The Husband Game

Nobody, I want to tell them. Nothing to see here. Everyone please just return to your regularly scheduled fan cheering.

But unfortunately, if I do my job right, they’ll all know who I am soon. That’s the point, after all, right? To get more readers, more fans, more people following this relationship and invested in it. Before we bring it all crashing down.

I breathe in the ice-tinted air, trying to clear my head. It’s going to be okay.

Luckily, once the other team skates up to face off against ours, and we all rise for the national anthem, I have something to distract me.

And when the puck drops, I forget all about my worries in the first place. Because wow.

Charlie dominates the ice. He skates faster than anyone else on his team, whizzing from one end to the other. I can’t keep my eyes off him, and I track his path back and forth, as he moves from helping to defend his goal one moment to skating across the blue line and racing into enemy territory the next.

The other team is talented too, I can tell. They match each of Charlie’s shots, and never leave him open for long. They have one particularly big bruiser who never even touches the puck—his only job seems to be to trail Charlie like a piece of gum stuck to his shoe, never letting the puck reach Charlie’s stick if he can help it.

But Charlie doesn’t let that stop him.

Eventually there are five minutes left in the first period, and one man short, thanks to a bullshit penalty call if you ask me—the ref claims one of our guys tripped the other one, but even from my seat all the way off to the side of the ice, you could totally tell their guy was faking it, falling exaggeratedly over our guy’s stick when our guy didn’t even move an inch toward him.

That’s when Charlie gets hold of the puck at center ice. He takes off, instead of playing defensive and just dumping it into the enemy zone. He speeds straight toward the net, toward their defenders. He fakes right, and one defender peels off, trying to deflect a shot that never comes, because Charlie still has the puck. He whirls around the second defender, fires off a backhanded shot, and…

“GOAL!” the announcer shrieks, and then everyone is on their feet, jumping, shouting, screaming.

I leap up right along with them, shouting Charlie’s name. Some guy I don’t know high-fives me, and a girl in the stands behind me gives me a hug from behind. I’m laughing, cheering.

The attitude in the arena changes after that.

So does our team’s skating. Unless I’m much mistaken, they seem to move faster, complete more passes, dodge more attacks. By the end of the first period, we haven’t let a single goal in, and my adrenaline is pumping hard as we roll into a period break. Charlie waves at me from the ice, gesturing. I don’t quite understand, until the girl who hugged me in the stands earlier taps me on the shoulder.

“He wants you to meet him at the locker room,” she explains. Then she offers a hand. “Anna, by the way. If you want to walk over together, I’m headed that way. Pat’s my boyfriend.” She points at one of the defensemen, who’s waving in her direction and beaming. “A bunch of the guys meet their dates between periods. Supposed to be good luck if we give them a kiss.” She grins at me.

“Oh. Sure,” I tell her, my face flushing. Because for a second, I forgot what I was doing here. I forgot that Charlie wasn’t really my… well, anything.

Before I know it, I’m following Anna out of the stands, weaving through the press of the crowd and up the stadium seats, down a long hallway, past a security guard who looks like he’d rather keep playing Angry Birds on his phone than give any kind of a damn who comes back here anyway, and the next thing I know we’re standing outside a closed door that positively reeks of men. Body odor, sweat, adrenaline. And a whole lot of Axe Body Spray.

My nose must wrinkle, because Anna catches a look at my expression and bursts into laughter. “I’d say you get used to it,” she says, “But you really don’t.” Then she’s pounding on the door, before I can say anything.

I notice a couple other girls headed up the corridor toward us, all around Charlie’s age probably, dressed in everything from jeans to miniskirts. I shuffle from one foot to the other, suddenly shy.

“So, how long have you and Charlie been seeing each other?” Anna asks, that grin back again.

“Oh, um… I don’t know if we’re like, officially—”

“Lila.” Charlie’s the one who has flung open the locker room door. Charlie, only half dressed, bathed in perspiration. Charlie, with his perfectly sculpted, naked chest on display for everyone to see, those perfect washboard abs glistening, and oh, fuck. The way he’s looking at me, like he could devour me alive, makes me wish fervently that everyone else in this hallway would just… disappear.