got here yesterday. How do you know him?”
“I don’t,” I snapped back quickly. The truth was I didn’t know him. I hadn’t wanted to know his name, and he didn’t even know mine until yesterday. Now he was going to be in my life for the next few months, whether I liked it or not.
“Bull shit you don’t know him! I saw you showing him around the school earlier today, and you looked pale as a ghost when he was trying to talk to you. Something’s up.”
“I need a drink," I replied, resting my elbows on the table and collapsing my head into my hands so my palms could rub my eyes. “Or two or three.”
“I’ll get you as many drinks as it’ll take for you to let me in on all the juicy details.” She looked at me expectantly. “You know him. And when I get back, I wanna know how.”
Tina headed toward the bar, giving me a brief respite. I breathed in deeply, taking in my surroundings. The bar was more crowded than I expected for a Wednesday afternoon. It was a casual place, a local haunt that teachers often frequented because of its close proximity to the school. It had a certain Cheers quality to it, which made it all the more appealing. She returned a few minutes later with two shots of tequila and two beers. I drank both shots immediately—before realizing that one of them had probably been for her—and then chased them with a lemon wedge and a few gulps of my Miller Lite. “Thanks.” I glanced up, massaging my temples and contemplating what to say next. Okay, here it goes . “I met him in the Aspen airport when I was heading home from my parents' over break.”
She raised her right eyebrow to let me know that she damn well knew there was more to it than that. “And?”
I briefly gave her the gist of what had transpired: my embarrassment at check-in, running into him at security, his sexual innuendos and forward advances at the bar.
“Aaaand?”
I breathed in deeply and kept my eyes down, preparing myself mentally for what I was about to say. “And . . . I may have let him finger me during the flight,” I said, before raising my eyes slightly to gauge her reaction.
“Oh my God, Lily! You go, girl! I didn’t know you had it in you.” She wore a smile that I couldn’t have blowtorched off her face.
I sped up my words, hoping that somehow the last part of what I had said might get lost in the air on its way to her ears. “And I may have begged him to make me come while he fucked me up against a wall in the Philadelphia airport.” I shut my eyes tightly for several seconds and then finally opened one when she hadn’t responded.
For the first time in my life, I saw Tina Nielson speechless. This can’t be good.
“He wants you again, doesn’t he?” She answered her own question, so caught up in the excitement. “That’s why you seemed weird on the tour today! He was hitting on you, and you didn’t know how to react.” She paused only to catch her breath. “Lily, you have to fuck him again. You can’t just let that fine piece of ass walk around the building for the next five months without banging the shit out of him on your desk or something.” Clearly, this dilemma was not as difficult for her as it was for me.
I let out a sigh and allowed myself to sit back, becoming slightly more relaxed in the vinyl booth. “It’s not that easy. He’s bad news.”
“What do you mean ‘bad news’?”
“You know he was a professional hockey player, right?” I looked at Tina and she seemed to be listening closely. “Well, he was pretty good. Really good actually. He was drafted into the minors out of high school and made it to the pros within two years. He played for the Avalanche for five years until his contract expired and . . .”
“Yeah, he’s a hockey player who looks like a fucking God. So what? Get to the point,” she interrupted eagerly.
“He couldn’t get picked up by another team. He’s had a
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