Felicity

Tuesday is more of the same. Mostly. Ares squeezes into my car, ignores my hints that we should pick up his car instead—either he doesn’t let anyone else drive it, Nick was lying about him having a car, or possibly that’s where he keeps all of his haiku books and doesn’t want anyone to know—and after we drop Loki for a day of hanging with Kami at her family’s veterinary clinic, Ares spends the morning in the waiting room resting and icing his ankle while making magazine-page paper airplanes that he tosses at our receptionist whenever she’s not looking.

And I breathe a sigh of relief that he’s taking it easy today.

I heard he let a three-year-old kick his ass in tic-tac-toe for an hour too. And that the three-year-old’s mom insisted on wiping the crayon marks off the walls herself once their appointment for her older kid was done.

At lunch, since he’s stayed off his ankle and not gotten me in much more trouble at the clinic, I take him to my favorite burrito bar. I get a sofritas black bean bowl. He orders three steak and carnitas burritos with extra cheese, double guacamole, and a side of chips.

For the record, he accomplishes this with four grunts, three fingers, and a series of pointed gestures. When I go to pay, he does a ninja move with the crutch that ends with his credit card getting slid into the machine first.

Both the cashier and I gape at him.

She recovers first. “Can I see your tattoo?” she whispers reverently.

He goes pink in the cheeks, grunts once, and grabs our bags. I have to rescue his credit card, and he’s already three shops down when I catch up to him.

The sky’s a fuzzy blue today and the temperatures are hovering in the low forties. I’m in a big winter coat.

Ares is in jeans and a T-shirt that proclaims him Matser of the Versicorn with an arrow pointing to his left bicep.

“Tattoo, huh?” I ask as we wait for the light at the corner to change so we can cross the street.

“Snake.”

“Liar.”

His lips twitch up, but he doesn’t look at me.

“You talk to the team doc yet today?”

“Bees.”

When Nick was out for two weeks with a groin strain last season, he was in with the doc and physical therapy team every day until he was back on the ice. Ares needs the swelling to go down before he can start physical therapy. I’m positive the team’s medical staff wants to see him regularly to monitor how he’s doing.

And Nick might’ve mentioned in a text this morning that he told Dr. Santiago, the team’s head physician, that Ares was hanging with me.

I know Dr. Santiago. We’ve met on a few occasions.

Okay, once.

We met once.

When Nick was injured, and I’d just been turned down again for the Zamboni job—that accident was not my fault, but it went on my driving record anyway—and I just happened to be at Mink Arena before a game with my parents when Dr. Santiago walked by and heard my dad mention his worries over my finances.

Which are fine.

But my parents worry. And Dr. Santiago got an earful about young, inexperienced, poor life choice-making Felicity…

I’m twenty-seven. Intellectually, I understand I’m young, because average lifespans mean that I’m basically only a third of the way through life. Emotionally, I’m processing the weird turmoil that sprouted in my chest last night when I realized Ares Berger has his entire life purpose figured out, and I’m on my fifth attempt at a career with nothing but a string of bad boyfriends in the rearview mirror, still lunging for the same goal I’ve failed at attaining for the last eleven years.

Educationally, I’ve been reincarnated a few times and should be an old soul.

No, I don’t like to talk about my high school or first college experience. Not because they were painful—no more so than you’d expect of a kid going through puberty while surrounded by a bunch of people at least five years older who could smoke, drink, and vote to their hearts’ content—but because I don’t like how it gets me boxed.

Nerd. Geek. Video game player. Watches Big Bang Theory for the physics. Into manga. Can recite all of the Marvel Universe movies by heart. Does cosplay on the weekend.

All. Dead. Wrong.

I wouldn’t recognize Captain America if he walked up to me on the street and offered to let me lick his hammer. Or whatever it is Captain America carries.

I don’t fit in that stereotype, and I’m more than my brains. And some days, despite the four college degrees, I don’t think I’m very smart at all.

See again, Felicity doesn’t know her mission in life.

Beyond wanting to work for the Thrusters.

Which feels further and further away some days.

But at least my parents add the part about being proud of me for being talented in other ways. Which can’t pay the bills, but being well-rounded is important.

Yeah.

Got that memo in high school.

Have the signatures in my yearbook to prove it.

Wow, Felicity, you’re so smart. You’re really going places.

Thanks for letting me copy off you during geometry tests.

Hi, I don’t know you, but everyone else signed that you’re smart, and I’m signing everyone’s yearbooks, so nice job at being smart.

That last one was from Kami, former head cheerleader, former prom queen, and the only student at Moss Baker High ever voted Most Likely To Die From Being Too Happy.

I like to pull out that yearbook when we have too much wine and taunt her with her high school popularity points.

To be fair, we only went to high school together one year, when I was finishing senior credits as a thirteen-year-old and she was a freshman, so I didn’t actually see the popularity points she racked up, but my point is, when I crossed the stage at graduation with my valedictorian ribbon on, nobody knew who I was.

They knew my name and my GPA, but they didn’t know who I was.

I didn’t know who I was, and I was keenly aware of it.

And now, fourteen years later…I still don’t exactly know who I am.

But I have enough degrees to have options for jobs, a patent and a copyright here or there that I might’ve sold for a small fortune, terrible taste in men, and friends.

And Ares Berger. Who smells like strawberry shortcake today. Not the doll, but the actual dessert.

In case you were wondering, since there’s a difference.

We push into the clinic, the new crop of patients in the waiting room all gape at Ares—some with whoa, that dude is big expressions and some with holy shit, that’s Ares Berger expressions—and Melba at the desk holds up a note for me. “Didn’t you break up with that Doug guy? He called and said he could meet you for dinner tonight to talk about things.”

I keep a pleasant smile on my face, even though Doug can go fuck himself, and take the note. “He called here? Sorry about that. And thanks, Melba.”

“He still have your puppet?”

Ares growls.

It’s a small noise, and no one else seems to hear it, but I feel it reverberating through my bones.

“No big deal,” I say.

Melba frowns and pulls her glasses down. “I thought you said you accidentally left Harold at his place.”

I’ve been here for a rotation for two of my designated four weeks, and they all know about my puppets. One of the PTs on staff here recognized me from open mic night at The Laugh Track on my first day. “You know Harold. He can take care of himself.”

He’s a puppet. He can’t take care of anything by himself. But he’s a grumpapotamus puppet—seriously, he’s a hippo with the grumpiest face you’ve ever seen, so freaking adorable—so there’s a chance.

I smile and wink at Melba.

Her uh-oh, she’s gone off the deep end brow wrinkle smoothes out, and she laughs with me. “You are too funny, Felicity. Mr. Berger, here, on the other hand…”

“Needs to go put his foot up,” I say. I drop my voice and pretend I’m Ares. “I promise, no more writing on the walls today. And I’m sorry about the paper airplanes. Thank you for letting me sit in your waiting room.”

I glance at Ares.

He’s watching me with a straight-on, no-blinking, you need help look.

Why, no, that wasn’t a shiver racing down my spine. It was clearly a small furry animal that dropped out of the ceiling and dug its way under my shirt. Because if it was a shiver, that means I’m reading Ares’s expressions, and he’s getting protective, and I don’t need another brother, but nothing about him feels brotherly. No, that’s all hero and champion and protector, with a side of holy shit, he’s kinda hot when he’s growly, thank god he’s not in his hockey uniform and holding a stick too, which means everything suddenly feels incredibly complicated.

“Ice,” I stammer. I shoo Ares back to the staff room, which is just behind the receptionist desk, and I follow to make sure he’s going. “Now. You can eat with ice on your foot.”

“Her parents told me she always was a smart girl,” Dr. Santiago says as we enter the room.

Yeah, that look Ares is giving me now also makes a shiver slink down my spine.

Because I’m pretty sure that’s his I’m going to kill you and use your arms for hockey sticks to bat your head around the ice that’s soaked in your blood look.

Because being six-nine and three hundred-something pounds of pure muscle isn’t enough. He has to have the glares to go with it.

I square my shoulders and smile at the Thrusters’ head physician, who’s chatting with my boss in the break area. “Hey, Dr. Santiago. How’s Brianna?”

“Terrifying.” His eyes twinkle as he pulls out his phone, though he’s clearly not letting Ares out of sight. “She’s at the exact right height to bang her head into the countertops every time she comes running into the kitchen.”

He passes me his phone, and I ooh and aww over pictures of his three-year-old daughter, because while I’ve only met him once, I’ve got the man’s number. Her dark hair is long enough for adorable curly pigtails now, and her big brown eyes are the stuff of heartbreakers.

Once Ares has taken a seat at the other table, propped his foot up on a second chair, and started pulling out his first burrito, I hand the phone back. “Put her in a helmet. Gotta run. Patients waiting and I take my clinicals very seriously.”

My clinicals supervisor stands as well. “Me too.”

Ares is glaring at me as I shut the door.

“You thinking you want to stay in sports rehab when you get your degree?” Dr. Ricci asks quietly as we leave Ares to his doom.

“Sports are in my blood,” I say, because it’s noncommittal-ish and I don’t like to jinx things.

“We always have room on staff for people with good connections,” he muses.

I keep a smile on my face like it’s not irritating and embarrassing that I’d get a job offer just because I have connections. My other degrees are in accounting, computer science, marketing, and bowling industry management—long story, and no, I don’t want to talk about what happened with that bowling ball on my last day of my last job, which was also my first and only day on that job—so this is the first time networking has had the potential to play into my future.

“Oh, I don’t know that I’d do you any good,” I say brightly as I check the board to see who I’m assisting this afternoon. “They won’t even hire me to drive their Zamboni.”

“Hm.”

Yep, I know that look too. The well, you are a woman driver look. Coupled with the glance back at the staff room door.

He’s going to weasel up to Ares. Use the man to try to get in with the Thrusters and score himself some hockey patients.

I’m forcing a smile when I join back up with the PT I’m shadowing today.

But I don’t feel happy.

I’m off-balance.

Because I’m no better than Dr. Ricci is, am I?