Josh’s Play

“Thanks, Alecia,” I replied. That was how often I’d been to the physical therapy department. Frequently enough that I didn’t even have to check in and was on a first-name basis with the receptionist. I was a fucking regular.

And okay, maybe I understood the importance of protecting my health. If your goal is to end up in the National Hockey League, you’ve got to keep your body in tip-top shape, but that didn’t mean I had to like the amount of time I was spending in physical therapy.

And maybe, just maybe, it didn’t help matters that sometimes there was a petite and very pretty woman around my age, the aforementioned Diane, who stretched and flexed my ankle and then watched me putter on a treadmill like some leading man in a slow-motion action scene, and that other times, my therapist was a guy. A skinny guy, with shoulder-length pink hair and a take-no-prisoners attitude. A guy with the gentlest touch and the softest hands as he stretched and rolled my ankle and pushed my leg above my head.

I hated having both of them running their hands all over me and hated myself for the reasons why.

I nodded at the receptionist and looked around the waiting room at the other basketball, hockey, and football players forlornly waiting their turn. It was then I noticed a new face among the damned. He stood out in that he didn’t stand out at all. As opposed to all of the athletic men and women, most of whom were wearing workout clothes in some variation of Hampstead University's maroon and white, this dude was in khaki shorts and a pink golf shirt, wearing two-toned boat shoes, one hue of which matched the color of the shorts. He had one elbow propped up on the armrest, his forearm upright, his left hand and wrist wrapped in a brace.

He was clean-shaven, with short, wavey, light brown hair, sun-kissed in the waning days of summer. He had rich olive skin with a healthy tan that spoke of time outdoors. His legs were slender compared to mine but defined with muscle. He was not unfit but did not have the air of an athlete about him, making him stand out in that room. His phone was propped on this thigh, and he was clearly working to type something out one-handed. Occasionally he would use the thumb of his other hand, scowling in frustration as he remembered he shouldn’t, propping it back up on the armrest in defeat.

He was cute.

I could admit that, right? The guy was cute, Just because I found guys more attractive than women, it didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t, not if I wanted to make it to the pros. I had been taught long ago that there could be no distractions if I wanted to make it to the NHL. So for the same reason I’d sucked it up and spent an inordinate amount of time in that miserable waiting room and hardly any time on the ice, I would ignore how cute I thought he was and focus on hockey. I reminded myself, not for the first time, that anything that wasn’t preparing me for a future as a professional hockey player wasn’t anything I should be focused on.

The only thing was, there were no other seats, like in the entire place, so I went and sat next to him and just couldn’t help myself.

“What are you in for?” I shot him my winning smile, and he smiled right back.