Chapter 5
The afternoon sun was hot, which is why Ryan was thankful his back porch had a table with an umbrella. He had thought about taking his shirt off too, but Lucy came out of her place a few hours ago and set up papers all over her table on her porch. He had already shown her plenty of his shirtless body. He didn't need to do it again.
Although it was kind of cute the way she seemed to always get flustered when he didn't have a shirt on. After he left her place this morning, he realized she was treating him differently while he was sitting at her table with a shirt on than when he was walking up after his dip in the lake with only a towel on.
Of course, Lucy didn't know he was only wearing was a towel. She didn't know that he wasn't wearing anything when he decided to jump in the lake this morning. He could only imagine the kind of reaction she would have if she saw him getting out of the water completely naked considering how flustered she got when he was only missing a shirt.
But after coffee, he had decided to pull himself together. He went back to his cabin and took a proper shower to get the lake smell off of him. He pulled on some new clean clothes and not the dirty ones he grabbed from his floor this morning when he rushed to get dressed and go over to Lucy's place.
After that, he sat on his couch and opened his book. Lucy was right. He did like reading something that wasn't very high brow. He needed a mindless distraction and this was perfect. He found himself immersed in this murder case with the detective trying to track down clues all over New York City.
He ate lunch with the book propped open in one hand and his sandwich in another. He took an afternoon nap for an hour. It was part of his normal routine during the season — practice, home or back to the hotel for a nap, and then wake up for a game. He hadn't been able to shake that routine during this offseason yet. Then he dragged himself off the couch and went outside to sit under the umbrella with a pair of sunglasses and a glass of water, propping his feet up on another chair.
There were no distractions until Lucy came out. She had traded her black leggings from this morning for a long, flowing sundress. She smiled and nodded at him before setting down a huge box on the table, pulling folders out and laying them all over. He figured she was working on a case so he didn't want to bother her.
Ryan liked the book, he really did, but he didn't just like it because he was trying to distract himself. He was also trying to impress Lucy with his apparently non-existent English literature skills. He wasn't kidding when he told her he took easy classes because he wanted to focus on hockey. Sometimes, like this morning, he regretted not putting more effort into his school work. But there were other times when he was on the ice and it just felt so natural.
Except now, things didn't feel natural to him. He had lost playoff games before, sure, but it was worse this time. It just felt like this was supposed to be their year — and then it all fell apart. What was he supposed to do after that? Was a good hockey player supposed to just let this go? Or to hold on to this pain as motivation for next season? Honestly, that couldn't be an option for him because he didn't want to feel like this all summer. He couldn't relive this pain every day until the puck dropped on the first day of the season in October.
But it wasn't just hockey that didn't feel natural to him right now. Every time he finished a chapter, he glanced over the edge of his book to see Lucy sitting on her patio, sunglasses on as she tucked loose strands of hair behind her ears and typed away at the laptop in front of her with papers strewn across her table.
The sight of her was making him feel something that wasn't normal for him. He had been around Lucy so many times before. He even had Lucy's number in his phone as a just-in-case emergency contact — something he had started to do after he had his appendix removed last year — but he never specifically called her to invite her over. It was always a message he would give to Sydney to invite Lucy.
So why was he feeling so weird about her now? Maybe it was just different when it was Lucy and Ryan with no one else around. Maybe there were things about Lucy that he didn't notice when she was with Sydney or exchanging witty barbs with his friends or once again lecturing him about how he needed a standard non-disclosure agreement for women to sign before he slept with them. Although she usually brought that last one up after she had three glasses of wine and was planning on crashing in Sydney's guest bedroom so he wasn't sure if she was really being serious.
Luckily, he had his book to distract him, which was good except for the fact that he was done with another chapter. So he picked up his glass of water, desperately sipping at the little bit of melted ice that had pooled at the bottom, before setting it down and casually looking over at his lake house neighbor. She was still hunched over her laptop, staring intently at the screen.
"Oh, crap," she muttered before frantically pressing keys with some serious force like she was mad at the machine. "Save, you idiot."
Click, click. Type, type. Her fingers were flitting all over the place and he wasn't really sure exactly what she was trying to accomplish. Then she went still.
"Fuck."
It was quiet and subtle, but he definitely heard the mature Lucy Evans swear from the seat at his table.
"Problems?"
Her head snapped up as if she had forgotten he was there, even though she had acknowledged him when she showed up earlier.
"Sorry, did you hear that?"
He gave her a teasing grin over the edge of his book. "Oh yeah, definitely."
Lucy gave him this little laugh that made him feel awkward but alive. "My laptop died," she explained. "I should've brought the power cord out."
"Why didn't you?"
She shrugged. "Stubborn, I guess."
"Maybe you need a break."
"Maybe," she lamented.
"You want a beer?"
What?What the hell was he thinking? Had he just invited her over for a beer?
"What?"
