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This is just like the day at my hometown hockey rink twelve fucking years ago, and I can’t take my eyes off the red haired girl on the ice.
“Don’t call me Pheebs,Hunter.” Her first words to me since the summer before last.
Her voice brings back a flood of memories, memories that fill the years between that first meeting twelve years ago and this moment.
And the annoyed, condescending lilt in her voice as she practically spat my name at me reminds me of just where we stand with each other.
Now, I’m recalling all the spats, arguments, snide remarks, and teasing that we threw back and forth while growing up.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“I’m here to install the new HVAC system,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I’m skating, of course. What does it look like I’m doing?”
I breathe out a laugh. “Glad to see you’ve still got a talent for sarcasm, Pheebs. I mean, what are you doing …here?”
After high school, Phoebe went up to Maine for college. Got a scholarship for figure skating. She was always a hell of a skater, and could beat me in a race across the rink for the first couple years we knew each other.
Of course, around seventh grade the tide turned there. But still, she had incredible talent as a figure skater. Someone who could genuinely be in the Olympics one day. I had no idea she was back down in PA—or why she would be.
I do know that she hasn’t posted on any of her social media pages for a couple months. Total radio silence, when they used to be pretty active.
Not that I stalk her social media or anything. It’s just natural to casually, now and then, hardly ever, keep tabs on ex-high school classmates, right?
“I go to school here now,” she answers.
There’s a strange tone to her voice as she says that, almost like a kind of … regret?
I want to ask her why she’s moved back here from Maine. But I also don’t want her to think that I actually care. Which I don’t.
“Missed me so much that you had to come back, huh?” I quip, feeling a smile curve on my lips. Teasing Phoebe and pushing her buttons comes a lot more naturally than engaging in a real conversation.
She barks out a laugh. “Ha. Good one, Hunter. The first time one of your lame jokes has made me laugh. We’re living through history.”
I tut against the roof of my mouth. “Let’s not get history mixed up, Pheebs. You definitely laughed at my impersonation of Mr. Goodwell at Robbie’s party in eleventh grade.”
“You’re mistaking gagging with laughing, Hunter.”
“Uh, you guys know each other?” A third voice intrudes on me and Phoebe.
Sometimes when Phoebe and I talk, it feels like the rest of the world melts away. But now I remember we have an audience. I turn towards Shane, one of my new teammates on the Hot Shots hockey team this year, who asked the question.
“Shane, meet Pheebs. We’ve known each other for?—”
Phoebe cuts me off. “Too long. Far too long. And please, call me Phoebe. No one calls me Pheebs.”
I put my hand over my heart and gasp, contorting my face in mock pain. “I’mno onenow?”
The big, fake smile that beams on her lips makes her answer clear.
The way the smile makes her cheeks rosy, the crimson blush contrasting so starkly with her smooth, pale skin, also makes my heart pump faster and sends a part of that extra blood flow straight to my cock.
Phoebe’s still no cuddlier than a cactus, but she’s somehow grown even hotter since I saw her last.
“What about you guys?” Phoebe directs herself to the rest of the guys, “What are you all doing here?”
“Orientation,” Shane answers.
We’re here as part of a new program that the business department is running this year. In an effort to improve links between Ridley University and the local Ridley community, the school is offering course credit for a semester of volunteering part-time at local organizations.
