Page 27 of Wild Pucker

I poke my head into the kitchen. Over the summer, the organization renovated a section of the upper level of our practice facility to include a gourmet, commercial-sized kitchen, a pantry, an office big enough for several people, and a tasting room. The guys love the tasting room. It's essentially a team dining hall where we get to eat the best food of our lives. Lily will have her own small team preparing food for us in this space.

Players will be on a strict diet from the start of training camp to the end of the season. Summers are our time to let loose a bit and pig out, but, you know, everything in moderation. We all know that when we arrive at camp, we're expected to be fit. There have been a few times when a player has come in overweight and out of shape after a summer of partying a little too hard. It's not cool to fail your first physical because you're a fat fucking idiot.

Which is where Lily and Sam come in. They'll feed the team before practices and meetings, then send us home with meal plans so we don't eat stupid shit. Once the season starts, it will be much of the same, except Lily will also teach us basic cooking skills. She and Sam have created an interactive program where we can access team recipes, instructions and videos, and log our meals on an app to ensure we are consuming the right amount of micros and macros in our diet. Sam will review our meals and adjust them as necessary. The goal is to get a competitive edge through what we fuel our bodies with.

I inhale deeply as I walk into the kitchen. Something smells good. I spy a few pots on the gas stove, and it looks like something is in the oven. The sound of someone humming is coming from the back of the kitchen near the offices, and I try to stealthily move my way toward Lily.

I spot her at a glass desk with her MacBook open, listening to music and typing away, oblivious to everything else around her. She's wearing one of those white coats you see chefs wearing on TV, and her blonde curls are pulled back into a messy ponytail. I can't stop the smile from stretching over my face as I listen to her sing along to the music. But I'm pretty sure she's got the words wrong.

"All the lonely Starbucks lovers, they'll tell you I'm insane," she sings, and I chuckle to myself. Lily loves Taylor Swift, so much so that Luke and I started listening to her too. Her music is contagious and catchy.

"And you call yourself a real Swiftie," I say from the doorway. Lily squeaks and jumps up from her seat, her chair rolling away from her desk.

"Chase! You know I hate it when people sneak up on me," she huffs, putting a hand to her heart. "And you know I'm an OG T-Swizzle stan. She's the bomb-dot-com."

"Then you should know there is no such thing as a 'lonely Starbucks lover.'"

"Yes, there is!" she insists and sings the chorus back to me. I just shake my head and laugh.

"She's saying, 'Got a long list of ex-lovers,'" I correct her. I only know this because I thought the lyric sounded stupid and made no sense. So I Googled it. I also thought it was Starbucks lovers, but I don’t tell her that.

"She is not! Is she?" Lily sits back down at her computer and pulls up Google. "That would make so much more sense," she mutters and types simultaneously. When the lyrics for "Blank Space" appear on the screen, I refrain from saying I told you so. "Oh my god, you're right! I've been singing it wrong for years! I just thought she really liked Starbucks."

"It's her fatal flaw.” I nod and add, "Starbucks is like drinking burnt gasoline. Tim Hortons is clearly the right choice."

"Amen," Lily laughs, gazing up at me from her chair. This is the Lily I love. The goofy, easy-to-talk-to friend who's always there to cheer me up no matter what. Something tightens in my chest when her eyes sparkle with humour. If you look closely, you can see a ring of darker, almost turquoise, around her irises. It's mesmerizing. She also has a tiny birthmark under her right eye that's a shade darker than all the little, light freckles sprinkled across her nose. I want to kiss every single one.

"Whatcha up to?" I ask, trying to distract myself from getting up to no good and putting my hands all over her.

"Just some meal planning. Did you know that Daniel Drake is also allergic to seafood? And Ollie and Ozzie refuse to eat mushrooms no matter how they're prepared? Coach McCall doesn't like pork. Luke will eat almost anything, but I swear the rest of this team is full of picky eaters."

"Sounds about right. You must know by now that hockey players are the worst drama llamas around."

Lily laughs and shuts her computer. She stands and stretches, then just stares at me. Her gaze stops on my eye, and she winces before reaching out a hand to brush her fingers lightly over the bruise.

"Does it still hurt?" she asks. I lean into her touch. Her fingers on my skin are like a soothing balm.

"Nah. Luke hits like a girl."

"Then girls must hit pretty fucking hard because you went down like a sack of bricks."

"I did not!"

"You really did,” Lily says with a wince. She stops for a moment before saying, "I'm sorry my brother hit you."

"I deserved it. I did kiss his sister at his wedding."

"You really did," she echoes and takes a breath. I'm not sure she realizes it, but her body starts to lean in closer to mine. She's so close I can smell the coconutty scent of her shampoo. "Is this crazy?"

"No," I answer, not sure what she thinks is crazy, but instinctively reciprocating her nearness. "I don't know about you, but right now I feel more sane than I have since I saw you walk down the stairs in that damned green prom dress a million years ago. You made me want to strangle that snivelling science nerd and steal you away."

"Derrick was not a snivelling science nerd," Lily laughs, pulling back. "He was sweet and nice and—"

"Boring," I finish her thought. Lily frowns, biting her lip. I wouldn't mind biting her lips right about now.

"Derrick wasn't a rockstar, but he was kind, and he loved me. And when you spend years waiting for someone else to realize you exist, having a boy—any boy—pay attention to you feels like a dream."

I've said the wrong thing, and I know it. Lily's miffed. Her eyes seem to shimmer with heat, and the tips of her ears go red when she's angry. Abruptly, she turns and walks to the other side of the kitchen and starts putting random utensils away.

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