Page 14 of Slapshot
I knew she knew my name!
The space between us now that she’s moved away feels cold and I desperately want to close it. Who the hell is this chick?
“Hockeybro,” her friend says. “We’re not interested.”
“What’s wrong with hockey players?”
“We don’t have enough time before last call for me to answer that.” Her friend takes a sip of her drink.
“I don’t get it,” I say to Kaitlyn. Forgetting that her dad is a hockey player completely, why would she take a job working with hockey players if she disliked us so much?
“Let me help clear things up.” Again the friend interrupts, though this time it’s with my beer in her hand. She chucks the contents in my face. Her smug smile is the last thing I see before beer stings my eyes and drenches my shirt.
“Oh my god, Viv,” Kaitlyn says through a look of horror that’s quickly followed by laughter.
“Thanks for that.” I wring out my shirt onto the floor. The waitress is already at my side with napkins which I accept. “Really good talking to you. It was definitely interesting.”
I stomp back to my boys. Their cackling laughter reaches all the way across the room.
Patrick slaps a hand on my shoulder and a fresh burst a laughter explodes from the table as beer sloshes off my shirt.
“How’d it go?” he asks, biting back his own laughter.
I take a seat. “Well, I’m not thinking about hockey anymore.”
6
Kaitlyn
“You got some of that on me,” I whine to Vivian. We moved tables, but there’s still a wet spot on my dress from the beer my best friend tossed in Lex’s face.
A tad dramatic? Yes.
Absolutely hilarious? Also, yes.
I do feel a little bad for the guy, but not enough to apologize.
“Do you think he’s going to sit over there all night in wet clothes?” She smirks, obviously pleased with herself.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.” I steal a quick glance in his direction. His white T-shirt clings to his body and a cute redhead is attempting to pat him dry with a napkin. He doesn’t seem all that fazed by the beer-soaked shirt or the redhead.
“He’s kind of hot.”
I grunt an acknowledgment. “Should we get another round and then go to the multicultural house?”
“I think tonight is a night for shots. And I’m not ready to leave yet. The eye candy is too good in here.”
“They’re all hockey players.”
“Shh. You’re ruining it.”
The Biscuit is the hockey guys’ hang out and not somewhere I’d usually come, but Vivian insisted we stop by so she could prove that she was behind me and my new job. Her hatred for hockey players runs deep, but her support of me is unwavering. At least in the two months since we’ve become friends.
“Why do you hate hockey players anyway?” I ask. She’s never said, and I never thought to ask until now.
“Why do you?” she asks with a mocking glint that says she knows I’m not about to open up. I guess there’s a reason we haven’t discussed it before. Vivian and I’s friendship is built on a foundation of ambiguous backstories and a shared disdain for lots of things. We don’t ask the other to provide anything we don’t want to tell. Not because we don’t care, but because neither of us is big on sharing.
“I don’t hate hockey players. I hate hockey.”
