“Frankie.” Ren’s voice is muffled from the other side of the door. “Is everything okay?”
Clearing my throat, I wrench open the door again, quickly tugging down my hoodie in a hopeless effort to look dignified.
“Sorry about that. You surprised me.” Stepping back, I motion him in. “I was expecting Chinese food.”
His brow furrows. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“That’s okay. I just ate a whole pizza and pounded a bag of root beer gummies. I’m due for some GI rest.”
Leaning his shoulder against my doorjamb, Ren’s features shift to something warm, maybe amused. There’s that cheery, ain’t-nothin’-gonna-bring-me-down smile that drives me up the goddamn wall. Mostly because I wish I could replicate it. Then people might not think I’m such a grump when in reality I just can’t voluntarily make myself smile.
“You’re stoned, aren’t you?” he says.
“Excuse you.” I sniff indignantly. “I’m as sober as a nun.” As soon as I say it, I search my extensive memory for that simile and come up empty. There’s a good chance I just pulled it out of my ass. Damn.
Ren grins. “The nuns I know are notorious partiers.”
There he is, rolling with it, being nice. Curse him, this unreasonably nice man.
“Guess you found the cool nuns, then,” I tell him. “The ones I knew smacked my hands with rulers in grade school and made me stand in the corner for my insolence.”
Ren’s laugh is soft and warm. “You? Insolent?”
I turn toward the kitchen as I hear my dog Pazza start barking from the backyard, just in time to see her throw her paws up to the window.
When I glance over my shoulder, I notice Ren is where I left him, at the threshold. He seems hesitant to advance.
“That’s just my dog out back. She’s harmless…sort of. Well, not really. I was worried she’d maul the delivery guy, so she’s outside.”
Ren blanches.
“I’ll keep her outside,” I tell him, dropping onto my giant exercise ball with a groan. “I just need to sit, Zenzero. Come on. If you want to talk, here’s where we’re doing it.”
Ren closes the door behind him and walks slowly through my living room, his eyes roaming the place curiously. His smile stays but he looks… Is it shy? Nervous? God, what I’d give to better read faces.
Gently, he sets down his arms’ contents. First, a blazer, which I now recognize as mine. Then, the package he was holding. He slides it across the kitchen counter, pushing it my way. “Your jacket that you left behind,” he says. “And a gift of thanks for letting the Shakespeare Club angle go.”
I frown up at him. “You don’t understand how much that hurt. We’re the LA Kings. I had a skit in my head. Costumes and lines. So much material to work, ya know? King Lear. Henry IV, Henry V, Richard II, Richard III, Macbeth. Cymbeline. King John. That’s not even all of them…” My voice dies off as I search Ren’s enigmatic expression. “What? Have I shocked you with my categorical knowledge of Shakespeare?”
“A little bit.” It comes out hoarse.
“Don’t get too attached to the idea. I just know all the titles and some lines here and there that I had to memorize for a quiz back in college. I don’t know much about most of them otherwise.”
Ren clears his throat and shakes his head, snapping himself out of whatever that was. His easy smile is back as he pushes the package closer. “Right. Well, I didn’t want to make it weird by giving it to you at work tomorrow, and I thought it would be even weirder if I mailed it to you. Plus, I had your jacket, so…”
Yanking the package my way, I tug warily at the string. Knots are the bane of the arthritic’s existence. But the string unravels effortlessly.
I glance up at him and feel myself smile. “Thanks for avoiding the double knot.”
He smiles bashfully and nods. My smile deepens as an unfamiliar warmth floods my chest. I pull the paper away, tearing it easily. A bundle of soft cotton drops onto the counter and I lift the fabric. “A dress shirt?”
Ren steps closer, flipping it over before he smooths it along the granite counter. I stare at his hands longer than is most likely “appropriate.” But they’re…beautiful. Long and faintly freckled. Upon closer inspection, they’re also red at the knuckles, like he recently punched something.
“Maddox ruined your other one,” he says. “And I was pretty sure it looked like this. Is it a good match?”
I stare at the shirt, processing what he’s saying, my fingers sliding along the buttons. They’re different. I can tell that immediately. I have four of the same shirts, pants, and blazers that I wear to all games, and while this shirt looks almost identical, I can feel its difference. I pull at the shirt gently and watch it snap apart.
“The buttons—” His voice cracks, and he clears his throat. “The buttons are adhered to a durable magnet. The panel around them holds the opposite magnetic pull and is reinforced so they can take a good tug.”
I normally leave my shirts buttoned but for the top two, so I can slip them over my head and not deal with buttoning them. Buttons are a bit hard for my hands—especially early in the day or late in the evening, when they’re at their stiffest. Despite the pains I take to ensure my clothes are comfortable, I never considered clothes could be easier while still allowing me to wear what I wanted.
“Ren, where did you…” My throat feels weird, thick with an emotion I can’t begin to name.
“My sister is a physical therapist, but she’s an overachiever who nerds out on adaptive everything, from clothing to kitchen utensils.” He shrugs. “She’s mentioned them before, said a shop in the Fashion District sold them.”
Peering up at Ren, I am so damn confused. Clearly, he’s aware of my challenges, to the point he bought something for me out of consideration. Yet there’s no trace of that stifling, demeaning claustrophobia I’ve felt with just about everyone else I know. In this moment with Ren, I just feel…seen. And I feel a terrible need to kiss him.
Damn weed. It’s all to blame.
Weed never makes you this horny.
Shut it, pothead brain. No more wisecracks.
“That’s really thoughtful of you.” Tentatively, I wrap my hand around his, squeeze it once, then release it, before I give in to the impulse to tug him my way and kiss him senseless. “Thank you.”
A furious blush crawls up Ren’s neck, past the playoff beard. It’s beyond sweet but so odd to see this side of him. Because the Ren I’ve seen the past three years is humble, yes, but confident, assertive, striking. Rookie of the Year. MVP. Thrown on all the magazine covers, voted for hottest this, sexiest that. The guys tease him about it, and he just shakes his head and moves the conversation along. Ren’s got it all, and he’s always seemed pretty happy about it.
But then there’s this other side I glimpse, that I’m seeing right now. When he blushes and does his nervous tic of scratching the back of his neck. Almost like he’s uncertain of himself, not the confident guy who’s taken the hockey world by storm.
“You’re welcome,” he says. “I hope it’s not…” There it is. He scrubs the back of his neck. “I hope it’s not crossing a line or anything.”