Page 18

Chapter 18

Mikey

“Be careful going home.”

It was a simple phrase, something my mom would say. But I knew from Mom’s Kentucky raising that it was a mountain people way to say “I love you.” Almost everyone from that side of the family said, “be careful” instead of “I love you.”

Jessie, like Kitty, was a mountain person.

I didn’t think Jessie loved me, and she didn’t love me like that , but she cared about me. That was a change from our rocky start.

And what did she mean by home? Our home? Was she acknowledging that we shared a home? Or was it just my home?

I was all tangled up. I had no business having a crush on my roommate. None at all. Still, I started the playlist from the beginning before leaving Jessie’s work parking lot, reflecting on everything we’d talked about on the way there.

When I got home, I made more coffee and got ready for practice. My body was tired, but my mind was wide awake, and I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face. It was still stuck to me when I strolled into morning skate.

“Morning!” I chirped.

Guy narrowed his eyes at me. “Morning? You’re awfully cheerful.”

“Yeah, he’s like... smiling,” our captain Sorrento said. “More than usual.”

I shrugged. “Don’t know why. I’m pretty tired, actually.” I knew that would get me more questions.

“Somebody got laid,” Leroy taunted.

“Actually, no.”

Guy had fully stopped what he was doing to examine me. “What’s going on with Jessie?”

Figured that he would be the one to know me best. “She actually talked to me—”

“Well, yee-fucking-haw,” Leroy said.

“While I drove her to work this morning.”

Stelle wasn’t giving up. “What do you mean, you took her to work?”

“She had bad sleep, so I took her to work so she could rest.”

Guy shook his head. “Mikey, she just broke up with her long-term boyfriend. Go easy.”

“Who says I’m not going easy? I haven’t touched her! I mean, other than snuggling in my bed.”

Guy widened his eyes at me. “And taking her to work. And taking her dinner. I know you like her, Mikey.”

In my head, I added and kissed her boo-boo on her finger, and did anything and everything to get a second of her attention.

“No, I don’t. I mean, she’s hot—” I protested. “And you were the one who told me to take her dinner!”

“Mikey.”

“Yeah, okay. I hear you.”

“Just be her friend. She needs a friend right now. Put the other stuff out of your head. Be safe for her. If you try to put the moves on her, she’ll pull away. Give her space.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “You gave Kitty space and you guys were broken up for years.”

“Yeah, well, now we’re getting married,” Guy said. “The long game works. I know a thing or two.”

* * *

I ended up having to order Jessie a ride home because I was at the practice facility still when she texted that she was done. The physical therapist had me do extra conditioning and get a massage.

While I was on the table, I ordered a special delivery on rush to my place. She wasn’t comfortable in my bed, and that air mattress wasn’t doing shit for her. Jessalyn deserved a real bed, and I refused to be a bad host.

I rushed home to intercept the mattress people. But there was a little hitch in my plan. Apparently her new bed had to “off gas” or some shit before she could sleep in it. I guess memory foam stinks. As an apology, I ran to the store to get stuff to make for dinner. The other guys on the team had wives and girlfriends to make their meals. I had my meal prep lady, too, but I was also pretty decent in the kitchen. Plus, chicken breast, rice, and broccoli didn’t sound like an apology dinner.

She flumped through the door, looking exhausted as she slid off her shoes and put her purse and jacket on a hook behind the door.

“Hey,” I greeted her.

“Hey,” she said, surprise in her voice. “Second time this week I’ve caught you chef-ing.”

“I made enough for two,” I said with a grin.

“Mikey, you don’t have to cook for me.”

“But you didn’t eat yet, did you?”

“No.”

“Okay, before we eat, I have a little surprise and a little apology. Go look in your room.”

She squinted at me as she passed through the kitchen to the hallway.

“BEN!”

“Yes?”

She stomped back into the kitchen, looking half like she wanted to cry and half like she wanted to slit my throat. “Why is there a bed in my room?”

“I couldn’t let you keep sleeping on that air mattress, Jess. This is your home.”

“Stop being nice to me!” she shouted. “I’m not pitiful! I’m not your... your child!”

“You’re right. You’re not. But I want you comfortable here so you don’t rush out.”

Her chest was flushed red. “So what’s the apology? That it’s embarrassing that I’m a grown woman who’s relying on the charity of her rich athlete roommate?”

“No,” I said over my shoulder as I stirred the sautéed vegetables. I tapped the spoon on the edge of the pan. “Apparently the bed has to, like, off gas or something? Like they said it stinks and you have to let the smell come out for a few days.”

A few emotions passed over Jess’s face. The final one she settled on was anger. “So let me guess, we have to keep sharing a bed.”

I grimaced. “Hence the apology dinner.”

“Ben, I just needed to duct tape the air mattress. Stop fucking meddling!”

“Jess, come on. I’m trying to help.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath into her hands. “I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t want an apology dinner. I don’t want to share a bed. I need to find my own place.”

I felt like I’d been slammed against the boards. Somehow, this hurt worse than physical pain. I was trying, and she flipped it back in my face. I ground my molars as I turned off the stove. “Why?”

“I can’t rely on you for everything, Ben.”

“Why not?”

“I just walked out of a four-year relationship and right into, where am I, my neighbor’s apartment? I met him a couple of weeks ago, I sleep in his bed, he drives me to work, pays for my ride home, buys me furniture, cooks me dinner, and doesn’t let me pay rent. Is that an accurate assessment of where we are?” she raged.

“I don’t see why it’s a problem, Jessalyn,” I said carefully, trying not to let my own temper show in my voice. “Seems a ‘thank you’ would be in order.”

She stormed toward the front door. “Is that what you’re doing it for? The applause? What the fuck is this even about, Ben?”

I couldn’t exactly tell her that I knew Cole was a lying cheater. She might tear my skin off and make a skin suit out of me for being the messenger. I couldn’t tell her that I was a selfish bastard who wanted her instead. I had to keep playing the friend. I tried distracting her.

“Can you just eat? I feel like you need to eat,” I said.

“I won’t eat until you tell me what the fuck you’re doing and why! This is so fucking bizarre! I’ve lost my fucking mind for even being here. I should just go home.” Jessie paced by the front door, chewing her thumbnail. It looked like she might bolt at any moment.

“Don’t go home,” I said, staring at the floor between us with my arms crossed. I dug my fingernails into my forearms. Nerves passed through me, making me shake slightly.

“Why. Not.” She stalked toward me, eyes wild. In that moment, I realized just how much I didn’t know her. She could be a murderer herself and I’d have no clue. I hadn’t even googled her. I only knew her last name because I asked her when we talked on our balconies.

“I’m just trying to be nice,” I said, but my words were limp.

“Nope. That’s not it. Are you trying to fuck me?”

“Jesus, Jessie—”

“Well, what then?” she seethed, now standing right in front of me, all five foot whatever of her somehow seeming enormous in her rage.

I couldn’t tell her the full truth. She couldn’t handle it in her present state. I went with the easy out.

“I feel like I broke up your relationship!” I burst out. “I feel like it’s my fault that you left him, and I have to do something about it.”

Jessie’s face reddened, then she curled her lips. “Don’t flatter yourself, Mikey. You think you can just press your giant cock against me and sex-face me against your door, and that’ll make me walk out on my partner of four fucking years? I may have walked out but he called it over anyway.”

She said my cock was giant , thought the teenager who ruled half my brain. Not the time, teenager.

“No.” I said it low, quietly, with conviction. She’d been heaving a breath like she was ready to lob more insults at me. The breath hissed out of her like a pin in a balloon as she waited for me to say more. Her eyes darted quickly between mine. “I don’t think you left for me. I think you left because of what I said. I think you were perfectly happy pretending with him until I pointed out the obvious. And I feel like an asshole for pointing out the obvious and taking away your bliss.”

She rubbed her lips together, then gnawed on the bottom one. Her gaze traveled up and down the horizontal stripes on my shirt.

“You don’t owe me anything, Ben.”

“And you don’t owe me, either. We’re even.”

“No. We’re not,” she said, getting impassioned again. “I’m living in your apartment. You bought me—”

“Sweet Cheeks, you’re breaking the deal.”

“What deal?” She spit that phrase at me like a gangster holding brass knuckles in front of my face. God, she was feisty.

I grabbed her shoulders and walked her backward until her low back was pressed into the counter. Jessie’s breath caught as I leaned over her and opened the cabinet behind her to get down plates.

“You said if I told you why, you’d eat,” I said. “I told you why. Dinner’s getting cold.”

I held a plate out to her. Her ears turned red as she took it.

“Right.”

“Hope rice bowls are good with you.”

After filling her plate, she stalled, not knowing where to sit. She stood by the dining room table. “Should I go to the other end like we’re mortal enemies and have a stare-down?”

I cracked a smile for the first time since we’d been arguing. “Wait, are you implying we’re not enemies?”

“Hmm, good point.”

The banter that I loved so much was back. Had we just had our first real fight?

She ended up sitting across from me. “I’m sorry I got so... loud.”

I chuckled. “Don’t sweat it. You’re fun when you’re loud.”

“That’s demeaning!” she cried, her cheeks getting pink again. “That means you don’t take me seriously!”

“I take you seriously.”

She bristled. “Not if you think I’m ‘fun’ when I’m communicating a problem.”

Jessie was winding up for another rampage, but I swear, the woman just needed to eat. I stood as she prattled on, walking to her side of the table.

“It’s so classic for a man to think that a woman is being ‘cute’ when she’s mad, like her anger is just a child’s tantrum.” She stopped short as I took her fork from her hand, which she had just been using as a weapon to gesticulate at me. I rested my hip on the edge of the table. “What are you doing?”

I forked up some rice with the sauce I made and held it in front of her face. “Open.”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you going to open nicely, or are you going to make me shove it in when you’re cussing me out?”

“This is exactly what I’m talking abou—”

I pushed the fork past those plush lips and she bit down. Her eyes went from a disbelieving shock to a new softness as I removed the fork.

Then.

She fucking moaned. Her eyes rolled back and her head tipped. “Fuck me, that’s good. Did you really make that?”

I bit back a laugh. “If you want me to fuck you, Jessalyn, all you’ve gotta do is say ‘please.’”

I was being crass, but in reality, my stomach clenched. Why was the act of her enjoying my food so sensual? Why could I feel that moan at the base of my spine?

She rolled her eyes. “Dream on, Jockey.”

“Want more?” I asked, forking up another bite. “Open wide.”

She went right back to furious, giving me a glare that would have killed a weaker beast. She pressed her lips into a line, snatching the fork back from me and taking a bite.

“I’m not a child,” she snapped.

I leaned down close to her. “Then don’t play games. If you’re still mad at me after you eat, you can yell at me some more. But right now, you’re gonna eat, Sweet Cheeks. No more arguing until you’re full. Got it?”

She batted her eyelashes and gave me a simper. “Yes, Daddy.”

This woman. She really had no idea what she was doing to me. How much I wanted to pin her bratty ass to the dining room table and have her screaming for Daddy.

But that wasn’t where we were. She was upset with me for trying to help.

I returned to my side of the table, somewhat defeated. “I take you seriously, Jessie. I really thought I was being helpful.”

She dropped the attitude and gave me a morose smile. “You are. You’re just too nice.”

I poked my fork around my plate. “I just think you’re not used to someone treating you nice. You’re suspicious when someone’s nice to you. That happens when someone’s mean to you a lot.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” she groaned. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. Everything feels so out of control.”

I nudged her foot under the table to get her to look at me. She was starting to spiral. “You’re eating dinner with your friend.”

“Yeah, at his apartment that I currently haven’t paid for. That’s next to the apartment I shared with my long-term boyfriend.”

“Jessie, you’re not paying me to live here. This is your home. You don’t need to pay me for it to be your home.”

She scowled. “I will pay you, because I have to pull my weight.”

I tapped my lips, thinking. She really wasn’t going to let it go. “What if you make me a suit instead?”

She gave me a blank stare.

“You’re a seamstress, right?”

“Correct.”

“Well, I usually have some weird guy make my suits. I’d rather give you the business. And it’d probably be cheaper than paying rent and I’ll get a dank suit out of it.”

“Do you really wear suits that much?” she asked.

I totally forgot that Jessie was in fact not a puck bunny and knew jack shit about the NHL. “We’re required to wear them on game days, to and from the game.”

Her expression finally lightened. “Holy smokes, Jockey. I had no idea. I could probably get rich off your team alone.”

“Make me a good one and you know I’ll put in a good word for you, Sweet Cheeks. I’d market the shit out of you.”

She sat thinking for a moment. Her next words were quiet. “Because you feel guilty?”

God, was it Cole that made her so unsure of herself? When Jessie was at her most fiery, she was a force to be reckoned with. But vulnerable and self-doubting? I hated seeing that in her.

“Because you’re my friend and I assume you do good work.”

“This is actually not a terrible plan,” she said, taking a bite of her dinner.

“I’m full of good ideas. I’m excellent best friend material. And,” I said, gesturing to her rapidly emptying plate, “I’m a remarkable chef.”

“Alright. Deal. I’ll make you a suit in exchange for living here.”

“Great. So you’ll measure me tonight and have it done tomorrow, right?”

Jessie flopped her head down on the table.