The Hockey Player Never Looked My Way

The note was pink.

That was the first thing I noticed pale pink, folded into a neat little square, sitting under my desk, as it had always been there. I almost didn't pick it up. Almost. But my name wasn't on it and curiosity is a disease I've never been able to cure, so I unfolded it slowly under the desk while Mr. Philips was still talking.

Three words.

Come watch me play, T.

My heart did something stupid immediately. I knew that handwriting. I'd stared at it enough times on the sign-up sheets in the main corridor to recognize it without thinking. Dalton Yates. Dalton Yates, who had six championship trophies before the age of nineteen and a jaw that made girls forget their own names in the middle of sentences.

He'd called me T.

I pressed the note flat against my thigh and told myself to breathe.

By the time the bell rang, I had already decided to skip prep class. My drama coach was going to be furious. The Oxford Theater of Arts intake assessment was in two weeks and I hadn't missed a single prep session since September. But Dalton had written my initial. He'd specifically told me to come. That meant something. It had to mean something.

I spent thirty minutes in the bathroom doing my hair. I told myself I wasn't being pathetic while I was doing it. I went to the art room and printed a placard and wrote his name across it in thick black marker, bold enough to see from the ice. I told myself that was completely reasonable.

By the time I got to the rink and found my seat in the front row, I had rehearsed seven different versions of how our conversation would go after the game. In most of them, he looked surprised to see how good I looked. In all of them, he was glad I came.

I ignored the girls who stared at my placard.

I even ignored Trisha.

She was two rows behind me with Edna and Paula, which I only knew because I could hear that laugh of hers, the one she sharpened specifically to get under my skin. I didn't turn around. Trisha Cole had been my stepsister for eleven years and in all that time she'd never once done anything that wasn't calculated to hurt me. I was not going to let her ruin this.

I kept my eyes on the ice.

Dalton came out with the rest of the team and my chest tightened in a way I refused to analyze too closely. He was good. Everyone said he was good but watching him move on the ice was a different thing entirely fast and certain, like he'd been built for exactly this and nothing else. He scored the first goal in under three minutes and the crowd screamed and I screamed with them, holding my placard up, and I felt almost normal for a few minutes.

Then I noticed he wasn't looking at me.

Not once. Not during the breaks, not when his team celebrated, not when I held that sign as high as my arms would go. His eyes kept going somewhere behind me. The same spot, over and over, during every play pause.

Two rows back.

My stomach turned cold but I didn't let myself finish that thought. I raised my placard higher instead.

Then he blew a kiss.

Slow and deliberate, straight over my head, and behind me I heard Trisha laugh. I heard Edna say something and then Paula, and then the three of them were laughing together and I sat there with my arms still raised and my placard still up and I understood then, in a way that settled into my chest like something heavy, that I had made a very serious mistake.

I put the sign down. I didn't throw it away because I didn't want to give anyone the satisfaction of watching me throw it away. I just set it face down on my lap and watched the rest of the game in silence while Trisha took videos of me on her phone two rows back.

I didn't turn around. I didn't react. I just watched Dalton score six goals and told myself none of this was happening.

The final whistle blew and I stood up before I could stop myself. My feet moved on their own. I got to the barrier fast, before the crowd shifted, and when he came off the ice I was right there. I stepped in front of him. I smiled. I used the best version of my smile, the one I'd practiced in the mirror that morning.

He smiled back.

One second. Maybe less.

Then he put his hand on my shoulder, moved me aside like I was a door he needed to get through, and pulled Trisha against him so hard she laughed.

He kissed her. Long and slow, right in front of me, and when he finally pulled back his voice was rough and low and completely unbothered.

"I cannot wait to fuck you tonight."

Trisha smiled against his mouth.

Edna stepped up to my left. Paula is on my right. They weren't even trying to hide it.

"Did you genuinely think that note was from him?" Edna asked.

I didn't say anything.

"That placard though." Paula pressed her lips together, trying not to laugh and failing. "Trixie. Babe."

Tears came before I could stop them. I felt them and I hated myself for feeling them and I turned and walked away before either of them could see my face properly. I walked fast. I didn't run because running would have made it worse. I found the stairwell near the east corridor and I stood inside it and I let myself cry for thirty seconds exactly.

Then I wiped my face. Straightened my back. And went to drama class.

I was already too late.

Mrs. Okafor was standing at the front with her clipboard and the room had that unsettled, buzzing energy that meant something had already happened without me. She looked up when I walked in and her face did what faces do when the news is bad.

External investors had visited while I was sitting in that front row holding a sign for a boy who'd never once looked at me. They'd come to assess candidates for the Oxford Theater of Arts next intake. They'd made their selections.

My name wasn't on the list.

I stood in the doorway and heard Mrs. Okafor talk about other opportunities and alternative pathways and my father's face kept appearing in my mind. The way he looked when he was proud of me. The way that happened less and less now that Trisha's mother was in the picture and money was something we had to ask permission for.

My stepmother was going to make this the worst week of my life.

I left without saying anything.

The main corridor was loud and I put my head down and moved toward the exit and that was when I heard it. Clapping. Voices. That specific noise a crowd makes when someone is being celebrated.

I looked up.

Trisha was standing near the main doors surrounded by people and she was holding a file and even from where I was standing I could read what was printed on the front.

Oxford Theater of Arts.

I stopped walking.

She looked across the corridor and found me immediately, like she'd been waiting. She smiled the way she always smiled when something had gone exactly according to plan.

Trisha hated acting. She had never once expressed any interest in theater. There was only one explanation for what I was looking at and it involved her mother's bank account and a phone call to the right people.

She had bought my spot.

I turned to leave.

"Trixie." Her voice followed me down the corridor. "Aren't you going to congratulate me?"

People laughed.

I kept walking. I pushed through the side doors and turned into the hallway leading outside and I was so focused on getting out that I wasn't watching where I was going and I walked straight into someone.

His files were scattered across the floor.

I opened my mouth to apologize and looked down out of habit and stopped breathing.

One of the files had fallen open. Papers spread across the floor tiles and on the top sheet, printed clearly in plain black font, was a name I recognized immediately.

Mine.

Trixie Baker.

I looked up slowly.

He was already crouching to gather everything, unbothered, unhurried, and when he straightened and looked at me properly I registered that he was very good-looking in a way that felt almost inconvenient given everything else happening today.

He loo

ked at me like he'd been expecting me.

I looked at the file in his hand.

Why did this stranger have my name in his paperwork?