Hockey Is My Boyfriend: Part One (5 page)

A
fter fixing me up
, April even dropped me off at the movie theatre on Esplanade. She wanted to stay and have a look at Nicklas, but she had a date of her own. While I was waiting in the lobby, I saw two girls from my hockey team there. I figured they were spying on me, so I went over to chat.

“Sorry, Kelly. Laura did not believe you 100%, so she made us come. We’re seeing the new Katie Holmes movie anyway. Don’t worry, we won’t follow you into the theatre or anything,” said one of them, a d-man named Hilary.

“You look really nice,” said the other girl, called Sara M. to distinguish her from the two other Saras on the team. “I like your top.”

I didn’t think anyone had ever liked my top before, so April certainly knew what she was doing. The second sign that I looked different came when Nicklas walked right by me without noticing. To be exact, he checked me out but never got as high as my face, so he didn’t recognize me.

“Hey Nicklas.”

“Kelly? Kelly! You clean up nicely.” He seemed surprised, and smiled.

“Nicklas, this is Sara and Hilary. They’re on my hockey team.”

“Hello,” both girls said at the same time. They had these goofy expressions on their faces. Nicklas seemed to have this weird effect on women.

“Ladies,” Nicklas nodded at them. Then he turned his megawatt smile on me. “Shall we get the tickets?”

I held them up. “Way ahead of you,” I replied. I kept looking at his lips. Seriously, I just wanted to kiss him again. What was wrong with me? This was charity on his part, and I had to be cool.

“Excuse us then,” he said to the girls, who were apparently struck silent. He put his hand on the small of my back. Electricity again! I took a huge breath in, which caused him to focus on the V of my top.

“You sure look different, Kelly. You look—hot.”

“Um, thanks,” I replied with automatic politeness. Another first, no guy had ever called me hot before, unless I was actively sweating.

We sat down in the theatre. Nicklas started telling me about how his team was doing and who the best teams in his division were. As he was talking, he kept leaning towards me and getting really close. Once, he played with the fringe on my jacket, and his knuckles brushed my breast. I pretended not to notice. Finally he paused and gave me this intense look.

“You know all the time we played hockey, I never knew you had a body like this underneath the equipment.”

“Well, I probably didn’t. I mean I was only 13 or 14 when we last played together.” Wow, could I have sounded any dumber if I tried?

He laughed. The movie was starting, so I was spared from making any more stupid comments. As the previews began, he put his arm over the back of my seat.

“What are you doing?” I asked. Really, I couldn’t stop my inner eleven-year-old from hijacking the date.

“I figure if your teammates are watching, we need to make things look good.”

“I don’t think they’re here. They were going to another movie.”

“You never know, Kelly.” And he pulled me in a little closer to him.

The movie was actually pretty good, in a cartoony way. I liked that there was a strong female hero. But honestly, I was distracted by Nicklas the whole time. He was so close, his arm was touching me, and I could smell his masculine scent of cologne, soap, and sweat. He seemed to be able to generate the whole electrical thing without even kissing me. I was feeling a little dazed when we finally got up to leave. It was a good thing that this date was almost over, ’cause I needed time to gather my wits.

In the lobby, I turned to him and said, “Thanks for going through with this whole thing for me. It was really nice of you.”

He grinned at me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Whoa. I was thinking we could go for coffee or something. It’s still really early.”

“I thought you were meeting your friends after.”

“It’s more fun with you. I’ll call and let them know I’m not showing.”

He pulled out his cell, and I heard his side of the conversation. “Yeah, I’m not going. Nope, just chillin’ here. Yeah, it’s Kelly. No, you don’t know her.” He looked at me and grinned as he said, “She is. Definitely. Later.”

“What am I?”

He laughed and didn’t answer. We walked to a coffee shop around the corner, and he got a coffee and I got a hot chocolate. Then we went to the waterfront park across the street and sat on a bench, sipping our drinks and looking at downtown Vancouver across the water.

Nicklas held my hand as we walked back by a series of concrete walls that were part of a garden/walkway complex. He pulled me around by the hand and leaned me against a wall. He looked down at me and spoke softly. “God, Kelly, it’s so weird. You’re not my type at all, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since yesterday.”

“Yeah, I know.” That was exactly how I felt too! Nicklas was not the kind of guy I ever hung out with, yet here I was.

Then he kissed me again, and kept on kissing me. Zap! My whole body was vibrating again, and I kissed him back. It was wet and messy and warm, and my brain switched off completely. I pushed my body against his and it felt great. He paused for a moment and looked at me hazily.

“You’re so fucking hot. I can’t believe I never knew that before.”

I looked at him closely. His eyes were this turquoisey shade of blue, and although his hair was golden blond, his brows and lashes were dark. His teeth were white and even, his lips were thin, and he had a perfect nose. His skin was super pale and he had this amazing bone structure, all cheekbones and chin. He was basically gorgeous, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen that before either.

It was starting to rain lightly, so we headed back.

“Have you got a car here?” he asked.

“No, I got dropped off.” I had been planning to bus it home.

“Great, let’s go in my car.” We walked a few blocks and stopped in front of a silver Volvo SUV.

“Is this your dad’s car?”

“Nope, it’s mine.” His voice was casual but proud.

Once we were inside the car, we started kissing again. Since it was more private, we got even more into it. The gap between the bucket seats was a bit of an issue, but we managed to make out with our upper bodies intertwined. Nicklas ran his hands down my shoulders and over my breasts. Was it too soon to do this stuff? I wasn’t sure, but it felt fantastic. The whole electricity thing was happening all over my body. When we finally broke things off, the windshield was totally steamed up.

“Wow,” I said. “You’re, like, the best kisser ever.” Of course, I didn’t exactly have a big reference group; only Phil, and that was ages ago.

Nicklas smiled; he seemed to like the compliment.

“Hey,” he asked, “are you free tomorrow night?”

“Yeah.” I paused to think, “I’ve got a game at 5:00, so I’ll be done by 7:00.”

“Great, there’s a party—some guys from the team. Do you want to come with me?”

“Sure.” I was into exploring this electricity thing some more. And I was guessing that the charity part of the fake date was over now.

P
hil

“
S
hit
, is that Kelly Tanaka? When did she get so hot?” Marcus leaned back to stare. I cleared my throat and he gave me a nervous glance. “No offence, Phil.”

We were in the cafeteria for lunch, and Kelly was two tables away. All the guys looked over. Instead of her usual baggy jeans and t-shirt, Kelly was wearing these dark, tight jeans, and a white top that you could sort of see through, even though she had another top underneath it. When she turned around, I could see she had makeup on, and her dark brown hair was down instead of being in a ponytail. She saw us looking at her, and waved in her normal friendly way, like nothing was different. There were a few crude comments on her great ass, on the fact that nobody knew she had boobs, and on how cute she was.

But I knew all this already, so it bugged me that everyone was going all apeshit over her. Were they going to start hitting on her next? And why did she look so different?

I wanted to know what the hell was going on, but I didn’t see Kelly all afternoon since we had no classes together and the senior boys soccer team had a game after school. After dinner, I was about to phone her when I got a call from Dave Vanderhauf.

He sounded nervous, and we shot the shit for a few minutes. Then he said, “Hey P.D., did you know that Kelly is dating Nicklas Ericcson?

No fucking way.

“Where’d you hear that?” I asked.

“Well, Ericcson brought her to a party on Saturday; a bunch of guys from the team were there. I actually didn’t even recognize her, because she looked more, um, grown up than the last time I saw her. But she was all friendly and chatty, so I knew it was her.”

“Are you sure they were together?”

“Uh yeah, he was all over her.”

Shit, no way Kelly was like that. Now, I really couldn’t believe this, although I couldn’t think of a logical explanation. I grunted in reply.

“Well, I didn’t think it was a big deal for you, I mean you’re dating that girl from my school, right? But in case you wanted to know.” Hoff was a good friend, and I had talked to him about Kelly more than a few times. He was cool though, and didn’t make a big deal out of it.

I was pretty stunned and didn’t end up calling Kelly after all. This was something we needed to hash out in person, so I figured I’d go to school early and talk to her.

Kelly seemed completely normal when I caught up with her at her locker before school.

“Morning, Phil.” She smiled at me and I felt relieved. I was sure there was nothing up. She pulled off her jean jacket, and she was wearing tight clothes again. Just a regular top and jeans, but they showed off her body. Usually I was all for girls wearing revealing stuff, but with Kelly, I wanted to put her jacket back on. Was all this dressing up for Ericcson’s benefit?

“It’s not true, is it?” I asked.

“What’s not true?”

“I heard that you’re going out with Nicklas Ericcson. That can’t be right.”

“Why not?”

There were only a hundred reasons, but I blurted out the first one that came to mind. “’Cause he’s a douchebag.”

“He’s not a douchebag!”

“Really? Because I dated a girl who had just gone out with him, and I think ‘insanely selfish’ was how she described him. Or maybe it was ‘egotistical a-hole.’”

She shook her head. “Nicklas is not like that at all. He’s a really nice guy.” This was typical Kelly, she always saw the best in everyone. But she also had a bullshit detector, which should have gone off after five minutes with Ericcson.

“So you are going out with him?”

“Kind of, I guess.”

I felt shocked to hear her say that. I guess I didn’t really believe it until this moment. “But Kelly, what about your promise?”

“My promise?”

“You promised that when you were ready to go out, you would tell me.” She had also said she’d want to go out with me first, and that was something I had counted on.

“But you have a girlfriend. You always have a girlfriend. Besides, it kind of happened by accident. It wasn’t like I made this big decision to start dating.”

“Kelly, are you nuts? How can you accidentally be going out with someone? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I don’t know, it started with a dare, and then things, uh, progressed.”

“How far have they progressed?”

“Are you the dating police, Phil? I’m not telling you anything else.” Kelly’s temper was starting to flare up, and I knew I was pushing her too hard. But she was making me crazy. The whole idea of Ericcson laying one finger on her was so wrong. She slammed her locker shut. “Do I ask for all the details on you and Anakin?”

“It’s Anika, and I would tell you if you wanted to know. She’s history.”

“Does she know that yet?”

I swallowed. “Well, not yet, but she knows things are not going well. We don’t have a lot in common. But really, Kelly, why him?”

She paused for a moment, and I wondered if she was going to even answer me. Then she looked up at me, her eyebrows raised. “It’s… the electricity.”

“Electricity?”

“Yeah, don’t you feel it with Anika? Like when you touch or whatever? It’s electricity that goes through your whole body and makes you feel alive.” She sounded like she was asking me a question that she really wanted the answer to, but I had no idea what to say. All I knew was how fucked-up everything was.

“And Nicklas Ericcson makes you feel this way?”

I didn’t give her time to answer, because I didn’t want to hear any more. I walked away quickly. When I turned the corner, I saw that she was still watching me.

“
O
kay
, Kelly, how about Saturday night?”

I put the phone on my shoulder and looked at the calendar. “Sorry, Nicklas, I’ve got a late game in Richmond. Sunday?”

“Can’t, I have a school thing in the afternoon and then I’m meeting my dad for dinner.”

Coordinating my schedule and Nicklas’s was ridiculously hard. We had been going out over a month, and I could count the times we’d been together on one hand. He had two practices and two games a week, endless homework, and tons of extracurricular activities at his private school. I had school, dry land training, and at least three ice times a week. If our parents had planned that hockey would keep up from getting into trouble, it was working.

Nicklas growled in exasperation, and there was a brief silence. “Oh wait, I’ve got an idea, you’re off school early Friday, right? I’ll come and pick you up and we can hang out then.”

“Don’t you have school though?”

“I’ll skip my last class. It’s not a big deal.”

“I don’t want you to get in trouble or anything,” I told him.

“I want to see you,” he said firmly.

Yeah, and I wanted to see him too. Well, more than see him. When we did get together, we usually started out at a party he knew about, left early, parked somewhere, and made out. The car was basically the only place we had to be alone. My mom was a ceramic artist who had her studio in our garage, so she was always home. Although his mother and stepfather worked, they had a fulltime housekeeper who was home days. I think she used to be his nanny. In any case, there were too many people around all the time.

On Friday, I was waiting for Nicklas in front of the school. Phil, Marcus, and Ryan passed by and said hi, but didn’t stop to talk. Phil had been avoiding me ever since he found out I was dating Nicklas. Phil thought I should have asked him out first. I felt guilty about that, but it wasn’t like he had been waiting around for me. And while I really liked Phil, but I didn’t like him in the same way I liked Nicklas.

As they walked away, Phil looked back once, twice, and then he turned around and came over.

“What’s up, Kel?” He smiled at me, and I felt happy that he wasn’t still mad.

“Not too much,” I told him.

“Want to come over to my place and hang? The weather’s kind of crap, but if the rain holds off we could go for a paddle.”

“Thanks, but I can’t. I’m waiting for a ride,” I explained. I didn’t really want to rub in the Nicklas part, but just then his SUV pulled up. Phil tilted his head to see who was driving, then curled his lip. He was majorly pissed off.

I opened the car door and Nicklas greeted me. He was still wearing his school uniform, so he looked both like a kid and someone’s dad.

“Bye, Phil, I’ll see you later.” I got into the car, but he caught the door before I could close it and leaned inside.

Nicklas nodded at him. “Hey Phil, how’s it going?”

“Hey Nicklas.” Then Phil didn’t say another word, he just stared at Nicklas. Well, more than a stare, I had seen that look during games. It was: “I’m going to win this face-off and then shove the fucking puck down your throat.”

I had to break this up. “Okay, well, nice that we could have this little team reunion… but, uh, we’ll see you later, Phil.” I tried to pull the car door shut but didn’t succeed. Phil switched his glance to me, but turned off the death ray.

“Yeah, see you later, Kelly. Be good.” He slammed the door and we took off. I watched Phil disappear in the side mirror and then exhaled.

“What’s his problem?” Nicklas wondered.

“No idea,” I replied. Well, I did know but I didn’t want to get into this whole deal. I had already defended Nicklas to Phil, and I knew how well that went.

“Probably jealous. He thought he was hot shit back in Bantam, but now he doesn’t even play rep.”

I couldn’t let that go. Phil had been a better hockey player than Nicklas when we played together, and he was still excellent. “Well, that’s because he didn’t try out for rep. He could have made it.”

“That’s what all the guys say that don’t have the jam to try out.” Nicklas looked over at me with a frown. “Did you used to date him? Is that what this is all about?”

I shook my head. “I never dated him. But we are good friends.”

Nicklas shrugged and seemed to forget about the whole thing. I was still bothered though, because I could see how upset Phil was. Here I had been looking forward to seeing my boyfriend and now I felt sorry for Phil. Life was so confusing.

“Where are we headed?” I asked as we made our way onto the Upper Levels Highway.

“I thought we’d go to my house and hang out.”

His home was very modern. It was huge and high up the mountain with a wide view of downtown Vancouver. What I really liked were all the open spaces. Not too much furniture, mainly teak tables and chairs with white fabric. There were golden wood floors with shaggy rugs, mostly cream-coloured, but a couple of bright orange ones too. I decided on the spot that if I ever had my own place this would be how I would decorate it. Nicklas shrugged when I asked him about it.

“It’s Swedish modern. Lots of places look like this in Sweden. I prefer my dad’s place.”

His dad lived in a condo downtown, but I hadn’t seen it. Nicklas seemed to have some issues with his mother. He hardly ever talked about her and never mentioned his stepfather, even though I was pretty sure they came to all his games. I really didn’t get into the whole parent thing with him. Truth be told, we didn’t spend a ton of time talking.

We went to the kitchen to get a snack, and Nicklas grabbed a note off the fridge.

“This day keeps getting better and better.” He put an arm around my waist and pulled me close. “Melinda’s out running errands, so we’re alone here.” He kissed my neck, which tickled. I squirmed and he wrapped his arms tighter around me. “Let’s go up to my room, baby.”

We walked up the wide plank stairs to his bedroom. I felt a tightness in my stomach, but I wasn’t sure if that was due to nervousness or because I had actually wanted a snack. Nicklas was holding my hand and grinning. No nervousness for him. I was so dozy about everything, but he was always sweet and patient with me.

He opened the door to his room. It didn’t look like the room of any teenaged guy that I’d ever seen. First off, it was completely, spotlessly neat. I didn’t know if that was due to Nicklas or Melinda. Secondly, it was huge, you could practice stickhandling in here. My room was the opposite: tiny and packed with stuff like books, sports equipment, and childhood treasures. Everything here was white: the walls, the desk, the chair, the dresser. The only colour in the room was from the wood floors and a framed blue screenprint above the bed. I kept glancing at the bed, which looked so big and prominent. It was queen-sized and low to the ground with a puffy white duvet.

“Nice room,” I said. The queasy feeling in my stomach increased.

“Nicer now that you’re in it,” he said. He lifted my chin, and his mouth covered mine in a wet, messy kiss. I put my arms around his neck and kissed him back. This was what I had missed.

Nicklas guided me over to the bed and manoeuvred me onto it. He kept kissing me, but his hands were busy. He took off my shirt and my bra and then took off his shirt as well. Our exposed skin felt extra hot wherever we were touching. I could finally get a good look at him since we weren’t in the back of his car.

His skin was smooth and really pale, and my hands looked tanned against him. When I touched his pale pink nipples, he had a sharp intake of breath; then he smiled, leaned in, and kissed me hard. He pulled back slightly to lick my lips, like he was tasting me, and then licked down my neck right to my nipples. Holy shit, that felt amazing. He bent his head down and sucked one nipple, and I think I actually moaned out loud.

Nicklas took my hand and put it on the front of his grey dress pants. I could feel his cock inside, and it felt really hard and kind of pulsing. I had seen guys before, like my brother or teammates, but they were never sporting erections like Nicklas.

“Take it out, Kelly. You got me so hard, and now you’ve got to help me.”

Help him, like help his erection to escape? Okay.

I undid his belt and unzipped his dress pants and his cock was kind of pushing out of his boxers. Nicklas yanked down his clothes, and his cock popped out. His hair down there was a darker colour than the blond hair on his head. His cock looked nice and smooth, kind of like a Greek statue thing.

“Touch it.”

All right, but I wasn’t exactly sure what to do here. I put my hand out and stroked his cock. Nicklas groaned. I started petting it, like I would a cat, but this didn’t seem right.

“Wrap your hand around it,” Nicklas told me. I did that. “Now move your hand up and down. C’mon Kelly, get into it.”

“Sorry. I’ve never done this before.”

“What? You’ve never jerked a guy off before?”

“No, Nicklas, I thought you knew. I’ve never done anything before.” Embarrassed, I let go of him.

“Really?” He sounded pretty happy about this. I was worried that he would hate that I was so inexperienced. “So you’re a virgin, right?”

“Of course.”

“And you’ve never done anything? At all?”

“Well, I kissed a guy in grade ten.”

“That’s it?”

I nodded.

“It’s weird because you seem so hot and into it to me. But whatever, it’s cool. I’ll tell you what I like, and then we can do it, okay?”

“Okay.”

He took his clothes off completely and I checked out his whole body. His quads were pretty big, probably from hockey.

“Now Kelly, where were we?” Nicklas reached out for me and starting kissing me again, which relaxed me. He ran his hands over my bare back and then cupped my breasts, which felt so good. I kind of wished we could make out like that for a while, but Nicklas was guiding my hands down. His cock was really hard, but the skin there was so soft. He didn’t say anything, he just kept making out with me and then put my hands where he wanted them: one on his cock and the other on his balls.

As I touched him, I felt kind of powerful because everything I did caused a big reaction in Nicklas. His eyes were closed, and he groaned loudly when I moved my hand up and down. He liked a lot of pressure, which was weird to me because I thought he would be more sensitive down there. He put my hand over the head and got me to go faster with the other. Suddenly he arched his back a little and groaned really loudly and started to come in spurts into my hand. We lay together for a couple of minutes afterwards, and then I grabbed a Kleenex and cleaned up.

So… now what?

Nicklas checked the time and started pulling on his clothes. “We better get going, somebody’ll be home soon.”

I started getting dressed too. I felt funny inside though.