I release a noise that sounds like a mix between a hiss and a growl and click my seat belt into place. Morgan sighs, as if the fight I put up just mere minutes ago has taken five years off her life.
“I can’t believe I had to literally drag you out of the house,” she grumbles, starting her car.
Her long blonde hair is split down the centre and twisted into two perfect braids. She flings one over her shoulder and fiddles with the touch screen on the dash until a country song floods through the speakers.
I tighten my ponytail and slant her a look. “You wouldn’t have had to if you would have just let me be.”
There’s a stack of school work that damn near wobbles in the wind on my desk at the moment and only so much time to complete it all. Accompanying Morgan to pick her boyfriend up from a shinny game is not at the top of my priority list.
Unfortunately, my best friend doesn’t share the same focus when it comes to school as I do, which in turn hinders her ability to understand where I’m coming from most days.
“You were in need of a break.”
“I was doing just fine.”
“Have you eaten today?” she asks after pulling onto the road.
I roll my eyes. “Yes, Mom. I had just finished off a jar of peanut butter when you barged into my room.”
Her nose crinkles. “Is that all you’ve had?”
“It was the crunchy stuff.”
“As if that makes much of a difference.” She clicks her tongue. “At least you had something. I won’t bug you about it anymore.”
I nod and smile gratefully. Morgan’s heart is in the right place; it always is. She’s a momma bear through and through.
Luckily, she really does drop the topic and chooses to just sing along quietly to music for the rest of the drive. My eyes are droopy by the time we reach the arena, and I’m suddenly feeling extremely bitter at the fact I can’t ever seem to sleep in the car. A nap—albeit a short one—would have done wonders for me.
Morgan parks her massive Jeep Gladiator beside a familiar truck that I know belongs to the newest member of the Saints. I twist in my seat, glowering at my soon-to-be ex-best friend.
“You couldn’t help yourself, could you?”
She unbuckles her seat belt and grins, completely unbothered by my attitude. “Nope. Now, get out. It’s rude not to say hello.”
I watch her slip out of the vehicle and disappear but don’t make an effort to follow. A shriek builds in my throat when my door is ripped open and I’m being dragged out by my arm.
Stabilizing myself on the concrete, I gasp, “You’re absolutely crazy.”
Morgan laughs. “And you’re stubborn. I’m not asking you to get down on one knee and bow to the guy. Just say hi.”
I dig my heels into the ground, but Morgan’s love for the gym has made me no match for her when it comes to brute strength. With a set of neon green talons she calls nails biting into my skin, she pulls me hard enough that I stumble out from behind the cover of Oakley’s truck and into plain view. A colourful string of curses falls from my mouth when I see the two guys standing a few yards away, their eyes on me and Morgan.
“Hi!” she shouts.
Forcing a smile, I lift my hand in a small wave. I gulp when the guys start walking toward us. Matt rushes to Morgan, but I don’t see what happens after. Not when my eyes have become trapped on Oakley’s and the warmth that fills them.
Like every time I’ve seen him, the guy oozes confidence. Not in an overbearing way but in a way that stirs your curiosity, making you want to get closer and learn more about exactly where that confidence comes from. At this point, I’m not sure which is worse.
Two dimples pop in his cheeks when he grins, and my stomach tightens in response. Oh boy, he’s hot.
I’m relieved when Matt speaks up, his voice cutting through whatever was building between me and his new friend before my nipples got hard enough to cut through my shirt.
“About time, baby. I was worried you got lost or something.”
“We would have been here sooner if it wasn’t for Ms. ‘I ’m-not-leaving-the-house’ over here,” Morgan replies.
Aware that Oakley still hasn’t looked away from me, I turn to Morgan and say, “Or you could have just left without me.”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t want to see me,” Oakley says, his voice a deep rumble.
“Aw, Boy Scout. Are you happy I’m here?” I ask before I can stop myself.
“Boy Scout?” Matt asks.
Oakley ignores him, his eyes trapping mine. “Yeah, I am.”
My breath hitches at the honesty in those words. “Oh.” Oh? Am I for real?
“That’s cute,” Morgan says. Matt sputters a laugh.
Oakley pins him with a glare. “Hey, Matt?” Matt stops laughing. “Go home.”
“Fuckin’ rude, Oakley. I thought we had something good going right now,” Matt gasps.
Morgan heaves a sigh at her boyfriend’s dramatic ways. “Good Lord, Matthew. Come on. We’ll hit that frozen yogurt shop you love on the way home.”
“What about you? Do you like frozen yogurt?” Oakley asks. I dart my eyes his way, surprised to find a set of sharp green ones watching me.
“Me?” I ask, as if he were asking anyone else. I want to cringe at how ridiculous I’m being right now. It’s like I’ve never spoken to a guy before.
Oakley chuckles. “Yes.”
“Not as much as I do ice cream. Fro-yo is more Morgan and Matt’s thing,” I answer honestly. Morgan swears up and down it tastes the same as ice cream, but I’m positive that’s just a lie she tells herself to feel less sad about missing the real thing.
“Let me take you for ice cream, then.”
I ask in a small, quiet voice, “Right now?”
His chin dips. “If you want to. As friends, of course,” he clarifies.
“Oh, she wants to,” Morgan cuts in. Bitch.
With his hands in the back pockets of his dark-washed jeans, Oakley eats up some of the space between us with large strides. He stops a short distance away, close enough that he can see how flushed I am but far enough away that I can barely pick up the hint of his body wash. Suddenly, I want him closer.
I’m aware Matt and Morgan are just a few footsteps away, but they’ve faded to the background. I tug my lips into a small smile that I hope is enough to convince him that I’m comfortable with the idea.
“I think I would like that.”
His grin is blinding. “Let’s go.”
“Full transparency, I was worried you would turn out to be a plain vanilla ice cream kind of girl,” Oakley quips from across the small checkered table.
The ice cream parlour is relatively quiet, with only us and an older couple sitting inside to enjoy our treat instead of out in the sun. I’ve never been to this place, but when I searched local ice cream parlour on Google Maps, this was the first one that popped up.
I dip my red plastic spoon into my paper bowl and scoop up some of my strawberry cheesecake ice cream. My eyes hold his in a silent challenge as I press the spoon to the outside of my sticky lips. “What if I was? Would you have turned and left?”
His eyes flare, zeroed in on my mouth. He looks sinful, and I falter for the briefest second before regaining my composure. Doubt is a prick in my side—doubt that he can possibly be looking at me the way he is.
“Hell no. I would have just encouraged you to try something else. Maybe begged if need be,” he states, voice thick with something too dirty for just friends.
My muscles lock, and I can’t seem to make myself push the spoon into my mouth. I inhale sharply and shiver when a cold drop of melted ice cream falls to my bare thigh. The second my lips part, I’m shoving the spoon between them and licking my lips to rid them of the stickiness left behind.
Oakley looks pained for a moment before he shifts his attention to something behind me, and his expression turns to anger.
“What’s wrong?” I ask before twisting in my chair to look over my shoulder. The second I do, my heart squeezes painfully, a knot growing in my belly. I spin back around and try to ignore the way Oakley’s curious eyes seek out mine by staring at the empty table behind him.
“Hutton? Hey, man.” The overly friendly greeting comes from behind me, and I tense up.
A shadow forms at our table, thanks to the man now hovering over us like a storm cloud that just won’t drift away. My immediate reaction is to punch him in the dick, seeing as his groin is in perfect hitting distance, but instead, I paint on an exaggerated smile and turn to my ex-boyfriend. Kill them with kindness, Ava. My mom would be proud.
Oakley clears his throat. “Remer.”
David looks exactly as he did when we first met in high school, minus the forehead acne and the shaggy blond hair he cut the week before our first day of university. His eyes are still a sharp, icy blue that I used to fawn over and his nose a bit too straight. He still carries a serious case of daddy issues on his back like a badge of honour and believes his actions reap no consequences.
Both explain why his explanation for cheating on me was that he was simply experimenting, as if that was reasoning enough. “How do I know if I want the lobster if I haven’t tried the crab?” he had said in his defense. And that was that.
I refused to ignore the raging alarm in my head at his actions, and we haven’t talked since I left him standing outside our hotel room door in Penticton. There was no regret as I watched him walk away ten minutes after I shut the door in his face, just an ache in my chest as I questioned why I wasn’t good enough.
It’s a terrible feeling to feel disposed of, like you never really mattered. That was the worst part of it all. The part that still stings when I think about the years we spent together.
It was an awful sense of déjà vu. Suddenly, I wasn’t a nineteen-year-old woman watching my boyfriend walk away; I was a little girl standing in a room at children’s services, wondering why another potential family had decided against adopting me.
I sit up a bit straighter when David finally looks at me, and his grin falters, his facade crumbling at the edges.
“Octavia,” he says tightly, painfully.
With my smile still in place, I ignore him and straighten in my chair, effectively brushing him off. Oakley’s lips twitch in amusement.
“I heard about your shinny game this morning. Next time, you should let me know. I would love to join.” David is all but beaming at his new teammate. He’s never been all that good at reading a room, but this is a new low.
“I don’t think so,” Oakley replies before shovelling a scoop of ice cream in his mouth.
The blunt statement comes so suddenly that I laugh before I can stop myself. I slap a hand across my mouth to stifle the noise, but it’s too late. The damage has already been done.
“Why are you laughing?” David asks me, his blue eyes no longer ice but fire instead. I steel my expression, refusing to look affected by him and the hostility he’s showing me. “I never thought you were a puck bunny, but clearly, I was wrong. Hockey dick is the best dick, though. So I’m not surprised.”
I wince. Ouch.
“Are you talking from experience? Do you get a lot of hockey dick, Remer?” Oakley accuses. His eyes are two angry slits.
“Fuck no! That’s not at all what I meant,” David defends.
Oakley hums and lifts one hand to gesture to the door. “Well then. If you wouldn’t mind, we were in the middle of a conversation when you interrupted us.”
“Uh, yeah. Okay. Sorry, man,” David stammers. Is that sweat between his eyebrows?
Clearly not wanting to be subjected to any further embarrassment, my ex-boyfriend spins on his heels and walks away, leaving a ding from the bell above the shop door in his wake.
A warm sensation fills my chest in response to Oakley’s support, and I find myself staring at him. “Thank you.”
He nudges my foot with his beneath the table and flashes his white teeth in a swoon-worthy smile. “Anytime, Ava.”
