Given that I didn't have my own kitchen to make arepas with, I had to spend a lot of time at the diner. Given that it was the only restaurant in town, it meant I had to see Lena Lee a lot.

I expected shit to get really awkward. I, for one, was feeling awkward as hell about the whole ordeal. It then came as a shock a few days later when I was grabbing a quick dinner in a corner that she slid to a seat in front of me. I looked up like a deer caught in the headlights in the middle of taking a spoonful of tomato soup to my now unresponsive mouth.

"Hi," she said, folding her hands on the table. "How are you?"

I swallowed and when there was no taste in my mouth I realized it was because I hadn't taken the spoon into it. So I did, just to gain some extra time as I savored the soup.

"Hi."

She looked around, to make sure there were no eavesdroppers. Once confirmed that the coast was clear, she leaned closer to me and said, "I just wanted to let you know that your secret is safe with me and that, if you want, we can be friends."

I set the spoon down, looking at the red splotch it made against the napkin. I desperately wanted to say yes. One way or another I hadn't had a lot of girl friends before, even while I was in boarding school in Trinity. I'd been one of them, ridiculously rich and entitled, but I'd never felt like I belonged. Maybe it was the fact that I was latina, or maybe it was the fact that despite my privileges I had gone through trauma the likes of which they'd been fortunate to never experience. It had scarred me. It tainted every relationship I had with everybody. They all knew I was that one girl whose family had ran from their home country because of tragedy.

My brother hadn't had that much trouble being a part of his new environment. He was brighter. He hadn't seen what I'd seen. And he was male and had the overbearing confidence to back it up. He was always surrounded with girls who wanted very specific things out of him, and not many of them had cared enough to peel back the deeper layers of him. The only two girls who were not desperate to jump his bones were one, the girlfriend of his best friend and another girl who was younger than them, my age, but had stayed behind in Trinity. She was on the shy side and I was on the closed off side, and that combination didn't make for a lot of conversations.

So, despite the fact that I knew this couldn't go well, what with one lie on top of another, I found a smile stretching across my face.

"I'd like that," I said.

Lena Lee gave me a wink. "So, you know, if you have boy trouble you can always come to me."

I might have blushed a little at that. I sincerely hoped I didn't have any boy trouble here.

The exchange went to the back of my mind for the next week as we practiced relentlessly for the first game of the season. October had started without any change in temperature. It was still cold as fuck. What it did bring was a new intensity to everybody around me that infected me with a bad case of resting bitch face. Dad had grown impatient with the house restorations, at long last, and he'd taken it as his new role to oversee the repairs in person. I had to avoid Main Street after that in case he saw me hauling hockey equipment up and down. It made my commute to and from school longer. Then there was Coach Martel riding our asses so hard that my body had gone past the limits of pain and found the new utopia where it felt nothing.

And then there were the boys.

They all seemed to have become headless chicken, because it turned out that the first game of the season was against the Eagles of East Pembroke High at their home turf.

I had since learned a few key facts. For example, the rivalry between the Bears and the Eagles went as far back as the '60s, which meant that every goddamn male who was alive in between and around the two towns had contributed one way or another to the bad blood. Another interesting aspect was that East Pembroke was a co-ed school, and my fellow Bears were extremely jealous of that. But then they told me that there were enough Pembroke girls who liked the Bears boys as to have made a fan club, so not all sucked on that front.

Here was the kicker, though. Last year the Bears had met the Eagles in the province games... and lost.

Let's just say, everybody was on edge. There was a feeling as though the first game of the season would be the one to determine the fate of the team for the remainder of the year. Coach Martel and Assistant Coach Gauthier tried to keep us focused on the practice drills, saying things like a good foundation was what we needed to excel as individuals, but that a team spirit was what would get us to nationals. It was all well and good, but it didn't help for shit to get the edge off for anybody.

When the day finally arrived, there was so much tension that everybody's lips seemed to have been sewn shut. We all boarded the bus that would take us to Pembroke in silence, one by one. I knew they were all running through their history with the Eagles in their minds, hoping for a different outcome tonight, but that wasn't what had my stomach in knots in particular. In all honesty, I didn't think I was going to play tonight and I thought my friends were damn good. They were going to kick Eagle feathery ass, no doubt.

The problem roiling in my stomach was that dad couldn't know I was here to cheer for the guys from the bench, and not from the bleachers. I hoped that the bullshit I fed him about having school spirit kept him from asking people about my true whereabouts.

I took a seat by a window so that I could at least look at the mountains while listening to music from my phone, rather than staring at the back of people's heads. There was a shift in the seats as someone sat beside me. I turned my face and had to bite my lips not to react.

"Hey, Dean," I said.

He rested his head against the seat and in a drawl said, "Hey."

Well, if I was so fun to hang around with what the hell was he doing next to me?

A few beats passed without anyone saying anything, so I spoke. "Why aren't you sitting with Pace and discussing strategy for tonight?"

"He's so nervous that I'm afraid it might be contagious."

Coach Martel stood in the middle of the bus there and gave a clap that caught everybody's attention. "We all know what the Pembroke Eagles motto is, right? They soar."

I saw Dean's visage darken, transforming his pretty face into a mask of aggression. I pulled back against the window, startled that I barely recognized him this way. Then I saw that all around me everybody wore the same mask.

"Here's something you mustn't forget, though," Coach continued. "We're Bears. We're big. We're strong. We're unstoppable. We are predators and we roar."

A chorus of yeahs greeted him.

Coach threw a fist in the air and shouted, "What do we do?"

"We roar!"

He asked again and the roar that came out of each of us was deafening. It served to dissipate the tension enough that we could all sit back for the ride without steaming. I nudged my seat mate with my elbow.

"Nervous?"

He cracked one blue eye open. "What do you think?"

Dean probably meant it as a rhetorical question, but I was not above pettiness. So I replied, "I think you are, but you're trying to hide that you are for the sake of the team."

He closed the eye and folded his arms, as if preparing to take a nap. When no response came I bent forward to get my phone and headphones from my backpack. This was going to be a hell of a long ride, and I needed the fuel from my training playlist to bring my blood to a boil. Even though I was not going to play, I wanted to feel ready for anything. I put one earbud in place and he spoke.

"I won gold at the World Juniors, I shouldn't feel nervous at all."

I froze. My face turned toward him in a series of jerks. He had his eyes open now, staring at the back of Shane's red head in front of him.

"Did you just admit to being human?"

His frown creased between his eyes and he looked away. "Fine, forget I said anything."

I felt a flash of heat in my face as I realized that he'd been willing to open up, and like a jerk I turned it into a joke.

"Sorry," I said, shrugging. "You just seem so perfect all the time that I can't help but pass up a chance to bring you down to earth."

He faced me with a cocked eyebrow. "You think I'm perfect?"

"Did I say that? I meant arrogant, for sure."

This drew a smile out of him for a moment that felt too long. Then he sighed and ran a hand through his shiny hair that I was sure was like silk to the touch. But that was exactly the kind of boy trouble I had to avoid at all costs, so I balled up my hands and when they started itching too much for touching him, I sat on them.

He dropped his hand in his lap and sighed. "Yeah, I admit it. I'm nervous."

"Why?" I asked, trying my best to not sound like I was fishing for something to tease him with. I genuinely wanted to know. "Haven't the World Juniors been the highest stage you've been in so far? This should feel like nothing to you."

Dean turned to me in full, eyes wide and almost afraid. He licked his lips, and I used the last bit of discipline I had not to stare at the moist patch his tongue had left in its wake. I focused on the blue of his eyes. Like a Caribbean sky. Staring straight through mine but hopefully not seeing the depth of my thoughts right there and then.

"That's exactly the problem," he said, leaning sideways against the back of the chair. The position stretched his neck in a way that left the chords of muscle vulnerable to my perverted mind. I focused on his words as he spoke next. "What if my World Juniors performance was the best I could ever give? What if I let down my team today, my friends?"

I fumbled with words for a moment. This was unexpected. I'd somehow pegged him for someone who always blazed ahead of the average unfalteringly. I didn't fathom he could feel insecure about anything, especially not at hockey. He was supposed to be the best in town and after doing some stalking that I'd only admit in the private of my mind, I found that he was one of the very top high school players in the entire country. He had only brightness ahead of him, and yet he was worried that it might already be behind him.

On the one hand it pissed me off. This was exactly the kind of concern an elite person had, and it made me realize that my dad's money and my circumstances didn't make me special for shit. I was not good at anything. I hadn't accomplished anything. Here was someone who had the world in his hands by his own effort instead.

For that matter and on the other hand, how could I possible give him advice?

I didn't have to, I realized. But I could give him support.

"Dean," I started, noting a sternness in my voice that I didn't know I possessed until then. "I guess what you're thinking is normal and stems from the fact that you're not the totally conceited douche tard that I thought you were."

"Thanks?" he asked, the twitching muscles of his face showing that he was torn between temper and amusement.

"Hear me out," I said with a palm raised up. "I don't know you that well but here's what you have to realize. You've got to where you are on hard work, haven't you? The only way you fail us tonight is if you don't work hard. And I can't see why you wouldn't. These Eagles owe you a debt and today you can collect."

His lips parted with an exhalation. My heart started to beat faster with every second of his stare smoldering my face.

"You have a definite talent for both making me feel like shit and boosting me up that is driving me out of my mind."

A hot flash traveled through my body, and I was thankful for the thick clothes I was wearing that he couldn't see my skin burst into goose bumps everywhere. I cleared my throat once. Twice. It took me a few seconds to compose myself enough that I didn't think my voice would break.

"Well, that's what friends are for, aren't they?"

The fact that he looked disappointed made me lose my breath.

Did I just imagine that?

greetings from your favorite* evil author. if you were feeling a certain sense of security while reading this story, or like maybe everything was going fairly okay... well, i hope last chapter reminded you who you're dealing with: me 😊✨

*possibly not true but not judging here