I drove home carefully since I felt dazed. Whenever Jimmy and I were alone together, it was like my brain wasn’t functioning fully so other parts of my body took over. We got the same adrenaline rush as hockey, except from sex. We went full tilt and took chances, but it was unreal. My body was completely wrung out.
I didn’t want to go home and have to talk to my parents about how the evening had gone. “Oh great, Mom and Dad, we had a lovely dinner, and then we fucked each other’s brains out under GM Place.” Plus, I smelled like sex, even after using a condom. Sex was oozing from every pore of my skin. Luckily, it was still early enough to make alternate plans, so I called April and then my parents.
Unfortunately my dad answered.
“Dad, I’m going to stay at April’s tonight.”
“April’s? Weren’t you out with this James fellow?”
“I was, but he had to be back early, team curfew. So I thought I would hang out with April now.”
“Well…” An interminably long pause followed. “Excuse me, Kelly, but is this one of those excuses, so you can, er, spend the night with your boyfriend, while your parents think you are at a girlfriend’s?” He must have been reading the Life section of The Globe & Mail again. Plus, talk about shutting the barn door too late—I had already had sex twice before eleven o’clock, three times if you counted what happened in the restaurant.
“No, Dad. To prove it, I will drop the car off at our place and then walk over to April’s. Look out the window; I’m pulling up now. Alone.” This was the most awkward conversation ever. I was twenty, but when I was at home I had to answer to my parents like a twelve-year-old.
By the time I got to April’s, the cold night air had cleared my head enough to be able to think straight. I slipped into her house, mercifully without seeing any of her family, and went up to her bedroom/clothing warehouse.
“How did the dress work out?” April demanded excitedly.
“Great. Actually I may have to buy it from you. Jimmy loved it so much. He loved the underwear too,” I added dreamily.
“The underwear? Oh my God. What happened? Weren’t you going to dinner with his parents?” April looked more closely at me. “Oh how could I not have noticed, you totally reek of sex. You look like a truck hit you.”
I didn’t want to talk about this, so I went off to take a shower. I took the clothes I had left here before dinner. Of course, I had no panties, but April did not need to know that detail.
With the hot water beating down on me, I relaxed and relived the evening. We had such incredible chemistry. Although I wasn’t too impressed with what he had done in front of his parents, it was hard to keep our hands off each other. Having sex in GM Place had given me this adrenaline rush, and the sex itself had been so intense.
And maybe Lise was right about things developing with time. When we weren’t together, Jimmy had worked hard to show me I could trust him. That dependability, combined with my post-orgasm high, was making me wonder if I was beginning to feel everything that he did. I would have to sort out my emotions because it would be so sweet to tell him in person. For me to say “I love you” in return would make him so happy. A sense of bliss came over me.
April was waiting impatiently when I got back.
“Spill,” she commanded.
“Sorry,” I replied. “I think my personal stuff with Jimmy should stay personal.”
“Oh man, I caused it to happen, and now you won’t tell me. I bet it was the stockings.”
I merely smiled.
“Don’t give me that Mona Lisa look. I don’t have a sex life right now, and I need to live vicariously.”
“Other than under-aged Swedes? You could have one, if you gave Cameron Elliott the time of day.”
“Cameron Elliott?” April was incredulous.
“You know he’s liked you for years.”
“Would you sleep with Cameron Elliott?”
“No, but I only sleep with hockey players.”
“Duh, Cameron Elliott is a hockey player. He was on your team, remember?”
“Sorry, I meant good hockey players.”
“Must be nice to have so many guys that you need screening criteria.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you, Jimmy gave me a gift.”
“A gift, didn’t he give you that bracelet for Christmas? Wow, what did he give you?”
“An Easton Stealth.”
“Sounds like a car.”
“No, it’s a hockey stick.”
“A hockey stick. How… romantic.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s one of the most expensive sticks out there, composite shaft, lightweight and powerful. It makes your shot harder.” I had locked the Stealth in the trunk of the car.
“So he spent a lot of money on you?”
“No, I think it was one of his sticks. He gets them free from manufacturers.”
“So he gave you a hand-me-down hockey stick. I can’t believe you didn’t hit him with it.”
“Why would I? I love it, and he wanted to cheer me up.”
“Well, who wouldn’t be cheered up? That’s a panty dropper if ever I heard of one.”
Wasn't that the truth? I wasn't admitting anything though.
“You’ll see when I use it in my game tomorrow night. It will be awesome.”
I was exhausted, both from the tension of the dinner and our exertion afterwards. I stretched out on the cot April had set up in her room. So many times we had done sleepovers like this, talking and giggling all night.
“Jimmy’s so exciting,” I said.
“Really?” April sounded skeptical. “He doesn’t seem like that kind of person.”
That was true. It wasn’t about Jimmy himself; but when the two of us were together, things were exciting. And he did exciting things, like play in this huge, televised tournament. Well, not only play—he was one of the best players on the ice.
I got to be a part of these things too. But what Phil had said earlier still bothered me. Had I turned into an observer, rather than a participant?
“What’s it like to go out with someone famous?” I asked April. Last year, she had done a season on a cable TV series in Los Angeles and ended up dating the hunky star, Noah Palmer.
“You have to stay real. If you think about the image, the money, the fans, and the gossip, you’ll go crazy. Keeping things as normal as possible is the only way it can work. Of course, it’s a little like high school. Except instead of Andrea Murray telling you that your boyfriend’s been fooling around, it’s Perez Hilton.” April laughed harshly.
“It’s so weird, at first, I was the older, more experienced one. Now it seems like Jimmy’s leaped over me. He’s done so much. Now, he’s been so dominant in this series, and the crowds are cheering for him. He’s getting recognized everywhere. Man, I don’t even know if I’m the right person to be his girlfriend. Am I enough?”
“Why do you like him?” April asked.
“Well, he’s very attractive, no matter what you may think. He’s really nice, a decent person, and sweet. And he’s a really good hockey player.” I was sounding like those lame NHL ads. I couldn’t put into words why I was so attracted to Jimmy. It was on almost from the moment I’d met him, and that attraction had only grown.
“Explain the hockey player part.”
“When I see him play, I love the way he works so hard and makes things happen. It actually turns me on. Weird, eh?” April was nodding a bit too vigourously. “But more than that, we like to talk about hockey together. I don’t think I could be with anyone who didn’t love hockey. And he actually knows way more hockey stuff than me.”
“Hard to imagine,” April replied. “But don’t you see that this is all good?”
“In what way?”
“You haven’t said anything about all the money he’s going to make some day or his fame. But money has never been important to you, except needing it for better hockey gear. I think you would get into watching him play in a beer league as much as the NHL.”
“Yes, but that would be better, because then we could maybe play together.” That countered what Phil had said. It wasn’t the calibre of the game; you watched it because someone you cared about was playing.
“What you don’t get, and I do—since I have had my fifteen minutes of fame—is that when you are famous, you get a little paranoid. Do people really like me, or is it the fame? Who can I count on? And some people deal with this by riding the celebrity train for everything they can get from it: sex, drugs, money, whatever their little heart desires. But some people try to keep it normal, as normal as possible.”
“Well, I’m certainly normal.” Wasn’t that the problem?
“Yeah, but Kelly, you are more than normal, you are like a rock. Don’t you remember all the times I called you to complain and vent?”
“Yes, I used to worry about your phone bill.”
“Typical you, worrying about my phone bill. But calling you was much cheaper than therapy. When everyone around me was nuts, you were the lone voice of sanity. Remember when that director wanted me to get breast implants?”
“Oh God, yes. That was nuts.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what you said. And then you said, ‘April, your breasts are perfect. And if you change your body, you won’t be able to wear your beloved designer clothes.’” April was almost in tears now. “That was the bestest thing you could have said, you reassured me and then appealed to the practical little North Van girl in me. And I so would have regretted that surgery.”
She stopped for a moment to compose herself, looking a lot more like the little North Van girl and less like the emerging actress. Then she went on.
“Kelly, if James is smart, he is probably using you for the same thing. So much stuff has been happening to him in such a short time, he needs someone to talk to, someone he can trust.”
Our phone calls did lack romance. We talked about hockey, about how our games had gone, and about his issues around business and career stuff. I thought our calls should be sexier, but I guess that wasn’t really our style. Our times together were plenty sexy.
“Okay, so what you are saying is I’m the best girlfriend for him because I’m normal, sensible, and not gorgeous. Makes sense.”
“I never said anything about not gorgeous. And from the way he looks at you, he thinks you’re plenty gorgeous.”
“Really?” I needed a little stroking after all that average stuff.
“Definitely, it’s like he wants to clear the room and jump you. Plus he never even notices me, and I am waaaay better looking.”
“Perhaps you would have better luck with bigger breasts.”
And I found out April could hit pretty hard—for a girl.