“That I can do.” Must replenish those bodily fluids. I stretched up to the cupboard to get a glass. When I turned, he was staring at my legs. “Water filter’s in the fridge if you like it cold.”
“I am getting enough of the chill in this room.”
I placed the glass on the counter with a touch more force than I should have. “You woke me, then kept me awake. I have to be up in two hours.”
He picked up the glass and walked to the sink to flip the faucet and fill it. I hesitated over my next move. Wait for him to finish? Usher him out the door? Continue with my judgment fest?
“Does Macca know you’re using his bed?” Judgment fest it is.
“I merely took what was offered. Isner said I could stay over.”
“Your place not good enough?”
“It is not yet suitable for visitors. I arrived in town only yesterday.”
Yes, we all knew. It was an unusual situation, a transfer in during your final year, but there’d been talk of him suffering some sort of breakdown after his mother died in Russia.
“You must really love Ringo.” That was what everyone called Coach Starkey.
“He has been good to me.”
The words emerged a little melancholic, in that way Russians often had. They managed to make everything sound like a tragedy of epic proportions.
He knocked the water back and I turned away, because watching him was weirdly intimate. Or maybe it was the fact we were standing in my kitchen, me in sleep shorts and my Eat, Sleep, Hockey, Repeat tee. Him having just made that girl very, very happy.
He placed the glass in the sink, then turned and leaned against it.
“We have not been properly introduced,” he said.
“Ah, but the great Alexei Nazarov needs no introduction.”
“Perhaps, but silver-eyed skater girls do. Isner did not tell me his girlfriend’s name.”
Silver-eyed skater girl? And he thought … “Isner doesn’t have a girlfriend. At least not right now.”
“So you and he are …”
“Not in a million years. That’s a friends-only deal, a line that will never be crossed.” I might have gone through a brief phase at fourteen when I imagined what it might be like to be kissed by Jason. Thankfully it passed and no feelings of such ick had resurfaced. “What makes you think I’m with Jason? Did he say something?”
He considered that for a moment. “He is a big fan of yours. And you and he seemed to … speak with the mind.”
“You mean telepathic? We’ve known each other a while, that’s all. But believe me, I won’t ever date a hockey player.”
The slightest muscle tic started in his jaw. It was fascinating to watch.
“You prefer the sensitive boys. The American football players.”
“Yeah, those sensitive American football players with their short seasons and fashionable shoulder pads. Jocks aren’t my jam. They tend to go for the adoring girls, the ones who scream ‘baby’ and ‘you’re such a big boy!’”
“But I am. It is the truth.”
My cue to gaze upon his penis, perhaps?
Nope. “Well, truth or not, I have to get to sleep.”
“I apologize for waking you. Isner did not say you lived here. Next time?—”
“There won’t be a next time, Russian. Please keep your extracurriculars to your own living space.”
