In Duke’s world, I think he felt the same way. He never told me he was lacking in the friends department, but I could kinda tell sometimes. I think it was because of his temper problems on the ice. The rest of the kids started to roll their eyes at him just like the parents did. It was all kinds of patronizing, and I didn’t blame Duke for wanting nothing to do with them.
In Duke’s case, I also figured the other kids not liking him much had something to do with the fact that the coaches always used him as a good example during video-review practices. He’d brag to me about it as we walked home, but I internally cringed a bit. I knew that turned him into an enemy. It happened to me in figure skating. I loved spinning the absolute most— more than jumps, unlike a lot of other skaters. I’d spend an entire hour just working on my spins, where other girls only practiced them the first ten minutes of a session. But… then I’d get bagged on in the locker room about it. I could practically still hear Farrah complaining: ‘Can you not spin so much? I am so sick of my mom talking to me like, ‘Why can’t you spin just as much as Savannah? You have no excuse for blah blah blah blah’… So, stop it already. We’re all annoyed.’ I mean… really? It was clear from that complaint, as well as other things she’d said over the years, that she didn’t like me because her mom always compared us… So I bet that happened to Duke too. I don’t think kids are born comparers. I think it came from the parents and coaches.
It was whatever though. Duke and I learned to fully embrace what we loved to do, and we weren’t about to let anyone dull our hard work, even if that meant we were left being loners.
So… guys wanting to hang out with us? Including me? Unusual.
A guy hadn’t so much as looked at me at school the past seventeen years of my life… Did I always harbor a tiny twinge of jealousy during homecoming and prom seasons over never being asked? I’d be lying if I said no.
But these guys… They were cuter than any of the guys at my school. While they slurped their slushies, I couldn’t help but notice their strong jawlines, and quick smiles. They didn’t seem to be trying to one-up me the way it always felt like girls at the rink did- maybe that was just a figure skater thing because at the end of the day, we were each other’s competition. No… This was different. They seemed to have genuine interest in what both Duke and I had to say. It was refreshing. And the way they mixed hockey lingo into their regular conversation was… cool.
They spoke our language.
An excited voice in the back of my head whispered, maybe they could be our friends…
As I directed them back to our house, I forced myself to calm down and think before speaking. I tried to hide my right hand by my thigh in a position with an imaginary pencil between my fingers to remember that it was in fact my right side. I didn’t want to come off as dumb to them, and I knew my inability to remember lefts and rights wasn’t the brightest thing about me… but it was figure skating’s fault! It happened to a lot of us. But I didn’t want to talk about that.
The pencil thing helped though, and my directing was going really well, until we hit our subdivision where there were a lot of turns back-to-back.
When Griff turned right instead of left, I cringed realizing I said the wrong way, and I abandoned my calm demeanor and tapped on his seat. “No, it was that way. Sorry.”
Duke shook his head at me and said, “She meant left.”
I glowered at him. I loved the kid, but did he have to make it so obvious?
“No need to be sorry, Sav. I’ll just swing back around,” Griff said calmly, making me feel relieved.
Duke took over directing after that, and I sat back, mulling over the way he called me “Sav.” I’d never had a nickname before… but it rolled off his tongue so easily… and I liked it. Sav sounded carefree… I wanted to be a Sav.
Our house was the very last one on a dead-end road. You could tell it was ours from the hockey net out on the driveway next to my dad’s shiny new pickup truck parked there. He wasn’t home though. He and my mom rode to work together most mornings or nights. I could never keep their shifts straight.
“This is us,” I said to them.
As soon as he parked, Duke and I started to scramble out of the car, but Nick and Griff just stared up at our house.
I paused in the doorway of the truck and looked over at them in the frontseats.
“What?” I asked.
“This is your house?” Nick as me with scrunched up eyebrows.
“Uh, yeah,” I answered, looking at him suspiciously.
Griff just scratched hishead.
“It’s… huge,” Nick said, still looking up at it.
I gave a shrug. “Both our parents are trauma surgeons at Mission Hospital down the road,” I said, hopping out onto the snowy lawn.
I briskly walked to the front door and felt all the boys fall in step behindme.
I started to unlock the door then paused… thinking again that maybe this wasn’t the best idea.
I turned to face them and could see my breath hanging in the cold air in front of me. “You guys aren’t going to like rob us, are you?” I asked, feeling shaky all of a sudden.
Nick looked amused. “Not at all, Sav. Unless you mean rob you of all the wins in ‘chel. I’m here to play.” Most rink rats called the NHL game on Xbox “chel”. He rubbed his hands together. “We haven’t gotten our hands on an Xbox in forever. We hoped we’d be staying with a billet fam that had a set up, but noluck.”
I went back to unlocking the door then because I was freezing my ass off. “You guys are billeting?” I asked as I pushed open our house. Duke scrambled in before me. Griff automatically held the screen door open for me above my head as I walked in.
