Page 32 of Icing the Cougar
For a long time, we don’t move. She strokes my back, gentle now, and I nuzzle into her neck, tasting the salt and the echo of her heartbeat under my tongue.
After a while, she rolls away and stretches, staring up at the ceiling. “That was—” she starts, but I don’t let her finish. I turn her on her side and pull her close, spooning, one hand on her hip, the other tracing lazy lines over her stomach.
She’s quiet, thinking, always, probably about me, about the things I won’t say out loud. I feel the question in her body, the way she tenses when I squeeze too tight, the way she breathes my name like it’s a warning.
I lay there for an hour, staring at the ceiling. The clock on her nightstand glows 11:58 in soft blue. My fingers drum against herskin, restless, and she twitches every time, but doesn’t tell me to stop. My mind runs circles, replaying every second of practice, every word from Coach, every joke from the locker room. Cougar, GILF, silver fox—fuck, maybe they’re right. Maybe I don’t deserve her. Maybe I’m just a kid who doesn’t know when to quit.
I watch her sleep, the line of her jaw, the freckles on her cheek, the tiny bruise on her neck where I got too rough. I wonder if she’ll still want me in a year, or if she’ll realize she’s better off with someone older, calmer, less likely to destroy everything he touches.
I listen to the fridge hum and the cars drift by outside, the city never really quiet even this late. I trace her spine, memorize each bump and hollow, each place my lips have been. I wonder if she dreams of me, or if she dreams of something better.
Chapter 16
Trinity
I’ve never liked the tunnels beneath an arena. They’re always damp, fluorescent, and echo, giving you that earie feeling, but I promised Jasper I’d meet him down here after his game. At least they won and tonight he’ll be in a good mood instead of him being upset. I’m halfway down the corridor toward the locker room, when I hear them—male laughter bouncing off the concrete walls. I keep walking, even though every step slows me down, because I already recognize Jasper’s laugh, even when it’s disguised under bravado. Even when it sounds nothing like him.
There’s a bend in the hallway just before the locker room doors. I pause there, pressing myself flat to the wall. The locker room door opens and closes with staff walking in and out, and I can see glimpses inside each time they do. Guys are standing in aloose cluster, towels draped around their necks, heads tipped back as they howl at something one of them just said.
“How long you figure before your cougar trades you up for one with a real job, Jazz?” a voice pipes up, high and mocking.
Another guy snorts, “She’ll get bored of your shit, man. Bet you fifty bucks she ghosts before playoffs.”
Jasper’s voice, raw and louder than the rest, almost a bark. “None of you have ever even seen a real woman naked, let alone one who’s not begging for a follow back on Instagram.”
“Whatever, man,” the first one says. “Just don’t come crawling when she snaps you back to reality with the fact she’s got a decade more experience with life than you do.”
They laugh, Jasper included, the mean kind of laughter, the kind that feels like you’re being spit-roasted over a bonfire. My chest tightens so fast it hurts, and I have to swallow to keep from gagging. I can’t see Jasper’s face, but I know him well enough to guess the expression he’s got on—big, lazy grin, like none of this matters. Like he hasn’t spent the last three weeks in my bed, my mouth, my thoughts.
Someone else, maybe Zach, pipes up: “I want in on the pool. I give it three weeks, tops. Unless she gets pregnant, and then you’re totally fucked, bro.”
My vision goes white at the edges. I don’t move, don’t breathe, just stand there shaking, nails digging half-moons into mypalms. The marks Jasper left on me last night go from sweet memory to acid on my skin. I’d thought they meant something. Now they feel like brands. Evidence.
My ears ring, and the words start to blur together, but I can still pick out phrases: “Conquest.” “Notch on the stick.” “Older chicks fuck crazy, but you gotta dump them before they get clingy.”
I press myself so hard into the wall. Every memory I have of the last month—Jasper’s lips on my skin, the way he’d curl his hand around the back of my head and tell me, “Don’t flinch, just trust me,” the way he’d say my name when he thought I was asleep—turns from hot to poisonous in my brain. My hands start to tremble so bad I have to hide them in my coat pockets, clutching at lint just to keep from shaking apart. My mouth tastes like metal.
The laughter fades as the guys seems to drift apart, probably scattering toward the showers. The door opens again, and I see Jasper lingering behind, saying something I can’t hear, but it doesn’t matter. I wait until the hallway is dead quiet, then step away from the wall and keep walking past the locker room, past the weight room, all the way to the deserted end of the hall, and collapse onto a bench made of cold, ridged metal.
It’s the kind of bench that leaves lines in your skin if you sit too long. I don’t care. I need the pain. I stare at the spot on the floor where the mop bucket left a dried ring of blue and try to un-hear everything I just heard. It doesn’t work.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
Jasper:WHERE ARE YOU
Typical that it’s all caps, no punctuation. I flip the phone over and press it face-down on the bench, hands folded in my lap. I’m not ready to see or talk to him yet.
The sounds of the rink drift down through the ductwork—sharp scrape of a Zamboni blade, the clatter of skates against concrete, the far-off buzz of crowd noise like a headache in the walls. I focus on it and just breathe until the pounding in my chest eases off.
It doesn’t go away though. It never goes away.
I replay every second of the past week in my head. The way Jasper would look at me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention. The way he’d touch me, desperate and almost scared. The way I’d let him.
Now, I see all of it for what it was. It was only a story he could tell. Another line to drop in a locker room. A secret thrill, knowing he’d conquered someone older, someone out of his league. Maybe it had never even been about me.
Maybe I’d just been practice.
I touch the mark on my collarbone, the one he’d bitten into my skin last night, and try to remember if it ever felt good. Now it just burns.
