The high of finally nailing down my partner for the tournament was fast dwindling as the school day went on. I hadn’t forgotten about my meeting with Gabriel Corrigan after his hockey practice. The fact that I was now project partners with the guy I was secretly catfishing made a lump the size of a mandarin orange take root in my belly. It stayed with me, even as I walked through the doors into the ice rink just a block from the school.
Immediately, a chill wrapped its icy fingers around me. I shoved my hands into my hoodie pocket and made my way through the empty concession area to the stadium. Without an audience booing and cheering, the whole place actually looked kind of shabby. Worn wooden benches sat empty, the plexiglass surrounding the arena smeared and fingerprinted. I supposed it always looked that way, it was just the seductive thrill of the games that made it seem especially exciting on the weekends.
The boy’s hockey team was still in the rink as I made my way down to the second row of bleachers and grabbed a seat on one of the hard benches. It didn’t take long to find number thirteen. Gabriel and his brother were easily the biggest players on the team. They were scrimmaging, chasing after a puck that had just flown across the ice without someone to guide it. Mr. Hart skated after them, his face hardened with concentration as he watched his players fight for the puck. Gabriel was winner. He broke free from the pack with impressive strength and directed his large, muscular body down the ice, causing me to gulp with nerves.
Maybe I hadn’t thought this through.
How was I going to face him, knowing everything that I did?
He was going to take one look at my face and know I was CurrerBFighting from the game. I just knew it. And then he and his brother were going to torture me until I had to leave school. Leave town. Heck, leave the state.
Sweat began to form on the back of my neck. I swiped at it, instantly annoyed at myself for being so weak-willed. It wasn’t like Gabriel could read minds. If I just kept it together, played my charming old self, he’d never see it coming. The Corrigan boys were known for their brawn, not for their brains. This would be easy, as long as I didn’t freak out.
“All right boys, that’s a wrap!” Coach Hart blew his whistle and waved his finger in a circular motion in the air. “Good practice. Everyone remember to take it easy for this weekend’s game. Rest up those muscles. See you tomorrow.”
As the rest of the team headed in toward the locker room, number thirteen broke off and skated toward me. My blood pressure rose as he unfastened his helmet, pulled it off, and gave his shaggy head a shake. His cheeks were flushed, possibly from the cold, or maybe from the awesome maneuvering he’d just done on the ice. As he got closer, I could tell that his hair was wet with sweat and clinging slightly to his forehead. It wasn’t a bad look for him. Not at all. It was no wonder the Corrigans had fangirls lining up at hockey games for them. They knew exactly how to milk it.
“Hey,” he said in a gruff voice, raising his chin slightly in greeting as he stepped off the ice. His gaze flicked up to meet mine for the merest second before he tucked his head and stared hard down at the ground.
“Hi.” I chewed on my bottom lip, determined not to start this meeting like our last one. All we needed to do was decide on our topic and then this meeting would be over—and the torturous churning inside of my gut would go away. Pulling my notebook from my backpack, I flipped through the first few pages. “So I’ve been thinking about what we could do for the project. It’s got to involve something with a lot of activity. Something that involves the muscle and skeletal systems and would be easy for us to document. This is just a bunch of word vomit, but I’ll spit it out there and see if you like anything. Deal?”
I looked expectantly up at him and a jolt went through me when I found him staring at me, his mouth grim and forehead wrinkled in concentration. The moment our eyes met, he shifted his weight and moved his tight grip up on his hockey stick.
“Fine.” His jaw muscles contracted and loosened. “Shoot.”
“All right.” Always the man of many words. I looked down at my scrawled notes. “I started with a dance theme. Ballet, hip hop, belly dancing, swing, two-step, ballroom dancing. Any of those sound good?”
One glance up at his horrified expression was all it took to tell me those were out of the question.
“Okay, so you’re not a dancer,” I said with a laugh. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you study ballet.”
“Thanks.” The instant relief on his face was almost enough to make me giggle.
Instead, I chuckled quietly and looked down at the notebook, mulling over the options. Maybe I should’ve stuck to ballet. It wouldn’t been a sweet kind of torture to put on the boy who’d helped make my very existence miserable since seventh grade. But I was already poising to torture him by using him for the tournament. I
may have been a bit vindictive, but I wasn’t cruel.
“Well, there’s also running, jumping, walking, speed walking, bicycling, basketball, baseball, and horse riding.”
I’d gotten that last idea from Charlotte and her new barrel riding obsession. It would’ve been awesome to study the human body as it worked together with a horse to compete.
Still, Gabriel didn’t seem all that attached to any of my ideas. When I looked up at him again, he simply shrugged noncommittally. Annoyance flared up in my gut. Surely, he wasn’t going to make me do all the thinking for this project. If he had any good ideas, he needed to speak up.
“Hey, Gabriel!” Joe Brewer came barreling onto the ice in his skates, a hockey stick in his hand. He threw his hand into the air and waved at Gabriel with an embarrassing enthusiasm. “I bought a stick!”
I watched as Joe skated toward us. Honestly, it was like watching a baby giraffe walk for the first time. Where Gabriel was natural and fluid on the ice, Joe was a mess. He nearly plastered himself against the plexiglass as he failed to break in time.
“You ready, G-man?” he called.
G-man? No one dared called one of the Corrigan boys such an infantile nickname. At least, not if they wanted to survive high school. I squinted over at Gabriel, scared for my little gamer buddy’s life, but he didn’t seem insulted. Instead, he cracked a halfway grin, went over to the gate, and leaned over it.
“In a sec, Joe,” he said, nodding in my direction. “School stuff.”
“Right, right.” Joe puffed out his chest under his hoodie, as if he thought it would make him look more muscular. “I’ll just be shooting a puck around over there.”
I put down my notebook and walked toward the plexiglass. “I didn’t know you played hockey, Joe.”
He wagged his eyebrows at me. “You bet yeah, babe. With the G-man’s help, I’ll be the best player on the team before long. You’ll see.”