t have—I mean, clearly, you were old enough to drink and gamble.”

I waved him off, then reached up and tugged at my hair, which desperately needed a cut. “I get it a lot.”

“So does Bodie.”

I blinked. “My roommate,” he clarified. “He has cerebral palsy, so he’s short as fuck and kind of tiny?” He lifted the last word like it was a question. “And he’s got this baby face like yours. Don’t say anything though, unless you want a tooth knocked out.”

I definitely didn’t, and I would also never be that rude to a total stranger. I zipped my lips, then held up my hand. “Not a word. And for the record, I’m twenty-nine.”

“Sweet, okay. So I didn’t rob a cradle or a grave. Bonus.” Tucker grinned widely. “So, we should have dinner.” He talked fast and changed subjects so quickly I felt like I was getting whiplash.

I frowned at his suggestion, then checked my phone. “It’s, like, ten forty-five.” Was that an East Coast thing I didn’t know about?

“Not now.” He rolled his eyes and squeezed my fingers before letting go. “Tonight. I’ll bully Bodie into cooking for us. Then I’ll make him leave so we can actually talk this out somewhere that isn’t a café with a bunch of small-town, nosy gossips trying to listen in.”

I glanced around frantically for evidence. Was that happening? Everyone seemed to be minding their business. Well, except for two guys who looked like brothers—maybe even twins—sitting three tables away. They weren’t looking at us, but they did start laughing when Tucker said that.

“Ignore them,” he said pointedly and louder. “We don’t talk to people who make fun of me.”

They laughed harder.

“They’re not looking at us. How do you know they’re making fun of you?”

“They’re not looking because they’re blind. But they have super-trained hearing, like a fuckingdog,” he shouted, making them double over with their giggles, “because they play hockey and have to listen for the puck. And I’m going to make their coach make them skate suicides until they puke if they don’t mind their business.”

“Love you, Tuck!” the brother with the backward baseball cap said loudly.

“So.” Tucker smiled at me and showed off two missing molars with how wide his grin was. “Anyway. Dinner.”

I could do dinner. I smiled back, and his ears pinked. What I wouldn’t give, I thought, for this to be something I could keep. But there was no way I was ever going to be that lucky.

CHAPTERSEVEN

TUCKER

“Cook me a fancy dinner tonight?”

Boden stared at me over the rink wall, using his sticks to shift the front of his sled back and forth. “I’m sorry. Do I look like a personal chef to you? Are you confused about the uniform, or…”

I leaned over the wall with my whole body and made grabby hands at him. “Pleeeeease.”

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