MY BODY IS currently seventy percent water and thirty percent glitter.
It's everywhere. In my hair, on my jeans, somehow inside my shoe. There's glitter on the poster board, on the seats, on Leila's coat, probably in my lungs at this point. I'm going to be finding glitter for weeks. I'm going to die and they're going to cremate me and the ashes will be forty percent glitter.
"I told you not to open it like that," Leila says, not looking up from the banner she's working on.
"You just said 'be careful with the glitter.'"
"Exactly."
"That's not instructions. That's a vague warning." I'm trying to shake glitter off my hands but it's just redistributing. Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies. "I need specifics. 'Don't shake it like a cocktail' would've been helpful."
She's laughing, which is rude, but also fair.
We're set up in the stands overlooking the practice rink, supplies spread across seven seats like we're running a kindergarten art station. Poster board, markers in every color, stickers shaped like paws, and the glitter bomb I just detonated.
Below us, the Wolves are warming up.
And by Wolves, I mean Ace, because even though the rest of the team is also there, my eyes decide they're mere background.
I'm not staring. I'm observing. Evaluating.
Because I need to understand hockey for the sake of charity, and understanding hockey requires watching Ace's thighs work as he skates.
Those thighs could crush a watermelon. Or my head.
He's wearing practice gear—fitted compression shirt under his pads, hockey pants that somehow make his ass right fucking there, and I'm supposed to be drawing a banner but instead I'm mentally undressing him.
Jesus Christ, focus.
I pick up a marker. Put it down. Pick up a different marker.
Ace does a crossover, muscles shifting under his gear, and I make an undignified noise.
Leila glances over. "You okay?"
"Yep. Great. Just very passionate about banner fonts."
She looks at my blank poster board. "Uh-huh."
On the ice, the team's moved into stretching, and—
What. The. Fuck. Is. Happening. Right. Now?
They're doing…something that involves dropping on the ice in some sort of unholy half-kneel, half-crouch, thighs spread, and I'm three seconds from passing out.
"Earth to Devon." Leila waves a hand in front of my face, but I'm only semi-aware of the fact that she's even here or that I exist.
"I can't focus when they're humping the ice!" I blurt out.
Leila chokes on her coffee. "They're what?"
"The stretches! The warm-ups! All the—" I gesture wildly at the ice. "—the bending and the flexing and the thigh things!"
She laughs. "The thigh things?"
"You know what I mean!"
"I really don't."
