Page 17 of Unbreakable
EIGHT
JEANINE
THEN
I stayedat Dylan’s place a lot more nights.
He came over to my place to prove to my roommate that he was real and I hadn’t been kidnapped. The first time he had to go on the road for work after we met, I felt like I’d lost some vital piece of myself. I missed a guy I’d met a week before, something I never could have anticipated.
But it was Dylan. We were under each other’s spell, completely wrapped up in us. I’d never felt like this for anyone.
By one week, he knew where to tickle me to make me unable to speak or breathe.
By two weeks, he bought me a toothbrush and called from the drugstore to ask which brand my facewash was.
So at the end of the second week, when he asked me if I’d spend my night off work at his game, I said yes.
I hadn’t been shopping for a boyfriend, and certainly not for one who played pro hockey, but there I was, all decked out in the team colors and sitting next to the team captain’s wife, Amber. She was gorgeous: blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and with a smile so white it could rival the ice in front of us.
Did I mention she was nice? Like so nice I wasn’t sure I should act like what Dyl called my usual sassy cocktail waitress self. I should have gone to my first game by myself or with one of my friends.
“So how did you and Sorrento meet?”
It took a second for his last name to catch up to me. Obviously, I knew it, but not well. I called him Dylan or Dyl in most of the two weeks we’d been seeing each other. I’d never been in a relationship this fast and furious. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to reveal his great flaw. Maybe how fast we were moving was the flaw.
I shoved that feeling down. I was twenty-seven and being jaded about dating was getting old. Dylan was allowed to just be a nice guy.
“He came into where I work,” I said. “And the rest, as they say, is history.”
“How fun! Where do you work?”
“Well, I’m an actor, but I wait tables at a dive in Santa Monica. He came in when I was singing karaoke with a live band.”
“Santa Monica? No one really gets down that way much. Wonder what took him there.”
“If I recall correctly from that night, he said he’d already seen what there was to see close to home,” I said with a laugh. Her look of horror told me she wasn’t overly comfortable with discussing my new boyfriend’s promiscuity. “What about you and . . .”
Shit, I’d already forgotten her husband’s name. He was the team captain. I should have had it down by now.
“Justin? It’s much more boring than that. We went to high school together and just never broke up.”
“That’s a lot of dedication,” I said, looking impressed.
She shrugged. “It’s hard sometimes, him being gone so much, but it’s worth it. I don’t really know any different at this point. It’s better here than in the lower leagues.”
“I bet,” I said.
“You’re the first Sorrento’s brought around. He must like you.”
I snorted. “What an honor.”
At that moment, the puck clipped the plexiglass a few rows in front of us, making me jump. It was followed closely by one of Dylan’s teammates getting checked into the glass. I gasped, and she laughed. “Not a hockey fan?”
“My brother and his best friend played,” I said, “but not like this. These guys are annihilators.”
“They certainly try,” she said. “So acting, huh?”
“Yeah, I like to try and get into movie musicals. I’ve been chorus in a few shows, and higher in some stage productions.”
