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I’m like a gazelle cornered by a pack of lions. I sit low in the crease while six of our forwards—Sebastian, Tuck, and Carter from the first line and Jamie, Will, and Kiran from the second line—surround me in a semi-circle, each with a puck sitting in front of them.
Then Coach blows his whistle.
Kiran sends a slapshot hurtling towards me. I block it, but the very instant that my glove connects with the puck, Coach’s whistle screeches again, and Will sends his puck flying to my lower left, the worst possible place considering my positioning after blocking Kiran’s shot.
I sprawl in time to send it bouncing off my leg pad. Sebastian’s and Tuck’s shots also get shut down. Will tries to fake me out, but there’s a forcedness to his motion that gives it away, and I don’t bite. When he slices his stick back to send the puck to me for real, I easily swat it away.
When Coach’s whistle blows for the sixth time, Carter totally telegraphs his shot. It’s not like him. He’s usually hard to predict, but every bit of his form gives away that he’s aiming for my top right, which is where I go to block.
Only for the puck to sail past my bottom left and hit the back of the net.
I push up my goalie mask and stare at Carter, my jaw slack with disbelief.
Carter shoots me a wry grin. “Thought I was going for the upper right, huh?”
I shake my head, keeping my eyes locked on him. How the hell does he do that?
If Carter can fix some of his puck handling issues and improve his speed, he might be the best NHL prospect out of all of us.
I don’t know what my dad was thinking when he offered his less than stellar opinion of Carter earlier this semester.
Actually, scratch that, I’m pretty sure I do know what he was thinking: only focusing on the negatives of Carter’s game, and being blind to any of his talents as long as there was something to criticize.
Jamie’s in awe of the shot Carter scored on me. For good reason. “You gotta teach me how to shoot like that,” the freshman says. One good thing about Jamie is that the kid’s eager to learn. He’s got the right attitude, and that combined with his natural talent should take him far.
Jamie and Carter make an interesting contrast. Jamie’s fundamentals are razor-sharp. His stick handling, passing, and speed are all fantastic. But he’s too predictable. He never really pulls off a dazzling play that makes your eyelids snap open. Carter, on the other hand, has relatively weak fundamentals for a player at this level, but makes up for it with brilliant plays that come totally out of left field.
Tuck plops himself down on the bench behind my locker. “So,” he addresses me, “what’s it like bein’ tied down?”
“Tied down?” I throw his words back at him as a question.
“You know, with Summer. Tied down.”
My heart does a twist, because honestly? I like the sound of that. Being tied down with Summer. Immediately after I feel that twist in my heart, though, there’s a sinking sensation low in my stomach.
Am I really tied down, or is it more like I’m contractually obligated?
Obviously, Summer and I have gone far past the terms of our original agreement. Hanging out all the time, falling asleep with our arms and legs intertwined, drinking in each other’s moans as I pound into her? Yeah, not part of the original plan.
But what is the plan right now? I like her and she likes me. We like spending time together. Especially when that time is behind closed doors and involves our clothes being several feet away from our bodies.
Actually, scratch that especially. I like browsing the shelves at the bookstore, studying across the table from each other at a coffee shop, hanging out in her room playing with Salsa together, or watching a movie with her just as much as I like thrusting my hips between her warm thighs.
That very fact should bother me—but strangely, it just doesn’t.
But does that mean the terms have really changed?
What happens if her shit-head ex Sean moves on, gets a new girlfriend? Or when the end of the semester rolls around? Does she say, welp, it was fun screwing each other’s brains out while pretending to be dating, but now it’s back to our normal lives. See you later!
Look, I’m not stupid. There’s one obvious solution to this. I could ask her. Ask her how she feels—whether this fake relationship became real to her like it’s become real to me.
Sometimes when we’re together, the question is on the tip of my tongue. But I never get it past my lips. Because what if I don’t get an answer I’m hoping for?
What if she just wants us to hook up and have fun while we’re fake dating, but isn’t interested in keeping things going once there’s no need for us to put on this show anymore? What if I then have to keep faking it with that knowledge in mind, my own feelings still the same as they are now?
Doing that would be torture, but I’d have no choice, because I still need a place for Salsa to stay until I can get an apartment of my own.
“So, uh, does a prolonged silence mean being tied down is good or bad?” Tuck’s drawl pulls me out of the over-thinking quicksand I was just up to my waist in.
