Page 10 of Much Ado About Hockey

Karen flushed, realizing how blunt she must’ve sounded. “It doesn’t match your… your image,” she began carefully, trying to recover. Her voice trailed off as she glanced down at the mismatched socks again. She wasn’t even sure what she was expecting anymore—leather jackets and chaos maybe, but not novelty socks and a weirdly clean condo.

“This is my place,” Jett said simply, his tone neutral but his eyes searching. “You can drop your things there or…”

“I’d like to sit at the table so I have a place to write,” she said, lifting her chin with the smallest thread of resolve. She needed some kind of structure here—something to hold onto.

“Oh sure,” he replied with a nonchalant shrug, jerking his thumb toward the dining area. “Over there. You want somecoffee, tea, or a beer? Wait. I bet you are a mimosa-sorta-girl, aren’t you?”

She blinked at him again, unsure if he was teasing or genuinely trying. “I don’t drink.”

“Me neither – and I was hoping you wouldn’t ask for the beer.”

“Then why offer it?” she asked, puzzled and trying to make sense of the patchwork of contradictions standing in front of her.

“Because it sounded cool and seemed normal.”

Karen tilted her head, utterly thrown. “Beer, when you don’t have any, is not normal,” she chided, her words slow, almost careful. “Most people would say ‘coffee’ or ‘just a glass of water’.”

“Ugh, have you tasted the tap water?”

She raised her brows. “Do you have bottled?”

“Yeah.”

“Then offer a bottle of water instead of beer.”

“Okaaaay,” he drawled dramatically, his entire body radiating mock exasperation. “You can drop your things there. Would you like coffee, tea, orbottled water? I bet you are a mimosa-sort-of-girl.”

She stared at him, disbelief crashing over her in waves.

“Oh. My. Gosh,” she muttered, drawing out each word as if they might make more sense in isolation. “Did you justalteryour sentence andrepeatit back to me…with a tone?Seriously?”

He only shrugged, unconcerned, like this entire exchange was perfectly acceptable.

“I’m not a child,” she said flatly.

“Coffee then?”

“I thought we already established that.”

He shrugged again.

Karen squinted at him. “Is something wrong with your shoulders?”

“I’m tense,” he admitted, shrugging yet again before rotating his arm in a lazy circle. “Wanna rub them?”

Her eyes narrowed. “No.”

“Figures…”

And with that, he turned and wandered off toward the kitchen, rubbing one shoulder with a broad hand and rolling the other like he was working out a kink from a workout he never mentioned doing. Karen stared after him, jaw slack, eyes wide. He was officially the strangest man she had ever met.

And she was here.

Willingly.

What did that say about her?

She sighed and knelt down to place her things—her purse, her notepad, the pen she always carried like a lifeline—beside his sneakers. The ones that had seen better days and were now tossed haphazardly near the wall. Everything about this place and this man was slightly offbeat, like a melody that didn’t quite resolve.

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