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“Come on. Two girls sucked my dick today. Make it three?”
“You know, wow, as tempting as that sounds, that’d be the worst idea possibly ever. And kinda gross.”
“I know, I know. I’m just kidding.” He was snoring again before she could even say anything else, so she figured this was a good time to make an exit.
What a fucking day, she thought, unable to remember not only a time when she’d had so much excitement, but a time when she’d felt so free, to just be herself and do whatever she wanted to do without having to answer to anyone. And as clearly fucked-up as these guys were, she enjoyed being around them and certainly didn’t mind the attention they gave her.
She knew this was going to be one hell of a ride, but she felt a curious excitement to see just where it would take her.
For the Love of the Game (8)
“Baylor, what the actual fuck was that? Are you even watching what’s going on?”
He skated back towards the bench, where the defensive coach was screaming at him. “Sorry, Coach Reilly. I guess I hesitated.”
“Yeah, you’re damn right you did. Did you even see the two guys who blew right past you? Where’s your head at, kid? That was a game, that’d be another minus. That what you want? You wanna be the d-man who racks up minuses?”
“No, Coach.”
“Well, that’s what you are right now. You need to move your fucking feet and get after it! Now get back out there and run that shit again. Hayes, Segorsky, Dales: go again with Rislan and Baylor.”
Ryan skated back out towards center ice, banging his stick in frustration. The season-opening away game was tomorrow night, and he’d been completely sucking ass for the past two weeks. This certainly wasn’t who he normally was on the ice. He’d been tried with just about every other defenseman on the team, but for some reason, there just wasn’t that chemistry he was used to. He did not want to end up a rotating defenseman, but it wasn’t looking too promising at the moment. Rislan was who he’d mostly been paired with, and he’d been great about giving him pointers.
“You’ve got the size, man. You gotta throw that body around, make ‘em hurt,” Rizz had told him. “They need to be terrified to come across that blue line when they see your big ass.”
The two biggest criticisms from his coaches were that he didn’t play physically enough for his size and that he was too slow, nothing he hadn’t heard before. At the end of all three preseason games, he was at minus five. He could tell his teammates were getting frustrated with him, though they were nice about it, with him being the newbie.
Most of them were nice, anyway.
“Yo, Rook: you do know that on D, your job is to stop the other team from scoring, right? I can’t do my fuckin’ job plus yours. Get your shit together. This ain’t the NCAA. And for Christ’s sake, learn to fuckin’ skate, eh? I’ll fuckin’ pay for some lessons!”
Hayes had been absolutely brutal. He was Bridgeport’s star player, and he and everyone else knew it. He’d come right from the OHL and was on year two of his two-way, three-year entry-level contract with the New York Islanders, but had landed in Bridgeport having just barely missed the roster out of camp last summer.
He’d had an unbelievable rookie season in the AHL; he’d made the All-Star team and led the Isles in goals and points, until the end of March. During a game against Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, he was cross-checked into the boards shoulder-first, a dirty hit that landed the other guy a three-game suspension. He ended up with a grade four AC separation that resulted in him needing surgery, which had pretty much laid him up for most of the summer. He’d started skating again just three weeks ago, and it had been decided that he’d start the year with Bridgeport, even though everyone fully expected him to join the big club at some point sooner than later.
When practice was over, Nick grabbed Ryan as he came off the ice. “Baylor, I wanna check out that knee again, ice it a bit before you head out. Meet me in a few.”
Ryan had gotten into a collision in the last game and twisted his left knee pretty good. It was still bothering him a bit, but he taped it up and pushed through. He kept telling Nick he was fine, but considering it was literally Nick’s job to assess and treat injuries, he insisted.
“It’s definitely looking better, and you were skating much better, too. Let’s ice it for about 20 minutes, and I want you on wall squats and hamstring curls before tomorrow’s practice and before the game tomorrow night, work on that mobility.” He wrapped the ice pack around Ryan’s leg on the table and set a timer. “So, how’s my cousin? You kill her yet?”
Ryan smiled. “Not yet. Nah, she’s good. Nick, thank you. I literally couldn’t have asked for a better roommate.”
“What’d I tell you? I knew you two would hit it off. How’s her new bartending job? I gotta call her.”
“She seems to like it, I guess. She’s been working a lot of nights lately, just finished training. We haven’t…” he paused. “We haven’t seen each other much. She’s been busy with her writing, too. I think we’re supposed to hang out tonight.”
Ryan would choose death by wood-chipper before he admitted it to another soul, but he knew a big part of his problem on the ice was because of Amara. They’d been living together for almost a month now, and it couldn’t have been going any better.
Like Rizz had said that first night, their energies were completely in sync. They just naturally gravitated towards each other and had developed their own little routines: certain shows they’d watch, who would cook dinner when, and he always looked forward to when she’d read to him some of the freelance writing she was working on to get his opinion on it. His opinion was always that, though the subject matter was usually boring as shit and he didn’t understand a word of it, he was in awe of her writing ability.
“It amazes me how smart you are,” he told her, smiling at the way she’d blush when he said that.
To any outsider, this seemed like it was perfect, and it was. But the part that was fucking with Ryan’s head was that he wasn’t interested in being her roommate or her friend anymore. Despite all odds, mainly the 18-year-wide canyon that separated them, he’d managed to fall so fucking hard for her that it was all but making him physically ill.
Besides hockey, the only thoughts he had from the minute he woke up to the minute he fell asleep were of Amara: the way she would rest her legs across his lap when they watched TV, the way she snorted when she laughed really hard, the way she’d always cover him with a blanket when he dipped out on the couch, the smell of her body when she’d return from a workout. His existence was completely consumed by her.
He just couldn’t tell her that.
