“Holy shit, Darcy!”
Hank had appeared, towering over us. The dude was almost seven feet tall. He put one giant hand on his sister’s shoulder, and held up his phone with the other. “Thanks, Hartley. I owe you.”
I shrugged it off, but not before Fairfax noticed. After Hank dragged his sister away, he fixed me with a wobbly stare. “So you’re cock-blocking me now?”
Seriously? “No, man. I’m helping you out. You’ve got to throw the little ones back. It’s the law.”
“You are such a bastard, Hartley. Always such a bastard.”
I clenched my fists on instinct.
“Oh, fuck no,” Bridger spat, putting a hand on my chest. “You are not punching Fairfax at my party. No matter how big a douchecanoe he is tonight.”
But my blood was boiling already. That fucking word. Why do people have to use that fucking word?
“Dude, no,” Bridger pled, both his hands on me now. “Let this one go. If you hurt him, he tells Coach…nothing good comes from that. And the guy is plowed, Hartley. He won’t even remember this in the morning.”
As if to prove the point, Fairfax began to sag onto the window seat.
I shook Bridger off me, but I didn’t lunge at Fairfax.
“No good deed goes unpunished,” Bridger added, handing me the crutch I’d dropped.
Right. So this had been fun.
I turned away without another word, heading back towards Corey, and her perch on the sofa arm. The sofa proper was taken up by with two couples engaged in varying stages of foreplay. But the wall beside Corey was empty, and so I maneuvered myself into position to lean upon it. With just a third of a beer left, I could dangle the cup from two fingers and still hang onto my crutches.
“Everything okay?” she asked mildly.
“The leg is killing me tonight,” I mumbled, staring into the last of my beer.
She tugged her bag off her shoulders. Digging into the bottom, her hand emerged with a tiny bottle of Advil. God bless her, she tapped two of these into my palm.
“You are such a babe,” I said, tossing them back into my mouth.
“Uh huh,” she said with an eye roll.
I gave her a wink, and the puck bunny standing in front of us gave Corey a dirty look. She was a fluffy-haired cheerleader type wearing some kind of tight, shiny shirt.
“Stacia really left you high and dry, didn’t she?” the shiny-shirted girl asked me.
“How do you figure?” I shifted my weight to put more of it against the wall. I was fairly miserable, and it was only ten o’clock.
“She’s wandering Paris, and you’re stuck here in sunny Harkness Connecticut. How’s that fair? A whole semester without any action?” She tossed her hair, and the invitation was unmistakable.
I winked, shaking my phone in one hand. “See, that’s what Skype is for.” The girl and her friend dissolved in a fit of giggles, while Corey rolled her eyes again. “The only tricky part is getting the whole thing in the picture.” I held the camera at arm’s length and waist height, as if zooming out on my crotch, and they howled again. I drained my beer, wondering why I came to these things.
A guy we called Kreature pushed through the girls to talk to me, and I was happy for the interruption.
“Hey man. How’s it going?” I asked. “Have you met Callahan’s little sister?”
“Nice to meet you,” Kreature shook Corey’s hand. “Practice was just brutal today, Hartley. Lunging sprints on the track, followed by murder drills on the ice. No scrimmage. It was exhausting and boring at the same time.”
“Giddyup,” I said, crushing my empty cup.
“Trust me, man. It was a day when missing practice meant missing nothing.”
“No kidding?” I said. But privately, I thought, bullshit. I’d have done anything to be at practice today, instead of laid up with a giant cast on my leg. I cut my glance over to Corey’s for half a second, and found her with a knowing smile.
Yeah. She was the only one in the room who understood.
After Kreature went away, Corey put her bag over her shoulders again, and found her crutches. “I’m going to take off,” she said.
“I’ll walk you out,” I volunteered immediately.
She headed for the doorway, and I managed to follow without clubbing anyone with my cast.
“You don’t have to walk me out,” she said as we reached the landing outside Bridger’s door. “Why do the stairs two extra times?”
The pain in my ankle made me grimace. “I’m not, Callahan. I’m just using you as an excuse to sneak away.” With great care, I crutched down the first stair. “Come on, you can say it. That was a totally pointless evening.”
“Was it? Honestly, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Nobody puked on me, and I didn’t do a face plant on the stairs.” Callahan hopped down one stair, and then another. Compared to me, she was practically a gazelle.
“I guess it’s all about expectations,” I muttered, tackling the second stair.
“Everything is,” she agreed quietly.
Chapter Six: More Fun than Disney World