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Fuck if I know. A few months ago I would’ve said yes. But now I have Lake in front of me, and when he’s in front of me I start to suspect my type is dark-haired, sarcastic, and a touch shy of feral.
“Do you care if I have fun?” I ignore the second question.
He rolls his eyes. “The suspense is going to keep me up the whole night.”
I’m not sure what else to say, but I also don’t want him to leave. Fuck me, when did my thoughts become so nonsensical? It used to be easy.
My life used to be easy.
“I’ll let you get back to your… thing.” He starts to turn around.
My hand moves without any input from my brain. Lake looks down at where my fingers are clutching his arm and gives me another one of those says-more-than-a-thousand-words eyebrow quirks.
“It’s a study group,” I say. “A dinner after a study group. It’s been a long evening.”
It’s been a long week.
We lost our game yesterday. The shit mood lingers. Only now, standing in front of Lake, I feel slightly better. Relieved, for some godforsaken reason. Like life makes sense again.
Lake raises the bag he’s holding. “Same. Without the study group.” He looks away from me, back at the restaurant windows. “She likes you,” he says. “The blond.”
“Emily,” I supply for some reason.
He doesn’t acknowledge that. His eyes move away from the restaurant. They flick to me for a moment.
“Yeah. Anyway, I’ll see you around,” he says.
“Are you free tomorrow?”
What are you doing?
What are you doing?
What the ever-loving fuck are you doing?
“No,” he says with a finality that leaves no room for negotiation or compromise.
My fingers stay glued to his arm. His eyes stay glued to my fingers.
When he looks up, his cheeks are tinged with a faint flush.
“I’m going to Boston because Rachel and Sawyer are renovating and apparently friends help each other with that. If you happen to know who came up with that rule, point them my way, because I have a few choice words.”
“Is Kelly going to be there?” I blurt. I don’t mean to ask. I shouldn’t ask. But I ask.
His face is completely expressionless, so I have no idea what he’s thinking.
Not that I ever do with Lake.
“Yes,” he says. Short and simple and at the same time complicated as hell, because I don’t think the empty, feels-a-bit-like-heartburn-but-actually-isn’t feeling in my chest is supposed to be there.
There’s another moment of almost leaving, which ends with me pulling him to a stop, and him letting out an exasperated sigh and an equally exasperated, “What?”
“If you guys need an extra pair of hands, I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re volunteering to give up your Sunday to help a couple of relative strangers empty an old house of a few generations’ worth of accumulated crap? I really doubt you don’t have anything better to do.”
He’d be right about that. With hockey and school, my plate is full. We play thirty-four games a season. We make it to off-season, that number goes up. I spend a lot of weekends on a bus, traveling between different arenas. I sleep in a lot of hotel beds over the season.
