Page 39 of Rookie Season
But as I stride back to the dressing room, Sandine walkspast me and purposefully shoves his shoulder into mine as he does.
“Coach Anderson can’t do you favors forever, Nepo Baby. You’ll have to actually play hockey eventually.” He snickers and walks into the shower room.
I roll my eyes and try not to let the comment bother me. I’m a damn good hockey player, always have been. I’m just finding my stride here on a new team and in life.
Everything will be okay. Hopefully.
Once me, Penn, and Fisher are in the G Wagon and on our way home, I finally relax. Fisher scored a goal tonight, so he can’t stop smiling. His energy is contagious, making it difficult to hang on to my sour mood.
It’s nearly midnight when we finally arrive back at the loft, and I don’t feel tired at all. Probably thanks to my extra-long nap courtesy of Harry Styles the third.I need to find a new charging cord to use tonight.
The three of us step inside to find Ally standing in the kitchen surrounded by baking supplies and music playing on the Archibald Bluetooth speaker system, some pop song that I’ve heard on the radio before. She doesn’t notice us immediately and does a perfect pirouette in time with the music in the middle of the kitchen.
Her eyes are closed, feeling the music as she moves, almost like she doesn’t even know she’s dancing. Her body is all long, graceful lines and fluid movement, and I can’t tear my eyes away.
She finishes the dance move by kicking one leg out with a flourish, then opens her eyes. When she sees us standing there staring at her, she jumps and her hand comes to her chest.
Penn and Fisher clap and whistle.
“Encore, encore!” Penn shouts.
I find myself wanting an encore as well, wishing to see more of her dance routine.
Ally rolls her eyes, a faint blush on her cheeks. “Absolutely not. Archibald, music off,” she says with a laugh then nods to the TV in the living room, where ESPN is still on. “Congrats on your win tonight. You boys hungry?”
“Aww, you watched our game?” Fisher lumbers toward her and pulls her into a brotherly hug. “And yeah, I’m starving! What are you making?”
“I was going to surprise you guys with homemade cookies when you got home, but my mom called and I got a little distracted, so I’m just getting to it now.”
“Can we help?” Penn asks, shrugging off his suit coat and rolling up his shirt sleeves.
“Yes!” Ally says, waving a wooden spoon in the air. She’s still wearing her workout shorts from earlier, but she’s thrown on a baggy hoodie over that tight tank top.
“Grab the chocolate chips over there.” She points to a shopping bag. She must’ve gone to the store because I’m pretty sure there were zero baking items in our apartment until now.
Fisher and I follow Penn’s lead, removing our jackets and rolling up our sleeves. We’re probably all thinking the same thing—the more we help, the faster we can eat the cookies.
Ally gives us each a job; Penn’s measuring dry ingredients, Fisher is whisking the eggs, and I’m scooping the dough onto the pan. Ally must make these cookies a lot, because she isn’t using a recipe.
I find I enjoy watching her take charge, telling us what to do. I like this confident side of her. Is she always this confident when she’s dancing? Taking command of a stage, all eyes on her, even in the kitchen licking batter off a spoon,her movements are graceful. She might not even realize how often she keeps her toes pointed.
I blink, realizing I’ve been studying her, and now the cookie pan has twice the amount of dough balls on it than Ally instructed. I force myself to keep my eyes on the cookie sheet, then try to convince myself to go to bed.
To spend my time the way I like to…alone. But my feet won’t move, and I find that for once I don’t want to be alone right now. I want to be right here.
Where she is.
CHAPTER 17
ALLEGRA
“We’re so damn domesticated,”Penn crows as he bends over to extract a hot, fresh pan of the best chocolate chip cookies on earth from the oven.
Fisher slaps him on the ass. “The apron definitely adds a little something-something.”
We were all in hysterics a few minutes ago when Penn started rooting in a drawer for a measuring cup and instead produced a frilly pink apron—an apron that definitely doesn’t belong to me and which all three of the boys swore up and down they knew absolutely nothing about.
It was Noah, surprisingly, who grinned wickedly and concluded it must belong to Fisher’s mom and that she probably wore it for his dad with nothing underneath. Fisher immediately dry heaved and argued his parents would never—and even if they would, he didn’t want to know about it…and then, just to piss him off, Penn decided to wear the apron.
