Cozying up to Luke when Kris was around proved to be a difficult task when the last days of October, after my sky high hangout with Kris, were so jam packed. I had closing weekend for Giselle and the Maple Leafs had two home games with a road trip to Boston sandwiched in between. The team had a Halloween party, but with the big club’s entire roster in attendance, it wasn’t the right time or place for Luke and me to make our point. I didn’t even go.

The first week of November brought a week of rest for me before six full weeks of preparation for The Nutcracker. For the boys, it brought back-to-back games: one at the ACC and the other in Washington 24 hours later. The first of the two, a Battle of Ontario loss against the Ottawa Senators, had been on Luke’s birthday. The following night, against the Capitals, they lost in a shootout.

When they returned home, on the tail end of a four-game losing streak, Luke reluctantly celebrated his belated birthday at Sloppy Joe’s, a pool hall bar on Lake Shore Boulevard. It was a hockey bar (well, all bars in Toronto were hockey bars) that was packed on Leafs game nights. Instead, on an off night, Luke and his teammates and friends packed the place. The bar couldn’t promise to shut their doors for a private party for a few hours—it was a Friday—but they did open early to accommodate the birthday boy. The team couldn’t stay out all night anyway; they had a morning skate to get to the next day.

The bar was pretty void of other clientele when I got there with Étienne and Carolina. It was just past five in the afternoon. I brought some of my company friends with me to share the good time. I knew Luke would be occupied by a million different things for his few hours out and that I wouldn’t be at his side for the night. Once again, it wasn’t the right time or place to make gains on Kris.

But I had to be there for the damper celebration of Luke’s birthday. Kris wasn’t supposed to know that Luke and I couldn’t be all over each other in front of their other teammates because of him. I had to be there but I couldn’t hang around Luke all night. It was all so complicated, all for the game. I’d fessed up to my friend Sarah about the game I was playing, just so I could have someone other than Luke to talk to about it, and after a while she joked that she was going to need a flow chart to follow along.

Anyway, Luke had become one of my good friends over two months. Showing up to his party didn’t feel like fulfillment of a role that was going to help me get the guy I wanted. I was happy to be there to celebrate his birthday, even if it was belated, and even if he and all his teammates weren’t exactly in a partying mood.

He was surrounded when I first saw him. My friends and I settled into a corner table by one of the dart boards. We ordered suicide wings and a pitcher of beer. Preparation for the Christmas shows would be grueling just as the preparation for the autumn program had been. On Monday, we’d be back at St. Lawrence Hall. We deserved to indulge during our week off.

I approached Luke once our orders were in to the kitchen. He was at one of the pool tables, cue in hand, and not even drinking. I was in his line of sight as he was analyzing his next move. “Hey you,” he flashed me his dimples.

We came together for a hug once I was standing right in front of him. “Hi.”

He introduced me as a friend to two of his teammates, Colby Armstrong and Tyler Bozak (a couple of Saskatchewan guys), then handed off his pool cue to someone else before taking me aside so we could have a quick interaction.

“I have a gift for you,” I told him. “I put it on that table. I hope you like it.”

One of the tables closest to the bar top had a neat pile of wrapped gifts on it. The stack was small, which I thought made sense, because what could you really get for a guy who already had everything?

“Thanks,” Luke nodded. “Have you been here long? I didn’t even see you come in.”

“Just fifteen minutes or so. I didn’t want to interrupt,” I shrugged. “I brought some of my dance friends. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not.” He inquired, “Where’s your table? I’ll make sure they add it to my tab.”

“There. They’re the ones playing darts.” I pointed at my friends over in the corner we’d picked out.

Luke shuffled his feet like he was deciding if he should begin walking or not. “Should I go over and introduce myself?”

“No.” I put my hand to his chest for emphasis. “They don’t want to be part of your adoring public. They just came for the free beer.”

Étienne and Carolina weren’t even paying attention to what was going on away from their game of darts, oblivious to all the NHL talent in the room. I’d explained where we were going on the way over. I’d told them that I was friends with a couple of hockey players and one of them was having a birthday party. That didn’t incite a riot with them. All they wanted to know was if they were going to get drinks and hot wing heartburn for free. Luke might as well have been a bus boy if he went over there.

His laugh was deep and loud before he replied, “Okay then.”

I saw him glance behind me and the smile leftover from his laughter turned wider. Luke took my fingers from his chest and curled them against his palm so that we were holding hands. His next words were soft so that only I could hear, “He’s watching us, you know.”

Before I ever saw Luke when I walked into the bar, I’d seen him—Kris. When I saw him he’d been talking to new Leafs captain Dion Phaneuf and his hot Hollywood girlfriend who had once been on Popular Mechanics for Kids. For Luke’s birthday party, Sloppy Joe’s on Lake Shore was more star-studded than any of the clubs and lounges on Queen West.

With a half step, I lessened the distance between Luke and me and gave a smile of my own, “Good.”

“I would kiss you right now but…” Luke trailed off.

But we were in a room full of his friends and teammates, he meant. If he kissed me, I was either going to be the girl he was dating or some slut he was sleeping with. That’s who I would be perceived as by anyone that looked up from their games or drinks and saw us. We couldn’t risk it.

“It’s fine,” I replied and squeezed his hand once before letting go. “21 looks good on you, Luke.”

It was the absolute truth. The minty green of his polo shirt really made his grey eyes pop. His tousled brown hair preserved his baby face look. Dimples and the bump on his nose always looked good on Luke.

“Well I think I still need to grow into it,” he said, giving me an exaggerated once over. “It doesn’t look as good on me as it does on you. You look incredible.”

My day had been wide open so I had had plenty of time to look hot in a way that was appropriate for a party at a casual bar. I’d gone with a form-fitting oxblood-coloured sweater dress, paired with opaque navy tights. To keep it casual I’d put on a pair of oxfords and gathered my shoulder length blonde hair into a simple low ponytail. The dress showed off my slim shoulders and clavicles. My lips, tinted with lipstick that matched my dress, were absolutely kissable. I thought I looked pretty good without looking like I was begging for attention.

“You’re the best, Luke.” I leaned in and, simultaneously, stood on my tip toes so that I could kiss him on the cheek. “Happy Birthday. Belated.”

Before letting me escape back to my table, he told me that he would text me for a progress report later on. My friends were still waiting on our basket of wings but their game of darts had been short lived. When I informed them that our bill was taken care of, they quickly topped off their pint glasses with the little that was left in the first pitcher and requested another from our server.

Étienne wanted to get a round of shots once she’d already left for the bar. He was particularly fond of our server and wanted every excuse for her to keep returning to our table. She was a cute and curvy little brunette wearing the standard Sloppy Joe’s uniform: tiny black shorts and a racerback tank with the bar logo right on the chest. Étienne wasn’t into ballet bodies. She was just his type and hadn’t even complained about his attempts to flirt with her so far.

“What if we ordered more food?” Étienne asked. “Do you think she’d be mad?”

“She’s our server,” Carolina stressed. “I think she’d be mad if we don’t leave a decent tip.”

My dance partner let out an exasperated sigh. “Can I leave my phone number? Would she be mad about that?”

I giggled as I took a swig of my beer. My pint glass was still half full since I’d stepped away to talk to Luke briefly.

“Hey,” a new voice spoke beside me.

When I looked up, Kris was standing next to me at the edge of the table. “Hi,” I smiled.

He didn’t look happy. “Can I talk to you?”

“Kris,” I said, “these are my friends, Carolina and Étienne. Kris is…Kris and I go way back. We grew up together.”

“Nice to meet you.” Kris barely cracked a smile, as they greeted him, before speaking directly to me again and repeating himself, “Can I talk to you? Outside? Now?”

“Okay,” I agreed monotonously with an eyebrow half raised, wondering why he was being so insistent and rude. “I’ll be back, you guys.”

I grabbed my coat off the back of my chair to shield me from the early November evening and slid my phone into one of the pockets. I turned back to my friends and mouthed a ‘sorry’ as Kris and I were walking towards the door. I followed him outside and we didn’t stop until we were standing in the doorway of the storefront next to the bar. It was a souvenir shop that, according to the hours listed in the window, closed at five every afternoon. The doorway was wide—fitting double doors—and lit by a solitary fluorescent motion-detecting light.

Kris’ hair looked more blond than usual under the bright light, and his skin looked flushed out. The blue of his eyes actually looked deeper, accented by the long, curly eyelashes he’d had even as a boy.

“So what did you want to talk about?” I wondered as I slipped into my light pea coat. Given our location, there was always a slight breeze coming in from the shore of Lake Ontario.

A moment passed before he said anything. I studied his face. It looked like he was trying to calm down. He took a deep breath. “Kaylie, this has to stop.”

Once my coat was on, I untucked my tied hair from inside the collar of the jacket. “This?”

“This…you and Luke…your thing. Whatever it is you’re doing,” Kris clarified, “it has to stop. I mean it.”

I shoved my hands into my pockets. And then I froze.

Holy shit.

It was about to happen. The moment I’d been waiting for. The one Luke had told me was just on the horizon. This was it. It had to be. Kris was about to drop his bomb.

Suddenly I was flustered. I felt a cold sweat coming on. I counted down from five to one before I responded. When I responded, I was just testing to see if he would break easily. “Why do you think you have the right to tell me that? Why would I stop just because you tell me to?”

“Because…”

Because you like me? Because you want me to have a thing with you instead?

“You think Luke is such a nice guy,” he changed the format of his approach. “The two of you are getting close. You think that you’re headed towards a relationship with him. Am I right?”

That’s how he wanted to make his reveal? He wanted me to shake it out of him. He wanted me to admit it first. He wanted to play hardball.

“Luke makes me feel special,” I answered.

That much was true. There were moments of weakness when I wanted to be part of something real with Luke, like the night that I’d been drunk and tried to sleep with him. But even stone cold sober, there were moments that I was willing to forget everything between us was just for show. He always knew the right thing to say and took good care of me. He made me feel special. What girl didn’t want a man that made her feel special?

Sometimes I wondered if Luke felt the same way, if he thought there could be something between us, even though that wasn’t our intention from the start. In trying to spark a fire and finding out I had real feelings for Kris, I had also developed a tiny little crush on Luke.

“I’m telling you, you’re not going to sail off into the sunset with him,” Kris continued. “Unless you take control and stop, you’re going to fall head first off a cliff. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

“Give me a real reason,” I dared.

My heart was pounding in my chest. That was how I knew that anything I felt for Luke didn’t even register on the same Richter scale as what I wanted to happen with Kris. I’d fought for him without any proper assurance that the payoff would be what I wanted. He put my stomach into knots. He was still the one I wanted.

“There was talk in the dressing room. I overheard a conversation about how Luke has been talking to his ex again,” Kris spoke gently, as if what he was telling me might be a slap to my face. “Kaylie, the talk in the dressing room…it’s never just rumours.”

I hadn’t had the time to talk to Luke much over the last couple of days, what with the Leafs’ road trip and closing weekend of Giselle. From the start, we’d been very good about keeping our story straight. Anything important that could derail us, we told each other so we could corroborate our white lies. But he hadn’t said anything about his ex-girlfriend to me.

Kris spoke again, “So I asked him about it.”

“Okay,” I replied, hoping that Luke had come up with something good, anything that I could spin in my head and pretend like I’d known all along. “What did he say?”

“He said he’s confused. He likes you a lot,” Kris sighed into his next sentence, “but he’s still in love with her.”

Seriously? That was what he had said?

I got the sense that Luke hadn’t told me that he’d been talking to his ex-girlfriend again because he didn’t want me to know. I wasn’t mad that it was true, and I knew that it was, if that information had made rounds in the Leafs’ dressing room. He was in love with his ex-girlfriend, which was fine with me, and it was none of my business. Just because we were partners in working on my train wreck of a love life, it didn’t mean I could have anything to do with his. But I was disappointed with what he’d told Kris. It made him seem like a jerk and Kris probably thought I was a fucking idiot.

“It’s fine,” I began. “I—”

“Are you joking? It is not fine,” he sneered, interrupting me. “He can’t just use you, treat you like a placeholder, while he’s waiting to get back to the warm ranch. He’s an asshole. That is not okay.”

Kris’ voice had risen by a decibel. I couldn’t have guessed he would be so angry over me. My heart swelled.

“No, it’s not,” I agreed with a timid voice. There wasn’t an ounce in my body angry at Luke, even if I had developed a tiny crush on him, but I would have to pretend.

“This is my fault,” Kris said slowly. “I shouldn’t have let it get this far.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m so sorry, Kaylie,” he shook his head and sighed once more. “I thought you would have a good time with Luke. Enough for you to stop crushing on me. I didn’t think you were gonna fall for him and…”

No.

No.

Kris finished his train of thought but I didn’t know what he said. I didn’t even hear his voice. I tuned out. I was stuck on the sentence before. Please tell me he did not just say ‘enough for you to stop crushing on me’.

“Wait, Kris,” I spoke, hoping he didn’t hear the shake in my voice. “Crushing on you? What?”

He had the audacity to smile. “You don’t think I know that you liked me? I wasn’t born yesterday, Kaylie.”

Bloody. Fucking. Hell.

He knew?!

Had he known all along? Did Luke know that he knew? My mind went into overdrive.

“Are you saying that you told your teammate to hook up with me…knowing that I liked you?” I was still figuring it out as I spoke.

“Um…sort of,” Kris winced. “Not really. I told him that you were cute, and he was newly single, so I thought maybe…I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought.”

Kris thought I was cute? Wait, so not the point. He’d practically auctioned me off and he hadn’t even waited for the highest bidder.

“So basically you told Luke that I should be his rebound girl.” I lost my head. “It was okay that I was fooling around with him, so long as I started to like someone else? Someone other than you?”

Kris looked sufficiently uncomfortable at the thought that I’d slept with someone because of his selfishness. Good. It served him right. He didn’t have to know that I’d never actually done the dirty with Luke.

“Kaylie,” he began, “when you put it that way, it—”

“Admit it.” I cut him off and narrowed my eyes at him. “That’s what you did.”

He didn’t. He looked away from me, to his feet.

“Luke isn’t the one that’s an asshole,” I said to Kris just as my voice cracked. “You’re an asshole.”

It felt good to insult him to his face, after finding out just what he thought about my crush on him. I’d really started to believe that he might have a thing for me too. At the very least I thought he genuinely cared about my well-being. None of it was true. My fate with him wasn’t like those girls like Rissa. It was worse—it was nonexistent—and he had made sure of it.

With a shaky breath, I pushed off the sidewalk and began walking. I walked past the bar, straight towards the end of the street. I had pulled my phone out of my pocket with one hand, and was just about to press the button for the pedestrian crossing with the other, when Kris’ voice rang out again.

“Where are you going?” Kris demanded, his footsteps brisk behind me.

“Home,” was my simple answer. “I’m going to take the streetcar to the subway.”

It wouldn’t take long to get to the condo. The bar where Luke’s party was taking place was already in Etobicoke. I typed a quick text to Carolina as I waited for the signal to cross the street. My friends didn’t have to leave just because my mood had soured. I apologized for leaving abruptly and asked her to hold onto my purse until the next day.

“Please don’t leave. Come back inside,” Kris begged just as the pedestrian light changed from the orange hand to the white silhouette of a man. I was off in a flash and Kris groaned, walking along and still following me closely. “Your brother is going to kill me.”

Oh, I was counting on it. I was absolutely livid. There would be no complaints on my part if Gavin wanted to use his overprotective older brother card this time around. In fact, I would gladly help him. Gavin could pour the gasoline and I would light the match.

Notes

Well it looks like Kris dropped his bomb, just not the one Kaylie was hoping for.

This is one of my favorite chapters, but I've also worried what you guys will think of it. I don't think that this revelation about Luke and his ex is completely out of left field. I want to remind everyone that the way Luke's character is presented in the story is with a bias, through Kaylie's point of view. As I'm sure you already know, a first person POV narrator isn't necessarily a reliable narrator. Kaylie talks about Luke the way that she sees him and knows him. She can't say what she doesn't know. Remember, from the start, Luke came up with the game plan. Luke is the one who stopped them when Kaylie was drunk. Maybe there's a reason other than he's just a really great guy.

I am not, however, worried about the next chapter. More questions raised and more revelations. So excited to share it with you and get your reactions. Thank you so much for your comments. And most of all, thank you for reading! :)

Extended Chapter Notes