Page 26 of Don't Puck Up

“Where are you from?” I asked, needing to redirect the conversation back to safer ground before I slipped up and revealed myself.

“Boston originally, then we moved to Cleveland for college,” Chris explained.

Kamirah added, “We’ve known each other since middle school.”

I’d read that they were high school sweethearts, but learning that they’d known each other even longer blew me away.

She grinned at my goldfish expression and continued. “We started dating as freshmen in high school, and when we applied to colleges—”

“Wait, seriously? You actually started dating when you were, like, twelve or thirteen?”

“Where do you start high school when you’re that young?” Kamirah asked, her eyes wide.

“Back home we do. I was twelve when I started in grade seven.”

“That’s middle school for us,” Chris explained. “We do high school from when we’re fourteen or fifteen. But yeah, we’ve known each other since we were about thirteen and started dating at fifteen.”

“So you know all the embarrassing stories about each other?”

Chris laughed at my question, and my belly swooped, knowing he was doing that because of me.

“Know? I lived it!” Kamirah giggled, and I was riding a high. These two were addictive. “Chris was the star hockey player on the school team. All the girls fawned over him, and he liked to think he was this mysterious superstar—you know, the brooding, silent type.”

I looked him up and down and smirked. “Whatever worked to get the girls.”

“It did until they wanted him to talk back.”

“I was giving them the chance to tell me about themselves,” Chris shot back playfully.

“Training him was hard work.” Kamirah gestured at him with her thumb and giggled.

“And yet, you’re still with me.” He stretched back and interlaced his fingers behind his head with a grin, and Kamirah rolled her eyes, then shot him a smile.

“I’m not letting some other woman benefit from the skills I’ve taught you. Please, what do you take me for?”

“She seems pretty smart to me,” I teased Chris.

“She is.” Chris was looking at her with complete adoration, a small smile on his lips and his body turned in toward Kamirah’s. “But don’t think I was the only terrible one here.”

“Tell me more.” I leaned forward, forearms on the table, while biting back a laugh.

“Kam wore every bad fashion choice, usually all at once. Layered necklaces, those strappy knee-high sandals, colored skinny jeans, and those tops with the bit around the waist like a skirt.”

“Peplum tops, and they were cool, thank you very much.”

“I think we all looked ridiculous in the noughties,” I added. “I was sporting the Justin Bieber look.”

Chris waved off my comment with a flick of his wrist. “Kamirah had green-tipped ends on her hair. Her very red hair.”

“It matched my eyes.” She poked out her tongue at Chris, and I laughed again. I looked at the cascade of her fiery red hair and couldn’t imagine it any other color. I resisted the urge to run my fingers through it, tugging on the thick waves.

“So what happened after high school?” I asked and adjusted my shorts, trying—unsuccessfully again—to give my erection some more room.

“We wanted to go to college together. When our offers from Cleveland came through, we jumped at it,” Chris explained.

“Chris was drafted by New York as a rookie—” Kamirah added.

ThenChris finished her sentence. “—but they had a few injured forwards and an excess of D-Men, so I was traded to Detroit at the end of my rookie year.”