Page 11 of Playing the Player

“But he still took you out to dinner and stuff like that, didn't he?”

“Yeah, but I mean, I wouldn’t class me sitting watching him watch his phone as a date.” Conor grinds his molars together, looking like he wants to punch through the wall.

“I wish I’d have known. I would have made tonight a lot more special.”

I laugh softly, my heart squeezing painfully in my chest. "Tonight was special. I loved every bit of it.”

“Would you wanna go out again?”

I freeze in place. There’s a small voice in my head screaming at me to say yes and the longer I stand here not speaking, the louder that voice gets. “I can’t.” I breathe out instead but deeply regret it as Conor’s smile falls. “It’s not you. Trust me. This is all me.”

“Uh huh.” He scratches the back of his neck and the air around us suddenly feels heavy and suffocating.

The words hurt to say but I force them out anyway. “I was with Max basically my whole life. I don’t know how to be on my own yet, never mind with someone else. It wouldn’t be fair of me to start something with you when I can’t give you all of me.” Plus, Conor is a player on and off the ice. He’s a major fuck boy. If I went on another ‘date’ with him, it would lead to me being heartbroken once again. One real date with me isn’t gonna change him as a person, so why should I set my heart up for failure again?

“I get it, Sasha. It’s okay.” I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Thank you.”

“But, you have my number,” he pauses and my breathing becomes heavier as I wait for him to finish, “when you’re ready, give me a call.”

Conor leans down, places a gentle kiss on my cheek and then walks off, leaving me standing in the hallway alone with my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest.

It takes me four tries to unlock my door because my hands are shaking wildly. Why am I so flustered? I’ve been on the receiving end of Conor’s flirting more times than I can count, and it’s never made me react this way. My pulse is erratic, my skin feels hot, and no matter how hard I try, I cannot get that man out of my head.

4

Sasha

I am so fucking bored right now. I’m on my lunch break at work, which is usually my one chance to escape the office and clear my head from all the shit Larry has put me through. Today though, I’ve been asked, and when I say asked I mean told, to stay at my desk. Larry has emails he needs me to look through before the end of the day and he wants me to do them right now. Apparently they can’t wait.

I can eat at my desk as long as I do it subtly so that no clients can see. I wouldn't want to appear unprofessional now would I? We can’t have a woman stuffing her face the first thing clients see when they walk through the doors. God forbid.

I’ve already finished my chicken and salad sandwich, and I’m still waiting for those emails to come through. My lunch break is over in ten minutes and the bastard still hasn’t sent them! There was no need for me to miss out on a real coffee after all.

It turns out I could have gone to the coffee shop across the street and had the real stuff, but today I had to settle on the one downstairs where the coffee looks and tastes like dirty water. It’s basically hot water with a sprinkle of coffee mixed in.

I’ve been doom scrolling on Instagram for fifteen minutes now, occasionally refreshing my emails to see if anything pops up. Nothing. Back to my phone, refresh, nothing. Repeat.

At this point I’m not even looking at what’s on my phone anymore. My thumb just keeps scrolling through the posts, but my mind checked out ages ago.

I should really be doing some sort of work right now but I still have seven minutes of my break, which means that’ll be seven minutes of unpaid work, and I’m too stubborn for that so I will sit here and do nothing until the clock hits 1:30pm.

Setting my phone down on the desk, I refresh my emails for the one hundredth time and still, there’s nothing. This man irritates the hell out of me. He does it just to get under my skin and somehow, it works every single time.

My knee bounces restlessly beneath while my fingers drum against the top of my desk. I glare at the clock, praying that it would go a little faster. It doesn't. I think it actually goes slower. But, you know what they say, a watched pot never boils.

I groan out loud, slumping in my desk chair and pulling my phone out again. Maybe Liv can make the seconds tick by a little quicker.

“Hey, girl.” Olivia says as she answers on the third ring. Alarm bells immediately ring in my head. She does this thing where, whenever she’s upset, angry or overtired, her accent involuntarily slips back into British. And from just those two words, I know something is wrong.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” She lets out a heavy sigh, followed by the unmistakable sound of her flopping onto the bed.

“Liv, come on. Something is wrong with you.”

Before even finding out she was pregnant, Olivia had really bad prenatal depression. It started after her and Josh had split up and it lasted for months. I was terrified for her. She wouldn’t talk, she wasn’t eating, and she would either sleep all day, every day, or not at all. I was terrified to leave her on her own, so I practically moved into her apartment.