I open my mouth. Close it. Take another sip of wine.
The thing is, I’ve been holding this in for days. The whole flight back from Detroit, I sat three rows behind Zayden and pretended to be fascinated by the in-flight magazine while my brain replayed the almost-kiss on a loop. Then I spent two days at work carefully avoiding being alone with him, which is hard when you’re literally assigned to touch him every morning.
I need to talk about this. I’m going to explode if I don’t.
“I almost kissed Zayden Bishop,” I blurt out.
Winnie’s eyes go wide. “I’m sorry, you what?”
“Or he almost kissed me. I don’t know. We almost kissed each other. On a sidewalk. In Detroit.”
“Oh my God.” She’s grinning now, that delighted grin she gets when gossip exceeds her expectations. “Start from the beginning. Don’t skip anything.”
So I tell her.
I tell her about the plane, how he kicked Logan out of the seat so he could sit by me and said,maybe I like the view. I tell her about overhearing his FaceTime with Maisie, how cute he is with her. I tell her about running into him at the hotel bar that first night, the way he said,apparently I have no filter around you, like he couldn’t help but be honest.
“Wait, wait.” Winnie holds up a hand. “And then what?”
“Then I said something stupid about not minding his mess, and he looked at me like...” I trail off, not sure how to describe it. “Like he wanted to believe me but was afraid to.”
“Tori.” She clutches her chest dramatically. “This is the most romantic thing you’ve ever told me, and you once dated a guy who wrote you a poem.”
“That poem was terrible.”
“It really was. Keep going. What happened in Detroit?”
I tell her about the game, watching from the bench, and how I ended up at a bar with the team even though I knew it was a bad idea.
“A bar with hockey players.” Winnie shakes her head. “Living dangerously.”
“It gets worse.”
I tell her about that douchey guy who stopped me in the back hallway of the bar. The way Zayden appeared out of nowhere and said,touch her again and we’re going to have a problem, in a voice that made the guy practically trip over himself backing away.
“I think I’m attracted to your hockey player,” Winnie says. “Is that weird? That’s probably weird.”
“He’s notmyhockey player.”
“Sure, Jan. Continue.”
I tell her about the walk back to the hotel. His jacket around my shoulders. The way he stopped under the streetlight and looked at me like I was something he wanted but couldn’t have.
“He touched my face,” I say, and my voice comes out quieter than I intended. “Brushed my hair back and just... let his fingers linger on my jaw. And I thought he was going to kiss me. I wanted him to kiss me. I tipped my face up toward his, but then he stepped back and said he should get me back to the hotel, and we rode the elevator in total silence. I’ve been losing my mind ever since.”
Winnie is quiet for a long moment, which is alarming because Winnie is never quiet.
“Okay,” she finally says. “I have questions.”
“Of course you do.”
“Question one: what’s he like?”
I smile, thinking how in the world to explain Zayden. Bish. Daddy Z.
“Well, he’s French-Canadian, which means he swears in two languages and has opinions about hockey that border on religious.”
Winnie’s already got her phone out, thumbs flying. “Zayden Bishop, right? Let me see what we’re working with here.”
