Page 19 of Just Friends
Truly a mystery, that roommate of mine. He’s ridiculously handsome, built like a God, and he’s tall enough your neck will get sore from looking up at him. Oh, and he’s a wealthy pro athlete. As if that weren’t enough to get nearly every woman alive throwing their panties at him? He’ssucha sweet and caring guy—probably the sweetest guy I’ve ever known, actually.
Jax could have basicallyanygirl he wanted.
So why does he waste his time on these girls he obviously doesn’t even like?
6
Jax
With breakfast cooked—and hopefully not acompletedisaster—there wasn’t anything else to do but wait.
I hopped up on the granite countertop with my tablet in hand. I held the device up to my chin and blew across the screen, a puff of bread flour scattering.
On screen was a scene I’d watched so many times, I knew it by heart. Still, it never lost its magic. I pressed play.
“Captain Shea Ellis, you’ve waited a long time for this,”the league commissioner said, with one hand resting on the chalice of the Stanley Cup.“Come lift the Stanley Cup for the city of Boston.”
Growing up, Shea was my hockey idol, and I modeled every aspect of my game afterthe smooth-skating, hard-nosed d-man. He played seventeen years in the league, long enough that even I had the honor to play against him once I made the league. But this video was from Shea’s very last game of professional hockey, and the thirty-seven-year-old’s bushy playoff beard had more gray in it than brown.
For the thousandth time, I watched the long-time captain of the Boston Brawlers gingerly coast over to the Cup—his legs looked like they were jelly, probably from adrenaline alone—and triumphantly hoist the silver trophy into the air. He screamed to the heavens, the Cup raised high above his head, as the pyrotechnics spit sparks in a glorious arc behind him.
Shea’s final game. It’s an iconic moment that never fails to get me a little choked up. The culmination of his life’s work. And he did it as a single dad raising three kids at home. After years of coming up short, he went out ontop,proving one man reallycando it alone—
Suddenly, Piper’s bedroom door opened.She emerged from her room in the clothes she’d slept in: a tight white camisole and short-shorts. It might not seem like much, but that actually shows how close we are, because Piper’s pretty embarrassed to show her legs around anyone else. And not because she’s worried her thighs are too big, or her calves too small or something like that—actually, she’s got really nice,shapely legs. The thing she’s self-conscious about is the bruises on her legs and knees. She’s one of those fair-skinned girls that bruises easily, yes, but she’s also prone to falling because of a condition she has: something called cataplexy.
I paused the video. “Morning, Pipes.”
“Morning!” Piper said in her eternally optimistic cheer. She corrected herself a second later. “Er,afternoon, technically.”
I peeked at the time. It was just past noon. “Were you able to get to sleep?”
“Yeah. Around eight in the morning, finally.” She sniffed at the air. “Whoa, hey, something smells fantastic! What is that?”
I slid off the countertop and grabbed two plates from the cabinet.
“Biscuits and gravy,” I said.
Piper, stopping dead in her tracks, looked confused. She gestured at my bedroom and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Wait, is that girl still here? Did she cook breakfast?”
I chuckled. “No … I made it.”
“Youmade it?” she asked, clearly not believing me. She hurried into the kitchen and inspected the scene. “Oh my God, there’s flour everywhere! It’s like a bomb went off in here—you reallydidmake breakfast, didn’t you?”
“Is it really that hard to believe?”
“Yes,” she said.
To be fair, her shock was completely warranted, because on most days you won’t catch me in the kitchen making anything but a protein shake.
She watched as I piled up a plate with biscuits and ladled sausage and gravy over it.
“Those look amazing! Did you bake those biscuits fromscratch?” she asked, astonished.
“I did. I even had to make a roux for the gravy, too.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Jax! How’d you learn to do all this?”
“I watched a YouTube video,” I said with a dip of my shoulder. “Pretty easy, really. Just gotta follow the directions.”
