Page 60 of Lovefool

Poor Harlan wrings his hands in his lap, as if he can manually squeeze out all his first-time reservations. A wealth of qualms that have universally decided that his brain was the perfect pincushion for their unopposed reign.

“Never mind. Here’s an easy one. How do you prepare physically and mentally for such a demanding sport like hockey?”

There’s a pause, and for a second, I think Harlan is going to jump ship, but his shoulders actually seem to relax. “Well, a lot of the guys go to the gym before or after practice, seven days a week. We hit quads, glutes, traps, core. Our sessions usually last for an hour.”

This is good. We’re getting somewhere.

I nod supportively, enlisting the help of my notepad again. “What about any mental workouts? I imagine that balancing hockey and school has to be challenging.”

“It might seem stupid, but I try to meditate when I can. Turn my brain off for a while, you know? It definitely gets overwhelming at times, so it’s important to take breaks every now and then. Oh, and eating clean helps a lot too.”

I spend the next ten minutes not pulling teeth—to my surprise—and I pat Harlan on the back as he departs through the exit.

My last interviewee of the day happens to be none other than the one person I shouldn’t be left alone in a room with.

Sutton leans against the far wall, looking like goddamn sex on legs with his understated confidence. He’s dressed in an MU hoodie and gray sweatpants that shouldn’t sculpt his lower half the way they do—every muscle and bulge visible, reminding me how easy it would be to untie his drawstrings and cop a feel in the privacy of our sanctum.

“You can come in,” I call out to him, still glued to the entrance’s threshold in fear of trading sense for sex and pouncing on him like a cougar in heat.

I’ve grown used to the ouroboros of overthinking that usually occupies my head, but right now, I’m only capable of cycling through some X-rated stations.

Sutton pushes off the wall and saunters over to me, barely fitting through the door frame and involuntarily brushing my shoulder as he enters the room.

He sits down in a chair that seems far too small to support him, though to be fair, all the hockey players so far have squished into it like it’s fit for a doll rather than a real human being. His presence is…heavy. Not suffocating, but unignorable. I don’t know if I’ll be able to uphold my professionalism with him looking at me like he wants to venture to No Man’s Land again and really test how soundproof these walls are.

Sutton’s eyes skim my barren office, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was secretly looking for a camouflaged recording device. “This is…intense,” he intones.

“Yeah, it’s the best we’ve got considering I don’t even have a budget.”

A slight change in subject. “How have the guys been so far?”

I shrug. “They’ve been alright. I don’t think I’ll make any breakthroughs, but this isn’t a career-altering article I’m writing. I’m just grateful that everyone seems pretty cooperative so far.”

The galaxies in Sutton’s eyes—usually warm and muted and swirling with extracts of honeysuckle stars—drop a shade in color as the air in the room turns frigid. For a moment, it feels like someone is pouring liquid nitrogen into the empty spaces of my body.

He rests his hand, palm up, on the table. “If they’re not, just tell me, okay?”

I accept his gesture, and the lived-in anxiety that has followed me ever since our rendezvous in the kitchen flakes off in the presence, ironically, of the one person who instigated it in the first place.

Just thinking about the way Sutton worshipped me with a devout tongue and a prayer wrapped in desperation brings me to a fever pitch that directly cancels out the ominous chill circulating through a ventless room.

We shouldn’t be unsupervised. There’s literally nothing stopping him from picking me up, planting my butt on the table, and going back for sevenths. I’d give “hands-on journalism” a whole new meaning.

Come on, Lake. Just ask him a few questions. Get what you need from him and save the risqué stuff for the bedroom. You can control yourself, can’t you?

Pish, yeah, totally, Inner Me.

Flipping to a clean piece of paper in my notebook, I begin the interview, slightly more flustered than usual since Sutton is squeezing my palm and shining his megawatt smile right in my face.

“Do you have any pregame rituals that help with the nerves?”

Unlike his other teammates, Sutton genuinely brightens at the question, and I can’t take all the credit for it. He loves to help people out of the kindness of his heart. Given that interactions have become strictly transactional in this day and age, the public could use more people like him.

I don’t doubt that this question has been asked a million times before, but Sutton responds as if it’s the most introspective thing in the entire universe. “As hockey players, a lot of us are superstitious. Me included. Some of the guys wear their lucky underwear, some of the guys pop a handful of their favorite candy, and I recite five things I’m grateful for to put the game into perspective.”

“What do you mean ‘put the game into perspective’?”

Either Sutton has prepared extensively for this interview, or he’s just made for the spotlight. I tend to think the latter, though he would disagree with me. He’s so certain about himself—so unafflicted by humanistic vices for a person who’s been through his fair share of trauma. It’s inspiring. He’s inspiring.