Page 17 of Forbidden Hockey

Hunter throws a wooden spoon at me. “Out. Lawn.Now.”

With the move in our near future, I pick up more shifts for extra cash. Hunt’s not gonna leave me hanging, but I wanna prove I can look after myself. Unfortunately, it means being around Trav more than usual. My brain whispers shit like,you could find another job somewhere else… But that’s the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard, so I ignore my brain.

He didn’t say anything about the other day—works for me. I didn’t wanna lie, but no way was I telling the truth. This is better. Maybe he’ll assume I was pissed about something else. Not like that hasn’t happened before.

Still haven’t figured out what my thing with Trav is, but I’m getting over it, starting tonight. No better way than hooking up with a rando from Benduovr—and that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.

Trav wanders into the kitchen, brow pinched as I’m wiping down the pass bar, about to take off for the evening.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“Some guy out there asking after you. Don’t recognize him.” Trav’s voice manages to be rough and smooth at the same time.

“Must be my date.” I waggle my brows like I would for any of my friends about a hot date. And a hot date he is. Some big guy with tattoos. Older. Wears leather.

Is that … panic on his face? No. Can’t be. I’m seeing what I wanna see. “Hunter lets you date?”

I laugh. “I’ve been dating since I was fifteen, Trav.”

He shrugs. “I’ve never seen you with anyone.”

That’s because I never bring my dates here. Don’t know why other than “it feels wrong”, but I talked myself out of that last night. Ican’tlust over my best friend’s dad.

“Admit it. You found him on that fucking app I hear all the staff talking about. How do you know he’s not gonna gut you open when he’s done with you, and feed you to his pigs?”

“Oddly fucking specific, Trav.”

“I’m sure you’ve heard of the Pickton farm? It’s not fiction, Dirk. And that’s just one story. Maybe I need to tell you about the time I had to fish someone’s bloated body out of the?—”

“Okay, okay,” I concede. Trav’s seen the worst of humanity, and he’s paranoid as hell because of it. “I’ll make sure he’s not a serial killer.”

“And how you gonna do that, huh?” He gets closer. I can smell him. If he takes one more step toward me, we’ll be touching. My skin breaks out in gooseflesh that I hope to fuck he doesn’t notice.

A weird sensation passes between us in a silence that lasts for too long. I mean, it’s not like Trav and I are chatty Kathys, but if we don’t have anything more to say, we carry on. We don’t faceoff in silence like an old married couple disagreeing about where we place the coffee canister.

“Anyway, I’m gonna…” I trail off, indicating that I’m leaving for the day.

“Since when do you tell me when you’re off? I’m the manager on duty. I sign you out.”

The “what the fuck” is on the tip of my tongue, and if not for the other members of staff present, that’s exactly what I’d say to him. As is, all I can do is take the scolding. Can’t say the other thing I want to either, which is that I never sign out with anyone anymore. Haven’t since I first began working here.

It’s kinda known that Trav and I are … friends, I guess? I always inform a manager when I leave, but I never ask them. I definitely don’t ask Trav.

“Anything you’d like me to do, sir?” I say, doing my best to keep the snark out of my voice.Buuuut, I’m almost ninety-eight percent sure I failed.

“Yeah, there is, actually. We’re low on expo stock.”

He’s a fucking liar. We aresonot low on expo stock.

His indigo eyes are hard, daring me to call him on it in front of everyone. I pull my cap off and run a hand through my hair. Looks like I’m doing expo stock we don’t need. That’s gonna take me an hour. “Jack’s expo tonight, if he’ll come in an hour earlier, can he do it instead?”

“No.”

“No?”

“S’what I said.”

I grit my teeth, biting back all the ways I wanna tell him he’s being a fucking dick. “My date?—”