Page 62 of High Stick Heartthrob

“And then… you leave me alone with all those hockey players.” Her eyes lit up. “The things I kept picturing them doing to me. All at the same time.”

“Did anything even remotely close happen?”

“No,” Hannah said.

“Meaning?”

Hannah sat back and folded her arms. “Meaning anything I’m thinking is made up in my mind and that I’ll take care of my own stuff later.”

“Batteries and a vision,” I said.

Hannah rolled her eyes. “You managed to twist the conversation around to me and make me feel bad.”

I smirked.

“Bitch,” Hannah whispered.

I lifted the frozen bag of peas off my hand.

Nothing was bruised or swollen.

But hitting Atlas in the jaw was like punching the corner of a brick house.

I put the bag of frozen peas back on my hand.

I looked at Hannah. “He told me I fucked up his life.”

“He said that?”

“He said that. I’m not sure what the rules are for this kind of thing. Meeting someone random and getting pregnant by them. All things considered… with the date… how it happened…”

“So this is my fault,” Hannah said. “Wow. A side dish of intense guilt.”

“No. It’s my fault for messing things up the way I did. It’s my fault for jumping into bed with him. It’s his fault for not having half a brain to think about putting on a condom. It’s my fault for not telling him to put on a condom. The wholeit’s your faultthing can go on for miles. The bottom line is that I’m pregnant. And the baby is his. And I don’t know. Maybe he was just messing around. Trying to joke around in a bad way. The guy has no real tone to his voice other than-”

“Themake your panties wettone?” Hannah asked with a grin.

“That’s the one,” I hated to admit.

“Go on.”

“So that tone. The way he talks is just…”

“Panty melting.”

“Enough with the panty talk, okay? I’m being serious. He said I was fucking up his life. Or I fucked up his life. I’m not sure of the exact wording. One second he was talking about Gram, then the next-”

“Wait a second,” Hannah said. “How does he know about Gram?”

“Well, I casually mentioned her on our date,” I said. “Nothing in detail or whatever.”

“Okay, this might change things then for me.”

“Change things? How?”

“Your date. It was a real date then. Like you two were connecting. You were talking about things in your lives. Not just some meet up and jump into bed thing.”

“He got into a fight.”

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