"You're the best thing I never knew I needed." – The Princess and the Frog
Over the next month, Cassie and I fell into a routine. We hang out two or three times a week, at first it's to finish up our project, but once we finish watching all the movies and put together our presentation, we don't have that as an excuse anymore. We still watch a lot of movies for old times' sake, but we're no longer limited to rom-coms, and we take turns picking which ones to watch, always with the goal of finding one we love that the other will absolutely hate.
She comes to all of our home games and wears one of my Seaport Hockey sweatshirts, she always brings her roommates with her and I always try to spot them during warmups so when I score I can look over and see the look of excitement and pride on her face. When we have away games, I always Facetime her after the game, which at first annoyed Coleman, who's usually my roommate, but he got used to it pretty fast.
The first time I called her, when we were in Colorado, I just wanted to hear her voice and tell her all about our game. I knew that was leaning too much into the couple side of things, and we'd agreed to keep things casual, so I'd made up the excuse of having phone sex, which I knew she wouldn't agree to when she asked why I called. Now she never asks, instead just waits for me to tell her all about the game.
I know hockey isn't her thing, and sometimes I feel bad for how long I spend recapping the games to her, but she always seems like she's listening and actually cares, so either I got her into hockey, or she's a really good actor. I'm really hoping it's the former not the latter.
We don't spend all our time together, in fact, there are weeks when we're both so busy, we're lucky if we get to see each other once, but the shuffling of schedules is always worth it for the few hours we spend together in either hers or my bedroom. She still drives me crazy and challenges me on almost everything, but we've both realized the quickest way to get us to stop arguing is to have sex. When we're having sex, we're both in agreement on a lot of things. Plus when we argue now it's less two people who hate each other and more old married couple bickering, as Gibbs likes to say.
I wasn't sure how well Cassie would get along with my roommates, and how well I'd get along with hers, and while by no means is everyone best friends, but when Cassie's there the guys are all decent, and when I'm at her place everyone but Alyssa is incredibly nice. For some reason, nothing I seem to do can get Alyssa to like me.
Our Season's going great so far we've only lost one game, and it was against Arizona who's been surprisingly good this year but has a few losses under the belt so we're still ranked first in our division. I think I'm a bit of a hardass as a captain, we've spent more time in the weight room and doing exercises when we don't have ice time than ever before, and I've done everything I can to get us as much ice time as possible. I also watch all the game footage in advance so I can point specific things out when we watch it as a team. My free time is practically nonexistent, but I need to exit this season knowing there was absolutely nothing else I could do to poove myself to Toronto.
Some nights, Cassie will do her astrophysics homework while I'm watching and taking notes on game footage, and it's kind of nice. It makes me imagine a different life, one that could never exist where I'm playing in Toronto, and she goes to school there and we get to actually be together for real. Anytime that notion crosses my mind though I have to stop myself. She and I will never last, but still, that hasn't stopped me from telling her things I've never really told anyone else.
Most people who know me well know that my little sisters and I were raised by our grandparents, but that's kind of the extent of their knowledge, Cassie knows the whole story about our Mom leaving and in return, I know things about her. The type of things you don't share with someone that's just a casual hookup. But that's all we are, I remind myself that every time she sends me a random text or something she finds funny, every time we hang out for something other than sex, and when she asks me to teach her how to skate.
"I still can't believe you don't know how to skate," I say as I'm helping her lace up the pair of skates she rented during open ice at the rink.
"When would I ever have needed to know how to skate," she responds, "plus with global warming, there won't even be enough ice to skate on in thirty years, and I'm an excellent swimmer."
"If you think it's such a useless skill, why'd you ask me to teach you then," I ask her quizzically.
"Because you're basically a pro, and your entire life revolves around skating, I wanted to know what the big deal was."
I finish lacing up her skates, which she very begrudgingly let me tie up for her then sit down to put my own on, it feels strange to be putting them on without the rest of my pads.
"Just so you know, I'm going to laugh my ass off when you fall," I say, holding an arm out as we get onto the ice.
"You wouldn't dare," she says glaring at me, then immediately losing her balance as we step onto the ice grabbing my outstretched arm to balance herself and turning bright red.
"Oh yeah," I say, "I'm going to be laughing a lot today." I'm not complaining at all though as I place my arms around her helping balance her as I explain the basics of how to balance properly, turning, stopping, and falling.
She looks kind of like a deer in headlights as I say, "Okay I'm going to let go now. You got this."
It's almost impossible not to laugh as she skates at what has to be the slowest pace ever, she's practically not even moving, but she's doing it all on her own and still looks incredibly out of her element.
"I think I have a new respect for hockey players," she says, still moving like a snail.
"Wow If I'd known this was all it took to gain your respect I would've taken you here months ago," I say smiling.
"I didn't say I respect you, I said I respect hockey players," she says playfully rolling her eyes.
"Hey you have to be nice to me right now, otherwise I could just leave you here. Stuck in the middle of the ice."
"Even you're not that awful."
"Aren't I though," I say then start to skate away, just far enough that she'll think I'm actually leaving.
"Hayden," she calls out emphasizing each syllable in annoyance.
"Gotta catch me," I say laughing, thinking there's no way she'll even try.
Then much to my surprise, she starts going fast or tries, she pushes against the ice and gets going, but immediately starts to fall and I quickly skate back towards her and semi-catch her, but not enough and we both end up on the ground.
She looks at me, "I hate you," she says.
I stare at her for a second, and then we both burst out laughing, gaining us a couple of looks from the other people here for open skate. We sit there on the ice laughing longer than we should until I stand up, then after watching her struggle to get up, help her up as well.
"You know, maybe that was a sign and we should call it there," she says, clutching my arm and turning us toward the direction we entered from.
"No way, you can't just give up after falling once, everyone sucks a little bit at first, just give it a few more minutes at least," I practically beg, not wanting to admit how much fun I'm having watching her attempt to skate.
"Fine, but the ice really hurts when I fall on it," she says giving me a look that I know all too well.
"You get used to it," I say, trying not to laugh. She's falling while barely moving, I've fallen on my ass or been knocked over while skating as fast as I can countless times. It's just part of the game.
I manage to keep her out on the ice for another thirty minutes, and even get her to agree to let a lady take a picture of us before we go as proof that she's skated. That's why I wanted the picture, as proof that she'd at least tried to skate, not because I realized I don't have any photos of her, and want something to remember this, whatever it is when it ends. God I really don't want it to end. I could stay out here, teaching her to skate, laughing as she falls then helping her up forever. Maybe it's just because I love being out on the ice so much, not who I'm out here with. That's what I'll tell myself at least.
"You know," I whisper to her as we're getting back to my apartment, "a nice bath is the best way to recover after skating."
"Really," she says smiling back, "You might need to show me how since you are the expert after all."
The second we're in my room, I close the door and push her back against it, colliding my mouth with hers. She wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me back, desperately.
I move my mouth down onto her neck and she lets out a soft moan, "Don't stop, but aren't we supposed to be taking a bath?"
"After," is all I let out as I continue, knowing and not caring that she'll have a decent-sized hickey on her neck after tomorrow. I don't consider myself a possessive guy, we're not even dating and even if we were she's a person not a piece of property, but there's something satisfying about knowing that anyone who sees her for the next few days will know she's taken.
Before I know it, we've moved from standing against the doorframe to being diagonal on the bed both of us in nothing but our underwear...
After, we lay next to each other in bed for a second, catching our breath. "How about that bath," she asks after a few minutes.
"I'll start the water," I say, getting up and disposing of the condom as I get the bath water running, I didn't notice before but she has a significant number of bruises on her butt and legs from the skating earlier today. I'm sure I have even more from hockey that I don't even look twice at anymore.
Moments later, we're sitting in a nice hot bath together, and it's by no means better than the sex but it's pretty damn nice, especially with all my muscles still tender from the amount of work I've been putting in lately.
"I thought athletes were supposed to take cold baths, what gives," she asks after we're both situated in the tub, her laying down almost completely on top of me, her ass perched on one of my thighs.
"Depends on what the baths are for," I say, "sometimes you want a cold one other times warm is better and something tells me you wouldn't have agreed to take an ice bath."
"No way in hell," She agrees, and I feel her relax more into me, "this is nice. Why don't I take baths more often?"
"I mean I take them pretty regularly for hockey, but for some reason this one's way better than normal."
"Oh," she replies coyly, "I wonder why?"
I lightly splash some water towards her, "I don't know, it definitely has nothing to do with the hot girl in here with me."
She splashes me back and giggles, "Yeah I'd definitely enjoy this more if there wasn't a sexy hockey player hogging half the tub."
"Hey," I say mock offended, "I take up way more than half the tub."
She laughs, "You really do," she pauses, "I don't mind though." Then she relaxes her head against my shoulder. And I think I could live in this moment forever.