Brooke and I had actually talked about this, and we decided to play it the way any other in-love couple would. We’d attend functions together, and when we traveled, she’d be in my bed with me if I rated a room on my own. That was never known until the start of the season, and single rooms came not only by seniority, but by performance. Still, preseason we most likely would all be paired up with roommates.
Well, that’s not exactly the arrangement we came to. In fact, she specifically said she would not be in my room, since she was not about to flaunt that in front of her father. I conceded that she would have her own room, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be fucking her on road trips. She just doesn’t know that part yet.
“You’re the only one that knows this is a sham,” I tell Dax. “We’ll stick to the same story that we gave the coach. We started dating a few months ago, fell hard and fast, blah-blah-blah. Not much else to tell.”
“Going to be weird seeing you all cozy with a chi—,” Dax starts to say, but my glare redirects him. “I mean…Brooke.”
That’s the truth. In the three years we’ve been friends, neither one of us has had a serious girlfriend. In fact, in my twenty-eight years of life, I never really have. I mean, sure, I’ve dated women exclusively and for lengths of time, but I’ve never been in love.
And I’m thinking dating a woman casually versus dating one you’re supposedly in love with are probably two different things. As a professional hockey player, I think casual dating means maybe being able to hook up once a week for dinner and a movie. Definitely fucking after. Or maybe taking a woman to a charity gala—you know, like arm candy. And then, well…fucking after.
But this thing with Brooke.
Our fake “serious” relationship is probably going to play out in a vastly different way. Especially if her father is to believe us.
“This might be more complicated than I thought,” I admit to Dax.
He chuckles as he twists the cap of his water bottle. He points it at me. “You’ll figure it out, bud. Maybe you should read some romance novels or some shit. My sister reads them all the time and says that if men read them, and acted like the dudes in those books acted, women would be a lot happier about giving blow jobs.”
I can’t help but snort. Dax’s sister, Willow, is the last person I’d take dating advice from. She goes through boyfriends faster than I go through M&M’s when I have a chocolate craving.
My phone rings and I pick it up from the table where I’d set it earlier. A smile forms on my face when I hear the opening “Ah-ah-aaaaah-ah” of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” My mom is a total Led Zeppelin freak and it’s her favorite song, so it’s her ringtone.
“What’s up, hot mama?” I ask as soon as I connect the call.
Dax leans across the able, puts his face near the phone, and yells, “Wa-a-a-z-up, Mama Scott?”
I lean away from Dax with a glare, but my mom’s laughing on the other end. “Tell that sweet boy I said hello.”
“He’s not sweet,” I say, but it would be futile to get her to believe me on that. She adores Dax. “So to what do I owe the pleasure of your lovely voice this morning?”
“Just wanted to say hi,” she says almost wistfully. “I tried to call you yesterday to wish you good luck on the first day of training camp, but got your voicemail instead.”
She had indeed called me. It was during the team meeting and I’d turned my phone to mute. After the meeting, we went straight to the ice. Then after that I’d hit the gym hard, trying to squat, deadlift, and chest press my frustrations away. After that it was dinner, then I was getting lost in Brooke. I hadn’t had a chance to call her back.
“Sorry,” I tell my mom. “Yesterday was just really hectic.”
“So how was it?” she asks me guardedly. My mom more than anyone knows how disappointing it was for me to get traded away from the Vipers when they were stacked to really kick ass this year. “How was the coach? The other players? What about the training staff? Are they cool?”
Chuckling, I settle back into my chair and tell my mom all about it. She’s been such an integral part of my hockey life she deserves my time to indulge all her curiosities.
Marianne Scott raised me solely by herself after my father died of a heart attack when I was seven. He got me started in hockey, but my mom took over as my biggest supporter after he was gone. She’s a financial analyst for an insurance company that has a main office in London, Ontario, where I was born and raised. All through minors and major juniors—which I was fortunate to play for London so I didn’t have to stay with a billet family—my mom was there for almost every single game, even traveling over six and a half hours to watch me play in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.