Page 17 of The Cruelest Kind of Hate
“Stretches,” I grouse, not wanting to elaborate. I hate being indisposed. I would’ve resorted to violence way sooner if it wasn’t for this brace hindering me.
Three months of stretches with the most beautiful girl that has ever graced this planet, touching me at every little convenience. I may be a competitive hockey player, but this is one game that I’m going to lose.
7
CHICKS BEFORE DICKS
CALISTA
“This is him?” my best friend—and fellow dance instructor—Hadley asks, turning her phone around to show me a picture of Gage. And not just a professional headshot of him in his hockey jersey. No, she somehow managed to find the sexiest, most erotic picture of him posing without a shirt on as he seductively sucks frosting off his finger.
I don’t know why that exists. I don’t know how she found it. But it’s currently singeing my optic nerves.
“Yes,” I mumble as I lean over my outstretched leg, feeling the satisfactory burn in my right hamstring.
She’s in a butterfly stretch to warm up for her pole dancing class, and she’s staring a bittoointently at the pixelated screen. “Cal, he’s hot as fuck. And that’s coming from someone who isn’t straight.”
No! Argh. Why couldn’t she say that he was a hideously deformed monster? Hadley’s not one for sugarcoating, either. She’s had plenty of opinions about my exes in the past, which is why they’reexes.
I avert my gaze from the haunting picture, pasting on a rictus grin. “He’s fine.”
“He’s better than fine. This guy could run me over and I’d thank him.”
I’ll run him over instead, free of charge.
“Uh-huh.”
“And you said he was a hockey goalie?” she exclaims, bending all the way at the hip so that her folded legs are flush against the ground.
I switch to my other leg for a side stretch, warring with a muscle ache, and now, thanks to Gage’s too-straight teeth and sexy grin, a stomachache. “So?”
She bumps me with her shoulder. “Sooo, goalies are really flexible.”
I snort. “Not this one.”
“They also have a lot of stamina,” she adds, giving me one of her terribly coordinated winks.
Once I’ve stretched the life out of my thighs, I bring one leg behind me and fall into the splits, needing some real pain to distract me from this volatile pool of emotion welling in my chest. Another pro-Gage comment and it’ll erode my bones like acid. “Why are you trying to pimp him out to me?”
Hadley gives me one of her famousoh, sweetielooks. “Maybe because you deserve to have fun for once? Let loose? Think about something other than work and your home life?”
“I can do that without getting in bed with someone,” I insist, bouncing slightly against the wooden floorboards to test the give of my splits.
“True. But it’ssooomuch more fun if you do,” she sing-songs.
I’d give anything to have Hadley’s carefree disposition. She’s adventurous, spontaneous, open-minded. She always says yes, no matter how absurd the question is. She lives her life to the fullest with no regrets, and she has the best stories to tell me because of it. If she wasn’t committed to three classes every week, she’d hop on the next flight to Barbados and live in abungalow with whatever she could fit in one of those hobo sacks. She’s also a big advocate for polyamory, which has helped with her mood in more ways than one.
“I just don’t have time,” I defend, although I don’t miss the tiny seed of longing planting itself in the pit of my belly, trying to spread its roots in a restricted square of nutrient-deprived soil. That’s what I am. A dying plant in a too-small pot. Never given the room to grow. Always destined to wither.
I’d love to have free time when worries didn’t torment my mind. I’d love to feel confident in where I’m at, to feel stable in my career choice, to feel happy with the decisions I’ve made so far in my life. But that’s a long way from ever happening. And although I may complain once in a while about my familial obligations, the structure of that routine and the relationships I’ve nurtured is what keeps me moored.
Hadley’s optimism is like a shot of espresso at five in the morning. “Wouldn’t you rather do the splits onsomeonerather than the floor of your studio?”
That’s…that’s preposterous. Hilarious, but preposterous.
“Please. If I wanted to bounce on a shrimp dick, I’d call my ex.”
Hadley glances one last time at her phone before chuckling. “Oh, honey. Gage Arlington doesnothave a shrimp dick.”
