Page 76 of Line Change

Pope picks up the skate without saying anything.

Nobody else looks his way. Half the room is still arguing about Bobby’s imaginary point.

He wanted his marks all over me last night and made me promise there wouldn’t be anybody else. I’m still the one pretending a dropped skate is only a dropped skate, and I’m getting tired of doing it for him.

All we agreed to was just us, so I don’t expect him to announce anything in the locker room. Still, Pope almost gives himself away over one bite mark and I’m the one making sure nobody follows the noise back to him.

Bobby gets this excited about everybody’s sex life. Finding out it was Pope would make him louder for ten minutes, and then Gunderson would open the door and he’d care about practice.

Pope gets to decide what he tells them. I still hate that dropped skate.

Bobby hooks a thumb toward the bite. “I could take that.”

“You’d be asking Nara for ice,” Sindre says.

Bobby turns on him, and I let Sindre take the argument.

The room moves on for all of ten seconds. I start pulling on my gear, but the hem of my compression top has caught above the bite and Bobby keeps grinning at it like he had anything to do with it.

Fine. He can yell about something else.

I stand and pull my compression top back up, exposing my stomach and both sides. “All right. Since everybody’s so interested, where should I get the next tattoo?”

Half the room has an answer before I’ve finished pulling up my shirt.

“Other thigh,” Anton says.

“Ass,” Bobby says, which starts an argument among three guys over whether I already have one there. He tries twice to drag me into it, and I ignore him.

Caleb warns me off anything under the edge of my shoulder pads until the season is over, as if I’m planning to leave practice and drive straight to a tattoo shop. A defenseman votes for my chest before Anton points out there isn’t enough blank skin left to make the trouble worthwhile.

I turn toward the mirror and let them look. Black-and-gray ink covers most of my left arm and continues over my shoulder, chest, and ribs. My right side has always looked unfinished beside it.

The first few tattoos were easier because I knew what I wanted before the appointments and kept adding to the same lines whenever the skin beside them started looking too blank. Nothing I’ve considered for the right side looks right yet. By the time I run a hand over my ribs, Bobby is arguing with Anton about chest tattoos instead of staring at my hip.

Sindre studies me in the mirror, then points to the blank stretch along my right side. “There. Under your ribs. It would balance the other side.”

There’s enough room for something narrow from my ribs toward my hip. I run my palm over the spot. “Maybe.”

“Aren’t you ticklish there?” Pope asks.

The skin below my ribs prickles. Pope found that spot with his mouth and went back to it every time I twisted away. He knows exactly how hard I have to clamp my teeth together when his fingers drag over it.

His voice is casual, like he has asked whether my skate needs sharpening. Anton stops talking in the treatment-room doorway. In the mirror, Bobby’s head turns toward Pope while a strip of tape hangs loose from Caleb’s stick.

I still don’t look at him. Bobby’s question is aimed at Pope, and for one second I want to leave it there and make him explain how he learned it.

The guys know I’m bi. Letting them wonder who has touched me wouldn’t tell them anything I haven’t already told them about myself.

Pope hasn’t told them he’s into men. I can’t do it for him because I’m pissed.

Bobby turns slowly toward him. “What?”

Pope’s fingers stop on the lace. I give him half a second, long enough to see that he doesn’t have an answer.

“He got me there during the battle drill yesterday,” I say before Pope can answer. “I almost put my elbow through his face.”

Pope gives the lace a hard pull. “You tried.”