Page 40 of Untouchable Player
I nod and she pours me a beer from the keg.
I try not to look around too obviously for Jesse, but as soon as Katie looks up to hand me my beer, she grins and asks me if I’ve spotted him yet.
“Who?”
“Hunky hockey player?”
“Shh,” I pinch her, but she just laughs.
The first few sips of beer are… unpleasant. I don’t like the taste of alcohol, I don’t understand people who say a nice cold beer looks delicious. A chocolate and macadamia nut cookie is delicious. But once I finish my first, the second doesn’t taste too bad.
“Slow down cowboy,” Katie says when I go back to the keg for another.
I still haven’t seen Jesse and my third beer emboldens me enough to text him and ask him if he’s still coming.
I stare at my phone while some guy flirts with Katie.
Jesse replies maybe thirty seconds later, though it feels like an eternity.
‘Sorry, on my way, are you with Katie? You ok?’
“What are you smiling about?” Katie asks.
“Nothing.”
The guy tries to pull her away to another part of the house, but she tells him she’s hanging out with me.
“I know you’re going to drop me as soon as…you-know-whogets here, but I’ll give you a pass, seeing as I’ve been hassling you for god knows how long to put yourself out there.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie, “it’s not like that with…you-know-who.”
Katie taps the side of her nose. “Okay sure.”
“And I’m not going to drop you, because we’re just friends, and he’ll be hanging out with Harrison all night and doing keg stands or whatever they do at parties.”
I realise I’ve never really paid much attention to what Harrison and his friends do. They’re just sort of there, being mildly annoying in the background. Last time I saw Jesse at a party, he was chugging beers. Is he going to be doing that this time? Probably. It gives me a little wake-up call I think I needed and I finish my third beer and pour myself another while Katie goes to the bathroom.
I’m two sips in when Jesse walks in with Harrison and a few of the other guys from the hockey team. I realise I know a lot more about the hockey team than I thought when I can name every person in his entourage.
As soon as I see Jesse, I get stupidly nervous and look away before our eyes meet.
When I look up again, Harrison is leading his friends into the kitchen and right past me. I stare into my beer, not wanting to know if Jesse turns his head to say hello to me. Or not.
“Hey, is he here yet?”
I jump. “How long have you been standing there?”
Katie has a fresh beer and her cheeks are a little flushed. That guy is looking over again and I can see by her expression that she’ll be radiating towards him again soon and I’ll be the third wheel again.
When I go back out to get a re-fill, the keg is empty and there are only dregs of vodka and rum in bottles being guarded by fierce-looking girls. Harrison and Jesse are nowhere to be seen.
Another keg will probably arrive or someone will go out to do a beer run, but I don’t want to wait around. I remember Katie telling me once that people sometimes hide beers in washing machines and toilets. I don’t feel like drinking toilet beers, so I go in search of a washing machine. There’s a huge line for the bathroom and I can’t see a laundry room, but there is a door that seems like it might lead to a basement, so I try my luck and creep down the rickety staircase in the dark until I find the light switch, and… bingo! A washing machine and a dryer pushed up against the wall.
I open the washing machine first, but find nothing. I’m leaning right into the dryer when a noise startles me and I jump and make an embarrassing squealing noise. Made even more embarrassing when I turn around and find Jesse standing there.
“What are you doing?” he asks. He looks like he’s trying not to laugh.
“You scared the shit out of me.”