Page 59 of Mistlefoe
I want more smiles like that, please and thanks.
“Hey, stranger. How long have you been there?” he asks, casually hanging his hands off the end of the weird broom’s stick.
Long enough to work myself up into a heart issue. Instead, I squeak, “Like, fifteen minutes?”
“Oh! Shit, did I give you the wrong time?” He checks his watch again, a wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows when he realizes he’s not wrong. It’s me.
Isn’t that a metaphor.
“No worries. I got here early by accident.” Clearing my throat, I decide to pick myself up from my seat and approach. Conor watches me walk down the steps until I stand before him, the wet glass in between. “So.”
“So.” He tilts his head.
Don’t worry, Conor. I too wonder where I’m going with this. Your pretty eyes are addling my brain.
“That was you in your element, huh?” I ask, grasping at straws now. Any straws.
He leans an arm against the glass, his forehead coming to rest against it. “What did you think?”
“It looked pretty cool.” It’s kind of a lie because all I could pay attention to was him, and he’s something better than just cool.
“I was way cooler back in the day,” Conor says with a toothy grin. “Just zipping up and down the ice at a million miles per hour, battling it out with big dudes who didn’t care about losing teeth.”
I narrow my eyes. “You seem to have kept them all.”
“You’re right, that’s definitely a silver lining of retiring early.”
“How about you show me?”
His eyebrows pop. “My teeth?”
I bark a laugh. “No, you silly goose. Your zipping up and down, like when you were allegedly cooler.”
“Allegedly? Those are fighting words, woman.” He grumbles before pulling away from the boards and skating backwards. “Fine, I’ll show you.”
“Yes, please,” I murmur into my scarf. And I don’t even mean it in a pervy way, I just want to see every facet of him that has been out of my reach.
I sit at the front row now while he retrieves his stuff from the bench, and once he’s outfitted, Conor transforms. The stick becomes an extension of his body as he picks up speed and turns, taking one of the pucks along with him. Powerful thighs pump hard against the ice and he eats terrain faster than I can blink. Conor is a blur as he skates past me, somehow not dropping the puck for a second.
My breath hitches in my throat and I jump to my feet. He’s going way too fast and the net is too close. I don’t even care that the puck hits the back of the net because he’s about to freaking crash!
But he doesn’t.
He bends his legs and that changes his direction. One second he’s hurtling at the boards and the next he’s gliding along them, stealing the puck off the net to start all over again.
I plop on my chair, my heart racing just as fast as Conor zig zags around the ice, not even losing steam even though I’m tired from just watching him. How amazing was he during his career, if this is what he can do now that he’s retired and not conditioned?
Abruptly, I remember something Richard said before Conor arrived for his first day atSPORTY. “I saw this guy tear up the ice at Madison Square Garden two years ago, I can’t believe he’s joining our team now. Life is wild, huh?”
“Qué si no,” I tell myself.
“How’s that forallegedly?” Conor asks as he brakes across from me once more. He’s breathing slightly harder, though not in great guffaws like I’d be. His cheeks are rosy and his eyes arebright behind his glasses. But the part that kills me the most is his hair—it’s a spiky mess at the top of his head that is begging for my fingers to comb it.
“I stand corrected,” I admit in a breathy voice. “You’re still amazing.”
His lips part as in surprise. “Still?”
“Yup.”
