“Oh, like construction?” I ask, trying to picture Jack on a construction site, and he shakes his head.
“Not really,” he answers vaguely, and now I’m even more curious.
“So like what then?”
“I’m from Amarillo, which is cattle country, and once I turned fourteen, the guy that lives in the house next to ours helped me get a job off the books during the summers at the ranch he works at.”
My jaw drops, and my imagination runs wild.Oh my fucking god.
I was right.
Save a horse, ride a goddamn hockey player instead.
I wonder if he wears a cowboy hat and assless chaps? Boots? Oh great, now I’m picturing Jack in assless chaps, and Ireally don’tneed an excuse to think about his ass.
“Al, you’re gonna catch flies if you leave your mouth open any longer,” Jack jokes, and I can’t stop staring.
“Are you serious? So you know how to ride a horse?” I ask, trying to picture it, and he laughs at me.
“That’s what you want to know?”
Don’t ask him about the chaps. “I mean, yeah?”
“Yes, I know how to ride a horse,” he says, his smile growing.
This changes the game. “Do you have any pictures?” I ask, and he snorts.
“Of me riding a horse?”
“Or like petting one, but I think it’d be pretty cool if you had one with a baby horse,” I think out loud, imagining how manymore matches his already popular dating profile would get if he had a picture with a baby horse.
“A foal, and I don’t know if I have any pictures because I’m usually focusing on my job, not posing for pictures,” he says, a hoarse laugh escaping him, and it does sound a little ridiculous to imagine him doing an impromptu photoshoot when he’s supposed to be working. “Does this have something to do with what y’all were up to the other night?”
“I already told you what we did,” I say, because technically, I did tell him in the library I would find him a girlfriend. It’s not my fault he didn’t think I was serious.
After Macy’s comment earlier about how she thinks I don’t stand a chance of being just friends with Jack, it’s motivated me even more to find him a girlfriend, to prove that it’s not like that between us.
“I don’t believe you were only drinking wine and watching movies,” Jack says, and I roll my eyes.
“Sounds like a you problem if you didn’t believe me,” I say, but my stomach sinks when he pulls into the parking lot for the arena. “Jack, what are we doing here?”
He parks, turning off the engine, and my heart stutters. I really hoped he had dropped this when he hadn’t mentioned it.
“Seriously, why are we here?” I repeat, and he unbuckles, turning to face me.
“Al, we’re here to not skate,” he says, giving me a warm smile. “You’ll have fun, I promise.”
It’s a miracle the parking lot is empty. There’s a reason I only come here in the middle of the night or before the ass crack of dawn. I don’t talk to any of my old teammates because what are you supposed to say after quitting something so abruptly and not having any answers for the questions they ask? Sorry? My abusive ex-boyfriend told me how pathetic I was for thinking if I won enough medals, it’d be enough for my dad to finally love me,and when I argued with him, he punched me so hard in my ribs I couldn’t breathe so I had to drop out of the competition? How he begged me to forgive him at the same time he promised to never do it again, because he was so afraid of losing me?
But Jack isn’t Bradley.
Maybe that’s why I argue with him all the time. My brain is trying to prove to myself it doesn’t matter how far I push Jack, he won’t lay even a finger on me.
With Jack, I can fight with him all I want, and he’ll still lift me over his shoulder to carry me to my bedroom before helping me get dressed in my pajamas.
I swallow my nerves, unbuckling my seatbelt. I cross my arms over my chest as I walk around to meet him in front of the truck, trying to quell the uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Skating by myself when no one else knows I’m here is one thing, but knowingly skating with someone else is completely different.
No. I can’t do this.
