Pucked: Pucked Over Part 27

"To Sunny's. I'm gonna stay there for a few days."

"Oh, no you're not! That girl is nothing but trouble for you. I should never have let you hang out with her when you were teenagers. I should've seen this coming. This is totally my fault. You're turning in to one of those brainless hockey s.l.u.ts!"

I get my dramatic flair from my mom. I hope I'm not this bad. "Brainless hockey s.l.u.t? I'm not a puck bunny, Mom. We're hanging out."

She points at my chest, even though it's now covered. "Hanging out naked!"

"I'm an adult. If I decide I want to hang out with someone naked, I can. I'm having fun."

"Fun? Fun? You're having fun?"

The parroting is getting annoying. "This conversation isn't productive, and you're being a total hypocrite. Sunny isn't a bad influence, and not all hockey players are bad guys. Alex is engaged, and Sunny's boyfriend is probably the sweetest human being on the face of the earth."

"That's two out of hundreds! Thousands!"

"I can't believe you. Do you even hear what you're saying? Do you even realize how ridiculous this is? It's not like you've been an excellent role model." I gesture to Tim-Tom sitting on the couch. He's wearing pajama pants and that's it. As usual. "Don't you own any s.h.i.+rts?" I call.

He looks down at his bare chest.

"Don't talk to Tim like that!"

I decide it's better to leave than say something I'll regret. "I gotta go. Sunny's picking me up."

"Fine. Go! Leave! Just don't go getting yourself pregnant and ruin your life like I ruined mine." She sucks in a breath, clamping her hand over her mouth like she's trying to push the words back in. "I didn't mean that, Lily."

When she reaches out, I step back, away from her touch, her apology. In that moment, she gives credence to all my insecurities-that I'm not enough, that I'll never be wanted, that I'm not worth the effort to love. Her regret is a mark I can't erase.

"That's the unfortunate thing about words, Mom. Once you put them out there, you can't take them back."

She tries to grab my wrist as I push past her, but I yank it free.

"I don't want you to make the same mistake I did."

"Which mistake is that? The one where you got pregnant, or the one when you decided to keep me?"

"You're the best mistake I ever made, Lily."

"But I'm still a mistake." My phone buzzes in my pocket. I check the message. It's Sunny. "My ride's here."

She doesn't try to stop me from leaving. Which is good. I'm close to tears, and I hate it when my mother sees me cry.

Two hours later, Sunny and I are lying on her bed. We're halfway through the magnum of white wine we picked up at the store. We're both tipsy since neither of us are drinkers. We've also gotten into her dad's cookie stash.

Robbie Waters is a chemist. He works for a marijuana lab perfecting strains for medical use. He does a lot of "testing."

I've ugly-cried, and Sunny's shed sympathy tears. It's one of the many reasons I love her; she's the best, best friend in the world. She'll laugh with me, cry with me, get as angry as she can with me-which isn't very angry, but the thought is always there.

"Do you want to know what I think you should do?" Sunny asks as she lifts her legs straight up in the air and lets them fall toward her head. Her toes. .h.i.t the mattress behind her, and her legs are still straight. She's more flexible than I am, and that's saying something, because I'm d.a.m.n flexible. I can practically fold myself in half backwards.

"Take up yoga so I can have super-bendy s.e.x like you and Miller?"

"That's one thing you should do. Except you can't have s.e.x with Miller, or me. You can have s.e.x with Randy, though." She's definitely drunk.

I smack her a.s.s.

"Ow!" She flips out of her pose and rolls on her side. "I think you should move to Chicago with me."

"We've already talked about this. I don't have a job there."

"But it would be so easy for you to get one. Alex says it won't be a problem to find you a spot as a skating coach, and the money would be way better than here. Plus you get paid in US dollars, not Canadian ones, so if you decided to move back here, your savings would be worth more."

"I like my job here." Though I don't love it like I used to. Lately I like it less and less.

Sunny takes a lock of hair and rubs the end of it over her lips. It's something she's always done when she's thinking, or nervous. She did it a lot at the beginning of her relations.h.i.+p with Miller. I still feel bad about the way I judged him before I knew him. He really is so, so good to her.

"I'm going to say something, and I don't want you to get mad at me for it, okay?"

I laugh. "I'll do my best."

"I know you love working with those girls, but Lily, I don't know if it's the best thing for you. Sometimes I think it makes you as sad as it does happy. It's such a reminder of what you missed out on."

She's right. Teaching skating in the same arena where I used to prepare for compet.i.tions hurts sometimes. Maybe it's because I get further and further away from my dream while these girls get closer. "It's a big decision."

"I know, but sometimes change is good. I love your mom, and she loves you-despite the things she said-but it's kinda like me and my mom, you know?"

I nod. I do know. Daisy is loads of fun to be around, but she's got archaic ideas about how relations.h.i.+ps work. It never occurred to her that Sunny would want a career and all the other things women in the twenty-first century strive for.

"At the very least, you should take some time off work and come with me to Chicago over the holidays. See if you like it."

"I can't do that." It's an automatic response.

"Why not? You're allowed to take a holiday, Lily, and frankly, you need one. You've been working two jobs for the past three years, and until April you were in school full-time as well. You need a break. Miller's off from the twenty-third to the twenty-eighth. Your girls have a break from skating then anyway, right?"

There's always a two-week break between sessions this time of year. "Yeah. I still have the coffee shop, though."

"There's no reason for them not to give you time off, and if they won't, you should quit. You shouldn't be killing yourself over the measly twelve dollars an hour they're paying you."

She's right. Again. It's just that I've worked there for a long time, and it's familiar. But I guess that's the crux of the problem. It's how I've always done things. I stayed with Benji because he was familiar and I knew what to expect, even if it wasn't good. I keep living in the apartment with my mom partly because I feel like she needs the help financially, and maybe emotionally, but also because it's what I'm used to, and the same with working at the arena and the coffee shop.

I'm boring and predictable. Except where Randy's concerned. With him I do things I never thought I would in a million years. Like let him eat me out against a wall in a public bathroom-with a locked door, but still. Or take Uber all the way to a hotel in Toronto so we could get our freak on for a few hours.

"Plus Randy'll be around."

"He rode all the way to Guelph with me this morning."

"What? But didn't they fly out today?"

"It was early. He wanted to come for the ride, and then he went back to the hotel."

"No way! He is so into you." Sunny sits up and spills her wine all over herself and the comforter.

"He's so into s.e.x with me, you mean." I won't admit out loud that I'm digging him more than I should. Especially if I'm considering moving to Chicago.

Sunny gives me a look. "You are so coming to Chicago with me. Alex says the house will be ready by then, and we're doing all the celebration stuff at his place, and you need time away from everything. So you're coming. It's decided. I'm deciding."

"Just like that. You're the boss of me, eh?"

"Yup. That's right." She puffs out her chest. "See how a.s.sertive I can be?"

I toss a pillow, and she deflects it.

There's a knock at the door. Andy, her Great Dane, jumps up from his spot on the floor. t.i.tan, her little Papillon, p.r.i.c.ks up an ear but doesn't move otherwise.

"Come in," Sunny calls.

Daisy peeks her head in. Well, it's more like just her face because her hair can't fit through the crack. "Just checking to see how you girls are doing." She eyes the bottle of wine. "Oh. Looks like you're doing just fine." She holds out a bag of sweet potato chips. "You could probably use these if you're planning to finish that off."

Daisy invites herself into Sunny's room to hang out with us. Neither of us minds. Daisy's a great mom, even if she's a little backward. Her dating stories about Robbie are hysterical. Plus, staring at her hair is always fascinating.

It's well past midnight before I stumble down the hall to the spare room. I could sleep with Sunny, but sometimes she tries to spoon. I also want to check my messages. Not that I expect to have one from Randy. He's unpredictable with his communication.

I pull the covers back and slip under them. My stomach does a stupid little flip-flop over the three messages from him.

I'm home.

Move to Chicago.

I have three bathrooms I can f.u.c.k u in.

The last message wasn't sent that long ago, maybe twenty minutes. I'm drunk enough that calling him seems like a great idea.

He answers on the second ring. "Hey." He sounds like maybe he was sleeping.

His gritty voice wakes all my corresponding parts up. "That's quite the pitch."

"Are you sold?"

"So alluring." There's a little slur to my words. Randy picks up on it.

"Are you drunk?"

"Nope."

"You totally are."

"Sunny and me might've had a little wine. I'm staying at her place for a few days." I don't know why I tell him this. It's completely irrelevant.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah. Fine. Anyway, I'm coming to see Sunny's new place over the holidays."

"You mean you're coming to see my bathrooms?"

"Those, too."

"We're gonna have a sleepover."

"So far sleepovers with you haven't included much sleep."

"How long you gonna be here? A couple days? A week?"

"Sunny said something about the twenty-third to the twenty-eighth, but we might stay longer. I don't know yet."

"You're not spending Christmas with your mom?"

"We're not exactly seeing eye to eye on things right now. And she's probably spending the holidays with Tim-Tom."

"Who?"

"Her new boyfriend."

"Is he the reason for the dissension?" Randy asks.

"Part of it." Why can't I lie like normal people?

"What's the other part?"

"My not coming home last night."

"You're in trouble for not coming home? Are you lying about your age or something? Are you really seventeen and you just look older because you wear makeup that looks like you're not wearing makeup?"

I snort. "It would explain my mostly prep.u.b.escent body."

"Don't talk s.h.i.+t about your body. I f.u.c.king love your body. Especially when you're naked and I'm on top of you, and even more when I'm inside you. s.h.i.+t. Now I'm hard. Again. You'd think after last night and this morning I'd be done with the hard-ons."

"Your d.i.c.k giving you problems?" This is easier than conversation about my family. All his attention isn't because he wants to date me. We just have insane chemistry, and he wants to f.u.c.k a million o.r.g.a.s.ms out of me.

"My fantasies about you are what's giving my d.i.c.k problems. If you move here, they don't have to be fantasies; I'll get to live them out all the d.a.m.n time. Then my d.i.c.k wouldn't be such a problem for me."

"If I was there I'd put your d.i.c.k on lockdown." I have to pause and choke back a laugh. "In my v.a.g.i.n.a prison."

"How soon can you get here?"

"Not for another two weeks."

"d.a.m.n it. Prison never sounded so cozy before."