We hit the first landing, on the floor below, and turn to continue down to the ground floor. No Wayne so far. Good. He stops suddenly and I stumble, almost banging into him. He catches me by the shoulders. “I ran into Jessie today and she mentioned it.”
“I don’t want to go and I definitely don’t want to bring you.” He freezes as soon as the words leave his mouth. “I don’t mean that the way it sounds. I mean that I don’t want to subject you to it. It’s just a bunch of teammates, and it’s not the way I wanted to start this date, but Avery is superstitious and we won the Cup the year we started this stupid chili night, so he thinks if we don’t do it again we’re doomed.”
I frown. “Avery Westwood is going to be there?”
He nods, and as we turn to take the last seven steps that lead to the lobby, there’s Wayne. His torso, wrapped in a dirty sweatshirt, is sprawled across three steps, his arms crossed on the landing with his head resting facedown on top of them. A spilled can of beer is on the step next to his ass, probably soaking his sweatpants. Sebastian’s whole body tenses. I can feel his muscles tighten in his back and his arm as I bump against it after his abrupt stop.
“It’s okay,” I say and step around Seb. His fingers, intertwined with mine, clench protectively, but I ignore it and bend down next to Wayne. “Wayne. Wayne, wake up.”
Wayne stirs, takes a sharp breath and promptly starts to cough. The stench of stale beer pollutes the air around us as he exhales, and when I look up, Sebastian is cringing. I turn back to Wayne and use my free hand to take his forearm and help him up. “Come on, you need to get to your apartment and sleep it off.”
“Thanks, Susie, honey.” He grins at me and uses the name he’s been calling me since I met him, even though I told him it was Shayne. His smile is lopsided and one of his top front teeth is missing. The other ones are yellow. “I didn’t mean to take a nap. Just, you know, couldn’t help myself.”
“Uh-huh.” I nod and smile and yank on Sebastian’s hand to try to get him to remove the scowl from his face. Wayne nods at Sebastian with a small, friendly, yet drunk, smile and stumbles down the hall toward his apartment.
I make sure he stumbles through the front door before I turn and lead Seb down the rest of the stairs. When we get to the bottom I speak before he has the chance—because I know he will and I know what he will say. “He’s harmless.”
“You need to move.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Shay.” His voice is stern and brimming with concern, but I don’t like it.
Once we’re seated inside his luxury SUV, which probably cost more than my entire year’s pay, he glances over at me. “I’m going to worry about you living here.”
“I’m going to worry about you getting your head smashed in on the ice,” I retort. “Guess worry is what happens when two people…fornicate on a regular basis.”
He doesn’t even try to hold in his laughter at that. It’s a loud, deep bark. His eyebrow, the one with the still-pink slice through it, rises. “Is that what we’re doing? Fornicating on a regular basis?”
“That’s what we’ve been doing so far,” I say as he pulls out onto the busy street. “I mean it’s regular for me. Probably not for you. You probably are used to it a few dozen times a week, but a couple times a month is pretty much a regular basis, considering before you I hadn’t had sex for almost two years.”
He hits the brake a little too hard at a stop sign, and I lurch forward. Thank God for seat belts. He turns to me with a look that’s a medley of shock and awe, like he’s just seen a ghost. “Two wholeyears? As in seven hundred and thirty days?”
“Longer, technically, because this was a leap year,” I reply calmly and watch his face grow even more stunned. It makes me feel a little embarrassed, which then makes me feel a little annoyed. “That’s a big deal to you?”
“It’s not to you?” There’s such shock in his deep voice that I start to feel awkward again. I hate being made to feel awkward.
“No,” I mutter back and wrap my sweater more tightly around me. “I’ve only had sex in relationships and I haven’t had a relationship.”
He seems to catch on that this is making me uncomfortable, because he reaches out and rests his right hand on my thigh, over my own hand. “So then I guess we’re in a relationship.”
“What?!”
“Well, if you only have sex in relationships, then that’s what we’re doing.” Frenchie grins slyly and I have the urge to both slap and kiss it off his face. “I’m your boyfriend then. It’s settled.”
“Until you,” I shoot back, flustered. “Now I’m all about the…the…” I’m trying to think of the right word.
“Bed buddy? Friend with benefits? Fuck toy?” Sebastian suggests helpfully. His smile slips from his full lips just a little as he adds, “We’ve been through this. I don’t want to be any of those things. I’m campaigning for boyfriend.”
“I can barely wrap my head around the fact that I willingly and repeatedly banged a hockey player,” I confess, watching his rugged profile as he maneuvers in and out of freeway traffic. “I can’t just jump right into a committed relationship with one. I need baby steps.”
“What’s his name?” Sebastian asks bluntly and glances at me with serious eyes. “Because this isn’t just about what you’ve seen. It’s about something you experienced.”
“You’re perceptive.”
“I am. And a really good listener,” he adds with a flash of his cocky grin. “So spit it out, Shay.”
“His name was Dustin,” I find myself admitting, even though it makes me uncomfortable. “I was already anti-hockey player in college, but I made an exception. And it bit me in the ass.”
