Page 7 of Net and Chill

She wants me.

It’s on.

“You live with your parents?”

“No. God, no. I work with them all day; I need my own space at night. Where do you live when you’re in town?”

“I rent the same house every year. It’s awesome. You should come over.”

“Now?”

I unlock the car and open the passenger door for her. It requires me stepping away to give her room, but it’s kind of a tight squeeze because of the car that’s parked next to me. I’ve never been so hyperaware of my body and how I take up space around a woman before.

“I’m five minutes from here. I’m gonna go home and watchJaws.”

“Are you kidding me? I was watching it when my friend called me tonight. I fucking love that movie!”

“Me too. I watch it every summer.”

“Oh, yeah? But not because you’re superstitious, huh?” she teases as she climbs into the seat.

Before carefully closing the door, I say, “Well, Bridget. We’ll just have to see if it brings us luck.”

4

BRIDGET

Earlier this evening, I was altering a large hockey goalie’s trousers while watching videos of various actors being interviewed while holding puppies. Then I started watchingJaws. Then I allowed Penny to drag me to The Penalty Box and in walked the goalie. Now I’m watchingJawsin the large hockey goalie’s living room with him. The only way this night could get better is if five puppies suddenly show up.

Okay, I can think of one other thing that could make this night better.

This rental house is, indeed, awesome. Bright and modern, with a big sectional sofa and a big-screen TV. Big, big, big. Everything’s big here except me.

We’ve both been drinking iced tea—he said he shouldn’t have alcohol in case he has to drive me home tonight. I appreciated the consideration as much as the hint that I might not be going home tonight, but I am quite certain he’s abstaining because of his upcoming photo shoot. He is incredibly good looking but not a pretty boy, so I find it endearing that he’s prepping for it like this. But then again, he is a New Yorker for most of the year. I can’t forget that.

We’ve been sharing popcorn. He’s been holding the bowl on his lap, and I’ve been reaching into it. I’m sitting to the right of him on the sofa, so I know his Bobby Orr isn’t directly under the bottom of the bowl, but my fingers have gotten really close to that thing today and I’m starting to think it would be rude if I didn’t get a little more hands-on.

We’ve reached the part inJawswhere Quint and Hooper are comparing scars, and Craig says, “When I was fifteen, a girl in Seattle invited me to her house to watch movies after school and she said I could choose whatever I wanted. So I found this on Netflix. When it got to the part after this, Quint’s speech about the USSIndianapolis, she got so scared she turned off the TV, and I was so mad I just left.”

“I mean. I know I should side with a sister, butthat monologue is mesmerizing—how dare she? They had an outdoor screening of this at Waterfront Park a few years ago, and I couldn’t even convince the guy I was seeing at the time to go. So we didn’t.”

“I went to that,” Craig says. “That was the night I met a woman who was deeply unimpressed by hockey. Which was kind of refreshing at first, but I took her out for a drink after and she spent the whole night trying to convince me to start an RV-rental company with her and her brother—who she put me on a FaceTime with. And instead of trying to convince me to work with them, he gave me shit for playing for New York because he lived in Boston.”

“That’s adorable, but I got that beat.”

“Oh yeah?” he says as he places the popcorn bowl on the coffee table.

“Ohhhh, yeah. There’s this musician/mushroom farmer who’d been trying to get me to go out with him for months, and I finally said yes. He was dead set on taking me to a new restaurant in Vancouver. Only I don’t think he had ever actually driven down to Vancouver before, because he got lost on the Coquihalla Highway.” Craig snorts. “He didn’t believe in using GPS apps and refused to listen tome when I tried to tell him where to go, so I just shut up and let him deal with it. We drove for four hours.

“He finally found a gas station, and we ate hot dogs for dinner—which I was honestly fine with. Except then his car wouldn’t start,” I say. “So he started crying and blaming me for making him nervous—also fine. I get it. I’m incredibly intimidating. He called a tow truck to bring us back to Kenton. And it turned out the tow truck driver was a guy I had broken up with half a year ago, and apparently he wasn’t as cool with it as he’d led me to believe. He spent the entire drive trying to get me to explain how it was possible that I’d gotten over him already. But the good news is those guys are now total besties and I only run into them, like, every other week.”

By the end of my tirade, I realize my legs are now somehow stretched out across Craig’s lap. How did this happen? Did he carefully and gently place my feet up on the couch like he carefully and gently shut the passenger door to his car earlier tonight? Or was I yammering so much that my legs were like,Okay, we’re gonna have to take control of this situation before the mouth ruins everything for all of us.

“First of all,” Craig says as he massages my barefeet, “I would like to have a word with both of those guys. Secondly—last year when we were in LA, one of my teammates begged me to go on a double date with him and this girl he really liked and her sister. The sister kept doing Stories on her Instagram about things I said and what I ordered, and then she’d read the comments to me at the table. And one of the comments was from the girl I was supposed to meet up with that night but forgot.” He covers his heart with one hand. “I am deeply ashamed about this, because I never forget about dates.”

“Except that one time.”

“Except the one time. But in my defense, that woman turned out to be kind of a pill. She did a video about being at the bar I was supposed to meet her at along with a screenshot of the Story my friend’s date’s sister posted and tagged me. And that was the last time I ever went on a double date. It was also, now that I think of it, the last time I went out on a real date.”