Page 2 of The Girlfriend Goal
"Most," I admitted. "But not all of us are like that."
"Right." She pulled her hair into a ponytail with quick, efficient movements. "Tell me, Lance Fletcher, star defenseman who's definitely not like other hockey players, how many women's sports games have you attended? How many times have you watched our game footage? Can you even name two players on the soccer team?"
I opened my mouth, then closed it. The truth was, I couldn't name a single player besides the captain currently eviscerating me.
"That's what I thought." She grabbed a bag from her locker and slammed it shut. "You're all the same. You think because you can skate backwards and hit people with sticks, the sun rises and sets on your schedule. Well, news flash. Some of us are out here working just as hard for a fraction of the recognition and resources."
"I said I was sorry."
"And I said I don't care." She shouldered her bag and stalked toward me. I stepped aside quickly, but she paused at the door. "Next time, try actually reading the sign. Though I guess that might be asking too much from someone who probably got into university on a hockey scholarship."
The jab about reading hit closer to home than she could’ve known. I felt my jaw clench, the familiar shame rising up. But before I could respond, she was gone, leaving me alone in the women's locker room like the idiot I was.
"Probably can't even read the sign on the door," I heard her mutter as the door swung shut.
I stood there for a full minute, processing what had just happened. In the years at Greenfield, I'd never had a woman look at me with such complete and utter disdain. Usually, mentioning I played hockey opened doors, not slammed themin my face. But Rachel had been thoroughly, completely unimpressed. More than that—she'd been disgusted.
It should’ve been humiliating. So why couldn't I stop thinking about the way her eyes had sparked when she was angry? Or how she'd commanded the entire space despite being half-dressed and caught off guard? Or the way she'd said my name like it was something distasteful she needed to spit out?
My phone buzzed. Team meeting in five minutes. Shit.
I sprinted out of the women's locker room—after double-checking the sign—and found the correct door two hallways over. The guys were already gathering, most of them looking as wrecked as I felt.
"Yo, Fletcher!" Matt called out from across the room. "Where the hell were you? You missed the pre-meeting entertainment. Petersen's still got puke on his shoes."
"Got lost," I muttered, dropping onto the bench next to him.
"Lost? In the rink you've been coming to for years?" Matt studied me with the intensity he usually reserved for deciding which dating app match to pursue. "You look weird. Weirder than usual, I mean."
"Thanks, asshole."
"Seriously, what's up, man? You've got that face you make when you're trying to solve calculus problems."
"I don't make a face."
"You absolutely make a face. It's like this." He scrunched up his features in what I assumed was supposed to be an imitation of me.
"That's just my regular face."
"Nah, your regular face is more 'confident asshole with a side of father issues.'" He wasn't wrong. "This is different. This is—holy shit, is this about a girl?"
"No."
"It's totally about a girl." His voice rose with excitement. "Lance Fletcher, commitment-phobe extraordinaire, has finally met a girl who's gotten under his skin. This is better than when I matched with those twins."
"Would you shut up?" I glanced around, but the other guys were too busy nursing their post-practice exhaustion to pay attention. "It's not about a girl."
Before he could respond, Coach Stevens entered, and the room fell silent. He launched into his usual post-practice breakdown, but I found my mind wandering. Not to the defensive zone coverage he was diagramming on the whiteboard, but to a pair of stunning eyes that had looked at me like I was something she'd scrape off her cleats.
"Fletcher?" Coach's voice snapped me back to reality. "Since you're clearly too advanced for this discussion, why don't you explain to Morrison why his gap control was shit yesterday?"
"Uh..." I scrambled to remember what we were talking about. "He was too aggressive on the forecheck?"
"That was you, man," Morrison called out. "Coach just spent five minutes explaining how you left me hanging when you stepped up on that two-on-one."
The room erupted in laughter, and I sank lower on the bench.
"Maybe if Fletcher spent less time working on his hair and more time working on his positioning," Coach muttered, turning back to the board.
