Page 50 of Three Pucking Words
Honor
Ican countthe number of dates I’ve been on, on one hand—three fingers to be exact. There was my very first date with the teenage boy who lived next door to our condo in Brooklyn when I was thirteen. Although, I’m not sure you can consider it a real date. He asked if I wanted to go get tacos at the food truck down the road. He did pay for them, though. A few years later, when I was sixteen, I’d gotten picked up by a boy in my class and taken out to dinner. He asked if I could split the bill because my entree was more expensive than his and he didn’t think that was fair because his family wasn’t “loaded” like mine was. Laughable, really, since the only money I saw was the forty dollars I earned babysitting our other neighbor’s daughter. Then I went to college where I met a cute boy who invited me to a frat party, where I’d gotten drunk and lost my virginity to him.
Not long after, I married that boy.
Needless to say, I’m not experienced in multiple departments. I don’t know the proper protocols for what one wears when they date, especially if it isn’t real. So, I opted to stay in the same clothes I worked in because it seemed safe. Not too dressy like I tried hard, but not too casual like I didn’t care. And the fact I thought so much about it made it feel a little too real.
I do my best not to get jittery as the game ends, or to smooth down my hair or touch up my makeup as Bodhi showers and changes in the locker room. In fact, I tell myself I don’t care what I look like or what he thinks of me.
Unfortunately, that promptly goes out the window when he steps out of the locker room and gives me a thorough once over that I feel deep in my chest from ten feet away. His throat bobs, and he says, “You look…great.”
Great isn’t beautiful. It’s not cute. But I blush anyway as his eyes do another scan over the length of me as if my black slacks and emerald blouse are the equivalent to a little black dress and heels. They’re not. In fact, I found both on a clearance rack at Target. But they do make my waist look narrower and my legs far longer than they are, so I consider that a win.
Then he puts his big, meaty palm on the low of my back until my skin all but ignites. He barely touches me as we walk to the car, but he may as well have put his hand down my pants. I blame the lack of orgasms I’ve had lately for my body buzzing as he opens the passenger side door and waits until I’m settled in before closing it.
I remind myself that this isn’t a real date, but my nerves don’t seem to understand. I also tell myself that the only reason I’m being driven and being given the special treatment is solely because I asked. I don’t have a car and Bodhi does, and we were at the same place and going to the same place. Plus, Bodhi doesn’t want homeless people to do weird things to me on public transit, which I’m grateful for.
I sit on my hands to stop them from fidgeting and focus on the buildings we pass along the long stretch of lit-up road. “Are Gemma’s grandparents watching her while we go out?”
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t glanced at the family and friends’ box for the little girl’s face, which was noticeably absent during the game.
“Gem was running a fever again,” he explains, sadness clutching his tone that matches the downward curve of his lips. “They decided to keep her home and watch the game from there. She sent me a two-minute video telling me how excited she wasthat I got a “touchdown” and asked if she could put my trophy in her room since we won. Clearly, I don’t talk enough about what I do for her to understand that we score goals, and don’t get trophies every time we have a victory.”
It’s such an innocent mistake I can’t help but laugh at her cuteness. “Sounds like she has the same extent of knowledge as I do about the game.”
He looks at me briefly with an amused smile that meets his eyes. “Thankfully, you know more than my six-year-old. She likes to call our uniforms “costumes” and thinks I’m a figure skater.”
The pig-like snort that escapes me is unattractive and embarrassing, but it spreads his smile into a blindingly wide grin. “Sorry,” I apologize, covering my nose as if that could help muffle the potential happenings of another hideous noise. “I was picturing you in tights and a leotard.”
Bodhi chuckles. “Do I look hot?”
The mental image I conjure in my head is comical, but I’m still not sure there’s anything that could make the man in the driver’s seat look ugly. “Yes,” I tell him, surprised at myself for the honesty. “Hot pink leotard and all.”
“You’d look good in a leotard,” is the reply I get back, warming my cheeks at the thought of me in something short and tight. I haven’t worn anything formfitting like that since I was a size ten, but I’m not going to tell him that. “If Gem sees you on the ice, she’ll think you’re a figure skater too.”
The face I make gains his attention at a long toll of red lights that we get stuck behind. It’s a default reaction to the idea, because it’s not a foreign one.
“What’s that look for?” he questions curiously, staring a little too hard at my profile.
I’d considered asking my father to pay for skating lessons when I was a kid but talked myself out of it when a few girls inmy school bullied me about my weight. The second they found out I’d wanted to become a figure skater they berated me with jokes about needing extra fabric for costumes or breaking the ice when I stepped onto it. I’d been young and impressionable, and it was just enough to discourage me from moving forward.
Who knows what could have happened if I brushed it off and went through with the lessons. My father was willing to pay for them—he never told me not to because of my weight. He would have bought me what I needed, no matter the cost, and did it without thinking twice. I always appreciated him for that, even if there were other areas in our relationship that lacked the same kind of support. Maybe if I hadn’t been a chicken, I would have gotten into better shape. Or maybe I could have been the first plus-size figure skater to win major competitions.
I’ll never know now, which is unfortunate.
Bodhi must assume what I’m thinking when I make no effort to fill the silence. “You can skate better than most of the team. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. You’re a force on the ice, Honor.”
My eyebrows shoot up as I gawk at him and his confident tone. “I don’t know about that…”
He casually lifts a shoulder. “I know I can’t do half the shit you were without falling or hurting myself. You’ll have to show me some moves sometime. Maybe when Bryant Park opens for the skating season.”
I want to roll my eyes at the bullshit he’s spewing considering his average skating speed is twenty-three-point-two miles an hour. Because,yes, I looked it up after the first game I attended when I could barely keep up snapping shots before switching my camera to a high-speed continuous shooting mode that allowed me to maximize my burst shooting speed. That means Bodhi skates almost the same speed as the school zone near my father’s house, and he can travel that fast while tracking the puck as it gets passed from player to player. But I don’t roll my eyes,because I’m more focused on him wanting to go skating with me in public.
Like anactualdate. Or maybe as friends?
The line between us is blurrier than ever.
“I could say the same thing about you, Mr. Hart Memorial Award winner of 2019 and MVP player of 2022,” I remark sarcastically.
