Center Ice by Cate Cameron Page A

rookies on the team. But Karen didn’t know that, and she might think he’d gotten Tori’s name wrong because he was an uncaring asshole who treated women like they were interchangeable. And I didn’t want her to think that about him. Or about me.
    “I’m Karen,” she said, cutting through all my stupid angsting with an easy smile.
    “Karen’s a friend of mine,” I told Winslow, putting just a little extra emphasis on the word ‘friend’. He’d know what that meant.
    Winslow gave her another look and then nodded slowly. “Nice to meet you.” He half turned and gestured into the shadows. “The keg’s in the truck bed. Help yourselves.” He looked at Karen, then me. “Dawn’s got a bunch of coolers and stuff, too, if you want. I think they’re in the cab of the truck.”
    “Thanks,” I said. He’d gotten my message clear enough. I didn’t let go of Karen’s hand as I guided her toward the truck. “You want a cooler?”
    “Beer’s fine,” she said, then added, “I’m not a huge drinker.”
    “I don’t know if that is going to work for you up here. Once it gets cold, drinking’s about all there is to do at night.”
    “No TV, this far north? No books? No conversation, or video games, or cooking classes?”
    I squinted at her. “Cooking classes? That’s what you think’s going to keep you busy?”
    “Yeah, that was a weird thing to say,” she admitted with a grin. “I just thought of it because my best friend in the city loves to cook. She was always trying to get me to take classes with her. But usually I’d just go to her house and eat her homework.”
    “I don’t understand that. Isn’t cooking, like…don’t you just follow the recipe? Why do you need a class?” I pulled a couple plastic cups from a stack in the bed of the truck and held one under the tap of the keg.
    “There’re techniques,” Karen said. “Like, you’re pouring a beer, right? The recipe might just say ‘pour a beer’, but you have a way of doing it. Tilting the cup, letting the beer hit the side first…whatever. That’s the kind of stuff she’d learn. And recipes.”
    “I like the ‘eat the homework’ idea.” I handed her a filled cup and then poured my own before reclaiming her hand. It felt natural, like it just made sense for us to be touching each other. “Come on,” I said. “I’ll introduce you to some people.”
    And that was when things got kind of stressful. Because practically everyone in town was at the party, at least everyone between about fifteen and twenty-five, and there were quite a few people in that age category that I didn’t really want Karen to talk to. Which was stupid, because it had been my idea to come to the party in the first place, and I’d known who would be there. I guess I just hadn’t thought it through. Everything seemed so simple when it was just me and Karen, but I should have known things would get complicated once other people were added to the mix.
    I’d have to face my past sooner or later, but for tonight, at least, I didn’t want to. So I steered Karen through the party like we were playing that old video game where the frog has to get across the road. We’d hop a little bit forward, say ‘hi’ to a few people, and then I’d spot trouble coming and we’d jump a few spots to the left, finding another group for a quick greeting and then someone else would approach and I’d tug Karen away, trying to keep us from getting splatted by a big frog-killing truck.
    Not quite what I’d had in mind when I’d suggested Karen come out with me. Maybe I should have suggested we do something with just the two of us, but it had seemed too early for that, somehow. Which made no sense, because we’d already spent a whole afternoon alone together, but that had been kind of accidental. This? Showing up at her house, talking to her dad, even. It felt like a date. And I was pretty sure it felt the same way to her, but I wasn’t totally positive, and if she did