Sure enough, there were hardly any signs of the impending holiday at Dom’s house. Other than a wreath with pinecones and red berries on the front door, their house looked the same as always. I let myself in as directed and kicked off my snow encrusted booties next to the messy pile of shoes by the front door. It was crowded inside with people in a strange mixture of Christmas sweaters and outfits meant to draw the attention of people they flirted with.
After making my way out of the entryway, I made eye contact with Wyatt. He was standing with an arm over a willowy blonde and a few other people I recognized but couldn’t name. With his other hand he held a red cup, his name scrawled on it in black Sharpie. “Dom’s in the kitchen,” he said from across the room. He used the cup to gesture to the kitchen unnecessarily.
I found Dom standing with his back to me, next to a counter laden with snacks and red Solo cups. He had his hands shoved in the back pockets of his jeans while he listening to something the woman in front of him was saying. Based on the way she was fiddling with a strand of her hair and making eyes at him, I had a feeling I knew what she was aiming at.
I squeezed past a couple of guys, both of whom were nearly a foot taller than me. “Hey Dom!” I said, perhaps louder than necessary, as I came to a stop beside him. I turned to the woman and said, “I’m Hazel.”
“Emily,” she said. Her heavily lined blue eyes were shooting daggers at me. She pressed her full lips together and stood up straighter. Turning back to Dom, she said, “It’s so cool that you get to travel all the time. You must get to see so many things.”
Clearly, I was not wanted in the conversation. Before I could decide whether I wanted to back down and let them talk privately or not, Dom’s eyes met mine. “It’s mostly hotels and the insides of rinks, isn’t it, Hazel?”
Dom either not getting the hint or choosing to ignore it made me feel oddly happy. I didn’t know many people here, so it was nice that he wasn’t pushing me away to flirt. “Yep,” I agreed, “mixed with jet lag.”
“Can’t forget the jet lag,” he said with a groan. “The glamorous part of travelling. But at least by the time everything is done and we actually have time to check out the local sights, we’ve adjusted to local time.”
Emily made a couple more attempts to freeze me out of the conversation, but Dom wasn’t having any of it. After a few minutes she was visibly exasperated and excused herself to get another drink. I waited a few beats so I could be sure that she was out of earshot and told him, “She was hitting on you and you scared her away.”
He turned to lean on the counter. “I know,” he said. He seemed completely unbothered by that fact. On the contrary, he sounded rather pleased with himself. He looked me in the eyes as he said, “I have no interest in her.”
I felt weird with him practically staring me down like that. It was dumb, considering we had spent the last couple months with Mark instructing us to stare at each other with morepassion. It must have been the change in environment. Standing in his kitchen with him in a Henley and me in a fitted green top my friends insisted brought out the colour of my eyes was a far cry from being at the arena in workout gear. Here, things felt somehow more different and more real than they did at work.
He finally broke the silence by asking, “Do you want me to grab you a drink?”
I looked around him at the row of bottles on the counter. They were in varying stages of emptiness and none of them were very expensive, but that didn’t bother me in the slightest. They were beside a variety of soft drinks for mixing. “I’ll make something when I decide what I want.”
Dom disappeared for a while, pulled off in a conversation with two men’s singles skaters who had just arrived. Not wanting to get in the way, I mixed myself a drink before heading to the living room. I wanted to track down my friends again. I didn’t get out often. I had no intention of spending most of the evening with strangers.
Kendra was in conversation with a couple people I didn’t recognize, chatting animatedly. Alexis was at her back, sitting on the arm of a couch and leaning forward as she talked with a couple of people, Emily among them. She had somehow gotten a hold of a beer, even though I hadn’t seen her in the kitchen. I tried to ignore the eye roll from Emily, but I decided maybe it was safer to join Kendra’s conversation just the same.
The conversation seemed to revolve around one of many iterations of a trashy reality show I knew nothing about, so I couldn’t contribute much. Thankfully, the conversation pivoted to real life relationship drama instead of what I sincerely hoped was semi-scripted drama for the sake of everyone involved. One by one, the others started offering up their worst stories about their exes or the drama they had caused.
“The guy I dated the entire winter term last year tried to insist that he was faithful and that I was just paranoid. What he didn’t know was that the only reason I’d gotten the nerve to confront him was that one of my group mates in my lab showed me the texts he’d sent her.” Kendra rolled her eyes and, after a dramatic pause, added, “The idiot still tried to tell me I was crazy after all that.”
The woman beside her said, “At least you weren’t together that long. I had plans to move in with my boyfriend and we had been looking at apartments. We found this really cute place – near school, big windows, updated bathroom, the works – so I told my roommates I was moving out. Then, the day before we were supposed to sign the lease, he told me he had second thoughts. Not just about moving in together, but about being together, period. So not only was I heartbroken, I had to go through the embarrassing fiasco of telling my roommates that I was staying after all.”
They continued to trade war stories. After a while, Kendra turned to me and said, “What about Brandon?”
My stomach clenched. “What about him?” I asked. I knew what she was getting at, but the idea of sharing it with these near strangers made me uncomfortable. It was hypocritical when I had been finding a perverse sort of pleasure in hearing about their gossip, but I couldn’t help it.
“You know, the night you dumped him,” Kendra said. She seemed oblivious to my discomfort.
I was temporarily saved by a hand on my shoulder. “What did you end up picking?” asked Dom’s familiar voice.
“Just a vodka cranberry,” I said, choosing to answer him rather than respond to Kendra.
“You are so predictable,” Dom replied.
Even avoiding eye contact didn’t convince Kendra to back off. On the contrary, she said, “Oh, Dom can help tell this story.”
“What story?” Dom asked, suddenly focused on the group as a whole rather than just me.
“The night Hazel broke up with Brandon. Everyone is telling stories about their exes and the terrible things they did.”
He sighed. “What about it? That he was a possessive creep who didn’t understand the concept of a skating partnership? Or the fact that he thought it was a good idea to sucker punch me in the face?”
“Well, you could have at least tried to tell more than just stating the facts, but yeah,” Kendra said sulkily. She did not approve of Dom's to the point storytelling. “Most of the other stories don’t have the whole knight in shining armour thing going for them, but at least that one does. Not you getting punched in the face or him being such an ass, obviously, but you standing up for Hazel and being willing to go to bat for her.”
Dom’s face went red. “Well yeah, I didn’t want him losing it at her, but I also needed to stand up for myself. I couldn’t take the insults lying down. Or let him get a second swing in. Plus, I’ve been told I need to protect her repeatedly.”
