The doc’s face eases into a smile. “You don’t dance?” she asks me.
“Not usually,” I say. “The dance floor is always so crowded. I like to just sit back and listen to the music.”
“You’ll dance, right, Doc?” Fig asks. “Show Gunny how it’s done?”
She smiles indulgently. “We’ll see.”
“We’ll get you out there,” Fig promises. “In the meantime, it’s a date. You’re coming with us the next time we go out to the club.”
He grins at me like a fucking Cheshire Cat, and I decide to check the shit out of him during practice today. Fig is one of our smaller forwards, but I’m not above crunching him to make a point. If he thinks he’s going to make a move on the doc, he needs to think again.
Gray Mackey is off-limits to him and every other one of these assholes, and I’ll make sure they know it, one way or another.
Chapter 11
Gray
Almost three weeks later, the Hydra have somehow managed a 50/50 record, even with Ash’s continued issues on the ice. After losing their first two away games, the team squeaked out a win in overtime at their home opener, and that gave them some momentum for a while until things started to fall apart again.
I haven’t seen much of Ash since I met the team. I’m in the middle of midterm exams at the university, so I’ve been underwater with grading and helping my grad students with their research and teaching responsibilities. The break Melinda promised me from my service activities has only partially materialized, and I’m exhausted.
While Ash and I haven’t seen much of each other, we text constantly. I know when his practices and games are, and he knows when I teach, so there are periods of silence between us, but when our free time lines up, especially on nights he doesn’t have games, we text for hours.
The small thrill I get when my phone dings with an incoming text from Ash is reminiscent of the way I used to feel with Drew in the beginning of our relationship, back when things were good. Which terrifies me. I shouldn’t feel this excited at the prospect of seeing or talking to the hockey player I’m supposed to be working with.
Our text conversations are completely innocent. Ash hasn’t sent any further ‘accidental’ pics, and he hasn’t asked for any inappropriate ones from me. Our messages are devoid of flirtation, yet there’s still something stimulating about them, as if the anticipation is there below the surface.
That’s the way it feels for me, at least. I can’t speak for Ash, and it’sprobably better that way, because if I get any inkling that he likes our conversations as much as I do, things could detour quickly.
We talk mostly about his game play and what he’s thinking or feeling. Ash has started to recognize some of his triggers on the ice, but he’s still unable to stop himself from reacting, so that’s what we need to focus on moving forward. It’s hard to do much over text, so we need to meet soon, but for now our message sessions are at least inching us forward in his treatment.
Alright, fine. Our text convos aren’t entirely game-related.
There are occasional personal questions thrown in – What’s your favorite ice cream flavor? Or where are you planning to take your next vacation? – but nothing too deep.
For my own part, I think I’ve latched onto Ash as a life raft because my online dating experiences have been abysmal. Worse than abysmal really, but I can’t find a strong enough term to describe the clusterfuckery that is my romantic life.
I’m still on two dating apps at Celena’s insistence, and she makes me go on a date at least once a week. Thankfully I haven’t had much time for more, because the three dates I’ve been on recently have been duds.
To start, I finally had to break it to Barry that I didn’t want a second date. I can’t bring myself to ghost anyone, so I told him outright I didn’t think we connected. He disagreed, but he ultimately accepted my decision and stopped messaging me. How he considered that date a success, I’ll never know.
My next three dates weren’t any better. The first was with an investment banker who spent half the date talking about banking and the other half talking about his car. Thankfully he never texted me again after.
The second guy started the date by being rude to our waitress, but I walked out when he began spouting homophobic comments about the two men together a couple booths down.
The third guy seemed promising for the first twenty minutes. He listened attentively to me as I explained my research, but things wentdownhill when he dismissed my statistical evidence and mansplained to me how the effectiveness of trash talk was in fact due to mental distraction for most athletes and not emotional disruption, as my study found.
I now text both Celena and Ash after each date to complain. Celena empathizes, then pushes me to get back on the dating apps and find someone else. Ash commiserates with me and assures me the men I go out with aren’t worth my time.
He also convinced me I wasn’t crazy for being disenchanted with the dating status quo. He’s been single since he and Grace broke up, and he admitted he’s not eager to put himself back out there again.
I didn’t loop Ash into my dating drama on purpose. I told him one evening I had a date and would need to talk to him later, so he messaged me that night to see how it went. I told him the truth, and we spent the rest of the night texting back and forth about what happened.
After that, it became normal for him to check in with me after a date to see how it went, as Celena does. I figure it can’t hurt to get the male perspective, so I tell him whatever he wants to know. Luckily the dates never get to the point of intimacy, so I don’t have to worry about sharing such details.
My phone pings just as I get home and set my groceries on the kitchen island. At this time of evening, it’s likely one of two people, and my heartbeat picks up a little as I swipe the phone open. It outright hiccups when I see it’s Ash, and I chastise myself for the reaction.
Ash
