Page 30 of Punchline
“Aww, what is this look?” Carson reached out and squished my cheeks between his palms. I smacked his hands away, and he laughed. “Don’t be sad, I still love you.”
“I know,” I said. I was grateful to have Carson in my life; him forgiving me for giving him a career-ending concussion was more than I deserved. “You jackass,” I added, because this was getting uncomfortably mushy.
“Right, well, good talk.” He got to his feet and pointed at the pads. “Hold those for me while I punch my feelings out.”
I shook my head, but got up and went to get one of the big pads anyway. “Why do you need to punch your feelings out?”
“Because I’m trying to figure out how to propose to Marek and it’s got me so nervous I can barely keep from spilling the beans to him the second I see him.”
I dropped the pad. “Wait, you’re what?”
Carson shrugged. “Ethan didn’t tell you?”
“No!”
“Oh, I thought he would. I got his advice last night on how I might be able to propose on the ice. It’s probably going to be during a practice, not an actual game, but?—”
“You’re going topropose?”
He arched an eyebrow at me. “You got a problem with that?”
I stared at him for a second as the news really sunk in. Carson, the guy I’d met in high school, the skinny, twitchy kid with a preternatural gift for grappling and a personality like sunshine, was going to propose. He was going to get married—Marek would never say no to him.
He’d become a fully-fledged adult, and I’d missed so much of it.
“No, man,” I finally managed around my own stupid emotions. “That’s great. It’s… just kind of amazing, I mean. That you’ve found someone you love so much, you want to marry him.”
Carson’s icy distance melted away in a second, and he went back to being a bouncy puppy. “I know, right? I never thought I’d be the marrying type, but Marek is. He likes stability and commitment and the white picket fence stuff, and when I’m with him, I like that too.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I used to think I’d be happy to travel the world, never settle down, just fight and teach and explore new places. But settling here in Vegas and being with Marek has been the best thing I’ve ever done. And I want him to know that.”
Holy shit, that was adorable. “I’m sure he does know.”
“He will once I put a ring on it.” Carson broke into a bad version of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” dance, and I threw the pad at him. “Don’t be so mean, Jake!”
“Get over here and punch me.”
We trained, and Carson waxed rhapsodic about how he wanted the proposal to go, and then we buckled down and taught four classes together—the noon lunch class for the professionals who couldn’t fit evening workouts in, the after-school class for kids 4-7, and the afternoon class for kids 8-14.
I let Carson take the lead with the older kids, but he happily gave me more face time with the littlest ones. It was a weird but true fact of life that the younger kids were less intimidated by my size, probably because they all wanted to climb me like a jungle gym. It was easy to put together a fun class that would wear them down and teach them something at the same time, and they were adorable. Their parents appreciated the fact that their kids were slightly less hyper when they picked them up, too.
Then there was the six o’ clock class for adults, which Carson co-taught with Beth while I stuck around to be a training partner, and then at seven Ethan arrived.
The moment we made eye contact, he blushed. I smiled; I couldn’t help it; he was so cute. He took his shoes off—I’d taught him well—and walked over to me. “Hi.”
“Hi.” I decided to make it easy on him. “How was practice?”
“Shitty. I was super distracted the whole time.”
Uh-oh.“Why?”
Ethan bit his lower lip. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
Now it wasmyturn to blush. Hopefully I was too ruddy from practice for it to be noticeable. “You had that much fun walking me through the hockey game, huh?”
“I had more fun with what came after. But! It’s fine that we stopped when we did, I just went home and took care of myself, and—” He stopped and slapped a hand over his mouth. “Shit. Just stop me from talking, okay?”
“Okay.” I couldn’t help but be pleased, though. It was nice to be memorable. And it wasn’t likeIhadn’t jerked off the second I was back in my apartment. “Let’s start with a review, then we’re going to work on counterpunching.”
Ethan grinned. “FinallyI get to punch!”
