Page 52 of Puck You Very Much
“There’s one thing we need to talk about though,” I said.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“The fact that the Lions and Riptides are set to play each other again.”
Zane’s face didn’t turn ashen. Nothing dramatic like that. His expression didn’t change either, which concerned me. Normally, he would’ve dismissed my concerns as a nothing burger, but even a tree stump like him would’ve known better. We’d gotten caught up in fun and games and forgot about the serious business that dominated our real lives.
“When do we play each other again?”
“Next week, at Remington.”
Now his eyes widened like a man caught in bed with another dude’s wife.
“Surprised?” I asked.
“I guess so.”
“I would’ve thought you would’ve known already,” I said. “I’ve known right along. We circle the dates we play you assholes.”
“We circle the dates we play you fuckheads too, and let me tell you, it gets us all fired up.”
Zane was full of shit. I didn’t need to have done the horizontal bop with him to know that. Basically, if he couldn’t come up with a decent response to something, he would say the first convenient thing, to avoid the awkward silence. That was how I knew he was full of it.
Unfortunately, I’d seen him do that on far too many occasions.
“Okay,” he said, “so we play each other again real soon. So what?”
“So what? Zane, don’t you understand what this means?”
“Of course I do. It means we’re going to mop the floor with you guys. That’s a given, isn’t it?”
“It wasn’t a given when we embarrassed you guys last time.”
“Yeah, but that was only because you…”
Even facts couldn’t shut Zane Hirst up completely.
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” I said. “I’m just bringing it up now because I know it’s going to be hard enough being boyfriends with someone who makes me sick without worrying about what happens on the ice.”
Zane furrowed his brow like he couldn’t take me seriously.
Deep down, I knew that being boyfriends alone served up a tall order even before you considered all the other crap. The idea that anyone could be my boyfriend still sounded crazy. That meant our relationship was about more than sex, even ifsweating up the sheets remained Zane’s number one goal. Now we had to think about how we would balance our relationship with high-stakes competition. Zane could dismiss it all he wanted, but the moment of truth would soon arrive.
“We can’t tell anybody about us,” Zane said.
“I’m not stupid, you know. Of course we can’t, and for more reasons than one.”
“We can’t see each other before games either.”
“Kind of like not seeing the bride before the wedding, huh?”
“Fuck off.”
“That makes sense. We’ll both be pretty busy in the hours leading up to puck drop.”
“I was thinking we shouldn’t see each other at all for a day or two leading up to the game.”
I wanted to ask him if he was pulling my chain. If I’d placed sex at the top of the agenda, his tone would’ve changed in a flash, but I would keep that in my back pocket for now. He didn’t change expression at first, probably hoping I would understand. When I didn’t respond, he stood up and paced the room.
