“Guess what, Jimmy?”
I was totally excited and started bouncing up and down. We were sitting on the players’ bench while evaluating the scrimmage. I noticed Steve was watching me, actually watching my chest, and stopped bouncing. What a perv.
“What?” Jimmy asked, keeping his eyes on the ice.
“Burt let me know, they’re bringing in another girl to help out. She’s not a hockey player, but she’s a local girl who is taking courses in early childhood education. Her name is Loreal.”
Steve perked up. “Loreal? I don’t know her. What a crazy name. I’m picturing a tall, gorgeous blonde.” He smiled, obviously honing his seduction plans for the new girl. If this meant he would finally leave me alone, it was almost as good as the news about getting help.
Jimmy didn’t seem interested in the new girl. He was sitting on the bench beside me, writing out rankings on a clipboard when suddenly he dropped it and yanked my head into his lap.
Excuse me? I wasn’t sure which was more upsetting; suddenly being in the fellatio position or the fact it was kind of turning me on. I felt his quad flexing under my cheek, and then he let go of my head. I popped back up.
“What the hell, Frechette?”
“Sorry, sorry, Kelly. Someone shot the puck hard, and there wasn’t even time to warn you.”
I gave him a suspicious look, but Jimmy looked completely sincere. I had been watching the skaters, and I didn’t see a puck or hear anything.
“Oh thuck.” I turned and looked at Steve. His lip was split and already swollen. “I got a thucking puck in da mouf.”
Maybe you should have been looking at the ice and not at my breasts. But I didn’t say a word since he was clearly in a lot of pain. I offered him a tissue.
Steve 'Fat Lip' Owen was right on two counts. Loreal denHertog was tall, almost six feet. And she was blonde, almost white blonde. But beyond that she was huge, a big-boned gal who towered over me and looked stronger than half the guys here. I was a bit intimidated when I first met her. However, she had a gentle manner and absolutely loved kids. And they loved her in return; all the girls who had been rowdy and disobedient with me were suddenly angels with Loreal. She was seriously the answer to my prayers, and we bonded right away.
“Kelly, it must have been so difficult for you to handle twenty-four girls.” We were lifeguarding a swim session at the lake. Loreal wore a black Speedo-type suit that looked almost retro, and her hair was braided into pigtails. I could imagine April itching to get her magic makeover wand out, but Loreal cared less about her appearance than anyone I had ever met. Her regular uniform was a t-shirt with a wolf painting and cargo shorts. She was making me look Vogue.
“Yeah, it totally sucked. But I bet you could have done it alone. You’re amazing with kids.”
“I love children. I want to have at least five or six myself.”
She was a year older than me and thinking about kids? Holy smokers. I spent more time worrying about not getting pregnant. Well, Loreal could repopulate the planet on my behalf. She was a cool, refreshing breeze in the camp’s testosterone-charged atmosphere.
“Hey, guys.” Jimmy’s low voice came from behind us, and I turned around. He was standing on the dock with Xavier, both of them dressed in t-shirts and board shorts. Unlike my dreams, his actual board shorts were a black and brown check.
“Hi. Are you guys here to take over for us?” I joked. Not that I really cared because after a good night’s sleep, I was my energetic self again.
“Nah, it’s hot, so we thought we’d have a swim after our ice sessions,” replied Jimmy.
That didn’t strike me as the most relaxing idea, since there were a bunch of squealing girls in the water, but it sure was hot. Xavier dropped his towel and t-shirt on the dock beside us and then Jimmy did the same.
Holy shit. Jimmy without a shirt looked even better than my dreams. He was slightly sweaty, and his tanned skin looked like it had been oiled. He had an incredibly cut upper body, with almost squared-off pecs and big delts. I already knew he had great arms since he did a lot of gym work on his bi’s and tri’s. But my eyes kept getting drawn down to his hips, where a combination of his jutting hipbones and sharply-defined iliopsoas muscles meant there were these lines pointing towards his cock. Like neon arrows at a diner flashing “Eat Here! Eat Here!” His board shorts hung a little low, and when he finally dove into the water, I realized in embarrassment I had been staring at his crotch for like a minute. Thank God I had sunglasses on.
“Wow,” I said to Loreal. “That’s a body.”
“Not bad,” she agreed. “Maybe a little boyish. I like some hair on the chest, myself.”
Boyish, really? Jimmy had pretty much the most mature body I’d ever seen on an eighteen-year-old. And judging from the increased volume of shrieks in the water, some of the young girls agreed.
“Is something going on with you and Jimmy?” Loreal asked me.
I shook my head. “We’re friends. That’s it.” My desire to lick the sweat off his body was strictly platonic.
“Oh really? But you’re always hanging out together—” Loreal turned and motioned for two girls to stop fighting over a snorkel. “I don’t know him very well. Everyone in Fredericton knows him, of course, but I live here.”
Jimmy and Xavier swam out to the raft and pulled themselves up. And he looked even better soaking wet. I blessed those laws of physics or whatever that meant his wet board shorts clung to his lower body. His legs were short relative to his body, and his quads were so big that they almost filled out the loose shorts. Then he turned around and his gluts were gigantic. I had already noticed his ass at the gym, but now I was getting the full picture.
“Kelly! Kelly!”
Janine, one of the younger girls, was standing right in front of me. “Finally. It’s like you’re in dreamland. Can you fix my swim-mask?”
“Oh sure, sorry.” I tied up her mask and checked my watch. “I guess we better get everyone out and ready for dinner,” I said to Loreal. But Loreal wasn’t even beside me anymore; she was helping someone in the shallow part. Jeez, I needed to be paying better attention to my job and not to, um, other stuff.
Burt had cleverly arranged the camp so the first week was Bantam girls and younger boys, and then vice versa. Thus he avoided having thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls and boys here at the same time. These precautions saved a lot of adolescent mooning. But all that hormonal energy had to go somewhere, and at night I was privy to a few of the girls fantasizing about the various instructors.
“Steve is way the handsomest.”
“I think Xavier is a hunk.”
“No way, Jimmy is the cutest. Plus he’s going to play in the NHL.”
“You’ll have to fight Kelly for Jimmy, she has a major crush on him!” Giggles, whispering, and peeking at me followed.
“Girls, let’s go to sleep, okay?” How could they not be exhausted after all the ice time, dry land training, swimming, and the trivia quiz that night?
“Kelly, do you like Jimmy?” one of the girls boldly asked me.
“Jimmy is my friend. Now let’s get to sleep.”
“He likes you,” someone else piped up. “He’s always staring at you when you’re not looking. And I heard him say—”
“Shut up,” one of the younger girls said. “Some of us are trying to sleep, and you keep talking about stupid boys.”
Exactly right, but first I wouldn’t have minded hearing what Jimmy had said.
The girls finally settled down to sleep, and I got a moment to think. Now that I was rested and ready-to-go, my energy seemed to be centered on the area below my waist. Here I was supposed to be this example of a mature female hockey player, and I was acting like a lovesick teenager.
Sure, Jimmy was attractive, but he was way too young. He was actually only a year older than my little brother. Yuck. Of course, my brother and his friends were skinny, nerdy, little guys whereas Jimmy was over six feet and about 180 pounds of muscle and general hotness. In fact, when he pulled himself onto the raft this afternoon, dripping water off his concave abs, I had to remind myself to breathe. Bad Kelly!
The guy had told me he wasn’t interested, and you couldn’t get more direct than that. With the girls finally asleep, I drifted off too. My nightly sex dream had us doing it in the dressing room at the rink, and I woke up in the night, sweaty and full of desire. Knowing Jimmy was sleeping only 200 metres away wasn’t helping.