Page 10 of Overtime
“Maybe I was the only one available.”
“Maybe.” Wyatt pauses. “Just be careful with that guy, Maddie. He has a reputation.” The way he says the last two words is as if he capitalized them, and I know exactly what he means. Aran Rodriguez is a player on and off the ice.
“Don’t worry. That has nothing to do with me.”
“Hmkay, hopefully those won’t be famous last words.”
I huff a quick farewell after that. While I appreciate his concern, I can also take care of myself. Ish. Extremely good-looking guys with bad-boy reputations and a stadium-full of broken hearts have never been my kryptonite. It’s not that I’m invisible to them. I’m just someone they glance around on their search for a hot girl who fits next to them.
That’s probably why it didn’t matter to him that he was reassigned to a girl, despite requesting a male tutor. I’m basically the same as Wyatt in his eyes. And to me, he’s like looking into the sun. It’s nice to know he’s there, and certainly heated me up, but so far out of my reach I won’t even contemplate the possibility. I put my car in drive and leave the parking lot, determined to leave him behind for the day.
But dang, does he make great character inspiration.
TDH, foul-mouthed, self-confident, bottomless eyes. I can’t wait to get home and flesh out some backstory. What would fit a character like this best? Surely something tragic. So what if it’s nerve-racking to sit with Aran Rodriguez for almost an hour, two times per week? If it means I design the ultimate hockey hero for my new book, it’s worth it. In fact, I should probably pay him for the service.
Optimism returns to me on the drive back to the apartment. I have no classes for the rest of the day, so I can spend a bit of timeon developing my first-ever hockey romance before switching over to my coursework.
Even better, my roommates do have class this afternoon. I’ll have the whole place to myself for a few hours.
I pick up my fave veggie lo mein on the way and wolf it down at the kitchen counter in our tiny apartment. After I’m done, I bag up the trash and toss it into the building’s trash container by the parking lot. Last time I threw the cartons in the kitchen trash and my roommates saw it, they said this was why I was so fat, and that if only I’d stop eating takeout, I could get healthier and lose weight, when, in reality, I can’t afford takeout more than once a week.
Back inside, I change out of the marigold cashmere dress I found at a thrift store and chuck my leggings across the room. I put on my comfiest pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt that fits me like a tent because it’s a men’s 4XL. And with this freedom, I decide to enjoy the only good feature of this apartment. The glorious couch.
Rebs was my roommate at the freshman dorms, and we hit it off. The dorm room was too small for all our junk, and she knew I was having a hard time with the shared bathroom situation. So, at the first chance we got, we looked for options and found this place. The problem was that it has three bedrooms, so we needed one more person to help us carry the expense.
Insert Tiff. She found us through the roommate-wanted post we made on the student portal, and there were no red flags from her. But that’s because the red flag was Tiff’s bestie.
Lori.
Good ol’ Lori is what fat phobia would look like if it could transform into a living, breathing person. She’s one of those girls who’s hot and knows it. And if you’re not at her level, she will let you know. Repeatedly. Until you either start hating yourself, run away from her as fast as possible, or turn into her so she canaccept you. I’m currently trying to do the second one of those options because, even though she’s not my roommate per se, she spends most of her time at our place hanging out with Tiff and Rebs.
Lori’s the author of the takeout comment, which was obnoxious and expected of her. But the next day, I came home with a few leftover cookies from the office and made the mistake of offering them to Rebs and Tiff.
I still remember how Rebs’s expression turned all concerned and she said, “Are you sure you should be eating this, Maddie? Maybe you should watch your calories a bit more.”
And that was the first time I exploded. Rebs was my best friend. She knew that my mom made comments like that all the time. She knew how much they drove me nuts and how they hurt. And how they made me shrink in on myself. Two years of atta girl-ing me when I vented to her about my mom went down the drain the second queen bee Lori walked into our lives, deeming Rebs ahotand me anot.
So yeah, I have to get out of this place. But first I’ll enjoy the feather-soft couch Rebs and I bought when we moved in for a little longer.
I brew myself a mug of lavender and chamomile tea, because I worked myself up to a froth just thinking about the mean girls. The aromatic steam settles my nerves. I put the fluffy blanket over my legs and settle in.
My laptop fires back up, and it still shows the site with the Thunder Strikes info that I’d minimized once I felt a little guilty over stalking Aran and his team. But now, in the privacy of this apartment, I look up his player profile once more.
This time I don’t stop at his pretty face. Except I don’t understand his stats at all. Are they good or bad? I’ve heard people say he’s a great player, but this is all gibberish to me. I open a new tab on my browser to start looking up the termsand soon discover that he’s not just great. Aran is the cream of the crop of Division I players. My tea goes cold as I fall into a rabbit hole of YouTube clips of games. I have no idea what I’m watching, but it’s fast, and I’m enthralled.
I pause to heat up the tea in the microwave and make a note in my journal that sayshockey players must have good eyes, because the puck is small and fast.
Huh, that must be how Aran spotted the letters TDH on another page of my journal. And maybe how he knew I was staring, even though he only made eye contact the one moment that made me choke.
The microwave pings, and I retrieve the mug. I remake my nest and brace myself.Aran Rodriguezpulls out a shocking number of results. The first one is a video feature inSPORTYmagazine—a magazine even I’ve heard of—from last year.
I watch the whole ten minutes of it with my mouth hanging open. It starts with a montage of various trainings. Aran lifting weights that look as big as me. Lacing up his skates in the locker room. Gettingwhitepucks fired at him in rapid succession—and him catching every single one like a machine. That has to be edited, right? But then they show him at a gym in normal clothes, catching a barrage of tennis balls someone flings at him from behind the camera, like it’s a party trick. The wordsprodigyandhottest goalie prospectare bandied about every so often. They get some action shots of him that I rewind to watch again. Not my fault they got his best angles.
“Whoa!”
I jump in my seat. One of the action shots shows him shirtless and lifting what looks like thick, heavy ropes in rapid succession. And my question from earlier is answered eloquently.
Yes, a human apparently can bethatchiseled.
