Felix walked out of Jasper’s pantry, an open bag of chips dangling from his fingers. “How much longer did the girls say they’d be? I’m getting hungry.”
“When aren’t you?” Huck asked as he twisted the cap off a bottle of water and swigged it.
“Hey, I’m a growing boy.” He flexed his bicep; one he usually liked to announce was bigger than mine.
It wasn’t.
Although, outside of hockey, it would big by anyone else’s standards. Felix was a human wall, much like me.
I looked up from the sports section of the newspaper. “They should be here any minute.”
Right on cue, the elevator doors opened and in walked Wolf and Freddie. Wolfie’s stomach seemed to get bigger every time I saw her, although Fred’s was starting to catch up.
Cooper’s face lit up as he saw her. He marched straight over, pulling her into an embrace, his hands circling on her stomach before snaking behind her. Wolfie received a similar greeting from Jasper, who had been sitting quietly at the breakfast bar.
I looked away, the familiar pang of sadness rolling through me like a heavy fog, dulling my senses, and I wondered for thethousandth time if I’d ever find what they’d all found. It was the norm for me these days, and my mind flashed back to Vegas, to the only woman I’d ever met who’d made me want to have what they had - someone to wake up to each day, someone to spend time with, someone to be there for.
The only woman I’d lost due to my own stupidity.
Our time together had been so fleeting that I sometimes wondered if I’d dreamed her.
My Lucky Charm.
I peered down at my phone, the photo of us on my lock screen reminding me she had been real.
I’d taken it on our way to my suite after we’d finished gambling in the casino. I’d stared at it so many times that if I had any artistic talent at all, I’d be able to draw her without even looking.
Whatever spell she’d cast, I was still well and truly under it.
I’d tried to get out, but it was proving impossible.
Until Lucky, I hadn’t met anyone I’d wanted to spend more than a few nights with.
When we’d first left Vegas and I’d lost her number, I’d attempted to block her out of my head in the only way I knew how. For a month, I’d spent all my spare time partying and trying to fuck her out of my system with every woman I met. It got to the point where I could only come when I pictured her face, searching for the high she’d given me when I’d been inside her, next to her, behind her, on top of her.
But where sex had once been my favorite hobby, it had become mundane. I realized I was chasing an elusive dream, and knew that only her brand of drug would do it for me now.
So I’d stopped.
Stopped dating, stopped fucking, stopped chasing.
It had been eleven months since I’d been with another woman.
I slipped my phone in my pocket, not wanting to descend into the filthy mood which usually followed when I thought about her too much, and went back to reading the sports pages.
“Hey, Drew?” Freddie moved away from Cooper and walked toward me. “Can I borrow your phone for a minute?”
“Uh, yeah. Sure.” I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it to her.
She glanced at it before looking back up at me with an unreadable expression. I guessed it was probably something to do with the fact Lucky was still on my lock screen. It had been a year… I needed to change the picture but hadn’t got around to it.
Okay, didn’t want to.
Wasn’t ready to.
She passed it over to Wolfie who also studied it and then gasped, her hand flying to her face. Her eyes immediately welled up, tears spilling over as she wiped them with her sleeve, sniffing.
I frowned. That was weird.
