Page 19 of Friendzone Hockey
It’s far from the neat and tidy way I prefer things. My jaw fucking ticks.
Slowly, I cross my arms, my bag of toiletries still in hand, and stare down at the angry little cat with big brown eyes, daring me to say something about it.
Daring me to tell him to leave forever.
“You’re picking all of this up, and you’re reorganizing my drawers.”
He sits up taller. Bet he was hoping I’d say something like that. Challenge burns in his eyes. “Make me.”
That little?—
When I don’t move fast enough, he shoves my empty suitcase off the bed.
Okay, Dashie. Message received loud and clear.
I pounce. He’s fast but not faster than me. I catch him by the hem of his T-shirt, dragging him onto my bed. I’m quick to pin him down, straddling him with my knees and trapping his wrists over his head. I let the devil make an appearance in my eyes. He thrashes and squirms, but he’s not goin’ anywhere.
“Stupid, strong-ass, hockey players,” he says as if he’s not one himself. Dash is a decent size, but I’m bigger. A fact I try not to think about too often. “What are you gonna do?”
I smirk. “This.” I know something about Dash. He’s ticklish as hell. I ghost fingers over his armpits and down his torso.
His laughter is deafening. It peals from his lips, coming from somewhere deep, somewhere old, somewhere before all the bad shit happened to him. It’s pure laughter, unbridled, and unlike anything I’ve ever heard before.
“Stace! Stacey! Fuck. Okay.Okay.I’ll pick it all up. Ah! That ti-tickles, you asshole!”
I don’t stop, exacting my revenge by tickling him almost to death. Tears stream down his face as he laughs until his throat rasps. He breathes a short sigh of relief when I stop, but I don’t give him much of a break, digging into his ribs with touches thatsend him on another run of laughter, stretching the length of time he’s without oxygen from laughing so fucking hard.
Yeah, I’m enjoying this way too fucking much.
I force myself to stop.
“If I let you up, are you gonna get straight to work, no arguing?”
“I swear. Fuck, I swear it.” His voice is way too fucking breathy for my liking. I think he mighta enjoyed that as much as I did.
I climb off of him, keeping my lips stern, maneuvering him off the bed. “Start with the drawers,” I tell him. “Go’on.”
The urge to smack his ass is strong, especially with how big and juicy it looks in those damn gray sweats of his, but I refrain.
He slinks off the bed as if he expects something else to happen, but know what’s gone? The heaviness that was in the air. The foreboding sense of impending loss.
I relax against a wall, arms still crossed over my chest, shoulder leaning against the white paint.
“Who folds their boxer shorts?” he complains.
“Everyone.”
“Nuh-uh. I shove ‘em in, and I know for a fact Dirk does too.”
“That’s because you and Dirk are monsters.”
He laughs some more, and it’s a happy laugh, but I already miss the kind of laughing he was doing while I tickled him.
I could get addicted to tickling him.
Dash works with determination, his tongue sticking out as if folding shit is hard. It might be for him. His folds don’t have the military precision mine do.
Then he speaks. He speaks so much; I’d call it chatty. I’m seeing a new piece of Dash for the first time. He talks about hockey. His favorite players. He tells me he loves hockey so much because it’s somewhere he feels powerful. He shares other things too, like how he always wished he had a sibling, but thatDirk’s close enough and how lucky he is to have Dirk as his faux brother.
