Page 10 of Gross Misconduct

“How long ago was that?”

He thinks it over. “Late nineties. I’ll let you do the math.”

I try to calculate how old that makes him. Math was never my strong suit. I’d take out my phone to use the calculator, but that’s even ruder than Wikipedia. He’s gotta be in his forties, which only turns me on more.

“Were you the star forward?” I ask, half mockingly.

“Defenseman, but a star.” He gives a faint chuckle. “I thought I was going to make it. So did my coach, my teammates, my mom. College and NHL scouts were fighting over the chance to talk to me.” He stares into his drink. “But one bad collision changed everything. This other player and I were going for the puck. At the last minute, he jams his stick out to stop me. The end of it busts through my face shield and straight into my eye.”

I gasp, which I know isn’t the respectful reaction, but shock overtakes me as I imagine the scene. Guilt immediately takes over me.

“I’m sorry.”

He waves it off. He’s probably used to it. “On the way to the game that day, my face shield had gotten cracked because a box in my car’s trunk fell on it. That made it vulnerable enough…”

My dad once said freak accidents are just a lot of little accidents piled on top of each other. The circumstances that led to that collision are one in a million, yet one in a million occurrences happen all the time.

“But that other player, he came at me with his stick. You don’t do that.” His face gets red thinking about his opponent, and I don’t blame him. “I’ll spare you the gory details involved with reattaching my eye. But after that, the scouts didn’t want to fight over me. Go figure.” He sips his beer. “My mom didn’t have the money to send me to college, and I didn’t have the grades to get a scholarship. All I wanted was to play in the NHL. I loved it. Aside from my kids, I didn’t know you could love something that much, like it turns your chest into an overinflated balloon always on the verge of popping. I was going to be a hot draft pick, buy my mom a nice house, and give her the life she deserved, show her that all her sacrifice and hard work so I could play hockey would pay off. Fuck, I’m sorry.” He rubs his forehead, letting out an embarrassed chuckle. “I’m killing the mood. You don’t want a sob story.”

I find that I do. It’s genuine and honest, a sharp change among my hookups. It makes it really hard to treat this guy as the one-night stand he’s supposed to be. My heart beats in my ears, even though my heart isn’t supposed to be anywhere near this interaction.

“It’s okay.” I put a hand on his shoulder, even though I really want to give him a hug. “It sucks.”

“It is what it is. Can’t change the past. It was a long time ago.” He waves it off, like it’s well in the past. Or he wishes it were.

“And I know all about wanting to make your parents proud. My dad was the proverbial sports parent. If I won a game, he loved me. If I didn’t, he wanted nothing to do with me. He didn’t even try to hide it. He didn’t buy into that whole ‘I love you no matter what’ thing that parents are supposed to do.”

What the fuck am I doing? Telling him about my shitty relationship with my dad, something I don’t even talk about with my friends. It’s not flirting material. Something about Griffin makes me want to open up, like I want to match his vulnerability. He’s quickly turning me into an unlocked safe, waiting to be yanked open and robbed.

“That’s fucked up. I’m sorry,” Griffin says. “He must love that you went pro.”

“Didn’t work like I thought.” I bit my lip, leaving it at that because I should not be sharing this shit with a hot stranger. “Do you still get along with your mom?”

“She passed almost twenty years ago.”

“And your dad?”

“Heart attack when I was ten.”

“Fuck.” My math skills are decent enough to know he was an orphan by thirty. Griffin is quickly turning from a bull I want to ride to a floppy eared dog I want to nurse back to health.

“To hockey?” I hold up my glass.

“Cheers.” Griffin snorts as he clinks it.

“Hey. Do you want to go somewhere?” I put my hand on his leg, inching up. “I have a view for you.”

4

GRIFFIN

We leave the bar and stroll down the empty, main drag of downtown Sourwood. There’s an electricity between us that only comes with the buzz of late night shenanigans. That feeling that something is going to happen, a charge between our bodies, a shucking of our responsible daytime selves. My body hums with nerves that the beers in me can’t quell.

Jack is much younger than guys I would go for, but damn if he isn’t cute. Now that he’s standing, I can fully make out his muscular body, the thick thighs and wide back common with hockey players. His thin lips stretch into a cocky smile filled with the unearned confidence of youth. Though, he made it into the NHL, so the confidence is warranted in this case. I’ll bet he loved to trash talk on the ice.

“Where are you taking us?” I ask.

“To murder you, of course.” He shoots me a wink. What guy gets away with winking at someone without being creepy? Jack does.

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