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“You mean the sex or the smoke alarm?”
I took her by the hips and pulled her close, both of us smiling. “I meant the date, smart-ass.”
“Yes. I had an amazing time.”
“Me too.” I kissed her and she brushed the hair back from my forehead.
“But we need to keep things on the down-low when we’re coaching youth hockey together. My dad’s not ready to know I’m seeing someone else yet.”
I sighed heavily, reminded that my attraction to Jolie had made me set aside my plans to stay on Coach’s good side. He was going to kill me for this when he found out. But hopefully I could get traded before that happened.
“I’ll do my best not to bend you over the wall at the rink during practices,” I said with a mock sigh.
“How chivalrous.”
I shrugged a shoulder and kissed her again. “I do what I can.”
A pounding at Jolie’s front door made her jump.
“Jolie! It’s Marie! Are you home? We have to evacuate the building; the fire alarm went off!”
Jolie’s eyes widened as she looked down at her near nakedness.
“Give me thirty seconds,” she whispered.
She ran into her bedroom and emerged wearing sweats and a thick, oversized cardigan sweater, which she held closed with one hand.
“Jolie, are you in there?” the neighbor yelled. “I’m going to break the door down!”
“No, don’t do that. I’m coming!” she said, running to unlock the door.
“Bye,” I said, kissing the top of her head.
As she opened the door, her middle-aged neighbor looked back and forth between us.
“Didn’t you hear the smoke alarm?” she said.
“Yeah, I’m so sorry, that was my fault,” Jolie said. “I forgot I had bacon cooking and I got in the shower.”
“You forgot?” her neighbor said skeptically.
I ducked my head and slipped out the door, waiting until I’d gotten back to my car to laugh. The jokes about our smoking hot first date would write themselves.
* * *
A few hours later,we’d finished practice and a bunch of my teammates had gone out for lunch. We were meeting back up in our weight room later to lift. I was ravenous and had wanted to go to lunch with them, but something had held me back.
It was my teammate Sawyer. He was sitting alone in a corner of the locker room, and I knew why. I’d always remembered his late wife Annie’s birthday because it was the same day as my dad’s.
“Hey,” I said, sitting down in a chair next to him once we were finally alone in the room. “You want to be alone, or is it okay if I sit?”
He seemed to snap out of his daze as he shrugged. “I don’t care if you sit.”
“My parents lost their first baby not long after she was born,” I said. “My mom said her birthday was hard, but she wanted to do something every year to remember her anyway.”
Sawyer nodded, a faraway look in his eyes. “It’s hard not to think about what could’ve been. What should’ve been.”
“I’m not going to hit you with clichés. But I’m here to listen if it helps.”
