Kiss My Ice

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13.

Nerves swirled in my stomach as I jogged to catch up to Chris. As if by fate, he had happened to still be at the rink after my practice with Aiden. Which of course, Aiden still hadn't had any major struggles with figure skating.

On a last-minute whim I decided to go ahead with my plan to ask Chris for help. It'd been almost a full week since my punishment with Aiden has started. I sucked at hockey. I was not comfortable stick handling, I could barely control the puck slowly, and I still wasn't a fan of the hockey skates. But Aiden however, he didn't seem to share the same uncomfortableness from switching sports that I had. I didn't just want to level the playing field, I needed to.

"Hey, hold up a minute!" I called out to Chris. Aiden had gone straight to the locker room, so I knew I had to do this quickly. "Can we talk for a minute?"

Chris stopped in his tracks, turned on his heel to face me. His eyebrows were raised, a sly smile on his lips. "You're willingly talking to a hockey player?" He gasped, clearly teasing me, and held a hand to his chest. "I'm honored."

The urge to roll my eyes at him was too strong for me to ignore. "Yeah, yeah," I mumbled, waved my hand dismissively at him. I broke to a walk a few feet from where Chris stood.

"What's up?" He held a friendly smile. That was a good sign. He didn't look annoyed by my presence.

My plan slipped from my mind as I stood there, taking the time to studying his features. In all the years that we'd trained at the same rink, gone to the same school, I had never noticed how genuine of a guy Chris seemed. He was tall, but lean, and though I had always thought hockey players were destined to walk around with permanent smug expression, Chris's face was always soft.

I violently shook my head, pushed out the thoughts threatening to dismantle my hatred of hockey players. I could feel the heat as it rushed to my face. Chris couldn't hear my thoughts, but had to have noticed me staring.

"Is everything okay?" Chris cocked his eyebrow, head tilted to the side.

"Yeah," I breathed. "I'm fine."

My eyes scanned the hallways, checking to see if any of his teammates were lingering around. The last thing that I needed was for one of them to overhear what I was about to ask Chris. Especially Aiden.

I didn't see anyone, but I felt it was better to be safe, than sorry. "Can we talk outside?"

Chris seemed to have picked up on my paranoia, his eyes scanned the hallways as if he was trying to figure out what I was looking for. He chose to not ask about it. Instead, he gestured towards the door. "After you."

Once outside, I released a large breath of air and shoved my hands into the front pockets of the light jacket I was wearing. "Wow. Okay," I muttered. My eyes fell on Chris's for a brief moment before I dropped them to the ground. "This is a lot harder than I thought it would be."

My thoughts began to race. Chris was the captain of the hockey team. It was insane that I was about to ask him for his help. Why would he want to teach me hockey to gain the upper hand on his teammate? Thinking about it now, I was realizing just how stupid of an idea it was.

"What is?"

I sucked in my lower lip, held it with my teeth. My eyes were lasered onto the Nike symbol on my slides. This was it. I'd already started the conversation, so I might as well have finished it.

"I have a favor to ask of you."

Chris didn't say anything at first. It was quiet for several impossibly long seconds before he started to laugh. I instinctively looked up from the ground and was met with his amused grin. "What could possibly have happened for you to ask a hockey player for help?"