Him

“You’re awfully quiet this morning, even for you.” Holly’s fingers drift down my back, ending their journey on my bare ass. “Thinking deep thoughts about the Frozen Four?”

“Yeah.” And it isn’t exactly a lie. I can guarantee that Friday’s trip to Boston is in the forefront of two dozen other players’ minds this morning. And about a zillion fans’.

I have more than winning on my mind, though. Now that we were actually headed for the championship, it was time to come to terms with the idea that we might face Northern Mass. The star player of their team? None other than Ryan Wesley, my ex-best-friend.

“What is it, sweetie?” Holly props herself up on an elbow to study me. She doesn’t usually stay over, but last night’s sex marathon had lasted until four a.m., and I would’ve felt like an ass hustling her into a cab that late.

I’m not sure how I feel about having her curled up in bed beside me, though. Spectacular morning sex aside, her presence makes me uneasy. I’ve never lied to Holly about what this is—and what it isn’t. But I’ve had enough experience with chicks to know that when they agree to a friends-with-benefits arrangement, a part of them hopes one of those benefits will somehow be landing a boyfriend out of the deal.

“Jamie?” she prompts.

I push aside one set of troubling thoughts and replace them with another. “Have you ever been fired by a friend?” I hear myself ask.

“What? Like…someone you worked for?” She has wide blue eyes, which always take me seriously.

I shake my head. “No. The leading scorer on Northern Mass was my best friend in high school. And junior high, too. You know that hockey camp where I work in the summer?”

“Elites?” She nods.

“Yeah, good memory. Before I was a coach there, I was a camper. So was Wes. He was crazy.” I chuckle to myself just picturing his scruffy face. “The dude would do anything. There’s this toboggan chute in the center of town—in the winter you can sled down onto the frozen lake. But in the summer it’s closed, with a twelve-foot fence around it. He’s like, ‘Dude, after lights out we’re climbing that thing.’”

Holly massages my chest with one of her soft hands. “Did you?”

“Naturally. I was sure we were going to get busted and thrown out of camp. But nobody caught us. Wes was the only one smart enough to bring a towel to slide on, though. So I had burns on the backs of my thighs from sliding down that fucker.”

Holly grins.

“And I still wonder how many tourists had to delete the pictures they took of Mirror Lake. Whenever Wes saw a tourist lining up a shot, he would always drop his pants.”

Her grin turns into a giggle. “He sounds like fun.”

“He was. And then he wasn’t.”

“What happened?”

I fold my hands behind my head, trying to appear casual despite the wave of discomfort sliding down my spine. “I don’t know. We were always competitive. Our last summer he challenged me to a contest…” I stop, because I never tell Holly the really personal stuff. “I don’t know what happened, exactly. He just cut off contact with me after that summer. He stopped responding to my texts. He just…fired me.”

She kisses my neck. “Sounds like you’re still mad.”

“I am,” I surprise myself by saying.

If you’d asked me yesterday whether there was anything in my past that bothered me, I would have said no. But now that Ryan Wesley has parked his nutty ass back in my consciousness, I’m all churned up again. Goddamn him. I really don’t need this going into the toughest two games of my life.

“And now you have to play him,” Holly muses. “It’s a lot of pressure.” She’s rubbing my hip now. I’m pretty sure she has some plans for the two of us involving a different kind of “pressure.” She’s looking for round two, but I don’t have the time.

Catching her hand in mine, I give it a quick kiss. “Gotta get up. Sorry, babe. We’re watching tape in twenty minutes.” I swing my legs over the side of the bed and turn for an eyeful of Holly’s curves. My friend-with-benefits is sexy as hell, and my dick gives a little twitch of gratitude for the fun we already had.

“Shame,” Holly says, rolling onto her back invitingly. “I don’t have class until this afternoon.” She runs her hands up her flat stomach and onto her tits. With her eyes locked on me, she gives her nipples a flick then licks her lips.

My dick does not fail to notice.

“You are evil and I hate you.” I grab my boxers off the floor and look away before I get all boned up again.

She giggles. “I don’t like you at all, either.”

“Uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that.” But then I clamp my lips together. Six weeks before graduation, it’s unwise to start even a playful conversation about how much Holly and I like each other. We’re strictly casual, but lately she’s been making noises about how much she’ll miss me next year.

According to Holly, it’s only forty-three miles from Detroit, where I’ll be next year, to Ann Arbor, where she’ll be in med school. If she starts wondering aloud whether there are any apartments for rent halfway between those cities, I don’t know what I’m going to say.

Yep. Not looking forward to that conversation.

Sixty seconds later I’m dressed and heading for the door. “Are you cool letting yourself out?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.” Her laughter stops me before I can turn the knob. “Not so fast, stud.”

Holly gets up to kiss me goodbye, and I make myself stand still for a second and return it.

“Later,” I whisper. It’s my standard goodbye. Today, though, I find myself wondering if there are other words she’s waiting to hear.

But when the door closes on her, my head is somewhere else already. I sling my backpack over one shoulder and slip out into a misty April morning. Five days from now I’ll be on the east coast, trying to help my team clinch the national championship. Man, the Frozen Four is such a rush—I’ve been once before. It was two years ago, and I was the backup goalie instead of the starter.

I didn’t play, and we didn’t win. I like to think those two things are related.

This time it’ll be different. I’ll be waiting between the pipes, the last line of defense between the other team’s offense and the trophy. That’s enough pressure to freak out even the chillest goalie in college sports. But the fact that the other team’s star center is my ex-best friend who abruptly stopped talking to me?

That is whack.

I meet a handful of my teammates on the sidewalk as we all approach the rink. They’re laughing about somebody’s antics on the bus last night, joking and shoving each other through the glass doors and into the gleaming hallway.

Rainier did a massive rink renovation a few years ago. It’s like a temple to hockey, with conference pennants and team photographs lining the walls. And that’s just the public area. We pause in front of a locked door so that Terry, a junior forward, can swipe his ID past the laser eye. The light flashes green and we push through to the opulent training area.

I haven’t said a word to anyone yet, but I’ve never been as much of a smack-talker as the rest of them, so nobody calls me on it.

In the team kitchen, I pour myself a cup of coffee and grab a blueberry muffin off the tray. This place makes me feel like a spoiled brat, but it’s useful when I’ve overslept.

Ten minutes later we’re watching tape in the team video room, listening to Coach Wallace’s analysis. He’s at the podium wearing a little mic that amplifies his voice all the way to the back row. But I can’t hear him anyway. I’m too busy watching Ryan Wesley dart across the ice. I see clip after clip of Wes passing through the line of defense like smoke, creating scoring opportunities out of nothing but ice shavings and quick wits.

“The number two offensive scorer in the nation, the kid has balls of steel,” our coach admits grudgingly. “And enough foot speed to make his opponents look like my ninety-seven-year-old granny.”

Shot after unlikely shot flies into the net. Half the time the on-screen Wes doesn’t even have the good manners to look surprised. He just glides onward with the grace and ease of someone who’d practically been born with steel blades under his feet.

“Like us, Northern Mass woulda made it to the finals last year, but they were hampered by injuries in the post-season,” Coach says. “They’re the team to beat…”

The footage is mesmerizing. I’d first seen Wes skate the summer after seventh grade. At thirteen we all thought we were hot shit just for attending Elites, the world-class hockey training camp in Lake Placid, New York. Hear us roar—we were the best of the ragtag players on our club teams back home. We were the kids to beat during pond-hockey pick-up games.

We were mostly ridiculous.

But even my punk-ass junior-high self could see that Wes was different. I was a little in awe of him from the first day of my first summer at Elites. Well, at least until I discovered what a cocky bastard he was. After that, I hated on him for a bit, but being assigned as roommates made it difficult to keep up my hatred.

Six summers in a row, the best hockey I played was against the sharp-eyed, steel-wristed Ryan Wesley. I spent my days trying to keep up with his quick reflexes and his flying-saucer slapshots.

When practice was over, he was even more of a challenge. Want to race to the top of the climbing wall? Ask Wes. Need a partner in crime to help you break into the camp freezer after hours? Wes is your man.

The town of Lake Placid probably heaved a sigh of relief each August when camp was through. Everyone could finally go back to living normal lives that didn’t include seeing Wes’s bare ass in the lake every morning for his daily skinny-dipping sesh.

Ladies and gentlemen: Ryan Wesley.

Coach drones on at the front of the room while Wes and his teammates do their magic on-screen. The most fun I ever had at a rink was with him. Not that he never pissed me off. He did that hourly. But I can honestly look back on his challenges and taunts and see he’d made me a better player.

Except for the last challenge he issued. I never should have accepted that one.

“Last day,” he’d taunted me, skating backward faster than most of us could skate forward. “You’re still afraid to take me on in another shootout, huh? Still whimpering over the last one.”

“Bullshit.” I wasn’t afraid to lose to Wes. People usually did. But it was hard to shut out a shootout, and I already owed Wes a six-pack of beer. Trouble was, my bank account was drained. As the last of six kids, sending me to this fancy camp was all my parents could do for me. My lawn-mowing money had already been spent on ice cream and contraband.

If I lost a bet, I couldn’t repay.

Wes skated a backward circle around me so fast that it reminded me of the Tasmanian Devil. “Not for beer,” he said, reading my thoughts. “My flask is full of Jack, thanks to the beating I gave Cooper yesterday. So the prize can be something different.” He let out an evil laugh.

“Like what?” Knowing Wes, it would involve some sort of public display of ridiculousness. Loser sings the national anthem while hanging brain on the town dock. Or something.

I set up a row of pucks and prepared to shoot them. Whack, went the first one, just missing Wes as he went by in a blur. I set up my next shot.

“Loser gives the winner a blowjob,” he said just as I swung.

I missed the fucking puck. Actually missed it.

Wes cackled, skidding to a stop.

Jesus Christ, the guy was good at fucking with my head. “You’re hysterical.”

He stood there breathing hard from all that fast skating. “Think you can’t win? Shouldn’t matter what the prize is if you’re confident.”

My back felt sweaty all of a sudden. He had me in an impossible position, and he knew it. If I refused the challenge, he won. Yet if I accepted, he had me rattled before the first puck even flew my way.

I’d stood there like a moron, unsure what to do. “You and your mind games,” I muttered.

“Oh, Canning,” Wes had chuckled. “Hockey is ninety percent mind games. I’ve been trying to teach you that for six years.”

“Fine,” I’d said through clenched teeth. “You’re on.”

He’d hooted through his facemask. “You look terrified already. This is gonna be rich.”

He’s just fucking with you, I’d told myself. I could win a shootout. Then I’d turn the mind games back on him—I’d refuse the prize, of course. But then I could hold the fact that he owed me a BJ over his head. For years. It was as if a cartoon light bulb went off over my head. Two could do mind games. Why had I never realized this before?

I’d lined up one more puck and shot it with great force right past Wes’s arrogant smile. “This is going to be a piece of cake,” I said. “How about we have this shootout, wherein I kick your ass, right after lunch? Before the end-of-camp scrimmage?”

For the briefest moment his confidence slipped. I’m sure I saw it—the sudden flash of holy shit. “Perfect,” he said eventually.

“’Kay.” I scooped up the last puck off the ice and flipped it in my glove. Then I skated away whistling, as if I didn’t have a care in the world.

That had been the last day of our friendship.

And I never saw it coming.

At the front of the room, a new reel is playing, this one highlighting North Dakota’s offensive strategy. Coach is no longer thinking about Ryan Wesley.

But I am.