Page 3 of Sexting the Coach (Pucking Daddies #6)
Elsie
“Alright,” Mabel says, stepping out of the little bathroom in our cabin and dropping her toiletry bag on her bed. “What the hell is going on with you?”
“Me?” I ask, my voice coming out squeaky, eyes rising up to find hers a little too quickly. Stupid, stupid—of course me, and there’s nothing in my reaction that’s going to convince her there’s not something going on with me.
“Yes,” she deadpans, dropping down to sit on the edge of her bed. “You.”
It’s late, and despite my best efforts to put Weston out of my head and focus on everything else—arts and crafts with the other people on the PT team, dinner in the huge lodge, marshmallows and s’mores around a campfire, that one player who insisted on bringing a guitar and was actually pretty good at playing it—I have not been successful.
My thoughts are two-part.
First, I can’t stop thinking about the little flash of the bruise, peeking up over the waistband of his shorts. The barely-concealed, twisted pain on his face. That slight wrinkle to his brow, the tightness around his mouth. He’s a man accustomed to hiding that pain.
And maybe he’s even used to nobody else noticing it.
The second part of the thought is worse.
Because it’s the part that can’t stop thinking about. The slope of his body, the line from his abs down to his hip, that little dip of skin visible from where he’d pulled his waistband down.
Toned, tanned, like a swimsuit model. Like the men in black and white underwear advertising campaigns. He might as well have had his t-shirt between his teeth or something.
When I walked into his room, it felt like I’d been caught doing something wrong, even though he was obviously the one trying to hide the fact that he was hurt.
“Elsie, hello?” Mabel says, waving her hand in front of my face, and I blink at her, then open my mouth to tell her the truth, but for some reason, the words just don’t come out.
Mabel and I have been tight since the first year of college, being roommates and going through the same classes and programs together.
I’ve told her everything—from my embarrassing crushes, to when I tried a menstrual cup for the first time and couldn’t get it out.
She and Hattie gloved right up, not even batting an eye.
We tell each other everything. But right now, I can’t tell her about this.
“Sorry,” I cough, “I’m just not feeling very well.”
She eyes me suspiciously as she rises from the bed, going to the mirror on the other wall and starting to run a brush through her long hair. It’s black at the root, where it’s growing in, and red down the rest of the length, long and straight.
I should be able to tell her.
But I can’t.
Why? Because I’m embarrassed, probably. I can’t believe I chased after him like that. It’s like I completely lost my capacity for rational thought, pushing right into his room without knocking.
If he reports me to HR, I’ll be fired tomorrow.
That thought sends a jolt of anxiety through me, and I try not to think about it. Try not to linger on what would happen if I lost this job before I ever really got a chance to experience it.
An hour later, Mabel has cut the light and is on her side, her hair neatly braided, face cream slathered on, an eye mask blocking out the world. She takes her sleep very seriously.
I should, too.
But I still can’t stop thinking about Weston, so I force myself to sit up. I run my hands through my hair, tap my fingers against my leg, then reach over to the nightstand for my phone and ear buds.
A moment later, white fills my screen—a hockey game from twenty years ago, Weston Wolfe looking strikingly similar to how he does now, crouching on the ice, the camera focusing in on his determined expression.
As the game plays through, I keep a close eye on how he skates, how he shifts his weight, the way he swings his stick and connects with the puck.
There’s nothing to indicate an injury with his hip.
For hours, I watch through more and more of his film, until I finally find a game in which there’s a slight delay, a slight twinge from him.
Near the end of his career. That final season, when they made it to the Stanley Cup but didn’t leave with the trophy.
“…What astounds me is this careful kind of play we’re seeing from Wolfe tonight, Steve. He is not usually quite so reserved.”
“I agree. The Squids on the ice tonight is not the same team we saw throughout the season.”
Was he injured at some point in his final season? Or is that just when it got so bad that he couldn’t hide it anymore?
If I could just take a look at him—do some scans, some mobility tests—then I’d be able to figure it out. Get him on a treatment plan so he wouldn’t have to grit his teeth, hide the pain anymore.
Which brings me back to the thought of him standing in front of that mirror, his hat turned backward, and his chin tipped down, all that tanned skin on display.
Every time I return to it—to me stepping forward and touching him, it sets my entire body on fire, until I’m really hating the fact that I’m sharing this room with Mabel.
If I was alone, I might be able to do something about the incessant, building pressure between my legs.
At around two in the morning, I decide enough is enough—I have to do something to get him out of my head.
Tapping away from the old hockey games playing on my phone, I pull up my text messages, scrolling down from the most recent ones—my group chat with Mabel and Hattie, texts with my mom—and down to the drafts.
Hattie says it’s crazy, but she’s known me long enough to know text drafting is my favorite way to get something off my chest.
My old best friend from high school, who changed friend groups and told everyone my prom dress was frumpy. The dance team coach who told me I’d never make it with weak ankles.
My ex, Jonathan Hanley, who was supposed to play for the Squids this year, but suddenly decided to cancel his trade to the team. He’d broken up with me over text, so it was only appropriate to draft out every horrible, hurtful thing I wanted to say to him in the same place.
It’s not like our break-up was even that devastating. I went through all the motions—crying, eating some ice cream, signing back up for my pilates class—but both Hattie and Mabel commented on how, as a pretty emotional person, I didn’t really seem all that broken up about it.
The screen in front of my face brings me back to the present, a name flashing at the top of the screen. Drew.
It’s the text thread with the most unsent messages—the one for my brother.
I swallow down the lump that forms in my throat at the thought of everything that I need to say to him, everything I know I’ll never say to him. That’s just not the way we do it in our family. And, besides, he’s still too angry with me for me to get through to him.
Hence, the drafts.
Instead of continuing to ruminate over that, I hit the button to draft a new text, finding Wolfe’s number in the staff directory, plugging it in.
Once, when I was home for the holidays during college, Hattie had questioned the process, saying it was a little too risky to make sense to her. Why not do it in the notes app?
I managed to convince her that it was drafting the text, actually seeing it as a message that could go out that would trick my brain into believing it. It helped me to feel like things could be resolved, even if they weren’t.
And it’s not like I can avoid Wolfe for the rest of this camp—let alone the rest of the year.
So, instead, I draft out some messages.
Elsie: I know that you don’t want to tell anyone, but I can tell that you’re hurt. And, as a medical professional, I’d be more than happy to take a look.
Elsie: Also, if you hadn’t been so dead-set on getting me during the game, you wouldn’t have gone down like that.
I pause, biting my lip, my fingers hovering over the keys, my heart pounding like this is a real message I might actually send.
But it’s just a draft.
Just an exercise.
A way to get everything out of my system.
And it’s not going to work if I don’t get everything out of my system.
After a moment of hesitation, my fingers start to fly over the screen, the words coming out faster than what I can keep up with.
Elsie: I’ll confess—I was checking you out earlier. And I think you were checking me out, too.
I swallow, glance over at Mabel, half expecting her to be sitting up at bed, her eye mask propped on her face, wearing that surprisingly maternal look and demanding to know what the hell I’m doing up this late.
But she’s still turned away from me, her torso expanding and contracting gently as she breathes. Deep asleep.
Adrenaline courses through me as I finish up my little sprint of text writing.
Elsie: I’d like to do a lot more than just check you out next time. I want to touch more than just your hip, want to see what’s under your shorts. Want to know what you’d do to me, if you got the chance.
It’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to drafting a sext in my life.
Jonathan always pressed for that kind of thing, but I was too mortified to think of what might happen if I said something cringy or unsexy and it got out to the wrong people.
I set my phone face down on the nightstand and walk to the bathroom, using the toilet quick and splashing some cold water on my face after I wash my hands. When I come back to bed, I think of the text my mom sent me earlier and pick the phone up to text her back.
The light flashes into my eyes, and it takes me a moment to see what’s on the screen.
Elsie: I’d like to do a lot more than just check you out next time. I want to touch more than just your hip, want to see what’s under your shorts. Want to know what you’d do to me, if you got the chance.
Sent five minutes ago.
Seen by Weston.
Oh, fuck.