Page 56 of Top Shelf
“Incredibly cheesy,” she agrees. “But also incredibly cute.”
“That’s my parents for you.”
“They’re still together, I assume?”
“Yep. Their fiftieth anniversary is coming up next year. Us kids are planning a surprise trip to the Amalfi Coast. They’re going to be so mad at first, but then they’ll love us again.”
She smiles softly. “Fifty years with someone sounds nice.”
I’ve never been against relationships like a lot of the other guys in the singles group chat have been, but I’ve also never been in a rush to settle down. I haven’t really given much thought to what fifty years could look like with somebody, but now that I’m thinking about it, she’s right. It does sound nice.
Really, really damn nice.
“Anyway,” she says. “Want to give me the grand tour?”
“Oh, right. You might want that, huh?”
After I offered her a room the other morning, it seemed like both of us wanted to get away from the other as fast as possible. Once her pants were dry, we settled on a move-in day, and she left. It wasn’t until after she was gone that I realized I never even showed her around.
I walk her through the apartment, pointing out the secondary bathroom and the room I use to house the hockey memorabilia I’ve collected over the years. There’s a lot of stuff in there, from commemorative photos to sticks that have too many memories attached to them to get rid of, to all the different jersey iterations I’ve worn.
“Wow,” she says, taking it all in. “This is…wow.”
I laugh. “I’m sure your brother has something similar.”
“I’m sure he does, but I’ve never seen it. Our parents got together when Reed was already in the NHL, so he was long out of the house. As you can imagine, we haven’t exactly hung out a lot over the years.”
“Why is it you two don’t get along again?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure.” She runs her hand over the jerseys I have hanging on a rack. “I don’t even remember why we disliked each other to begin with. I mean, I was a tiresome, petulant teen, and he was a young hockey star with a chip on his shoulder. Both of our families had been broken in one way or another, so maybe we thought we were trying to replace what we once had. I don’t know. It’s not that I don’t like him, because I do. I think a lot of it is just that I don’t know him. Not really.”
“And is that why you didn’t tell him you were moving in with me?”
She pauses. “Oh.”
“Yeah,oh.”
She shrugs. “I guess I just didn’t think that was an important detail.”
“You didn’t think you living with your brother’s teammate was an important detail to share?”
She finally looks at me, lips pinched together tightly. “Why didn’tyoutell him we were living together?”
“And how do you know I didn’t?”
“Well, for starters, my phone hasn’t burned a hole in my pocket, which must mean you didn’t bring it up to him either.”
Fuck. She has me there.
“No,” I confess. “I didn’t tell him.”
“What? You didn’t think you living with your teammate’s sister was an important detail to share?”
She sounds so bratty, and it reminds me of our first meeting, when she told off that married guy for hitting on her. And I like it. Way too fucking much. So much that it makes me want to kiss her.
Gee, this is off to a great start, Gavin.She’s not even been here thirty minutes and I’m already thinking about kissing her.
“Look,” she says, “we’re grown adults. We can do whatever we want. I don’t need my brother’s permission to live here, and neither do you. Besides, it’s just for a few months, right? Not like it’s that big of a deal.”
