In the end, I clamped my lips and ducked my head to run away like somebody with her hair on fire.
“Perhaps we can call her Black Bunny from now on,” I heard Artyom suggest behind me. “This way, we know which Puck Bunny we are talking about as she works her way through the team….”
The laughter of the hockey hyenas drowned out the rest of whatever else he said as I ran blindly toward the rink’s entrance—only to crash into Trish, who was making her way through the crowd to save me, even though I’d forgotten to give her the signal we’d agreed to when I came out on the ice to congratulate Tommy against Claudia’s many dire warnings.
“What happened?” Trish asked, grabbing onto my arms to steady me. “Did that Rustanov guy say something to you?”
I didn’t have to answer. She could tell from the look on my face just how badly my attempt to seal the deal with Tommy had gone.
“Oh, fuck that!” Trish glared over my shoulder toward Artyom and his crew, who were probably still laughing. “Watch me go tell that Russkie ball sack where he can?—”
“No, Trish, don’t!” I grabbed her by the hand before she could push past me and began tugging her toward the rink’s entrance, where Claudia was waiting with the furtive air of an herbivore who didn’t want to be seen by voracious predators.
“Claudia was right….” I admitted to Trish. “I should never have come here, no matter how much I wanted to make this thing happen with Tommy. Let’s just go, okay?”
Trish reluctantly let me drag her out of there.
And I spent the rest of the week actively avoiding Artyom Rustanov, as advised.
Unfortunately, hiding from a hockey god dead set on making your life miserable wasn’t that easy when he knew where you lived most nights.
“What are you doing?”
I nearly jumped out of my chair when Artyom noisily dropped into the Winona Ryder carrel right next to mine less than ten minutes after I sat down at my Anne Tyler one to deal with the schoolwork that was already piling up.
“Searching for more Yolks to fuck?” He leaned over the carrel’s divider to look at my laptop screen with no consideration for my personal space—or the “No Talking” sign hanging right above our heads.
I was filling out a report for a pretty sad child neglect case I’d shadowed a social worker on that morning. It had basically confirmed my decision to work on the four-legged animal side of things instead of the usual two. But I snapped my laptop closed on the highly confidential case before he could invade someone else’s privacy.
“That carrel is reserved.” By a history Ph.D. candidate who often reeked of future career despair and the family-sized bags of sour cream and chive potato chips, sure. But at least he was quiet—outside of all the crunching.
“Not anymore,” Artyom answered with a smirk. “It is mine for rest of semester.”
I wanted to ask how he’d managed to acquire this particular carrel when our reservations were supposed to be locked in stone until the end of the school year. But I refused to give him the satisfaction.
Instead, I packed up my things with shaky hands, swallowing the lump of anger rising in my throat. He wanted me to lose it. He wanted me to scream at him in the middle of the library so everyone could see me as the crazy puck bunny stalker he was painting me to be. Not happening, Rustanov.
So... my ultimate safe place. Another thing totally ruined by Artyom Rustanov.
Put that on the list, along with my potential relationship with Tommy.
And apparently, my previously upstanding reputation.
The next night, after telling me she was headed out to meet up with Claudia and a few of her hockey friends to smoke now that the women’s Yolks season was over, Trish came right back through the door less than an hour later. Crying.
“Oh my God, Trish.” I set aside my umpteenth attempt at readingDawnto rush over to hug my sobbing friend. “What happened?”
Short Answer: Artyom Rustanov. That was what happened.
Claudia hadn’t been lying about how powerful he was. Not only had his acid-washed version of the Berlin story spread like wildfire through the campus, but now there was another rumor going around that I was stalking him by trying to hook up with all his friends on the men’s hockey team.
According to the captain of the women’s hockey team, that’s how we ended up in the same Clara Quinn seminar.
“Everybody’s calling her Restraining Order,” she’d told Trish right before passing her the pipe at the team’s informal chicken wings and smoke-out get-together they were having at Claudia’s off-campus apartment.
The words hit like a punch to the gut.Restraining Order.That’s what they were calling me now? My cheeks burned as Trish recounted what the captain had said. It wasn’t just humiliating—it felt like a death sentence for whatever shred of reputation I had left.
That’s the weird thing about being a chronic people-pleaser. You’re so busy pleasing, you have no idea how horrible it will feel when people stop liking you to the point that they’re straight-up talking about you behind your back. Nothing in my aggressively Black Mary Jane wiring had prepared me for this.
