Page 45 of Punchline
So. I had a boyfriend now.
Not that I hadn’t had a boyfriend before in Ethan, but it felt more… real now. Which was weird of me, I knew that, simply equating physical intimacy to relationship status. Plenty of people were in happy relationships without the physical stuff entering into it, but the physical act was one of the main ways Igotthings. I had a hard time learning from videos or books, or even in seminars if I couldn’t work out the moves on the mat myself. It took consistent repetition, playing around with things, and strategizing ways to work it into my game that made a technique stick for me.
And Ethan and I were doing alotof repetition and playing around these days. The week after the smoker was one of the best I’d ever had. He came over to my place in the evenings more often than not even if we hadn’t worked together, and… well, let’s just say he gave me plenty to work on. All the other fun stuff aside, I liked being on the bottom more than I’d thought I would. We’d only tried it the other way once, and we’d ended up with him in my lap because there was something about looming over Ethan that I couldn’t really get into.
Fuck. I probably needed to talk to my therapist about that.
Then Ethan and Marek left for four days’ worth of away games, which left me with a lot of Carson on my hands. And when I said a lot, I meant?—
“Youhaveto help me make sure it doesn’t suck, all right?” he demanded from “his” side of my couch for the sixth time in two days. “It can’t suck. It’s got to be the best proposal possible.”
“You’ve already guaranteed it’s not going to suck by not going onto the ice yourself,” I pointed out, and got a pillow to the face in retribution.
“I’m being serious here!”
“So am I!” Carson was a great athlete and good at so many things, but balancing on skates wasn’t one of them. He didn’t know if his skating would have been bad before the concussion, but it was absolutely shit now. Marek had to hold onto both his hands to get him around the rink upright.
I felt awful about the whole situation since I wasresponsiblefor said concussion, but Carson waved every apology off like the friend he was. He preferred us being able to joke about it, so I tried to follow his lead. “Look, even without you going out on the ice for this, you’re still combining Marek’s favorite things—you, and hockey,” I said. “You got the team to promise to help, right?”
“Right,” he said, staring off into space as he wound his hands around my nanna’s afghan so tightly I could hear the fibers stretch. “They’re going to let me use their lockers to hang the banner on.”
“And one of the trainers is going to set up the confetti cannons, yeah?”
“Jimmy, yeah. He’s great.” Carson’s smile appeared for a second. “He works at his parents’ party store in the off season. He got me a great discount on the cannons.”
That was the only reason someone should ever consider a confetti cannon, as far as I was concerned, but this wasn’tmyproposal. If Carson thought Marek would like it, then he would. “And Ethan’s made sure that one of the coaches will let us in the locker room right before the end of the game,” I continued, running down my mental schedule of events.
“Yes.”
“And I’ll film so you can have footage to send to Marek’s brother, and you’ve already ordered enough celebratory cupcakes that everyone on the team can have two, and you’ve got the ring?—”
“Oh shit!” He looked at me frantically. “What about the chain?” Marek couldn’t wear his ring on his finger during games, but a lot of the married players strung them onto chains to wear around their necks.
“You bought it at the same time as the ring,” I reminded him. It was white gold with thick links and probably cost Carson as much as the ring had, but it would suit Marek nicely.
“Right… and the silicone ring?” It was black, stretchy, and another option if Marek wanted one.
“It came in the mail yesterday, remember?”
Carson leaned his head onto his hand and grimaced. “I don’t, actually. Not specifically. I’ve just got a feeling that something didn’t get taken care of. It’s probably this, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been wrong, and I can’t afford for anything to go wrong with this. Ican’t.”
My chest constricted sharply. I scooted a little closer to Carson and nudged his knee with mine. “You realize thatyou could propose to Marek at a McDonalds drive-thru and he’d say yes, right? He’s crazy about you.”
Carson sighed. “I know, but he deserves better than that. He’s no contact with his parents now, and Jan is great but when it’s not summer break they can’t see each other very often because of their schedules, and phone calls just aren’t the same. He gets along well with his team, of course, but he doesn’t have a lot of people outside of that, and he should. Marek is the best person I know, he deserves so much love and support, and I want to make sure he knows hehasit.”
Well, shit. “We’ll make it perfect,” I promised him. “Let’s talk it through again.”
The team’s first day back in Vegas was capped off with a game in the evening. It had been a hard time on the road, losing three out of four games, and even Ethan had been glum when he called me about it the night before.
“We lost two guys to injuries in the second game,” he said. “And one of them was Keps, so that meant our best enforcer was out. Marek did what he could, and Ceders is no joke either, but it’s not the same.”
Oof. It was always rough losing a teammate to injury. “Are they going to be okay?”
“Trainers say yeah, but they need a break, so we won’t have them in the game tomorrow either.”
“But you’ll be playing at home,” I said, trying to be encouraging. “That counts for something, right?”
“It’ll be good to be home,” Ethan allowed. “Mostly so I can see you again. And so we can get this proposal done soCarson stops texting me every hour. Man, I love him, but he’s losing his mind about this.”
