“Perfect. Just enough time for terrible concession stand coffee. My treat.”
“No, thank you.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him shift his weight, stretching his good leg out. I should not be noticing the way his joggers fit or anything about him at all, but apparently my eyes have stopped taking orders from my brain.
“Okay, but real talk.” His voice gets a little more serious and I can feel him looking at me. “I actually need your help with something.”
I glance at him again, skeptical. “With what?”
“My edges have been off since the injury. Jake says it’s mental but I think it’s my form. You’re a coach, right? Professional opinion?”
“You can’t even skate yet.”
“Exactly. Which is why I need to start thinking about it now. Visualization. Sports psychology. Very important stuff.”
My mouth almost twitches and I catch it before it becomes a smile, pressing my lips together. “That’s the worst excuse I’ve ever heard.”
His grin widens and my pulse kicks up. “Yeah, okay, you got me. I just wanted to buy you coffee. Sue me.”
God, he’s beyond persistent and the worst part is that some traitorous part of my brain is wondering what would happen if I said yes, if I let him buy me terrible rink coffee and listened to him talk about hockey and his injury and whatever else he’d want to talk about, if I let myself lean into this pull I feel every time he gets close.
But I can’t because my boyfriend is moving here in three weeks and I’m not the type of person who gets distracted by hockey players with nice arms and crooked grins and shaggy dark hair. The fluttery feeling in my chest when Rodriguez sits too close isexactly why I need to shut this down, to kill it before it becomes something I can’t ignore.
“I’m not interested,” I say, and I’m proud of how level my voice sounds. How completely unbothered.
“In coffee? Or in me?”
“Both.”
“Ouch.” He puts a hand over his chest like I’ve wounded him, but he’s still smiling, like my rejection is just part of the game. “That’s cold, even for the Ice Queen.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Stop being so icy and I’ll consider it.”
One of the kids from my next class waves at me as she walks in with her mom and I wave back, grateful for the interruption, for an excuse to look anywhere except at Rodriguez’s face and the way his expression shifts when I shut him down.
“Come on, JuJu.” His voice is softer now, almost coaxing, and I hate how much I like the way he says that nickname, the way it sounds intimate even though we barely know each other. “What’s the harm? It’s just coffee. I’m slowly dying of boredom over here.”
“That’s obviously not my problem.”
“Is this about September? Because I deleted that video like you asked. I haven’t filmed you once since then.”
“This isn’t about September.”
“Then what’s it about?”
You, I think, and my hands tighten around my phone.It’s about you and the way you look at me like you’re actually seeing something, it’s about how Garrett never makes me feel this off-balance and I don’t know what to do with that, and how you’re genuine in a way that scares me because I can’t figure out your angle.
“It’s about you not being able to take no for an answer,” I say instead.
Disappointment flickers across his face and I feel guilty suddenly. Which is ridiculous because I barely know him, he’s just a hockeyplayer who’s been hitting on me for three months, I don’t owe him anything.
“Fair point.” He pushes himself up, testing his weight on the bad leg, and I watch the way he grimaces slightly, trying to hide it. “For the record though, I think you’re way more interesting than you want people to believe.”
Don’t ask what he means. Don’t engage. Just let him leave.
“Well for the record, I don’t care what you think.”
