#clemberio

I trailed off, because how to do you tell someone you’re about to be intimate with that indescribable trauma happened to you and you don’t actually KNOW what to do with a dick since you’ve never had a healthy sexual relationship before? I wasn’t exactly sure, hence why I grew quiet.

Mark settled his hands behind his head— which just accentuated his arms and chest, and I realized that it was really unfair that there are men who looked like this in real life and not just on romance novel covers and I was still halfway shocked that I was curled up on the couch with one of said men— as he responded evenly, “Lemon, just do what you want. It’s ok, I promise.  If I don’t like something I’ll tell you.”

“But I don’t want to do something you don’t like,” I bit my lip after answering. Perfection wasn’t a suggestion with Bill and I hated that I kept comparing them together because Mark was kind and wonderful and Bill was a shitstain on humanity. 

“Babe,” he countered, “I do shit you don’t like all the time. But I stop and let you adjust or call me an idiot or we talk about it. That’s how you ended up on top, remember?”

I nodded and scooted back a little farther down his thighs, trying to sit on my heels instead of his knees. He had tucked his erection under the waistband of his underwear and jeans, leaving the head of his cock sticking out; without thinking, I reached out and, with the tip of my finger, smeared around the precum that had gathered there

His breath hitched, and I heard him hiss through his teeth. He unclenched his hands from behind his head, moving them to grip the arm of the couch instead. I bit my lip, palming him through his jeans and then tentatively, unbuttoned his fly. As I slid his zipper down, I took a moment to appreciate how he was straining against his boxer briefs.

I dipped my hand under the waistband of his shorts and when I wrapped my hand around the base of his dick, his hips jerked and he swallowed a moan. The way his body responded to me made me feel a little dizzy with power; the novelty that I caused him to react that way and that I was calling the shots here was almost too much to bear, but I knew one thing for sure: it was incredibly hot and I kind of loved it. With my free hand, I shoved his underwear down and freed him completely, letting my fingertips trail up his length. His dick jumped into my hand and I enjoyed feeling him, enjoyed the velvety feel of his skin over the hardness of his erection. When I risked a glance up at him, he had sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and his eyes were intense, and laser focused on me. “Is this ok?” He nodded vigorously.

I watched him react as I stroked him, never having the opportunity to explore someone so thoroughly. Precum was dripping onto his stomach and I swiped it up with my finger and licked it off, rolling the bitter taste over my tongue. Mark’s breath hitched again and his dick twitched in my hand.

This time when he exhaled, there was a distinctive “fuck,” muttered under his breath.  Watching him straining, gripping the arm of the couch so hard I thought there would be permanent divots in the leather, I realized he was doing his best to give this completely unpressured experience to me, and as hot as this moment was already, the fact that he could be so unselfish in it, despite everything, only endeared him to me more. 

I rubbed my thumb over the head of his cock, and I saw the muscles in his jaw clench as I spread around some more of the precum that was leaking out.

“Lemon,” he choked out, “Spit in your hand.”

“What?” I asked. His words broke my trance, and even though I understood what he was saying, it took a moment for me to process the suggestion.

“Spit. In. Your. Hand,” he panted.

I did my best to gather enough saliva in my mouth before I did what he asked. The lubrication changed the texture of his skin, and he went from velvet to silk. I loved the feel of him against my hand, the easy slide of him across my palm almost hypnotic. As I stroked him, I felt him get impossibly harder.

He was trying to control the movement of his hips, but they kept jumping up underneath me, shoving the length of him through my fist completely. 

He wasn’t completely shaven, but he was trimmed and I moved my other hand to palm his scrotum, rolling his testicles in my hand. I heard him curse softly as I teased them, felt them tighten as jet of cum landed on his stomach and he groaned, “Fuck. Don’t stop.”

I had indeed stopped what I was doing to watch the cum jet out of him, but with his encouragement, I started again, stroking him through each spurt and firmly holding his balls in my other hand. 

FInally, he was done and he reached down and grabbed my wrists in his hands as he conceded, “Okay, now you can stop. Too much.”

He flopped back, sinking into the couch as he let my wrists go and with his eyes closed he rasped, “Holy shit, Lemon, that was… hot.”

It was hot and now that I wasn’t transfixed by his genitals, I was able to sit back on my heels and just look at him: his hair was disheveled from my fingers carding through it and the cross on the silver chain was resting against his chest, carving a shimmering path through all of the muscles there. I took that moment to appreciate that there were so many muscles. Even if I worked out just as much as he did, I still probably wouldn’t have half the amount of muscles— which I personally thought was unfair.

HIs abs were splattered with his cum and I gave in to the urge to reach down and trail my index finger through the milky fluid, pushing it through the valley of his abdominals. When I risked a glance at his face, he had one eye open and he was watching me carefully, his rakish eyebrow raised. “You’ve never gotten the opportunity to just enjoy someone’s body, have you?” he asked. 

Shaking my head, I impulsively licked the cum off my finger.

He grabbed his shirt off the floor and wiped his stomach off before he sat up. When we were facing each other again, his hand went to the back of my head and he pulled me down for a kiss, his tongue invading my mouth almost like he was trying to lick his own cum out of it.

When he finally pulled away, I had to touch my lips to make sure they were still there. “Come on, Lemon,” he prompted, picking me up and setting me on my feet next to the couch. He made it seem so easy, even though I knew there was no way it was. He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the bedroom, trying to hold his jeans up with his free hand. He ended up kicking them off in the hallway.

Once we were through the door, he pulled me forward and spun me around like we were dancing, his bed hitting the back of my knees and I fell backward onto it. I had been dreading this moment and I shut my eyes, bracing for the moment of panic I knew I would feel when he fell on top of me.

When his weight didn’t hit me right away, I opened an eye to catch him falling to his knees. He had disposed of his boxer briefs and tossed them with his shirt into a pile and I realized he had gotten fucking naked and I had missed the show.

Propping myself up on my elbows, I asked, “Barbs? What are you doing?”

He reached up to hook his fingers into the waistband of my leggings and stripped them off with my underwear in one smooth pull, throwing them in the same pile as his clothes. “I should think that is obvious,” he whispered into the skin of my thigh.

“It’s… not?”

He gave me a look I couldn’t interpret and grabbed me gently, dragging my body toward him until I was almost hanging off the bed. He arched a brow, like that was supposed to give me a clue and I shrugged, clueless. I was still unsure as to what was happening, but I wasn’t uneasy about it, which was a miracle in and of itself. 

He walked closer to me on his knees as he instructed, “Arms up.”

I lifted my arms, more as a reflex than anything, and when I settled back on my elbows, I was naked. It was the first time I had been naked with a man since my marriage, and I fought the urge to cover myself. Mark sat back on his heels for a moment and I could feel his gaze traveling up and down my body. When he spoke, his voice was so soft that I barely heard him murmur, “You are breathtaking.”

I looked down, half concerned that my body had been replaced by body snatchers. But, all I saw was the same old body I saw every day: one with a faint map of stretch marks from gaining weight too fast; battle scars, that were both literal and figurative, from fighting my marriage and myself; a smattering of cellulite, weird tan lines and broken capillaries; and assorted other imperfections that seemed to be emphasized in this moment of vulnerability. Before I could voice any of this, Mark slid his hands from my ankles to my knees and twisted them to skirt along the inside of my thighs. He ran them upwards until his thumbs found the crease along my vaginal lips, which proved to be sufficiently distracting and quieted the self-doubt racing through my brain.

When he pulled my folds apart and blew on my clit, I fell back onto the bed, a whimpered “fuck,” escaping my throat. I felt the smile on his lips as he pressed them to me and licked the length of my pussy.

I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to watch him or just lay back and enjoy the sensations. He explored me with his tongue, his fingers spreading me apart as he licked around my pussy. When he closed his lips over my clit and sucked, my hips arched into his face, and when he slid a thick finger into me, I bit my lip to keep from crying out.

My orgasm hit me like a tsunami; the sensation started to rise, and suddenly I was drowning, my hips bucking wildly into his face. I swear Mark growled when he locked his free arm over my pelvis to hold me in place as he sucked my clit and finger fucked me through my orgasm. As I was coming down, he slid a second finger in with the first and the stretch caused a mini orgasm on the heels of the first. With a flat-tongued lick, he detached from my “pleasure nub,” and I suddenly understood why terrible romance novelists called it such.

He continued to slide his fingers in and out of me, leaving trails of wet opened mouth kisses along my thighs until I relaxed completely, the occasional tremor shaking my body. 

When he slipped his fingers out of me, he sucked them into his mouth to clean them off before crawling over me and resting against the pillows; once situated, he hauled me up his body and arranged me half on top of him, his dick resting along my thigh.

With our naked bodies like this, it painted a stark picture of how different we were. HIs body was thick and toned. I don’t think he had one tiny cell of fat on him and his skin was a dark olive after having been in the sun all summer. I, on the other hand, looked like poorly proven sourdough bread that Paul Hollywood would have been ashamed of… with blue hair.

I felt Mark take a breath below my ear as he whispered in it, “Was that ok? I don’t want to brag, but I have been told I’m pretty good at that.”

I stretched my jaw a bit, willing the muscles to work since all of them felt like they had the integrity of wet cardboard. “I don’t have anything to compare it to,” I ventured, “So you could be the absolute worst in the world, but if that’s the worst, then the best might kill me.”

He went completely still beneath me as he processed my response, taking a moment before he responded, “What do you mean you don’t have anything to compare it to?”

I set my chin on his chest and looked up at him as I clarified, “I’ve never experienced that before?”

He looked a little shocked, and rubbed the hand that wasn’t cradling my ass down his beard as he thought that over. “Never tell Landy this,” he murmured, “but I’m actually at a loss for words.”

I shrugged. “Honestly,” I admitted, “If getting that as my first time meant I didn’t get it other times, I think I’m ok with that.” Mark smiled down at me and I returned the smile before I schooled my face into a more stern expression and continued, “Also, please don’t even mention Landy again while we’re naked, in bed together, or naked in bed together. ”

Mark’s face softened and he kissed the top of my head, chuckling lightly and he concluded, “Well, Lemon, I was glad to give it to you.”

His cock was still hard against my hip, and I ran a finger up the length of him as I began, “You’re still..”

“Mmmhmm.” I felt his chest rumble as he responded.

I looked at him inquisitively, “can I?”

He just looked amused as he answered, “Babe, if it involves you and my dick, I’m going to have very few restrictions.”

I bit my lip and straddled his thighs again, mimicking our position on the couch earlier.

“Do you have… you know?” I hoped he would know.

Mark’s face was caught up in a grin as he answered the question I couldn’t finish, nodding as he informed me, “your inability to finish sentences when referring to anything about sex is adorable.” His long arm reached up and he somehow dug a condom out of the drawer of his nightstand and tossed it near my knee. “Knock yourself out, babe.”

Suddenly faced with a hard dick, a man with his hands folded behind his head, and a condom, I didn’t know what to do or where to start. I looked up at him for guidance and he just shook his head as he told me, “This is your show, Lemon. No judgment.”

I bit my lip and traced the outline of his testicles in his scrotum, fascinated when the skin drew up tight in response to the stimulation. Mark sucked in a sharp breath but didn’t react otherwise. I was nervous all of a sudden and the moment felt charged, in a different way than it had earlier; some of the urgency was gone, and we had all the time in the world, which meant there was plenty of time for me to prove I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and make a fool of myself. I didn’t want to throw all of that at him right now so I just said simply, “You have to tell me what you like.”

“Clementine, you are naked, on top of me, playing with my junk… I like all of this.” He made no effort to hide his amusement. 

I wrapped my hand around his balls and rolled them between my fingers, causing another sharp inhale from Mark and and an exhaled “fuck.”

His dick twitched against his stomach, the tip leaking clear fluid onto his skin. Letting go of him, I scooped it up with a finger and sucked it off. 

His big body squirmed beneath me as he groaned, “Fuck, you are killing me, do you know that?”

Comments like that filled me with confidence and made it easy for me to toss aside all of my hesitation and it occurred to me I should thank him for that later. Feeling reinvigorated and embracing my newly-found inclination for power, I teased him, “You taste good. I didn’t know you could taste good.” I may or may not have made a show of licking my lips to prove my point.

He threw his head back and moaned.

I ripped the condom wrapper with my teeth, gripping his length in one hand and rolling the condom down it with the other. I let him slap back against his stomach and he twitched again as he cursed, “Damnit, Lemon.”

I gave him a sickly sweet smile. Had he not looked so incredibly good imbued with such a level of desperation, this wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun as it was.

“Oh, she’s playing now,” he chirped at me, before looking at me dead in the eyes and stating, “If you had a different past, this would be going way differently.”

 I moved forward, feeling the length of him settle between my pussy lips and I rolled my hips, the friction so good that I swear I could feel it in every inch of my body. The crown of his head dragged against my clit and I moaned as I asked him, “What would you do differently, Barbs?”

As I slid along the length of him again, coating him in copious amounts of my wetness, he hissed, choking out, “We wouldn’t have made it this far; for one, because I would have fucked you over the back of the couch.”

“Oh?” I quipped. I honestly didn’t know being this turned on was even possible and my hands went to my breasts of their own accord, holding them in my hands and rolling both nipples between my fingers.

Mark slammed his head back into the pillows, eyes screwed shut, as he took a deep breath and rasped, “Fuck babe, this is better than literally every fantasy I’ve ever had about you.”

“Really?” I breathed, rocking against him, enjoying hearing him say it. “I’m not really even doing anything…” As the pleasure coursed through my body, I could hear my voice falter and I was pretty sure that Mark was almost at a breaking point, if the tremor I could feel in his thighs underneath me was any indication.

“Really,” he confirmed, as I kept up my steady grind against him, his breath shallow as he continued, “What you’re doing is…..so fucking hot…” I felt him twitch against me as he confessed, “The only thing that could possibly make this better would be if I was inside of you.”

I raised up off of him and the action caused him to open one eye. Reaching between us, I angled his cock just right and started to sink down on it, pausing every few millimeters. Mark arched a brow at me as he watched, admitting, “Lemon, if you want me to beg for it, all you have to do is ask. But since you haven’t, I gotta know, are you trying to kill me?”

I shook my head, realizing that we were on two separate pages regarding my slow pace. “No,” I told him, “I’m just waiting for it to hurt.”

Mark looked at me pointedly and sat up, his arm sliding behind my thighs to prevent me from sliding down on him any farther. “Okay,” he began, “First of all, I think we need a rule: we don’t talk about previous experiences while we’re having NEW ones. Second of all, sex shouldn’t hurt EVER. I mean, unless it’s on purpose and you’re into that kind of thing. If you’re not into that, then it should never hurt. Do you understand me, Clementine?” His voice was firm and once again I had the feeling I may have trivialized something that wasn’t really trivial. 

I nodded because I couldn’t do anything else. 

He pulled me off of his cock and slid us both up the bed until his torso was resting against the headboard. 

“What are you doing?” I asked.

Mark smiled at me ruefully, bringing his lips to my neck as he whispered into my hair, “I thought I just needed to let you figure things out for yourself, but it has become glaringly obvious I need to be an active participant.”

My voice was soft as I responded, half scared and half confused, “I don’t know what you mean.”

We were still pressed closely together, and his hands trailed over my naked body, fingers teasing my nipples, as he directed me, “Kiss me, Lemon.”

I leaned forward and he moved his hands to knot in my hair, my breasts pressed against the hair on his chest as I kissed him. I kissed him deeply, trying to convey with my tongue just how much this all meant to me. 

As we kissed, one of his hands slid between our bodies, his fingers slipping between my pussy lips and softly rubbing my clit. I may have mewled into his mouth, but I’d perjure myself in a court of law denying that. 

While I was rocking into his hand, he grabbed his dick and angled it just right so that the tip slid into me as I rolled my hips. The sensation made me gasp, and I rocked harder, needing more.

“That’s it, babe,” he murmured, “That’s it.” His hands were on my hips, guiding me. I curled my hands into fists on his chest, wishing his hair was long enough to grab like this, but it was still short from a summer wax.

I needed him, I needed to feel full. I slammed myself down on him and he cursed in response, cautioning, “Fuck. Easy, babe.”

“Mark, please,” I whimpered, “I need more. I need you.” My hands unclenched, and I dug my fingers into his chest desperately.

His hands tightened on my hips as his punched up forcefully and he confirmed, “Ok?”

I nodded, almost delirious with pleasure as I begged, “More.”

He set a quick rhythm with his hips, and soon all that filled the room was the squelch of our bodies coming together and our sharp breaths. 

“Fuck, I’m almost there,” he groaned, “Tine, touch yourself.”

One of his hands left my hips and he took my fingers and pressed them to my clit, “Cum with me,” he urged.

“I can’t,” I choked out.

“You can,” he encouraged, “Look at me.” 

My eyes met his and he held my gaze as he continued, “I’m gonna get tested by the team doc tomorrow, because I can’t wait to fuck you skin to skin and fill you with my cum. I can’t wait to make you mine so you never have to worry about a man hurting you ever again. Even me.”

My voice was a whisper, as I whined out “Holy shit.”

“Now fucking cum with me, Clementine.” He punched his hips up hard and I came apart in a million pieces, like a stained glass window shattering from a bomb. He thrust into me irregularly until he sagged against the headboard and cradled me to his chest. 

We lay there in a sweaty mess, panting, until I broke the silence, and repeated, “You want to fill me with your cum?”

“Lemon, I swear to God, if you ruin this perfectly good moment with some self-deprecating sarcastic comment, I’m going to tell Landy you think his magic is dumb.”

I gasped in horror, “You wouldn’t. Also, again with mentioning Landy in bed!!!”

He kissed the top of my head chuckling, “You know I would. Now, just lay there and be quiet and soak in the moment.”

We were quiet again for a long time, long enough that the sweat was starting to dry on my skin and giving me goosebumps. I shivered, and this time it was Mark who broke the silence, asking “Does Daze need dinner or something?”

At the mention of dinner, my stomach growled. “Probably,” I guessed, “I know I need dinner. Why?”

I looked up at Mark and he was staring in the direction of the door as he told me, “Because she’s been quietly staring at me since we finished. Honestly, she started even before that, and if you weren’t half as hot as you are, I wouldn’t have been able to finish.”

I chuckled against his chest and sat up, pulling my leg over him, intimately feeling the loss of him inside me. “I’ll go feed her if you order pizza,” I offered.

Grabbing his shirt from earlier off the floor, I pulled it on, though it hugged my body a little more than I would have liked.

“Babe,” he sighed, “That one is covered in cum, grab a clean one out of the drawer.”

I gave him a saucy wink as I sashayed out of the room, shouting behind me, “Maybe I wanna be covered in your cum.”

He fell over into the pillows laughing and I heard him grumble, “Fucking minx.”

His beard was short, but thick; despite it, I saw his lips curve into a smile. “Around you it’s effortless.” He paused before continuing, “You know you seem pretty unperturbed about being stuck in a leaning elevator with a certified moron.”

I offered an anemic shrug before continuing nonchalantly, “Ohh ‘unperturbed.’ Did you hurt yourself?” One of his thick eyebrows arched and he flashed a 1000 watt smile but didn’t dish the insult back which made the game less fun so I answered, “My world feels like it’s on fire all the time. I’ve had complete mental breakdowns because I accidentally used a blue pen in a journal that I only used a black pen in. Comparatively, this feels like no big deal.” It felt weird to share that personal detail with someone I found so annoying.

He nodded at Daze, “Is that what she’s for?”

A personal detail was one thing, spilling my entire life story was another thing completely and he must have picked up on my hesitation because he held out his hand and said, “How about we start over. Hi, I’m Mark Barberio.”

Ok. He WAS an idiot, but at least he seemed aware of his hoof and mouth disease. I gave his hand a firm grip and shake. “Clementine. Clementine Jones, and this is Daisy, but I just call her Daze.”

“She seems like a good service dog and not at all for a blind person,” he grinned like this was now our inside joke.

I rested my hand on her head thinking about the freedom she gave back to me and took a deep breath, “She’s the best.”

The conversation lulled and I’d be the first to admit that I let it die. We sat in silence for a few minutes before I had a thought. “Wait, you said you texted Gabe?”

His answer was a lazy nod of the head with a “mmhmm” that sounded like it reverberated in his throat.

“What is the likelihood of him making me suffer by association, simply due to the fact that I’m stuck in an elevator with you? Because I just met him today and he seems like a nice dude and I think we’re copacetic, but I could easily see him leaving you in a steel box for a few hours.” I flashed back to the mischievous glint in Gabe’s eyes earlier.

Mark just shrugged, “I don’t know, Lime, guess it depends on if he likes you.”

“Great.” I slumped harder against the wall. “Any chance you want to share that Wi-Fi password so I can contact some people so they don’t worry?”

A few taps on his phone and a notification popped up asking if I wanted to save the password to the Wi-Fi. As soon as I hit accept, my phone started buzzing so hard it almost fell out of my hand.

Nora: Hey, I’m running late. There was a thing with the room I’m painting. It looks NOTHING like the swatch and after sanding and refinishing the floors and having the paint not look good I had a little mental breakdown. FINE NOW.

Nora: Ok, I am 10 minutes late, but where are you?

Nora: Ok. I’m worried now. Did you get stuck at work? WHERE ARE YOU?

Nora: CLEMENTINE, THIS ISN’T FUNNY. I’M GONNA CALL 911. I’M GONNA GET CADAVER DOGS. WHERE ARE YOU?

The last one came in as I hit reply and tried to tap out a response faster than Nora could dial 911.

I’m fine! Stuck in an elevator with no service! I’m sorry. I just got on the Wi-Fi.

Nora: Oh, shit! Are you alone? Do I still need to call 911? Where are you?

I’m fine. You know I handle actual emergencies better than like… not being able to find my lucky socks.

Nora: This is true and you’ve conveniently ignored the “are you alone” question.

I frowned. This was the negative part of sharing a solitary brain cell with your best friend.

I am not alone. There is another member of the Avs organization stuck in here with me.

Nora: “Another member of the Avs organization” very creatively not “Bob from accounting.” Are you stuck in the elevator with a PLAYER?

I reserve the right to remain silent

Nora: Nice try, that only works for the police. Not best friends. I’m allowed to torture you into telling me. That’s probably in the Geneva Convention somewhere. I’m sure of it.

I sighed and put down my phone, resisting the urge to rest my head against Mark’s shoulder. I told myself, it was because I was exhausted from my first day and now we were stuck in an elevator. He was busy tapping away on his own phone.

He slid his phone back into his pocket, “Why the sigh, Kumquat?”

At this point, he had to be trying to annoy me with the name thing so I just ignored it. Besides, I figured he’d run out of citrus fruits soon. “Overprotective best friend,” I grimaced.

“Ha!” he laughed humorlessly, “That must be nice. The team text is everyone sending me photos of their dinner.”

His stomach gave a rumble and I bit my lip trying not to smile, but failing. Quite miserably, in fact.

“Oh, so you think it’s funny that a pro athlete is missing dinner?” He gave my shoulder a nudge with his.

“Maybe a little.” My phone buzzed again.

Nora: CLEMENTINE.

Calm your tits, it’s just Mark Barberio. Not like I’m stuck with Cale or Nate.

Nora: Oh,so we’re just on a first name basis with all the Avs now, huh? It’s your first day. You work quick, sis.

NORA

Nora: Send me a selfie so I can be assured that you haven’t been kidnapped or are in mortal peril and I promise to only check in on you and Mr. Barberio every five minutes.

Ten

Nora: Seven.

Fine.

This was going to be awkward. Without preamble, I looked at Mark and inquired, “Do you want puppy ears or flower crowns?” While I waited for his response, I turned on my camera and lifted the phone in front of us.

And bless him, Mark said “What?” but smiled anyway because a camera was pointing at him. I snapped the picture and sent it to Nora.

He sighed, “If you post that anywhere, $10 says people are speculating that you’re my girlfriend within 12 hours.”

I offered a small laugh, “Please, they’ll be speculating that I’m out of your league.”

His resulting grin was almost blinding in contrast to his dark beard as he agreed, “No argument, but I like to shoot for the moon, at least if I miss I’ll land among the stars.”

It was a bastardized quote from The Power Of Positive Thinking, and I wondered if he knew that. Either way, I couldn’t honestly tell if he was flirting or not. It felt flirty, but my gauge was probably waaay broken after marrying my high school sweetheart and spending 7 years in a hellish, emotionally toxic marriage. My moment of uncertainty seemed to break the spell between us and, unsure as to what else to do, I awkwardly looked down at my phone. True to her word, goddamnit, Nora was giving me 7 minutes and I flicked through my email, desperate for a distraction.

Mark raised his arms and stretched, the movement of his t-shirt riding up drawing my eyes to the hem. It took me a moment to realize I was staring at the start of his happy trail and I felt a flush crawl up my neck. When he lowered his arms, he draped one around my shoulder. Did he just?

I cleared my throat before speaking, “Did you just use the stretch move on me, Barberio?”

He grinned, but didn’t move his arm or deny it, only pressing, “It worked, didn’t it?”

I frowned, flustered, and shrugged him off of me, before I said menacingly, “I could report you to HR.”

He returned his own shrug, “You could. But you won’t. I think you find me frustratingly endearing.”

He called my bluff and saw right through my empty threat, but even so, my eyes rolled of their own volition. When I realized I was speaking, it definitely confirmed my lack of filter or sense of self-preservation as I replied, “Endearingly exhausting, maybe.”

His grin almost broke his face, “You kept the endearing part. See?”

Goddamnit. I gave him an inch and he’d take a mile.

Then, he did the opposite of what I expected: he folded his hands behind his head, crossed his feet at the ankles, closed his eyes, and scooched down the wall a bit more like he was getting ready to take a nap.

“Are you seriously going to take a nap?” I asked incredulously.

“Yup.” He seemed without a care in the world.

“In a broken elevator with a crazy woman and her dog?”

He opened one eye and gave me an appraising look, “With another member of the Avalanche Organization and her service animal.”

I wanted to choke his smart ass, but I also wanted to kiss his smart mouth. Honestly, it was a toss up as to which one I wanted to do more and I found that supremely annoying.

“Easy, Orange,” he advised, “you look like you’re about to blow a blood vessel.”

At the same time as he said that, Daze put her paw on my thigh, her indicator that it was med time. I dug into my giant hobo/tote like bag for my Caboodle full of pills. Sometimes, it felt like I had an entire tackle box full of pills and medications.

I saw his eyebrow raise before he schooled his face into a more neutral look. I pulled out a huge multivitamin and tonight’s antidepressant of choice. I popped them and took a swallow from my water bottle. It took several sips before I felt the giant horse pill slide down and to be honest, it was a little uncomfortable performing this act, no matter how mundane, with an uninvited audience.

Mark seemed to lack a filter, too, and without hesitation he asked, “Did she just tell you to take your pills?”

I nodded.

“That’s cool! What else does she do?”

The pause was awkward on my part as I tried to process how to respond, “Um….that’s kind of like asking ‘What’s wrong with you?’”

He looked mildly surprised, and I swear I could see the cogs and wheels of his brain clicking, “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

Another silence stretched between us, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. At one point, I swear he let out a snore, but I couldn’t be sure; honestly, I wouldn’t put it past him to fake one in an effort to piss me off. I was tapping out a tweet when Mark groaned, “How long has it been? It feels like a hundred years.”

I looked at the time on my phone and informed him, “It’s been 5 minutes.”

His stomach grumbled again and for a moment, I felt pity for him so I dug in my purse for a snack. My hand came out with a couple of clementines and I sighed. My mom thought it was hilarious, Clementine eating a clementine. I offered one to Mark.

“Ooh a clementine! Thanks, Grapefruit,” he said as he took it from my palm. I don’t know why I suddenly felt like the girl in a horse movie trying to tame a wild stallion.

I just rolled my eyes and set to peeling my own piece of fruit. Now, I’ll be the first to say that I have many weird tendencies and compulsions. It’s not that I believe anything truly bad will happen when I don’t do them, but I also don’t NOT believe something bad will happen either. One of these more interesting idiosyncrasies was my rule that any fruit that gets peeled had to be unpeeled in one piece, and I would honestly spend 20 minutes carefully prying up the edges of the rind of an orange if I needed to in order to make it happen. Fruit peel structural integrity. It’s a real thing.

Mark, however, peeled his in record time and for all I know, he may have just put the whole thing in his mouth and swallowed it like a snake; Since I was too busy trying to peel mine in a single piece, I didn’t notice if he even chewed.

I don’t know how long he spent watching me, but I do know that I was nearly done peeling the fruit before he spoke. There wasn’t any judgement in his eyes, but his brow was raised as he wondered aloud, “Do I want to know?”

I shrugged, “I mean, what if I just peel it all willy nilly and then a plane crashes and kills hundreds of people?”

He held out his hand, offering to take it from me and complete the task, asking rather bemusedly, “If *I* ‘peel it all willy nilly’ will a plane crash?”

“Obviously not, that’s ridiculous, but I’m almost done,” I answered with a shake of my head.

I don’t know why, but it was endearing that he didn’t tell me it was stupid, he tried to offer a solution that might circumvent the neurosis. I continued painstakingly, prying the peel from the fruit, but it was harder to do when he was watching. I felt a nervous flutter in my belly but I finally pulled the peel from the flesh of the clementine. Having him watch my every move, I felt like I was the fruit and the calm exterior I tried to present to the world was indeed the rind being peeled from my vulnerable interior. Task finally completed and the snack acquired, I pulled off a slice and popped it into my mouth. I offered another piece to Mark; his only response was to groan and subsequently, he flopped on the floor.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Watching her set a piece of citrus on her lips and draw it into her mouth….I don’t know what to say other than that the effort I put into trying not to get an erection was substantial. And painful. I didn’t know what it was about her, but she was funny and interesting and I loved the little wrinkle she got between her eyes when she was thinking about strangling me.

I needed to get out of this elevator for so many reasons but the top contenders that came to mind were my fear of popping a giant boner in front of this beautiful woman, followed closely by my desire to get the taste of my foot out of my mouth. I wasn’t the smoothest guy on the team but I wasn’t the biggest dork either; I had some game, and hot women didn’t normally make me tongue tied. Thirdly, I was hungry.

And she wasn’t like, Instagram-model hot. Which wasn’t saying much anyway since they all seemed generic and looked the same. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was that made her so attractive- maybe because she didn’t fawn over me. Usually, I did fine with the ladies, and that was based purely on my looks, when they found out I was a professional athlete that made ok money, I couldn’t beat them off with a stick. But she knew what I was and she didn’t seem to care. That left me unsettled.

“How long has it been?” I prompted, feeling a bit like a child on a road trip, wanting to know how long until we got there. Wherever there was.

She looked at her phone before deadpanning, “10 minutes.”

I may have gotten a little more hysterical than needed when I exclaimed, “That’s it!? God, I’m going to kill Landy. How long should the fire department take to get here anyway?!”

She reached over and awkwardly patted my hip, as it was the closest part of me that she could reach since I was flopped on the floor in the fetal position. It was sweet and seemed genuine, but did not help the situation in my joggers. “There, there,” she murmured, “I think that’s how you comfort someone.”

I put my hands behind my head, restituting myself so I was laying on one of my biceps and my eyes met hers as I scowled and confirmed, “I feel very reassured, thanks.”

If I wasn’t mistaken, she chuckled a bit, and verified, “Your sarcasm is noted.”

“Pfft,” I sneered, “your sarcasm is *double* noted,” I said, mock offense thoroughly suffusing my growl. I turned into a bigger diva than Landy when I was hungry.

She just looked at me, fake pity scrawled obviously across her fine features as she teased, “Aww….Did that solid comeback make you feel better?”

Sitting up, I frowned and admitted, “Not particularly.”

The elevator smelled like citrus and I had a real fear that I wouldn’t ever be able to eat an orange again without getting horny. This could present real problems in the future and for a moment, I considered them thoughtfully.

In my head, I was picturing my grandmother, naked and reciting hockey stats, when Clementine spoke again, looking a little bit unsure of herself. “Tell you what,” she suggested, “if we get out of here in the next 30 minutes, I will fill your belly myself.” Her eyes went wide when she realized what she had actually said and how it sounded, and I swallowed awkwardly, trying to buy her some time as she recovered. It was one of the most goddamn adorable things I had ever seen. “I mean,” she clarified, “to get something to eat. Like food. At a restaurant. Or a grocery store. You know, a place with food.”

I felt a little victorious as she struggled, and I arched a brow but smiled, giving her a win as I said, “Wow, Clementine, that was spectacular to watch. I’ve tripped over my words a lot around you today, but you know what? I think that wins.”

The lift in the corners of her mouth was involuntary, and I was amused when she intentionally rearranged her face into a neutral position, “So,” she pressed, “you do know my name.”

I offered a nonchalant shrug in response, curious to see what egging her on would do, as I confirmed, “Whatever you say, Tangerine.”

Her backhand across my bicep took me by surprise and I fake-winced, shouting “Hey! Abuse! I’m calling HR.”

She shook her head slowly, crossing her arms across her chest before she said evenly, “It was self-defense. From your horrible flirting.” She didn’t miss a beat, and approximately 500 X-rated scenarios, all involving her in this elevator, immediately chased hockey stats from my brain. I was about as far gone as “Hockey? What’s that?” and I swallowed hard, trying to conjure up the image of The Golden Girls naked. When I did, they all had navy hair. Shit.

In the end, it took over an hour to get us free, most of which we spent in conversation yet somehow, I never really learned anything about her; I, however, divulged my hometown, family tree, details of what I’d done all summer, and my bucket list. It was curious-- she wasn’t the type of woman I would normally go for, more Hilda the Pin Up and less Vogue’s version of the girl next door, but she was smart and witty and beautiful in a totally different and amazing way. I’d be an idiot not to notice her, not to be attracted to her, not to be drawn to her.

Landy was waiting when the firefighters hauled us out of the elevator, looking like a cat who ate the canary. Honestly, he was worse than someone’s nana trying to set them up; he was meddlesome, offered unwanted advice, and surprisingly, was nimble with a pair of knitting needles.

Clementine was the first one out of the elevator and I followed. By the time I cleared the doors, she was already starting to walk away. In the soft light of the hallway, the alternate elevator reality in which we’d existed was gone and it almost felt like waking up from a dream, one that you didn’t want to end because you knew it was just getting to the good part. Frantically, almost as if I’d lose my chance before I had it, I shouted after her, “Hey Lemon, you owe me dinner.”

“Took over an hour, Barbs. Better luck next time,” she offered a genuine smile and it felt like having my head smashed against the boards. I think I hallucinated the wink she gave me. Maybe concussion protocol should have been implemented. Who knows. When my eyes refocused, she was gone and I zoned back in to Landy, who was in the middle of some unwanted advice.

“Barbs, you listening?”

I sighed, “Not even a little, Landy.”

He clapped me on the shoulder with a smile that could only mean trouble, and we walked to our cars. On the way home, I wondered what Clementine drove. I figured it had to be something practical and reliable. Then, I wondered what she had for dinner. What she watched in the evenings. Or if she was more of a book reader. Did she drink a glass of wine? Did Daze sleep on her bed?

I sent a curt Fuck you guys, muted the thread, and checked my other messages. There were some from just Landy so I opened his thread to see what was so scandalous it couldn’t be in the group.

Landy: Hey, can u bring flowers on Sat?

What the fuck for?

Landy: Mel wants them for the centerpiece.

“Mel” lol ok yeah sure dot gif

Landy: The disrespect. I am your team captain and I will make you skate laps until your legs fall off.

I sighed. I honestly didn’t know how the man went from rocking someone’s shit with a cheap hit one minute to flower arranging the next. Why am I on flower duty?

Landy: Because EJ would bring like some sticks and a bird’s nest from his yard and Josty is color blind.

And out of the 40 dudes still in camp, the three of us are your only options?

Landy: No, you are my only option because you owe me for Tine’s number. Now, I preordered something at that place around the corner from you, just pick it up on the fucking way, is that too much to ask?

Fine. He was being dramatic because he was Gabe and that’s who he is, I just slid the phone back in my pocket instead of engaging, my mind turning from Gabe’s flower drama back to Clementine.

---------------------

Turning off the treadmill, I put my hands on my knees and panted. Clementine was all I could think about. Working out usually did the trick to wipe my mind blank and exhaust me enough to stop the hamster wheel from spinning, but after an hour and a half on the stationary bike and an hour and a half on the treadmill, my body had nothing left to give and I was still thinking about Tine.

I thought about her in the shower, I thought about her making dinner, I paced around my condo unable to think of anything else. I picked up my phone a dozen times, tempted to text her, but I didn’t know what to say. The evening dragged on, I surfed Netflix for an hour before turning off the TV and staring at the black screen. The more I tried to avoid looking at my phone the more my fingers itched to pick it up, to text her, find out what she was doing. Was she walking Daze? Settled into her bed for the evening watching a show?

Finally, I gave up and left my phone on the coffee table when I went to bed. After several hours of tossing and turning, haunted by a witch with blue hair, I fell asleep.

The next day, I spent more time glancing up, looking for Clementine in the stands, than I did looking for the puck on the ice and it showed. I was missing easy passes, I couldn’t hit the net to save my life and I couldn’t defend for shit. I was in a foul mood after camp and only part of it was how I played. I didn’t see Clementine at all. Did she quit? Was she sick? Was she stuck somewhere on the side of the road because her 50 year old car died?

I was sitting in my stall, half undressed and still in my gaiters, stewing in my own sweat, when Landy started walking out of the locker room, looking like he stepped right off the page of a Swedish fashion magazine. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. He tossed me a look that said everything I already was thinking about myself, including: “I’m disappointed,” “You can do better,” “What the fuck is your problem?” “Get your head in the game, man.”

The door swung closed behind him, and it might as well have been the lid of my coffin. I was now alone in the room, and thus, like an adult, I sat wallowing in self-pity for a little while longer. My phone sat next to me on the bench and I desperately wanted to text Tine, see where she was. Instead, I dragged my tired carcass off the pine and went to shower.

The thoughts ran through my head and no matter how hot I turned up the water, I couldn’t seem to wash them away. At 30, I was considered a moderately old fart by NHL standards. There were definitely the veterans of the league, but I didn’t feel like them. Well, today I did. My legs felt like I was wearing 20lb weights on my skates, I kept squinting to see the puck, and my brain felt like it was telling my body to do things it simply couldn't do. Plenty of guys hung up their skates before even turning 30 and maybe I should have followed suit. I usually figured that existential crises were limited to those who were much smarter than I am, but maybe I was wrong about that, too.

As I walked out of the arena, I slid my sunglasses on. I will say, one of the great things about Denver is all the sunshine. It was a clear afternoon, and the sun was far in the west-- , in that hour or two before it really started to dip to the horizon and the world was covered by long shadows and golden haze. There were only a smattering of cars in the lot: a couple of them I recognized as belonging to management, but there was one that really stood out. A pink-- no, evening orchid, convertible with a white vinyl top. It took me a minute to realize my feet had stopped and were pointing back the way I came. I stood there for a long minute, trying to come up with some sort of feasible reason to go back inside. However, I hadn’t come up with anything by the time the person at the root of my obsession pushed through the doors, her trusted companion by her knee.

I couldn’t help my smile, “Hey, Lemon.”

She stopped when she was just a few feet away from me and I couldn’t read her expression, “Out of all the citrus fruits in the world you could have chosen, you couldn’t just pick the one that is actually my name?”

I offered a shrug and a scoff, chiding, “Where’s the fun in that? Plus, when you’re irritated you look like you’re sucking on lemons.”

She made a face, one that I was quite familiar with at this point, because she almost always was wearing it whenever she saw me. As if she read my mind, she threw back, “So I always look like I’m sucking on lemons when talking to you, then?”

It took everything I had not to blurt out “I’ll give you something to suck on.” Boys never grow up, we just get better at knowing our audience… sometimes. Instead I nodded, “Yes, a look I’m becoming very fond of.”

She smiled, genuinely and the world as I knew it jerked to a halt. The roaring of my pulse in my ears was making it hard to hear her and suddenly, I felt like I was in my first NHL game again and my heart was racing. Everything was simultaneously too fast and too slow.

“Barbs?” Her voice was echoey and far away from my vantage point, trapped inside my own head.

“Yeah,” I heard myself say.

She stepped into me, a cool hand lifted to press against my forehead, “Are you getting sick? You’re being weird and you played like crap today.”

Her admission that she had been there snapped me out of whatever trance I had been in. “Wait,” I stammered, “you were there?”

She dropped her hand, “Uh, yeah. I was in the rafters getting overhead shots. Even from there I could tell that you looked like you were distracted.”

Yeah, I was, looking for you was what I wanted to say, instead I just shrugged, in a manly way, I’m pretty sure, and muttered, “Lots of pressure, you know.”

She didn’t reply right away; She looked like she was turning a thought over in her head, and when she finally spoke, it was measured but genuine. “You know,” she said, “if you need to talk, I’m here for you, okay? I know a thing or two about negative self talk and having crises of confidence. It’s like… my life. And I’m not qualified to help, but I can listen AND have a whole Rolodex of people who ARE qualified to help. In fact, I’m sure the org has someone they work with, if you need it.”

I knew basically nothing about her, but I had a feeling she had suffered more in her 30 years on Earth than most people suffer in multiple lifetimes. And I thought it was beyond adorable that she mentioned a Rolodex and was talking to me like one would speak to a skittish animal - softly, and with reassurance and compassion. In that moment, her desire and willingness to help me, despite all of the shit that she herself had been through, did something to me - it was so real and pure and thoughtful and I was moved and I hoped she couldn’t read it on my face cuz I’m pretty sure I looked like the human version of the heart eyes emoji and I just couldn’t take all of the shit she’d give me for it. Instead, I took her hand and set it on my forearm, grabbing her huge suitcase she was calling a purse. “You know, I think I will be fine. I just need to know you’re watching and where you’re watching from. See? Easy peasy.”

She gave a bark of disbelieving laughter as she teased, “Ok and why is that?”

Because what you think matters to me kept running through my head in large, neon lights but I couldn’t say that so I went with, “I have to make sure you’re getting my good angles. Someone in that dressing room has to give Landy a run for his money for Most Handsome.”

Her answer this time was quick, almost as if she didn't think about what she was saying before she blurted out, “You don’t have bad angles, Barbs, I couldn’t possibly take a bad photo of you. Like, even if I tried. Besides, you have those beautiful expressive eyebrows and Landy’s ran away from his face.”

I couldn’t respond because I was pretty sure my grin was going to crack my face in two. My eyes were glued to her and, as we walked, I almost ran into a light pole. I dodged it at the last second, but the smile on her lips and the laughter shaking her chest said she caught my moment of clumsiness. “Okay,” she said, as she struggled to breathe between giggles, “You walking into a lamppost would make a terrible picture. A terribly hilarious picture. I’ll give you that.”

I was mortified, but was trying to walk it off. On a hockey team you learned to brush off the embarrassing things. If you didn’t react the boys would become bored, but if you reacted it was the new locker room game. We ambled slowly through the parking lot before I grabbed her by the hand, swinging our entwined fingers slowly between us.

She turned to face me while we walked (after checking for upcoming lampposts, to her credit) before she asked, “Are you walking me to my car, Mr. Barberio?”

My American Southern accent was admittedly awful and she’d said as much before but I wanted to see the look on her face anyway so I drawled, “Why yes, ma’am, that’s how my momma raised me.”

True to form, she blanched like she had just sucked on a lemon, groaning, “Oh my god, stop.”

I shrugged, “I can’t stop, I was born this way.”

“Born making horrible jokes and badly flirting with women?” she chirped back.

“Uh, no.” I retorted, “Born being awesome.”

She rolled her eyes, and that cute look of exasperation she got when I said something stupid or corny came over her face.

It bothered me how invested I was in this one woman. I wasn’t a player, per-se; ok, I was totally a player and never ever had any woman fucked me up this badly. Every minute of every day it felt like I was thinking about her; I wanted to know where she was and what she was doing, what her favorite foods were, the movies that made her laugh and what her middle name was and all that other shit. It was infuriating, and the cure was obviously going out and grabbing something random, but that seemed insufficient. It was the same as craving good homemade freshly-churned ice cream and only having nearly expired non-dairy sour cream in the fridge; Yeah, I could add sugar and stir it up but it wouldn’t be what I wanted, and I’d still have a craving for some fucking ice cream.

*~*~*~*~*~

Mark looked like he was far away in his thoughts and I reluctantly released his hand. I loved the texture of his arm hair, the softness of his skin and the way his muscles moved beneath my fingers. I could easily see myself stroking his arm as a stim.

I reached for my bag and that seemed to bring him out of his thoughts, “Thanks for walking me to my car.” My entire arm up to my shoulder disappeared in my bag looking for my keys. I had a little hook to hang them on top, did I use it? No. I always locked my car and threw them in the Mary Poppins bag I called a purse where they disappeared into another dimension.

His dark brown arched, and by now, I knew that it was one of his tells that he was about to say something stupid. “You know, as a woman, you should probably have your keys in your hand before you leave the building.”

As usual, my mouth was quicker than my brain and I instantly regretted it as I quipped nonchalantly, “Why? I feel safer in a dark poorly lit parking lot than I ever did at home with my ex-husband.”

I could tell that Mark was struggling to process what I’d said; he swallowed hard and I could tell he wanted to ask but he went a different route as my fingers wrapped around my keys and I fumbled to unlock my door, “But you could be attacked or raped or something.”

I held my tongue as Daze hopped into the car and I tossed my bag in after her. I slid into the driver’s seat and Mark held my door, eyes searching mine as he continued, “Seriously, Lemon.”

Sometimes, after living in trauma for a while, you forget everyone else hasn’t been and that your normal is incredibly disturbing to other people. After scads of therapy and my insular bubble of those who understand, the god’s honest truth about my shitty ex-husband is truly shitty, and it’s troubling, but it doesn’t have shock value to me anymore. You learn to detach, to make light of what you can however you can. It was real and it really happened and what happened happened, and calling it anything other than what it was is doing me a disservice. Most of the people I spend time with know that, and tolerate my moments of insanity, no matter how off color they may be. With each day that goes by I try to remember that it’s a part of my past, and no longer my present; now that I’ve acknowledged that as my truth, I’m free of it, in a way, sometimes. There’s still a lot of work to do, but a lot of coping and healing can be found in learning to laugh so you don’t cry. It might sound super fucked up, but it does help you cope. But, I forget that, especially when I’m around Earth People, I have to be a little bit more measured. Not everybody knows how to take what used to be my daily horrors in stride. Because they haven’t had to. What doesn’t kill you gives you a fucked up sense of humor.

This time, I saw the words forming in my brain but I had no way of stopping them. “Seriously, Mark,” I parroted, staring out the windshield, “that sounds like a standard Friday night for me. Or at least what my Friday nights used to be.” I didn’t risk a look up at him before I pulled the door shut. Or attempted to, he was still gripping the edge of the window.

“Clementine--” he started hesitantly, an unfamiliar tone present in his voice; it wasn’t the faux sympathy or indignant outrage or surprise or utter shock that most people responded with when they didn’t know how to handle My Shit. I didn’t know what it was at all and that was almost worse. I felt cold and my breath caught in my chest. The inches between us might have been miles. It felt like a hundred years had passed since we’d walked hand-in-hand through the parking lot, a million years since we’d laughed when he almost walked into that light post, an unfathomable number of lifetimes in a galaxy hundreds of thousands of lightyears away that we’d shared a cup of coffee and pleasant, lighthearted chitchat. Two sentences had changed everything and I could tell with every fiber of my being. I was a stranger to this person again, as he was to me. I couldn’t yet ponder the further implications of what that meant but all of a sudden everything in my immediate vicinity felt vast and scant and empty and I felt totally and utterly alone.

I pulled harder, needing to get Away From Here Immediately, and he released the door. It slammed shut and I swear I could hear it echo through what felt like the immense chasm that now existed between us. It wasn’t until I had started the car and started to pull away that I risked a glance at him in the rearview mirror. What I saw gave my inner voice a megaphone for the rest of the evening and I knew I had no hope whatsoever of getting her to shut up. Blinded by my tears, I ended up pulling into an alley between skyscrapers and Daze crawled into my lap. I hugged her and rocked until I wasn’t shaking anymore, until my bleary eyes could tell up from down and I could breathe easily enough to make the trip home.

Regardless of how much better some days are, I forget that just because that part of my life is over doesn’t mean I’m entirely done with it, or that it’s entirely done with me. I could feel its pull dragging me back down, and that night, I had no fight left in me to put up any kind of defense. Robotically, I went through my numb-out routine: sleeping pill, heavy metal, hot water, and then, hopefully, oblivion. I let the despair and the grief and the shame and the sadness suck me down and hold me under and part of me wished I could just wash away down the drain along with the scalding, soapy water that poured over me. That night, the water was ice cold by the time I was too tired to keep trying to wash away my imperfections and the voice wouldn’t shut up this time and she was still nagging me when I finally fell into a fitful sleep.

*~*~*~*~*

The rose-colored glasses I’d seen Clementine through? With those words, I physically felt them crack. As the minutes went by, the feeling settled deep in my chest and I wasn’t exactly sure how to handle it, but I was scared and angry all at once and none of those shitty things happened to me so I didn’t know why it felt like they did.

Part of me mourned the loss of her; with just a few words, she now had a metaphorical mine field around her that made her completely unattainable. She was damaged goods, and I didn’t know how to navigate around the landmines. Nothing in my life could have prepared me for that bomb drop, and I wanted to find out who this guy was and beat him into a bloody pulp. I wanted to hug her and hold her and tell her it was ok, that she wasn’t broken, but I couldn’t because she had shattered into a thousand pieces and she was still putting parts of herself back together.

It was way more than I knew how to deal with, or, sick as it made me feel to think, even wanted to. It probably made me a rat bastard, but I wasn’t qualified to deal with a woman who had been torn down to the studs and had to rebuild herself.

My eyes rolled of their own volition, but I felt the corner of my mouth quirk even though I was in no mood to verbally spar with a hockey player. I kept it simple and civil, “Hey, Mark.”

His grin was hopeful, “Hey, Orange. What’s up?”

“I’m tired, I didn’t sleep well. What do you want?” It was the opposite of the truth, I had slept like the dead and was feeling the effects of it still.”

“Want to grab coffee with me later,” he asked hopefully, but his smile fell slightly.

I sighed again, “I don’t want to go out with you, Mark.”

He nodded, “Okay, I hear you on that. What about a coworker taking another coworker out for coffee?”

At that moment, the offer was tempting; as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I needed more coffee and my Starbucks budget was severely waning for the week. “Fine. Just coffee, as coworkers.”

The grin that split his beard was almost infectious and I felt a little bit lighter as he skated off with a jaunty wave. Even more surprising, the voice in my head stayed quiet the rest of the morning.

As training camp began for the day, the environment at the rink was hypnotic and at one point I just closed my eyes and listened. The creak of the blades on the ice, the slap of a stick against the pick, the ringing that echoed through the large building as the puck hit the post or crossbar, coaches shouting, the quiet hum of players' voices as they spoke to one another. If I focused hard enough, I could put together a rhythm that sounded like the beginning of a musical number or a scene from STOMP.

When I realized the sounds were no longer happening around me, I opened my eyes. A glance at my watch told me I had basically been zoned out and meditating to the sounds of hockey long after camp had finished. I was packing up my bag when Mark came down the stairs. His hair was still dripping from the shower and his shirt was one button off making it hang crookedly.

“Hey, so coffee?” He asked breezily.

I couldn’t help but smile a little, “You didn’t have to rush Barbs, I wasn’t going anywhere.”

He quirked an eyebrow at me with a curious expression on his face as he questioned, “Rush? Who rushed? Not me. I didn’t rush.”

I gestured toward his shirt, “You’re crooked, dude.”

He looked down, confused, and tried to smooth the front of his shirt; I don’t know why, but it was an endearing gesture. Why I stepped forward to willingly touch him and started unbuttoning his shirt, down to the button he missed, was also a mystery -- I blame it on the meditation. I was so zen it was out of my control. My head was completely empty for once and I was acting on impulse. After unfastening the buttons that were misplaced and buttoning his shirt again coffectly, I smoothed my hand down the seam, his chest was firm beneath my palm and when I looked up he was so close I could see his eyes had ring of molten lava around the iris.

As a reflex, I cleared my throat, “Uh…” I said awkwardly, “so… coffee?”

Mark nodded his head, leaned over and grabbed my bag, smiling as he informed me, “I hope you understand that after feeling me up, this is officially a date now.”

I crinkled my nose at him and fought a smile as I remarked, “So you show up to a date disheveled with dripping wet hair? Good to know that’s your standard.”

“The second date.. Yeah,” he said through his own grin.

The eyeroll was mostly involuntary on my part as I snorted incredulously, “You actually get second dates?”

His grin turned totally douchey and I hated that I was a little bit attracted to it. He stopped to look at me and cocked his head, looking too damn smug for his own good as he said quietly, “Oh no sweetheart, the second date of the night. Not a second date with the same person.

This time my eyes rolled so hard I could see my own brain. Nonchalantly, I shortened my dog’s leash and told her, “Come on, Daze, the world’s biggest lying wannabe douchebro frat boi is buying me a coffee.”

“Harsh,” Mark complained, “But still a date.”

The border collie offered a sigh as we trudged up the stairs from the lower bowl and out into the corridor, “Nope,” I repeated, “Not a date.”

He shrugged his very nicely sculpted shoulders, “I mean, unless you halfway undress lots of men, this is a date.”

I didn’t have a response to that so I just stayed silent.

As we headed toward the street, Mark slipped my hand into his and wove our fingers together. I stopped dead in my tracks, surprising both Daze and Mark. I looked at our clasped hands and then at him directly before I attempted to untangle our fingers, trying to drop his hand, and said, “No way.”

He didn’t let go and kept holding my open hand and strolling up the sidewalk, decidedly ignoring my objection as he changed the subject and asked me, “So, how did I look today?”

It was clear he was going to hold my hand whether I liked it or not so I just gave up and let it fall to my side, “Why would I know that? Shouldn’t you ask the coaches?”

He offered a shrug, “I did and I got their opinions. Now, I want yours.” His little strut was ¼ my normal walking speed; so I adjusted my stride and started dragging him along at my normal pace. “Lemon, walking faster isn’t going to make this date go by quicker.”

I offered a dry laugh, “This is my normal walk. There’s a reason I have a border collie as a service dog and not a labrador.”

“Is the reason that you’re a high strung crazy pants?”

I stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk, ready to say about 20 different things including that I wasn’t high strung, that I wasn’t crazy, and that using crazy as a derogatory statement wasn’t cool in the 21st century. But then, I realized that I was, in fact, a high strung crazy pants. I had a half a dozen different diagnoses, I had a voice in my head that was constantly tearing me down, I had anxiety as such a level it could be considered a personality trait; I was on like 10 different medications and only 3 of them weren’t for my brain disorders. It wasn’t PC, but it was an accurate description. I let out the breath I had been holding and one of Mark’s dark eyebrows arched as he said quietly, “Honestly, I thought that was going to earn a good verbal sparring.”

I shrugged, “I mean you’re not wrong. I literally have a dog because I’m such a high strung crazypants and I couldn’t even get a *normal* dog, I had to get one that could match my high strung crazy pants energy, so I guess… you’re not wrong.”

He started walking again, pulling me along by his clasped hand, smiling softly at me as he said, “And yet, you still manage to function better than so many people. It’s kind of inspirational.”

I tugged at my hand and he released it this time, “I’m not here to be motivational for you, Barberio. Every day is a battle for me from the minute I wake up until the minute I go to bed.”

He nodded at me, understanding clearly written across his features, and he looked like he was choosing his words carefully, “I’m just saying, you may have problems, but you do more than the average person so you should give yourself a break. Congratulate yourself on the hard work you do. Let go of the battle for just a few minutes and enjoy life. Stop trying to work on yourself every minute of every day and just be.”

Honestly, I was shocked that such a deep thought could have come from what I assumed was a shallow puddle of a brain. Huh. Here I was lauding my own intellect, despite it causing me such misery, when Mr. One Point Five Total Brain Cells seemed to be enjoying his afternoon. His philosophy was pseudo positivity bullshit, but yet, he wasn’t wrong. Again. I was waaay harder on myself than everyone else. I felt my failings intimately and forever, while my successes were infinitesimal, like chasing a fleeting high. But maybe in chasing the big successes, I was missing a lot of small ones. Like today, when I just let go and listened to the sounds of the game I loved.

I was so lost in my thoughts for a moment that I didn’t notice Mark taking my hand again, and so caught up in my own head I didn’t realize my fingers were loosely wrapping themselves around his in return.

This idea that I needed to be more present and enjoy life was going to haunt me for days and it really wrinkled my panties that it was a dumb jock that put the idea in my head and gave me a lightbulb moment and not the psychologist or psychiatrist I paid thousands of dollars to every year.

We wandered all the way to the coffee shop on the corner, which was quiet and mostly populated by people I had seen around the Pepsi Center. Mark maneuvered me in front of the register and I stared blankly at it for a few moments, still mulling over the comments he had made. He let go of my hand and I felt his palm against the small of my back; when he spoke he was close and his voice was low and patient as he murmured, “Clementine, come back to Earth and order what you want.”

Daze nosed me and I blinked a couple of times, “Venti latte, please,” I blurted out. It felt robotic and overly cheery, but the barista didn’t even pause. I was sure he saw all kinds of wild things, and my robot/AI malfunction wasn’t even in his top 100. It was just my latest in a series of embarrassing interactions that would keep me awake for the next decade.

Mark ordered a cappuccino over my shoulder and with his hand still on the small of my back, guided me to a table, after he slipped his credit card back into a money holder and returned it to his pocket.

Once we got our drinks and sat down, Daze took her spot underneath my chair. Mark looked down at her when her tags clanked against the metal table leg and he smiled softly as he commented, “you know, it’s amazing-- half the time, I forget she’s here.”

I nodded, “I mean that’s part of her job. She’s a dog, and a cute one at that, so she’s going to get attention no matter where she goes, but she’s supposed to be as unobtrusive as possible.”

He shifted in his chair and I thought he was going to lean back, but he leaned forward instead; with his forearms on the table and his brown eyes focused on mine, instantly, he prompted; “So how do you like the new job?”

I shook my head, “It’s not really a new job, it’s temporary at best for now. It’s a trial run for a position they’re thinking of creating.”

Again, he prompted, “And what position is that?”

I felt the corner of my lips tick upward, he was trying really hard to get a natural conversation going and I was giving him nothing, “Digital Content Media.”

He offered a sigh, “let’s just assume I have an IQ of 80, which, honestly, probably isn’t that far off, so could you explain that, please?”

I smiled for real, sometimes, he was ridiculously humble, even thought he put on a show of being a sex-obsessed moron, I was positive his IQ was a lot higher than 80. It was at least 100. “Basically,” I started, “I’d be like middle management between the creative director and the actual content creators. My job would be to take the content, photos, videos, etc. and create a storyline for behind-the-scenes videos, promotions, etc.”

He thought for a moment before responding; when he did, his question was not one I expected. “But I see you with a camera in your hands most of the time.”

It was actually a very thoughtful observation. I smiled again, “Well sometimes, if I’m going for a certain aesthetic, it’s easier to create examples of the content I’m looking for. Also, I like that aspect of it, I just can’t do it all.”

It was weird having a man ask so many questions and actually seem interested in the answers. If it had been anyone but Mark, I would have been suspicious as he continued, “That makes total sense. How did you arrive at this being your calling, for a sports team no less?”

I fingered the napkin under my coffee cup, “I like sports, I guess. My dad is the coach for the basketball team at DU and I think growing up it was the only way to connect with him. I ended up liking hockey more than basketball though. I actually even convinced him to let me play for about a year in middle school, but I was horrible.”

He looked surprised but not entirely thrown off as he continued, “Ah middle school, what was that like, fifteen years ago? So you’re like what? 26?”

A bark of very unladylike laughter escaped before I could stop it and I put my hand over my mouth, embarrassed. “I’m so sorry,” I squawked, “I’m just surprised, you caught me off guard -- I actually turned 30 earlier this year. I’m just a late bloomer, I guess.”

His dark eyebrows raised, “Well damn, girl. You look good.”

I rolled my eyes, refusing to accept the compliment. It was like 1 step forward and 2 steps back with this neanderthal.

Mark’s eyes flashed as if he knew what I was thinking as he pressed on, looking just a tad guilty as he confessed, “I have to say, I really dig the hair.”

I fingered the dark blue ends and absently nodded, “Thanks.” His confession made me brave enough to share one of my own, “My ex-husband made me dye my hair blonde and basically, I had to be this perfect little Stepford housewife that did all of these different things that he liked. This was my rebellion afterwards. Honestly, I’ve had my hair every single color under the sun at this point, and I like this one best.”

At that, his gaze became troubled, but we were distracted as Daze sat up and put her paw on my leg: a medication indicator. I dug around in my puse for my Caboodle of pills.

Despite this not being the first time he’d witnessed Daisy in service mode, Mark shook his head in amazement as he commented, “It’s so cool how she does that.”

I popped the capsule in my mouth and washed it down with the water bottle I kept in my bag for precisely this reason. “Yep. She has a lot of time and effort put into her training.”

When she took her post under my chair again, the conversation turned to the upcoming season, then dream vacation destinations, followed by the best places to eat in town. Conversation flowed easily with Mark and it wasn’t until the sun was shining bright through the western facing windows, the baristas started closing up shop, and our cups were long empty before we realized how much time we had spent talking.

My phone beeped, and Daze whined, “Holy crap,” I said, noticing the time, “I have to get going.”

He stood and shrugged like he didn’t have any place better to be, “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

His hand found its way to the small of my back again and that seemed to rouse the voice inside my head again, as before I knew it she was yelling at me, ew why is he touching you. Does he know how gross you are? Part of me though, liked his hand there and I decided I was going to let that part of me win today and tell her to fuck off for now. I tried to ground myself in the moment, noting little things like how warm the sun felt on my skin through the windows, and how shiny Mark’s hair was now that it had dried, as well as the soft sounds of traffic rushing by outside the shop. It was enough to distract me from her unwanted commentary for a bit. Once we were outside, he didn’t move his hand. I stopped short and said, awkwardly, “Well, I’m just going to go to my car.”

He looked confused and emphasized his words like he was making sure he wasn’t the crazy one, as he informed me, “Yes. I know.”

I motioned toward the employee parking lot on the other side of the block, saying, “So I’m gonna go.”

Finally, he seemed to understand, but when he spoke his words were soft, “Lemon, I’m going to walk you to your car.”

His hand rubbed a small circle on my back, and I hoped he didn’t see the confusion plain on my face as I insisted, “But why? I’m capable. Hell, I have a dog.”

He blinked like he wasn’t quite sure of himself and simply said, “Because it’s polite.”

I must have bristled a bit at the idea that I couldn’t take care of myself or even do something as simple as walk to the car, because I felt myself deflate a bit. Even though he was being polite, the voice decided to jump on that angle. See? He’s just being polite. He would never like you. It somehow sucked the joy out of the moment for me. God, I wish she would just go away.

Mark’s hand slid across the small of my back and he cupped my hip, dragging me against his body. My arm had the option of being crushed or relocating; I opted to grab the strap of my bag hanging on the opposite side, which squished my boobs together awkwardly and I really hoped I didn’t look as self-conscious as I felt.

If he risked a glance at said squished together boobs, he was sly enough that I didn’t notice. We passed the last line of cars in the parking lot, and I was pulled to a stop by the hand on my hip, “Lemon, where’s your car?”

I looked at my car, the only remaining car in front of us and we were walking straight to it, “Uh, the only one left and we’re walking right to it?”

His hand tightened on my hip, “You mean to tell me that you drive a pink convertible Corvair?”

I shrugged, my shoulder moving against his chest, “Technically, the color is called ‘Evening Orchid’ it’s a popular color for cars of this generation, but yeah I drive a 1967 Corvair.”

He clutched his pec with his free hand like he was having chest pain, “You’re killing me, Smalls.”

Other than quoting one of the best sports movies ever made, I didn’t know what was happening, “I don’t understand.”

His hand left my hip and his arm hooked around my neck and pulled my temple in for a kiss, “You wouldn’t and it’s one of the reasons why I like you.”

I had no idea what he was talking about and most of my attention was analyzing why I didn’t freak out about Mark being physically affectionate with me. My ex-husband had manhandled me all the time, but it was with malice and zero tenderness. Being touched by Mark felt more like a suggestion or an invitation and less like a painful reminder of dominance and ownership. His touch was always soft, like a caress. It never felt like an unyielding cage.

I stuck my key in the door and turned it, the mechanism clunking as it unlocked. Daze hopped in before me, taking her spot in the passenger seat and I tossed my bag into the back. When I turned around to shut the door behind me, Mark was close. I caught a whiff of his cologne; it had an undertone to it that had to be his natural scent, and it was intoxicating. I wanted to bottle that scent and spray it on a body pillow to cuddle with at night.

His hand slid under the curtain of my hair, his fingers on the nape of my neck while his thumb tilted my chin up. My jaw clenched as I tried not to flinch. His eyes met mine as he smiled at me softly and murmured, “Thanks for coffee.”

I swallowed before answering, “Well, you paid, so I should be thanking you.”

His smile evolved into a grin that looked like it might break his face, though when he spoke, his voice was still low and soft as he admitted, “You know what, you’re right, as usual.”

I resisted the urge to rub my face into his hand like a cat, “Get used to it, Barberio, I’m right a lot.”

He took a deep breath and bit his bottom lip, “Go home, Lemon.”

He leaned forward, fingers pressing into my neck as I reflexively leaned back. He stopped, sensing my hesitation, and I relaxed. After a moment, he leaned forward again, and this time, I didn’t retreat as he kissed my cheek, the corner of his lips catching mine.

We paused there, lips barely touching. I was the first to get overwhelmed and I stepped back half a step. When I spoke my voice was barely there, “Thanks for coffee.”

He held the door while I got in the car and closed it as I leaned over to buckle Daze into the passenger seat. After I buckled my own seatbelt he rapped on the window with his knuckles, “Lock the door, Lemon.”

I rolled my eyes and hit the lock down anyway, “Thanks, Dad.”

His grin was contagious and I felt myself smiling back at him, “See you tomorrow. See if I can’t convince you for a second date.”

I rolled my eyes again but this time it was for dramatic effect and I turned the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled to life, the exhaust whum whum whum whumming with a throaty growl.