My Hockey Heartthrob: Face Off

The Lake

The lake wasn't really a lake. It was a pond. A frozen, scummy, beautiful pond behind Sapele High School where the ice was never quite thick enough and the boards were made of plywood and the lights were broken so you had to bring your own lanterns.

It was our place. Mine and Jax's. Before we were anyone.

I got there at 6 a.m. because old habits die hard and Jax was always early. The sun wasn't up yet. The air was so cold it hurt to breathe. I wore my own clothes this time — no jerseys, no hoodies that belonged to boys — just black leggings, a white puffer, my old skates slung over my shoulder. I left Cole sleeping. He slept shirtless, on his stomach, one arm hanging off the bed, tattoos stark. I didn't wake him. I wrote a note: Gone for a run. Back before practice. - E

It wasn't a lie. The lake was a run away. If you ran very fast and didn't stop to meet your ex.

Jax was already there. Of course he was. Sitting on the bench where we used to lace up, in a black beanie and his old high school letterman jacket — not his Wolves jacket, the Sapele High one with my initials still written in Sharpie on the inside pocket from when I used to steal it. His breath puffed white.

He stood when he saw me. "You came."

"You said one hour," I said, sitting on the opposite end of the bench, not looking at him, lacing my skates with hands that shook from cold and something else.

"I thought you'd change your mind after last night. After his goal. After he—" He stopped. "You screamed for him, Ella. I heard you on the broadcast. The mic caught you."

"I screamed because he scored. That's what you do at hockey games."

"You screamed like you meant it."

I finished lacing and stood. The ice was rough, not Zamboni smooth, but it was ours. I stepped on, wobbled — I hadn't skated on pond ice in five years — and caught myself.

Jax was on the ice in one smooth stride. He always made it look easy. He skated backwards in front of me, hands in his pockets, watching me.

"You still skate like a baby deer," he said.

"You still skate like a show-off."

He smiled. Real smile. The boy smile, not the captain smile. "Come on, Reyes. Show me what you got."

We skated. Slow at first, just circles, the way we used to before school when the world was small. My breath evened out. My legs remembered. Jax didn't try to coach me. He just skated next to me, close enough that our shoulders brushed.

"Why did you bring me here?" I asked after a lap.

"Because this is the last place you were honest with me," he said quietly. "Right here. Senior year. You said you'd wait for me. Then you didn't. I needed to know why."

"I did wait," I said, stopping, snow spraying. "For a year. You went to Michigan, you stopped calling, you posted with—"

"I know. I was eighteen and stupid and scared you'd leave me if I wasn't the big man on campus. I thought if I acted like I didn't care, it wouldn't hurt when you moved on. But you didn't move on. You waited. And I—" He looked down at the ice. "I kept your jacket. And your jersey. And that stupid photo of us at prom where you have braces and I have acne."

"I did not have braces at prom!"

"You had a retainer. You took it out for the photo and lisped all night." He laughed, then went serious again. "Ella, I never got over you. Not in Michigan, not in the draft, not in New York. Every girl, I compared to you. None of them—"

"Jax, stop."

"No. You need to hear it. I told them to hire someone else because I knew if you came, I'd do this. I'd ruin everything. I'm captain. I have to be captain. But with you—" He stepped closer, took my hands. His gloves were off. His hands were freezing, mine were freezing, but where they touched burned. "With you, I'm just Jax. The kid who can't do a crossover without falling if you're watching."

"That's not true. You're—"

"I am. Watch." He tried to do a flashy crossover to prove a point, hit a rut in the pond ice, and went down hard on his ass. He lay there, stunned.

I burst out laughing. Loud, real, the first real laugh I'd had in weeks. "Oh my god! Are you okay?"

He started laughing too, lying on the ice, looking up at me. "See? You make me fall."

I knelt next to him, still laughing, our knees touching. "You're such an idiot."

"Your i***t?" he asked, soft.

The air changed. His eyes dropped to my mouth. My breath caught. We were on our lake, on the ice where he first kissed me at sixteen, where he taught me to shoot, where we planned our future that never happened.

"Ella," he whispered, and his hand came up, cold, to my cheek, same as last night, same as five years ago.

And he kissed me.

It wasn't like Cole's forehead kiss — sweet and for show. This was Jax. This was history. This was five years of missed calls and prom photos and jerseys kept in closets. His lips were cold and chapped and familiar. He tasted like mint gum, same as always.

For a second, I kissed him back. I couldn't help it. My body remembered before my brain did. My hands fisted in his letterman jacket.

Then my brain caught up.

I pulled back, hard, scrambling backward on the ice, falling on my own ass now.

"No. No, Jax, no—"

He sat up, eyes wide. "Ella—"

"We can't! I'm — I'm with Cole!"

"It's fake! You said it was fake!"

"It doesn't matter! I signed something! I live with him! And you — you have a team! And I have a job! And you can't just kiss me after five years like nothing happened!"

"It happened! Everything happened! I still—" He stopped himself, breathing hard, his cheeks red from cold and from the kiss. "I still love you. I never stopped. I tried. I swear I tried, but I didn't."

My eyes filled. "You don't get to say that. Not here. Not after you left me."

"I know. I know I don't. But it's true." He reached for me again, slower. "One hour. You said one hour. Can we just... have one hour where it's not about contracts and jerseys and fake boyfriends? Where it's just us? Like before?"

I should have said no. I should have gotten up, skated off, driven back to Casa Maddox and pretended this never happened.

But I stayed on the ice. Because it was Jax. And it was our lake. And part of me — the seventeen-year-old part that still had his jacket in my closet at my mom's house — still loved him too.

We sat on the ice for that hour, not kissing again, just talking. He told me about Michigan, about the draft, about how lonely New York was. I told him about Columbia, about Metro Sports, about how I cried in the bathroom. He held my hands to keep them warm. He didn't try to kiss me again. He just... was there. Jax. My Jax.

At 7:15, my phone buzzed. Cole: Where are you? Practice in 45. - C

I stood, brushing ice off my leggings. "I have to go."

"I know." Jax stood too. He looked down at me, his beanie crooked. "Will you come again? Tomorrow?"

"I can't. I'm with the Hawks this week."

"After?"

"Jax—"

"Just as friends. I swear. Just friends who used to... you know. Skate."

I nodded before I could think. "Friends."

He smiled, relieved. "Friends."

We walked to the bench together. As I unlaced, he pulled something from his letterman pocket. A tiny, old, faded hair tie. Mine. From high school. The one I used to wear on my wrist.

"I found it in my old bag," he said, handing it to me. "Thought you might want it back."

My throat tightened. I took it.

We didn't kiss goodbye. We hugged. Quick, tight, familiar. He smelled like ice and that cheap spray.

I ran back to my car, hair tie on my wrist now, heart pounding like I'd done something terrible. Because I had.

I had kissed my ex while wearing my fake boyfriend's address on my driver's license.

I pulled up to Casa Maddox at 7:42. Cole's truck was in the driveway, running. He was on the porch, in sweats and a beanie, coffee in hand, watching me pull in.

He didn't look angry. He looked... empty.

"Morning," he said as I got out, skates over my shoulder, cheeks red, hair tie on my wrist that wasn't his.

"Morning," I said, trying to sound normal. "Good run."

"Yeah? Where'd you run? To 2009?" He looked at my skates. At the pond water frozen on my leggings. At the hair tie.

My stomach dropped.

"You followed me."

"I woke up and you were gone. Your note said 'run.' You don't run. You hate running. You said running is 'internalized capitalism.' So I checked your location. You share it with me, remember? For safety. PR safety."

He knew. He knew.

"It was just Jax," I whispered.

"Just Jax," he repeated, nodding slowly. He took a sip of coffee. "Did you kiss him?"

I couldn't lie. Not with his eyes on me like that.

"It was — it just happened. It was the lake, and history, and—"

"Did you kiss him?" he asked again, quieter.

"Yes."

He stared at me for a long time. Then he laughed, short and humorless.

"Cool. Cool. So my fake girlfriend who said 'no feelings' went and kissed her ex on the pond while wearing my hoodie. That's cool. That's great PR. Very stable. Very family-friendly. My GM will love this."

"Cole, it's not—"

"Don't." He held up a hand. "Don't do the 'it's not what it looks like' thing. I know what it looks like. I saw it. I sat in my truck and watched you two on the ice for twenty minutes. You laughed. You haven't laughed like that here. Not once."

My eyes burned. "You watched us?"

"Yeah, I watched. I'm a masochist like that." He set his coffee down hard, it sloshed over. "Get in the house, Goldilocks. We have practice. And we have to pretend we're in love for eight hours. Think you can manage that after kissing your true love at dawn?"

He walked inside, slamming the door.

I stood on the porch, wearing Jax's hair tie, in front of Cole's house, with both their smells on me, and I realized I'd just ruined the only good thing I had going.

The lake was supposed to be innocent. One hour of honesty.

Instead, it was the place where everything fake started to feel real — and everything real started to fall apart.