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“That’s not what you’re supposed to say,” I groan.

“I miss you too.”

I smile. “Tomorrow can’t come fast enough.”

“I’ll text you in the morning, okay?”

“Okay,” I say, shaking my shoulders with excitement. “Tomorrow! I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night, you.”

He grins. “Night, Blondie.”

We hang up, and I snuggle into my pillow and scroll back through our texts all the way to the photo he sent of himself eating the apple. Three days he’s been gone. I finished a paper, went to a football game, got my roommate drunk, and turned down a FaceTime from my own boyfriend because I was busy. I miss him, and it turns out that’s a completely different thing from needing him.

I stare at his selfie.

This man is so hot, and he is all mine.

36

I Didn’t Touch Him

Nash

We split the weekend. Friday we won 4–2 in a building that never sat down. I had two assists and won eight draws. A guy from Montreal sat in the second row of the press box with a laptop, which I found out afterward from Barnes. Saturday we lost 3–1, and I was on for two of them. The second one was mine: my man, my seam, nobody to blame but the guy in the middle. Berwyn didn’t say a word to me about it.

Greeley didn’t dress Saturday. He was a minus-two Friday with two bad changes and a turnover at the blue line that ended up in the back of our net, and Berwyn scratched him and put Layous’s line together instead. That’s hockey. It happens to everybody, and it’ll happen to me. He took it standing in the tunnel in a suit, watching warmups with that face on.

All weekend he’s been at the hotel, at the meals, four feet from me on the PK he didn’t get to play, and not one word about it. He smiled at me on the bus Thursday, and he smiled at me in the lobby Saturday night. I haven’t given him one single thing to work with in four days, and my jaw’s been locked since we crossed the state line. He’s planning something.

We hit the interstate. The sign says forty-two miles to go, and I go back to my phone, where the actual problem is. Kylie’s been sending things all weekend, and I flick through them. The football field, her and Paige, her roommate, the library, and a few selfies I stare at longer than I’d like to admit. I check the ETA. Twenty minutes later, I check it again.

We get in at six-forty. The truck’s already back, so the gear goes straight off it into the hallway outside the room. I do what they need from me, and then I’m across the lot with my bag over my shoulder. Koda yells something behind me that I don’t listen to.

I take the stairs at Corvin three at a time, drop my bag outside my door, and walk straight to Kylie’s. I knock twice.

She opens it in leggings and a T-shirt with her hair up. She gets as far as “Hi—” and I’ve got my hand on her throat and my mouth on hers.

I walk her backward into her room. The door swings and hits the wall. She’s laughing into my mouth for about a second and a half, and then her hands go into my hair, and she comes up on her toes and kisses me like she’s been waiting days for this. So have I. My hands go down her back and around her waist, and I pick her up off the floor.

Her roommate is at her desk. She turns around in her chair, and I look right at her over Kylie’s shoulder, and I don’t stop, because I have not touched my girlfriend in four days.

“I’m leaving,” Tessa says.

Kylie breaks off about an inch. “Sorry.”

“You’re not sorry.” Tessa’s already got her laptop under her arm and her shoes in her hand. “Nobody in this room is sorry.”

The door shuts behind her.

“Finally,” I say, and Kylie laughs so hard she has to put her forehead on my shoulder.

I tip her flushed face up and get a good look at her.

“Fuck,” I breathe.

I get her onto the bed, and my shirt’s off before I’m all the way down after her. She gets her hands on my chest immediately and drags them down, her nails going in a little at the bottom, over everything. I’ve had four days of a bus, a hotel, a room with Layous and a phone. And now she’s underneath me with her shirt pushed up, her hands in my hair, her leg hooked over the back of mine, and I can’t get close enough to her. I keep coming back to her mouth. Every time I move, every time she moves, I find her face again, and she makes this sound against my lips every time I do.

“I missed you,” she says.