Winging It (7 page)

Chapter Twelve

Toby

I heard the familiar ringtone as I was in the shower and didn’t even think about it. Dawn was calling. Not a big deal.

And then I woke up a little more and realized that, as familiar as that ringtone was, I hadn’t actually heard it in months. Not since Dawn and I broke up. I should have gone and answered the phone right away to figure out what was going on, but instead I stayed under the hot spray a bit longer. Everything in the real world was confusing, but everything in the shower was totally simple. Whatever Dawn wanted was going to be a complication, and I didn’t want to deal with it any sooner than necessary.

Of course, my little sister, Wendy, couldn’t accept my need for aquatic solitude. “Hurry up!” she yelled, banging on the bathroom door. “Leave me some hot water! I need to shower, too, you know!”

When I moved out, I’d probably have roommates, but I was absolutely going to find a place with my own bathroom. Top priority.

In the meantime, though, I rinsed, turned the shower off, and wrapped a towel around my waist before stepping onto the bath mat, already a bit soggy from whoever else had showered that day. Yeah, my own bathroom. I didn’t have the NHL dreams that some guys had. No Lamborghinis or movie-star girlfriends or huge mansions. But if
I
made the big league? I was going to have a kick-ass shower, all to myself.

Well, all for myself, possibly with some female company, I decided as I grabbed my phone off the counter and opened the bathroom door. I’d been trying not to think about Nat, but it hadn’t been working too well.

“About time,” Wendy groused, pushing past me in her bathrobe.

I ignored her, but it was a lot harder to ignore the giggling that was coming from her open bedroom door. Wendy was in the bathroom, but there were two—no, three—of her friends standing in her doorway, staring out at me. “Hi, Cooper,” one of the girls said, and the other two giggled some more.

I gripped my towel a little tighter. I spent a lot of time barely dressed in the locker room, even around female trainers or reporters, and it wasn’t a big deal. But they were all adults! This was a totally different story. “Hey,” I mumbled, and tried to retain some dignity as I dodged past them on the way to my room. God save me from thirteen-year-olds having sleepovers. I should get my parents to install a warning light or something so I’d know who was in the damn house.

Once I was safely back in my room I pulled on sweatpants and a Raiders T-shirt, flopped down into my rickety wooden office chair, took a deep breath, and pulled out my phone. I wondered if Dawn still had a special ringtone for me, and if it was as weird for her to hear mine as it had been for me to hear hers.

She didn’t sound too disoriented when she answered the call. “Cooper, what’s going on with you and Natalie? I think I talked her down, but you need to get a move on, buddy. She’s not going to run away from Scott forever.”

“What?”

“The plan. With Natalie.” Dawn spoke really slowly, like I was a preschooler. “I convinced her not to break up with you yet, and she’s going to suggest that you guys watch movies tonight instead of going out. So that’s good. But you need to start pulling your weight on this.”

I didn’t want to repeat myself, so I answered with, “Huh?”

She sighed heavily. “You like Natalie, right?”

“What?”

“Jesus, do you need to go drink some coffee or something? Have you not had your juice yet? Wake up, Cooper! You like Natalie, you don’t want her plan to work, but you’re playing into Scott’s hands. I’m doing what I can to help you out, but I can’t do
everything
.”

I wanted to pull the phone away from my head and bang it on the desk like it was defective, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t the phone’s fault I was getting such a garbled message. “Okay, one of us is drunk, and I don’t think it’s me. What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m being awesome. Like, I don’t even know if there’s a word for how awesome I’m being. Setting my ex up with the girl of his dreams? I’m a damn humanitarian, and you need to start appreciating that.”

“Could you please stop talking for a second?” I almost whispered.

And the cool thing about Dawn? She
did
stop talking. She let me sit there for a couple seconds, my body still while my brain raced, trying to catch up to whatever she was saying.

Nat. Dawn thought I liked Nat.
Wanted
Nat. Dawn thought I could use the fake dating and find a way to turn it into real dating. It wasn’t like the idea hadn’t crossed my mind, especially the night before in the arena parking lot. It would have been so easy, would have felt so right, if I’d been able to just lean over and kiss her… But I wasn’t going to set myself up for that sort of rejection, wasn’t going to let Scott
actually
win instead of fake winning. Besides, the night before had probably just been my reaction to having a fine female body pressed against mine while we’d been play fighting. It was a fluke. So I said, “Nat and I have been friends for a long time. I like her. But that’s a long way from her being the girl of my dreams.”

“Really? Because someone you like hanging out with, someone who loves the same sport you love, someone who’s really pretty and probably has a hot body buried under all those clothes and who your family likes and who’s strong enough to keep you in line without trying to steamroll you all the time…that’s not a good match for you?”

I didn’t need to hear all the reasons Nat was perfect for me, not under those circumstances. “Did you miss the part where she’s madly in love with my asshole cousin?”

“Okay, she’s got some appalling taste in men, I’ll give you that, but I don’t think you should disqualify her just for that one flaw.”

“Disqualify—” I was practically sputtering, now. “Dawn, here on planet Earth in the twenty-first century, it’s not really enough for
me
to like
her
. She has to like me back or this whole conversation is pointless.”

“But you’re at least admitting that you do like her?”

Was I admitting that? I wasn’t sure. I mean, I’d more or less admitted it to myself, but that wasn’t the same as being ready to say it out loud. Especially not to Dawn. And there was still the possibility that the attraction was just an instinctive response to physical stimuli, not anything deeper. I needed some time to sort this out, preferably without Dawn’s help. “Is this not weird for you? I mean, awesomeness aside, is it not weird for you to be trying to set me up with somebody? I don’t think I’d want to set
you
up with anybody.”

“Well, luckily for you, I’m not asking you to.”

“I don’t think I asked
you
to, either. I mean…” I gave myself a second to think about it. “Yeah, this is over the line. You can’t just
decide
who I’m going to be interested in, or who I’m going to date, or whatever. It’s not your call.”

“So you don’t want my help? I should call Natalie back and tell her I was talking out of my ass and she should ignore what I said? I should tell her to go ahead and stage a big breakup with you tonight at the hockey party? That’s what you want?”

Dawn had been right when she’d suggested I should get some coffee before having this conversation. I felt trapped, like my brain wasn’t moving fast enough to avoid all her snares. “Can you just leave it alone
now
? Like, don’t call her back and change her mind, but don’t do any more of whatever you’re doing, either?”

“Do you really think you can make this work without my help?”

“I’m not even sure I
want
to make it work. But if I do, it should be because
I
want it, not because you got bored and decided to start playing with people’s lives.”

“It’s not going to do you much good to decide it on your own if she’s already hooked up with Scott, though. Is it?”

“It wouldn’t be permanent. She’s not running off to Gretna Green to get married!”

“Oh my God, I
knew
you were reading those books! You pretended the whole time you were too manly for Jane Austen, but you kept moving my bookmark. I
knew
you were a secret romantic.”

I tried not to laugh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. The point is…” What was the point? Was I trying to argue that I wouldn’t care if Nat and Scott hooked up? That I could just swoop in and pick up where he left off, without any hesitation? Shit. I should be able to. I was a modern guy; I didn’t have some big hang-up about how girls should be virgins until they dated me. I should be just fine with the idea of Nat and Scott spending a bit of time together and then Nat and me hooking up. But this was Dawn I was talking to. “I’d fucking hate it if Nat and Scott got together,” I admitted. “It’d be like she was choosing him over me, and that’d be hard on my pride, for sure. But also…I don’t know. He’s
Scott
. He’s an asshole. He doesn’t care about her, not really, so he won’t be as careful with her as he should be. And I don’t want her to get hurt.”

“Okay,” Dawn said, her voice softer now. “But, Cooper? The thing is—it’s not fair to talk about it in terms of her choosing him over you. Not when she doesn’t even know she
has
that choice. You know? If you’re really interested in her, you need to tell her so. And you need to do it pretty soon. And if you decide you’re not really interested? Then let it go. Stop getting in fights at your game because he’s talking to her in the stands. If you’re not interested in her, then it was
good
that he was talking to her. Right?”

“You weren’t even at the game—” I started, but it was no use arguing. Dawn knew everything that happened to everybody in Corrigan Falls, usually about two seconds after the event. “I need to think about all this.”

“Yeah, you do. But you need to do it pretty fast. Got it?”

“At some point we’re going to talk about why this is important to you, right?”

“Probably not,” she said and hung up.

I stared at my phone for a while then headed downstairs to find some breakfast—hopefully not at a table full of thirteen-year-old girls. Usually when I needed to clear my head, I’d work out until all I could concentrate on was not puking. But with a game that afternoon, I couldn’t take that option. Maybe I’d call up some of the guys and see if they wanted to play Xbox or something. Or maybe I’d get the guts to call Nat. But until I knew what I wanted to say to her, I should probably try to play it cool.

“Cooper!” one of the thirteen-year-olds squealed when I walked into the kitchen. “We’re making pancakes! Do you want pancakes? You must be hungry, right? I can make you pancakes! How many do you want?”

Okay, a big part of me wanted to grab a box of cereal and a jug of milk and go eat in my room. But I’d been looking for ways to turn my brain off, and sitting alone upstairs wasn’t going to do it. Besides, my mom was there by the stove, and she could keep me safe, and Wendy was giving me a kind of heartbreaking look, like she was bracing herself for me to be a jerk to her friends but was really, really hoping I wouldn’t be.

I sat down at the table and said, “Pancakes sound great. I can probably eat about as many as you want to make.”

Wendy gave me a quick, relieved smile that made me feel like the world’s best big brother, and I figured I’d been fairly compensated for my time. I might not have the slightest idea how to handle girls my age, but the young ones? Them, I could deal with.

Chapter Thirteen

Nat

It was surprisingly easy to unplan the breakup with Toby. I just gave him a call and asked if he was okay keeping things going for a little while longer, and he said sure. I asked if it would be okay if we did something other than the hockey party that night, and he said sure. I asked if he wanted to watch movies, and he said sure. I asked if we could do a blitz of movies based on books by Nicholas Sparks, and he only hesitated for a second before saying sure.

“Oh my God, is this Zombie Toby? Have aliens captured your brain? You seriously want to watch that stuff?”

“I didn’t say I
wanted
to. I just said I would.”

“Wow. You are, like, the best fake boyfriend ever.”

“Yeah, thanks,” he’d said, his voice a bit tighter than usual. “Do you want me to pick you up after reffing?”

“You’ve got a game this afternoon—will you have time?” Wouldn’t he be caught up in the postgame blitz of adoring fans and puck bunnies? And, damn, I didn’t like the idea of the bunnies going after him. Because it would make our fake relationship look less convincing, I told myself. That was the only problem.

I needed to get my brain back on track. “For
full
fake boyfriend points, you should pick up pizza before you come get me.” I was joking, and from his noncommittal grunt I assumed he knew it.

But when I jogged out of the arena that night and sank into the passenger seat of his car, I took about one whiff of the scented air and then turned to see the flat, square boxes in the backseat.

“You still like garlic fingers?” he asked. “And meat lovers’ pizza?”

“You’re my hero.” I’d worked right through dinner and had been anticipating some reheated whatever-was-in-the-fridge when I got home, so pizza
and
garlic fingers was a huge improvement to my night. “I want to crack those boxes open and start eating right now.”

“You can if you want.”

“
I
can, but you? Pizza isn’t the best food for eating while you’re driving.”

He shrugged. “It’s not like you live far away. I can hold off until we get there.”

“If you can, then I can, too. I’ve got willpower, you know.”

“Yeah, okay. Try to slurp up some of that drool so the upholstery doesn’t get wet.”

“Hey, how was your game?”

“It was good. We won, but I didn’t get any points myself. How about you? How was reffing?”

I squinted at him. “What are you up to, Toby?”

And sure enough, he jumped and gave me a guilty look. “What are you talking about?”

But I knew him too well to be fooled. “You agreed to watch Nicholas Sparks movies. You brought me my favorite pizza, and, drool comments aside, you’re acting like a total gentleman across the board. You’re even doing the ‘deflect the conversation away from yourself and back to her’ thing. It’s weird and unnatural, and you’re up to something.” Maybe I didn’t want to know. Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut and enjoy it. But this was Toby, and I cared about him, so if something was going on, I should figure it out.

“I’m just trying to be a good guy.”

“No.” I kind of wanted to touch him, then, to reach out and take his hand or something. But I managed to keep the impulse under control. “You
are
a good guy, always have been. That’s not something you have to try to be. So this new thing, whatever it is…it’s not just being a good guy.”

“A good guy,” he echoed, and then he snorted. “Yeah. Excellent. Good guys finish last, right?”

“I think that’s nice guys, isn’t it?” I really wasn’t sure where this was going, but I didn’t like seeing Toby like this. He was—despondent? No, probably not that bad. But he seemed unhappy about something, and I couldn’t really be happy when he wasn’t. “Seriously, Tobe, you think you’re finishing
last
? What race are
you
running? ’Cause for the one I’m seeing, it seems like you’re pretty much in the lead.” Hockey star, loving family, lots of friends—what more did this guy need?

He was quiet for about a block and then said, “Seriously, how was reffing? Did you make any little kids cry?” Should I keep at him, keep pushing until he told me the truth? A couple years earlier I would have, but not anymore. New Nat and New Toby weren’t really close enough for that. So I figured I’d try to cheer him up instead. “I kicked a Tyke out of the game for swearing at me. Like, skating right up and yelling in my face.”

He looked over and raised his eyebrows. Tykes are seven-year-olds. “Seriously? What was he mad about?”

So I told him the story, and he was grinning by the time I described the penalty and laughing once I told him about the kid’s reaction. It felt good, making Toby laugh.

And it kept on feeling good when we went inside and dumped our boots by the front door, just like we always had. It wasn’t even that weird to see the Raiders logo on his jacket as he tossed it onto its once-familiar spot beside mine on the hallway bench. He trailed after me to the kitchen so I could grab napkins and two cans of root beer, and then we headed downstairs to the rec room. Everything was totally normal until we flopped down onto the ragged old couch.

It had been plenty big for the two of us when we were both smaller, but now, especially with one of us as big as Toby? The whole frame kind of sagged toward the middle, both of us getting shifted toward each other. I was holding the napkins and pop, Toby had the pizza, so neither of us had a free hand to brace ourselves. I ended up halfway on his lap, trying to wiggle back to my own cushion, laughing.

At least, I was laughing until I realized that Toby wasn’t. “Shit, did I hurt you?” It had felt like we’d more or less landed on each other, without all that much force, but maybe I’d hit a sensitive area or something. I’d definitely hit some
firm
areas, but there weren’t many parts of Toby’s body that weren’t pretty damn firm. “Are you okay?”

And as if touching him hadn’t made it clear that Toby had gotten ripped in the last few years, I got a practical demonstration of his new strength when he set the pizza on the arm of the couch and lifted me up and off him like I was a baby with a leaky diaper. With me still pretty much completely in the air, he shifted himself over to the far edge of the couch and only then set me down.

“What’s your problem?” I demanded, mostly joking and trying hard to forget how strong his hands had been around my ribs. “I showered after reffing, dude! I am lily fresh!”

He took a deep breath and blew it out like he was trying to exhale frustration. “You’re fine. I’m sure your conditioner would get an A-plus on the Scott Dakins sniff test.”

“Damn right it would,” I told him, wondering why it was so easy to be confident around Toby and so impossible around Scott. I also wondered if this was another chance for me to push Toby for a full confession about his mood, but again I chickened out. Easier to change the subject and hope he could just get over his grumpiness if I gave him the chance. “Comedy, action, drama—what do you feel like watching? I’ll fall asleep if it’s anything too serious, so don’t go getting intellectual on me.”

“I’ll try to resist,” he said, reaching for the remote. I let him take it because I didn’t care too much what we watched, as long as I got to eat pizza and garlic fingers. And, strangely, as long as I got to hang out with Toby and just…just
be
, I guess. No worrying about what he thought of me, or whether I was being girly enough or sexy enough or witty enough. He was Toby, I was Nat, and we were hanging out again.
And
we had pizza and garlic fingers. It was an excellent Saturday night.