Page 1 of Your Kiss Is On My List

Chapter 1

“You going to eat that food or try to disintegrate it with your eyes?” Majik asks.

I snort and fork a heap of her homemade pasta into my mouth. Everything she makes is five-star quality.

“Why are you back to campus so soon? It’s not for my cooking,” she says. In spite of her stare, I don’t have an answer. I’m just grateful Majik—otherwise known as Claire Majisky—is always at BMOC House and always happy—no, that’s not right because she never seems happy—more like ready to feed whoever’s here. But I’m surprised she’s calling me on my early return. She usually respects our privacy. I shrug and she accepts my non-answer.

Mom is another matter. She’s pissed that I left the day after Christmas. She didn’t buy my excuse that I had to get back to campus for hockey. The team has the week off. Our games don’t start up again until New Year’s Day. And she knows it.

But I can hardly tell her the real reason I left yesterday is because I didn’t want to run into my kid sister’s best friend, the girl literally next door, because I can’t stand to see her. She’s so… she’s too… never mind.

Shaking my head, I return my attention to my dish of pasta, and my housemate, Bane—Randall Bane—who’s sitting across the scratched wooden table from me. We keep the old table in the kitchen for when the dining room is too formal. So far, we’re the only two back at the house. Technically, Bane never left. He’s from Australia and he just had a kick-ass season as the QB for St. Paul U’s football team. I couldn’t convince him to come home with me for the holiday.

“What’d you do the past few days rattling around BMOC House by yourself?” I ask. He slides a glance at Majik then gives me his arrogant smirk, so I know some bullshit is coming.

“Who says I was alone?” I don’t roll my eyes because he’s too broken to ride about his loner status. Not that I should talk. It’s been a month since I spent some time with a girl and longer since I’ve had anything that could pass for a girlfriend relationship.

“He had me for company, didn’t he?” Majik stands with her hands on her massive hips like a sentinel watching over her kingdom. I often speculate that she could probably beat up half the guys in the house—no easy task since we’re a dozen of the top athletes for one of the elite college sports programs in the country. It’s not just that she’s big. It’s more because she’s a tough SOB, the toughest woman I’ve ever met—and that includes a couple of lady wrestlers I met when I was on spring break last year licking my wounds about our early exit from the playoffs.

There’s more gray than mousey brown in Majik’s short stubby ponytail, but she’s as stony as she was the day I moved in and still more intimidating than Coach Maroni, St. Paul U’s hockey coach, and he has a good ten years on her. They both have that craggy old toughness that comes with age and wisdom and not giving a shit.

Since Bane isn’t embellishing his story, and I know better than to wait for Majik to carry on a conversation, I throw down another mouthful of pasta. The only person less talkative than her is Coach. And in spite of that he’s a high-impact guy. I’ll miss him when I’m gone, and I’m fucking glad I’ll be leaving before he does.

All the guys on the hockey team held their breath before the season, hoping the old goat would stick around. But he promised one more year when he dubbed me captain. He also assigned me the mission of winning the Frozen Four tournament this year. Said he wanted to go out on top.

No pressure there. None at all.

But Coach knows I want to make it to the NHL bad. Not that everyone on the team doesn’t have the same dream. But I want it just as intensely as the rest of the guys and every time he looks at me I can’t help feeling like he looks through me to see that dark guilty cloud over my soul, the one I’ve been trying to vanquish since I was twelve years old. The one I’m convinced making it to the NHL will ease, make more bearable, make that incident less random, less horrifically stupid.

Coach knows every scout around the league, some of them from when they were players. No coach in the college ranks is more respected. He can make calls, get a few more visits from scouts for us than other programs would. I’ve done well, but I’m not MVP of the league and we missed the Final Four last year so I can use all the good mojo I can get.

Aside from the coach and his connections and any other bullshit, what will do the most good, what will put us over the top and seal the deal, is if we win the Frozen Four this year.

We need to win for Coach and for the team, to continue the St. Paul U legacy. And for my fucking future in hockey. So I’ll have a fucking future in hockey. Since I don’t have much of a plan B.

Gotta pour everything you have into what you want and never mind with the backup plan. If you plan for failure you will fail. Dad’s words of wisdom were repeated often enough through my youth, right after he told me I was meant to skate and not to dwell on… what happened. I hear his words running through my head like the background music of my life, underscoring everything.

I’m about to put the last forkful of pasta into my mouth when I hear the front door open followed immediately by a familiar shout.

“Anybody home? Trey, where are you?” Louise?

“Who’s that?” Bane checks with me and I’m wondering what the hell my sister is doing here. My first thought is that Mom sent a care package. We only live a two-hour drive away in the Boston area, although most of the time it feels like a world away. Thank fuck.

“In the kitchen, Louise,” I shout back. “And you’d better be bearing gifts.” I say to Bane, “My sister.” He nods.

“Don’t call me Louise. You know I hate that.” Her voice closes in and I hear her coming through the hall, but there are two pairs of footsteps. She’s not alone. Fuck. And then I hear the laugh, confirming my worst fear.

It’s not Lou’s laugh. And even though I haven’t heard it in three years because I’ve gone out of my way to avoid her, I would know that laugh anywhere. That's my kid sister's best friend, Danielle Innocent.

I wonder how innocent she is now. Fuck. I give myself a mental slap. Don't go there. Didn't I learn my lesson three years ago—the hard way?

The two girls crowd into the kitchen. I get up from the table and give in to the hug my sister inevitably shrouds me in, the bubbling energy replacing every negative vibe in its wake. Even with my eyes closed against the onslaught, I can feel the presence, stronger than my sister’s, of her brighter, smarter, prettier friend—Lou’s words, not mine. Her best friend, Danielle, started out being the cute kid next door, my little sister’s best friend, then she was my friend. And then, maybe it was inevitable, but she turned into something more than a friend, but only in my mind. Because when I lost my head that one time… fuck. I’m not a stupid shit anymore.

As I open my eyes and back out of Lou’s embrace, my eyes collide with Dani’s and my heart stops because she’s not an innocent girl anymore. Three years have turned her from a pretty princess to the devil’s temptation with her beauty pageant winner’s smile aimed in supernova wattage directly at me.

“My turn, Trey. It’s been years and years and I need one of your hugs.” She throws herself into my arms before I can protest. Before I can admit I need one of her hugs, but not the Innocent kind she’s given me before—pun intended. I need so much more than that. Or, correction, I want so much more than that. As my traitorous arms wrap around her automatically when she lands against my chest, all soft and curvy and smelling like paradise, my senses overload and my mind goes blank for a second.

And the only thing I can remember is that kiss, the one and only time we lapsed from kid sister’s best friend to … whatever the hell that was. Stupid older boy next door kissing an innocent young girl on the verge of true beauty?