Page 38 of Shutout
“Yeah, maybe you should,” I mumble, remembering the surprise sitting in his bathroom shelf.
Brooke gets up and starts peeling off the tape from the corner of Max’s poster. His T-shirt stays a little bunched up, showing a patch of skin between the hem and the waistband of his jeans. The wild part is that despite the narrow sliver, there’s an impressive muscle display.
He used to be way skinnier the last time we hung out. What the heck happened?
There’s another ping and he pauses the work to check his phone, leaving half of Max’s poster sagging forward. “All right. Coast is clear now,” Brook announces. “We can go back to civilization.”
“Was my company some kind of savage jungle?” Sarcasm drips heavy from my words.
His eyes flash as he opens the door and flicks off the light. “Oh yeah, I now know you bite.”
“What?”
He taps his bottom lip with his finger. “I had bite marks after we kissed.”
I gasp, trying to draw in enough oxygen to restart my brain after his abrupt topic switch. After spluttering for a second, I point at his face. “Liar!Youare the one who bit me.”
“Oh, so you were paying attention.” He grins as we walk down the deserted hallway.
“Didn’t we just agree to never talk about this?”
“Nope, I never actually agreed.” Brooke whistles some old school, jolly tune as we start walking down the stairs. Extra annoying that he’s right behind me.
“Well, stop. It’s embarrassing.”
“Why?” he has the nerve to ask.
I pause and grab onto the railing so I can turn over my shoulder. “Because we arefriends forever, am I right?”
Brooke seems bigger than usual from this vantage. I have to crane my head back to meet his eyes, otherwise I’d be staring at his waist. His face is uncharacteristically blank, but I don’t have the luxury of discerning what it could mean when he starts talking again.
“In other news, as your friend who is concerned for you, how are you enjoying the party? I know you don’t like this house.”
I resume the trek downstairs and when we’re both safely at the landing, I say, “Well, other than you clearly trying to embarrass me, nothing catastrophic has happened just yet. So I guess it’s okay.”
“Good, let’s keep it that way.”
Later, well after Brooke conveys me to my friends again and goes off to find a beer, I discover exactly what he meant by that.
Turns out, while we were waiting upstairs during what I feared was people having excessive public displays of affection, Brooklyn was orchestrating an operation for his hockey bros to remove a certain ex of mine from the premises.
That is the exact moment where I discover something. What I felt for him in high school was a crush. A first awareness that he was a boy, I was a girl, and that he smelled good and made me laugh. That maybe it’d have felt even nicer if he kissed me.
But this thing burning me up from the inside now… this is something else. Bigger. And it can turn into the kind of thing that destroys our friendship for real if I don’t rein it in.
CHAPTER 15
BROOKLYN
Iknow I’m in trouble when I screw up during a warmup blue line shuffle drill. Last year, I posted the best record in the team’s history, but today it’s almost like I’m trying to hit the puck with the butt of my stick. The fact that Coach Green is dragging me by my practice jersey over to center ice, far enough from everyone else, is confirmation enough.
He folds his arms as he faces me. “Tatum, we’re just days away from the season opener and you’re performing worse than ever. Why are you making me regret assigning you as captain?”
I wince. “I’m sorry, Coach. I, uh… my head’s a bit of a mess right now.”
A bitis an understatement.
“With what?” he hisses the words. “Girls?”
