I groaned. “I can’t help it, man. She’s always had this effect on me. You’d think after twelve years it wouldn’t hit me so hard.”
“What’s the real story with you two?” he asked, joining me in leaning against the wall. “You weren’t exactly forthcoming the other night. Do you just know her through Knight?”
I shook my head. “I mean, yeah, that’s where I saw her first. She used to come to all of our games.” I smiled to myself, thinking about Gracie sitting up in the stands. She’d always complained about how cold the rink was, so she’d sit there all bundled up in two sweaters, a couple scarfs, and her purple woolen hat. It clashed spectacularly with her red hair, but it always made me happy to look up in the stands and see her, nose usually buried in a book.
“She was my math tutor,” I told Jay. “Three years of high school.” I didn’t technically need a tutor my senior year. I’d moved on to statistics at that point, which for some reason came a lot easier to me than algebra and geometry had—maybe because there was a lot of statistics in sports. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Gracie that. Tutoring was the only way she’d see me as worthy of her time.
“I see,” Jay said, grinning. “You had a crush on the hot brainy girl. Let me guess—librarian fantasy?”
I snorted. I hadn’t limited myself to librarian fantasies with Gracie—I’d fantasized about her in pretty much every dirty way my horny teenage mind could come up with.
“She was way too good for me,” I told Jay. “She was in all these clubs, the smartest girl in the school. One of those sweetgirls, you know? Nice to everyone. The whole school loved her. And I was just the dumb jock she got paid to help out.”
It hadn’t always felt that way, though. There were a few times over those three years when I’d actually convinced myself that the gorgeous redhead with the big green eyes might actually like me. It took me four years to work up the courage to kiss her, and when I had, I thought maybe I was finally going to get the girl.
But all of that had ended when she cancelled our plans for prom. I hadn’t wanted to go at all after that, but my buddies convinced me sitting at home would be a shitty way to close out our senior year. I’d ended up at a table with Chloe, sneaking a flask under the table until I was drunk enough not to care that she had the wrong color hair and eyes.
“Well,” Jay said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “You’re still a dumb jock, but at least now you make decent money. Maybe she’ll give you a shot.”
I scoffed. “You do realize her twin brother is one of the richest men on the planet, right? You think she’s going to be impressed by a professional athlete’s salary?”
“Oh, right,” he said. “Forgot about that.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t really matter. I have enough on my plate right now with the move and the team and getting Josie settled.”
He grinned. “You trying to convince me, or yourself?”
I groaned, running my hands over my face, and Jay laughed.
“You know what I think? You should forget about the boss’s sister for now and the two of us will go out and find you some good old-fashioned, uncomplicated fun.” I opened my mouth to argue and he held up a hand. “You never hook-up, man. It’s been years since the divorce and you live like a monk.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
He clapped my shoulder. “I just want to see you happy.”
“Bullshit. You want me to go out with you so that you have a decent chance of getting laid.”
Jay scoffed. “I owe it to the fine women of this city to get out there and start spreading the love. They’ve been deprived of all this for too long.” He struck an exaggerated bodybuilder pose at the same time as a couple guys left the building.
“That’s just pathetic, man,” Enzo called as he passed.
“Shut the fuck up, rookie!” Jay shouted back. He turned to me as we pushed off from the wall to trek across the lot. “You know, that nickname isn’t really going to work on this team, is it?”
“Yeah. You call rookie and ten guys are gonna look up.”
We reached my SUV—I’d ended up with a midnight blue Range Rover, which Josie had refused to help pick out—and Jay slapped me on the back. “I still think you need a good hook-up. Unless you’re planning to give it a shot—with the redhead, I mean.”
“Grace,” I said automatically, and he smirked.
“Yeah, with Grace. You never know—maybe she was more into you back then than you thought.”
“It was twelve years ago, Jay. It really doesn’t matter if she was into me or not.”
Even if it stillfeltlike it mattered.
“Well, maybe she’ll be into you now, then. You look a hell of a lot better than you did at eighteen.”
I patted his cheek roughly. “Aw, thanks, babe.”
