Tomboy

That was just idiotic. The team nutritionist would kill him if he actually ate as many peanut butter cups dipped in chocolate as he wanted, but he still managed to sneak in enough to have to do an extra few laps around the rink.

Zach: Who is dumb enough 2 think that?

Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Apparently? You.

He opened up Instagram and spotted the post Fallon was talking about right away. It was a picture of someone, presumably him, holding a bag of Reese’s Pieces and declaring them his post-workout guilty pleasure. Yeah. He was going to have to sit Kyle down and have a little chat about this.

Zach: Tks for the heads-up.

Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: NP

He stared at his phone for a while, while the boiling water let off little pop-pop sounds in the pot on the stove. What are you waiting for, Blackburn? She said what she wanted and isn’t texting back. That’s not usually how it worked. Usually there was something flirty, some hinted-at promise of something more. Sure, it always came with an ulterior motive, but it always came. Not, however, when it came to Fallon. And that’s how, instead of turning back to the stove, he started thumb typing.

Zach: Are you actually off work and stalking me now?

It took about a minute, but the three dots in the bubble finally showed up on his screen.

Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Yeah right. Totally. Short shift this morning and tomorrow.

His lungs squeezed tighter. She had to work tomorrow?

Zach: But you’ll still be at the game?

Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Unless there’s a sixty-car pileup (I wish I was joking), I’ll be there.

Zach: Lots riding on this.

Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: I gave my word.

As if that said it all.

He absently scratched his chest. If the Ice Knights traded him, that would officially be the beginning of the end of his career. Kyle hadn’t exactly put it that way, but Zach knew the score. He had the next few games to show he could play like he used to, or they were going to send him off to another team—or down to minors. And if that happened? He’d be lucky to ever pay off the millions in debt his parents had racked up in his name or manage to keep the lid on what his parents had done. When he had to file for bankruptcy, everyone would find out. Then the worst would happen—it would make the news. Everyone would look at him and realize what a fool he’d been. They’d know he was just another athlete who’d trusted the wrong people and wasted his money because he was too dumb to know better. That was why he’d never called the cops on his parents and why he’d paid them what little he had left to go away forever. Keeping his dignity by making sure this stayed secret meant everything to him. He couldn’t let that happen.

By the time another message from Fallon came through, his heart was ramming against his ribs, his pulse was pounding in his ears, and the hand squeezing his lungs had tightened its grip. He had to blink a couple of times to clear his vision enough to read her words on the screen.

Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Have you ever heard Baby Shark?

Zach: ?

He just stared at his screen, his breathing slowly returning to normal as he tried to figure out where the hell she was going with this. They were playing the Thunder tomorrow. They didn’t have the Sharks on the schedule until their western road trip later in the month.

Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Click this link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XqZsoesa55w

From anyone else, he would have expected it to lead to something that would probably infect his phone and send everything he had stored on the cloud out to the masses. This was Fallon, though. She was a pain in the ass, but she didn’t seem the kind to fuck him over. So he clicked. And watched. And…what the fuck?

It was a kids’ song, the kind of obnoxiously-catchy, barely-any-lyrics song that was never going to get out of his head.

Zach: Why did u do that 2 me?

Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Because I’m evil.

Zach: Can’t disagree.

Zach Ate More Tainted Muffins: Plus it’ll be stuck in your head now and when things start to get a little stressful you can just bop along to your ear worm.

How did she know? And she wasn’t wrong. He was still tapping his fingers along to the beat.

Zach: There is something not right about you.