“Good point.” I held out the ice packs to her. “Where’s your sock? You should put it on and tuck these inside. It works a lot better than electrical tape.”
Teagan leaned to the floor and scooped up her backpack. She found her sock, pulled it on, and planted the ice packs inside. While I watched, my stomach growled, so I tore open the box of Cheerios, filled my trusty coffee cup, and poured in some milk from the dispenser before pulling a big spoon from my back pocket and taking a seat across from her.
She laughed. “You brought your own utensil, but not milk?”
I shoveled a heaping spoonful of cereal into my mouth and spoke with it full. “The spoons down here are too small.”
“Oh, I see.” She nodded. “You prefer a shovel.”
“I just burned twenty-five-hundred calories at practice. I’m starving.” I pointed to her colorful collection of ice pops on the table. “You better move those, or I might eat them next.”
When I finished the first cup of Cheerios, I immediately poured a second.
“Are you going to eat that entire box?”
“Do you want some?”
“No.”
I shrugged. “Then yeah, probably.”
Teagan laughed. She thought I was joking, but I did eat the entire box most of the time. I freaking loved Cheerios.
“So are you any good?” she asked.
“I’m good at pretty much everything, so you’re going to have to be more specific.”
She rolled her eyes. “At hockey. I mean, if you get injured so much that you can tell if bones are broken, that probably means you aren’t, right?”
I grinned. “You don’t know shit about hockey, do you?”
“Not really.”
“Injuries are part of playing. If you aren’t icing something, you’re not getting much playing time. I’m the team captain.”
“Are you a senior?”
“Freshman.”
“I didn’t think they named freshmen as captains.”
“They don’t. Usually.”
Teagan tilted her head. “Should I be impressed?”
“Nah. Got plenty of better things for you to be impressed about.”
“Like what?”
“Go out with me and I’ll show you?”
She laughed. “Smooth, Captain Yearwood.”
“So is that a yes?”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen. Why?”
“I’m twenty-four.”
I shrugged. “So? Doesn’t bother me. Does it bother you?”
She tapped her finger to her lip. “I’m not sure. If we did go out, where would we go? Is go out with you code for hookup in your dorm room? Or do you really want to take me out?”
“I’ll take you wherever you want.” I held up my cup of Cheerios. “Though I’m not a fan of eating O Toasties, so make it within reason.”
“O Toasties?”
“Yeah, you know, the knock-off brand. I eat a lot of Cheerios, and if I’m broke, I’m going to have to eat those things, and they taste like cardboard.”
Teagan grinned. “Too bad people don’t put Cheerios in their coffee and there’s no cereal machine you could rob, huh?”
I finished my second cup of Cheerios and downed the milk from the cup before shaking a third helping from the box. I looked around the empty cafeteria. “No Cheerios machine, but there must be a sarcasm dispenser somewhere, since you’re so full of it.”
Teagan tried to hide her smile. “How about a party with your friends?”
“As a date?”
She nodded. “I don’t go to a lot of parties anymore. But I think you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. It’s also cheap—and will keep you in those oh-so-important brand-name Cheerios. So why not a party? It’ll help me figure out if our age difference is just a number or a maturity gap.”
Shit. Most of my friends were immature idiots. A party wasn’t a good idea.
Teagan noticed my less-than-excited face. She arched a brow. “Unless you don’t want me to meet your friends for some reason?”
It seemed like she was daring me to say yes. I was nineteen and played hockey, which meant I never met a challenge I didn’t like. So I smiled. “How about Saturday night?”
CHAPTER 9
* * *
Georgia
I spent the next morning making lists, deliberating over the decision I’d already told Max I made last night. Obsessive overanalyzing didn’t stop after I came to a conclusion; it only meant I shifted from deciding how to handle a situation to wondering if I’d made the wrong choice. It wasn’t something I could stop. The problem was… I was having a hard time seeing any outcome other than me getting hurt at the end of this summer.
However, one of the many benefits of hiring my best friend to work in my office was that I had a built-in therapist whenever the need occurred. Maggie strolled into my office at 11 AM, assuming we were going to go over the latest graphics she’d been working on for an upcoming ad campaign, but right now she wasn’t going to get to show me even page one of what she’d brought with her.
Ready for business, she pushed a four-inch-thick deck of papers across my desk and looked up at the frown lines cutting into my forehead. “Don’t worry. It won’t take that long. It’s only a couple of concepts, but I did a few different colorations of each, so that’s why it’s so many pages.”