Page 19 of Poetry On Ice
Coach has set up an office in a small conference room and is waiting for us, leaning back in his chair with an expression that saysexplain yourselves.
McGuire takes the bait and attempts to defend himself. It’s a halfhearted attempt that involves more stammering than actual words, and it’s a mistake.
A big mistake.
Coach is on his feet right away, finger pointed, face flushed and growing redder by the second. I look downdemurely and try to suffocate the noxious belly laugh currently swelling to disproportionate levels below my ribs. I hear McGuire’s jaw clicking once or twice from the effort it costs him to stop talking, and that makes me want to laugh more.
What’s wrong with him? What the hell is his deal? Why isn’t he telling Coach what really happened?
Is he helping me hide my secret? Or is he trying to hide his own?
When Coach finally tapers off, I deliver a quiet, suitably subdued, “Sorry, Coach.”
“Sorry, Coach,” says McGuire, tacking on, “It won’t happen again,” in a quick and seamless attempt to outdo me.
To his credit, McGuire waits until the elevator door closes to let me have it. “What the fuck was that?”
I watch his lips move as he speaks. Tiny lines form and fan out. Plush, pink flesh presses together and parts. I mean to answer but I’ve spotted a little half-moon under his bottom lip that distracts me. An angry red line. A line I left there. With my teeth.
Enamel glints as he bares his incisors at me. “You’re amassivedick, you know that, Decker?”
Something about the way his lips move around the worddickmakes me come unstuck. It loosens my tongue and makes me start talking.
“Aw, thanks, Princess,” I say in a devil-may-care voice that sounds nothing like mine, “but I wouldn’t say massive. Bigger than average, sure, but notmassive.” His chest rises and falls sharply, and his eyes work their way up from my mouth and make blistering contact with mine.
I don’t know why I’m being like this. I’m not usually like this. I don’t normally talk to people like this. I have my shit together, and I never, ever let guys get under my skin, no matter how pretty they are.
Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be done talking yet. “Besides, you know what they say. It’s not the size that matters. It’s knowing how to use it…and I’mallover that bad boy.”
In the distance, I hear thunder. A low, angry rumble shakes the floor beneath me. There’s a strike. A crack of lightning on a clear horizon. A flame flickers in a sea of green and gold and takes hold.
It unnerves the living fuck out of me, not least because hours later, I still can’t tell if what I saw happened in his eyes or if it was my own reaction reflected back at me.
9
Robbie McGuire
Well, we lost again.
It was deathly quiet on the bus to the airport and hardly a word was spoken for the entire flight home. Everyone had their earbuds in and their overhead lights off. It was cold and late when we arrived back in Seattle, pissing with rain and windy as well.
I’ve been away for so long I forgot how shit the weather is here. I used to love the rain when I was a kid. To me, it felt like home. The crackle of an open fire and the soft glow of table lamps dotted around the living room. It felt like safety and security. In those days, being home as the weather rattled the windows and beat at doors felt like being woven into a cocoon. A cocoon made only for people who shared my last name.
On bad nights, when the rain set in, my mom used to make us hot chocolate, and we’d sit on the rug on the floor in the living room, crammed around the coffee table, dunking spoons into our hot chocolate and lickingthem clean. The hot chocolate was a big deal because my mom didn’t use a powder or mix. She’d heat milk in a saucepan on the stovetop and melt copious amounts of milk chocolate into it. “Chocolat,” she called it. She insisted we all use the throatiest French accents we could muster, under threat of only one marshmallow for those who refused to participate. It devolved into hilarity every time. My dad used to put his nose in the air and say “Chocolat” over and over without moving his lips at all.
It was great.
I can’t remember the last time we did it.
How did that happen?
It’s long after midnight, I’m three glasses of wine in, and right now, it feels like the end of the world. I didn’t consent to no more hot chocolate nights. I didn’t agree for that part of my life to be over. I was so busy chasing a puck and dreaming of ice that I didn’t realize life was changing around me.
Fuck. I’ve gone and grown up without meaning to.
It shouldn’t come as a big surprise since I’m twenty-four years old and it’s been over four years since I moved out, but it does.
I’m feeling quite crap, to be honest. The house feels too big and too empty, and the heat isn't working too well upstairs. It’s frigid up there, and a loud, clankingsound is coming from the boiler room. It’s the kind of sound that I just know is going to be expensive.