neck with a gloved hand. “Maybe I’ll talk to my brother first. Our teams play soon, and we can usually swing some downtime together before one of us has to be on the road.”
“How do you think he’ll take it?”
“I don’t know. But I think he might have some idea how our parents will.”
“Okay.” I clumsily skated closer, lifted my chin, and stole a brief kiss. “But like I said, don’t hurry for my benefit. Whenever you’re ready.”
He nodded, then gestured toward the locker room. “For the moment, though, how about we go back to my place for some of those things that nobody else needs to know about?”
I laughed. “That’s hot.” As I started toward the bench, though, I winced. “Except, uh… You might have to do the heavy lifting tonight.”
Jase flashed me a wicked grin that almost cost me my already precarious balance. “I’m pretty sure we can make it work.”
A solid week later, I could no longer feel that skating lesson in my poor, abused muscles. I still had a few aches and twinges that I was pretty sure were Jase’s fault, but they’d had nothing to do with ice skating. I could live with it, and it was hard not to stroll into the office with a smile on my face when I could feel everything he’d done to me last night.
Plus I was going to a Snow Bears game tonight. A chance to watch my man shooting around on the ice, maybe even getting into some fisticuffs? Fuck yeah.
I wasn’t the only hockey fan in my office, so it was always obvious when it was game day at home. The higher ups preferred us to dress more on the “business” end of business casual, but if it was Friday and the Snow Bears were playing at home, then hockey attire was allowed. Even if it was a jersey or T-shirt representing some other team, like how Gail in Purchasing always wore her bright green Cutters jersey and Dave in Shipping wore his red and white Montreal jersey (though only when they were having one of their rare winning-ish seasons; he was a bit of a fair weather fan).
I had a lot of opinions about this place, and I would have sold my soul for an opportunity to jump ship and work somewhere else, but at least Hockey Fridays made it somewhat more bearable. Between those and the odd birthday potluck, it wasn’t all bullshit and drudgery. Mostly bullshit and drudgery, but not all.
As I settled in for the day, the office was noisy, just like always, but there was an undercurrent of excitement I’d come to recognize over the years. I was used to the steady hum of conversation all around me. High cubicle walls muffled a lot of it, and over time, I’d just sort of accepted the occasional bark of laughter (looking at you, Dan in R&D) and the loud snip-snip-snip of someone clipping their nails at work (yeah, I know it’s you, Jared in Tech Support) as background noise.
Cathy, who worked in the cubicle to my left, hadn’t quite adapted even after five years. I could practically feel her vibrating with fury whenever the nail-clipping or loud-laughing started up, or whenever someone had a noisy battle with the communal printer that was forever jamming. I’d tried a few times to get our manager to let us wear headphones while we worked, under the pretense that it was a lot easier to concentrate on numbers when we didn’t have noisy distractions. He shot it down every time, though. After all, wearing headphones at work “looked unprofessional.” Who the fuck was going to see it? Who the fuck cared?
Sorry, Cathy. I tried.
I felt for her, too. Ten or fifteen years ago, I’d have rolled my eyes and told her to just get used to it, but living with Dallas had taught me that sensory overload wasn’t a voluntary thing. Cathy probably couldn’t will herself to tune out the noise any more than Dallas could tune out strong smells or bright lights. What I wouldn’t have given—and what Cathy probably wouldn’t have given—for actual offices with doors. If we ever switched to an open plan arrangement, I had no doubt she’d be the first to quit, and I didn’t blame her.
Today, the background noise of conversation had that excited vibe that happened when someone got their hands on a juicy piece of gossip. The whole place had felt like that for a solid month after