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Guilt overcomes me. “Are you sure? You were having fun.”
“Sophia,” Em deadpans. “Youare my closest friend in that group. Sure, we live together, but even if I lived with one of them, you are still my best friend. Fuck them.”
For the first time since the ordeal started, I feel a smile fighting to break free. My friend does not swear, so to hear her say the F word, of all words, has me on the edge of hysterics.
That may actually be the adrenaline letdown happening, but I’ll take it either way.
“Okay.”
She and I head back down the block in the way we came, passing the knock-off Irish bar we hit second. Just a few doors down is O’Gallaghers—a real Irish pub—where we started our crawl.
“You know, I think I might want to stop at O’Gallaghers again,” I tell Emina. They’re known to have sports on the televisions—there’s a hockey game on tonight that I chose to miss for this stupid crawl—and it’s never a rowdy place. Normally, I’d kill to go home and curl up in bed right about now, but I’m not ready to sit alone with my thoughts.
“Oh. Um... Okay.”
Looking to my friend, I smile lightly. “You don’t have to come in with me.”
“No, I’ll come in for one. And if you want to stay, I’ll just get an Uber or something. I don’t know that I want to walk over the bridge alone.” She laughs at the last part, but it’s one of the “fears” we’ve both had since moving to our place.
Nothingbadhas happened on the bridge.
There have just been enough bad things to happen onotherbridges in the country, that we both joke that we won’t cross it solo, especially not when either of us has been drinking.
This time when we enter the establishment, it’s busier.
Earlier, we were one of the first groups to enter. Now, every table is taken.
“I see something at the bar,” Emina says, grabbing my hand and pulling me through the throng of people. It’s a Thursday night at a bar—ladies night. The majority of the crowd is indeed female, but to my enjoyment, both televisions flanking the bar have tonight’s hockey game on.
I played up until eighth grade, but there weren’t any good girls’ hockey programs in my town for high school aged girls, so I switched to lacrosse.
Lacrosse paid for college and was how I met Megan and Jane.
Now that my thoughts circled back to those girls, I can feel my good mood dissipating.
Unfortunately, by the time we make it up to the bar, someone takes the only seat there is. “We can stand,” Emina says, shaking her head. “I’m okay with it. Are you?”
Nodding, I look up toward a television. “Yeah. I’m good.” The Enforcers are playing Seattle and are up, three to one. There’s still an entire period for Seattle to come back, but this group of Enforcers has been on fire all season.
I’m not paying much attention to what’s going on at the bar, because Seattle has a power play. There’s something about being a man down that always keeps me glued to play by play action.
“Hey, ladies, can I get you something?” a smooth voice cuts through. When I look over, I see our male bartender from earlier leaning into the bar top. The person on the stool in front of us leans out of the way.
“A vodka sprite, please,” Emina answers.
“You?” he asks, looking in my direction.
“I’ll do the same.” It’s not my usual go-to, but it’s easier to just get the what Em’s getting as the noise of the pub grows louder and it’s harder to hear.
He nods and turns away, and I can’t help but admire the way the white shirt he wears stretches over his back. He has visible muscles, but he’s not the big, body builder type. There’s also the way his shirt tapers down to his hips, and I immediately get a vision of what he likely looks without a shirt on.
He probably has dimples above his ass.
And he definitely has that well-sculpted V in the front that women go ga-ga over.
Shaking my head at my wayward thoughts, I look back to the television just as the penalty kill team—Porter Prescott, Nico D’Amaco, Rhys Kittner, and Mikey Leeds—slam into a four-man huddle. The scroll at the bottom of the screen announces a short-hand goal.
“Yes,” I murmur, catching Emina’s attention.
