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rsadellePart 1 - Part 2
"You went home with Tyler again last night," Courtney said in the morning. She put her cereal bowl in the sink and sat down next to Kelsey on the couch. "Am I right that you don't want to talk about it?"
Kelsey didn't have to think about it for very long before agreeing that she didn't want to talk about it. There could be comfort in talking to Courtney, but she also didn't want to make how she felt about Tyler any more real by putting it into words.
"Can we talk about my relationship?" Courtney asked. "Or is that going to be weird?"
Kelsey turned off the TV and turned so she was facing Courtney. "No, we can talk about it."
Courtney sighed. "They're leaving."
Kelsey blinked. "Like on a road trip?"
"No," Courtney said. "Like out of Glens Falls. The Phantoms are moving to Pennsylvania after this season."
"Oh," Kelsey said. She hadn't heard that, but then, she hadn't paid that much attention to local sports news, and it wasn't one of the things she and Tyler had talked about.
"Yeah." Courtney slumped against the back of the couch. "I'm thinking about going with."
That was even more surprising. "Really?"
Courtney nodded. "This thing with Jason is really good, and I love him. I think I love him enough to move to Pennsylvania with him. Or wherever. There's a chance he'll end up somewhere else."
"Wow," Kelsey said. "I knew you were serious, but I didn't know you were that serious."
Courtney sat up. "I don't know if I am, but we're graduating. Things were always going to change at the end of this year anyway."
Kelsey put her arm around Courtney's shoulders. "I was supposed to be going somewhere with David."
Courtney nodded. "And I was going to have to figure out if I wanted to get a job here or go to New York or Albany or what I wanted." She put her head down on Kelsey's shoulder. "Will you hate me if I go to Pennsylvania with Jason?"
"No," Kelsey said. "I could never hate you. I guess I'll be the one trying to figure out what I want to do."
"Whatever it is," Courtney said, "we'll still be best friends." She held up her pinky.
Kelsey hooked her own around it. "Best friends forever."
*
The bell over the door rang at five minutes to closing. Mary Ann had a policy that they would help any customer who came in before they locked the door at closing time, which meant that Kelsey's day had just gotten longer. Usually she didn't mind that much, but it was spring break, and she was really looking forward to going home and not having to do homework.
Kelsey put on her best helping the customer smile and looked up, only to see Tyler looking around curiously. He looked good, tall and strong, if out of place in the shop.
"Hi," she said. "This doesn't really seem like your kind of place."
He half smiled at her, meeting her eyes easily. "Not really."
"So what are you doing here?" Kelsey asked, not exactly trying to get him out of there, but still hoping she could go home soon.
Tyler shrugged his shoulders a little. "Can I buy you dinner?"
That wasn't what Kelsey was expecting. They'd already agreed they weren't dating, hooking up and their one previous dinner together aside.
"I know we're not doing this," Tyler said when she didn't have an answer for him right away. "But you're on spring break and Courtney's with Jason, so if you want to get dinner and have some company, I'll buy you dinner. If you don't have other plans."
Kelsey was just as surprised by the thoughtfulness of the invitation as she was by the invitation in the first place. He'd even given her a graceful out, and she could say she had other plans and go home like she'd originally planned. But she enjoyed his company and she would have fun if they went out to dinner.
"Okay," she said. "I have to close, but then we can go."
Tyler smiled at her. "Cool. Do you want me to wait outside?"
Kelsey smiled at him. "No, you can stay." David had come to meet her at the end of the day when they were dating, and Mary Ann had never had a problem with him being there. It would be fine for Tyler to hang out with her for a few minutes.
Kelsey locked the front door and flipped the sign to closed when the clock ticked over. Tyler stayed out of her way, checking messages on his phone, while she went through the rest of the closing up routine.
Kelsey had been taking advantage of the quiet afternoon to straighten displays and make sure the place looked good, so there wasn't much she had to do before she could leave, and it wasn't much later that she locked the back office, turned out most of the lights, and unlocked the door so she and Tyler could leave.
Tyler put his phone away and followed her outside, and then waited while she relocked the door and tucked her keys into her purse.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"The Brewpub?" he offered. "Unless you want to go somewhere else."
"No," Kelsey said, "that sounds good." The Brewpub was nice without being too nice, and they could walk there.
It wasn't a long walk, and it was a quiet enough night that they didn't have to wait for a table once they got there.
Kelsey put down her menu when she'd decided what she was having, and waited a moment for Tyler to do the same.
"No big spring break plans?" Tyler asked after he put down his menu.
"Not this year," Kelsey said. "I think Courtney and I are going to go shopping in Albany on Friday, but that's it." She shrugged. "Courtney wanted to stay here with Jason, Brie and Kevin went to Vermont for a romantic getaway, and Sarah went to visit some of her high school friends in the City. We're all graduating this year, and it would have been fun to do a group vacation like last year, but it just didn't work out."
"Where'd you go last year?" Tyler asked.
"Montreal. Brie and Kevin thought it would be fun, so we got a whole group to go."
"My family's from there," Tyler said.
"Really?"
Tyler nodded. "Yeah, my parents grew up there. They moved to Ontario before I was born, but a lot of our family still lives there."
"Is that where your grandma lives?" Kelsey asked.
Tyler smiled a little. "Yeah, both sets of grandparents."
Their waitress interrupted them to list the specials and then, when that didn't make either of them change their minds, write down their orders of burgers and beers.
"You're graduating this year," Tyler said when the waitress was gone. "Do you know what you're going to do after that?"
Kelsey made a face. "No. I guess I should start looking for jobs, but I don't really know if I want to stay here or go somewhere else or what." She didn't know if he knew anything about what Courtney was thinking about, and plans for after graduation wasn't really a topic she wanted to talk that much about anyway. "I heard you're leaving at the end of this year too."
"Yeah," Tyler said with a sigh. "The Phantoms are moving next year. I'm RFA this summer." Something of how meaningless that was to her must have shown on Kelsey's face because he said, "Restricted free agent. It means if anyone else makes me an offer and the Flyers match it, I have to take the Flyers' offer. I want to stay with them, but," he shrugged, "my stats aren't great this year, and they might not re-sign me."
The waitress came by to put a beer down in front of each of them. Kelsey and Tyler both thanked her, and Kelsey picked up her beer.
"What would that mean?"
"I'd play somewhere else," Tyler said. He sipped his beer. "All I want to do is play hockey, so that part would still be good, but I like this team and these guys."
Kelsey wasn't quite sure what to say to that, so she said the only thing that could really apply to both of their situations. "Change is hard."
"Yep." Tyler made a face. "Sorry to bring things down. That isn't really the fun I was suggesting."
Kelsey laughed. "I guess it's better to know we're not alone in not knowing what we're going to do next year."
Tyler smiled at her, one of his barely there smiles that required attention to notice. "Yeah, that's better."
Kelsey met his eyes, and they just looked at each other for too long while their smiles dropped away. Neither one of them was alone in how they felt, not at all, and they kept finding themselves right back in the middle of that togetherness.
Tyler looked away first.
Kelsey hadn't quite regathered herself when Tyler asked her about her trip to Montreal last year, but she shook it off and told him one of the stories their group liked to retell about that trip, and then asked him about his travels.
Exchanging travel stories took them all the way through until the waitress brought their meals, and then the food occupied their attention.
Kelsey finished her burger but not her fries. Tyler was being subtle about it, but she could see him eying them, so she pushed her plate toward him. "You want the rest of them?"
Tyler looked guilty at that. "You sure?"
Kelsey smiled at him. "Yeah. Go for it." She sipped the end of her beer while she watched him eat the rest of her fries, dipping every third one in ketchup.
They declined dessert when the waitress came by to take their empty plates and ask them about it, but they lingered even after Tyler had handed over his card and gotten it back. They weren't talking about anything important, but Kelsey was enjoying herself, the warmth of holding Tyler's attention, of laughing and making him laugh, just as good as any spring break vacation.
Only after their waitress came by for the third time to see if they wanted their water glasses refilled did Tyler look around them and say, "I guess we should go." He sounded as reluctant about it as Kelsey felt. But it was getting later, and the place was emptying out.
"Yeah, I guess," Kelsey said.
They pulled on their coats and smiled at the waitress on the way out of the restaurant. It had cooled down outside, and Kelsey pulled the collar of her coat up against her neck.
"Where's your car?" Tyler asked. "I'll walk you back."
"In the lot," Kelsey said, "this way."
Tyler stayed close on the walk, close enough that Kelsey could have hooked her arm through his or reached for his hand. It took more effort than she would have thought to keep from doing either of those things. Tyler didn't push that, but he did rest his hand at the small of her back when they had to walk closer to let other people pass them on the sidewalk.
Kelsey dug her keys out of her purse and clicked the button to unlock her car as they crossed the parking lot toward it. She stopped when they got to the door and turned to look at Tyler. She'd parked under a streetlight that threw the angles of his face into relief, left enough light for her to see his eyes meeting hers.
"Thank you for dinner," she said.
Tyler smiled at her. "Thanks for coming with me." They just smiled at each other for a long moment before Tyler leaned in, slowly enough for her to gauge his intentions and move away if she wanted to, and kissed her. It was a soft, sweet kiss, no urgency or hurry in it.
Kelsey let her arms come up and wrap around Tyler, settling in against him as he put his arms around her and kept kissing her with the same slow sweetness.
Kelsey leaned against Tyler when they stopped kissing, resting her forehead on his chest and feeling warm and safe in his arms.
She could invite him home, and she thought about doing just that as she stood there in the circle of his arms. But it hadn't really been that kind of evening. It had been more like a first date than anything else.
Tyler let her go easily when she stepped away, and he reached past her to open her car door for her.
"Thank you," she said again. "I'll see you around."
Tyler smiled a little. "Yeah," he said, "I'm sure." He closed her door once she was in the car. He stepped away from the car, but stayed, watching, until she drove away.
Kelsey took that warm feeling of being cared about all the way home with her.
*
Going out on a Wednesday night was Kevin's idea, or at least Kevin was the one who brought it to the rest of them; Kelsey had the vague impression it might have started as a plan somewhere in the farther reaches of their social circle.
Whatever the original reason, it had swelled into a large number of people, and it took a while for Kelsey and Courtney to make their way around the bar, saying hi to their various friends from school and also to the members of Jason's team who'd come along.
They got drinks at the bar, and then settled in around the central table, a few bar stools for people to sit on but most of them standing, Courtney sliding into the space next to Jason.
They hadn't been there very long when Tyler slipped into the space next to Kelsey.
"Hi," he said, one of those soft, barely there smiles on his face.
"Hi." Kelsey smiled up at him. It had been a month since they had dinner over spring break. That stretch of time hadn't done anything to dim the way she felt about him. She wanted to curl up against him, or drag him out of there and home to her bed. She didn't do either of those things, just smiled and turned back to the conversation.
Tyler didn't do anything overt, like put his arm around her the way Jason had his arm around Courtney, but he stayed close, exchanged smiles with Kelsey when the conversation hit on something they'd talked about before. It felt like they were together, and she let herself feel his warmth at her side and the certainty that they would be leaving together later.
The noise level in the bar had been rising steadily, and Kelsey was so focused on their group at the table that it was only when someone at the edge of their table yelled, "David!" that she noticed the cause of some of the noise.
There was David, beer bottle held casually in one hand as he hugged people with the other arm, making his way around the table.
Courtney shot Kelsey a glance, and Kelsey just shrugged at her, letting Courtney hug David and introduce Jason.
David eventually got to her, and Kelsey stepped back half a step so he wouldn't try to hug her. She had the space for it because, without her even noticing, Tyler had shifted away from her, making space between them.
"Hi, Kel," David said, using the nickname only he had ever called her and that he didn't have a right to use anymore. "You look good."
"You too," Kelsey said, and objectively it was true. He was still the grown-up version of the guy she fell in love with, and he still had the smile she'd always liked, the dimple in one cheek. But she didn't feel the same way about him, had no urge to get closer to him or even, really, to talk to him.
David asked her about school, and about the shop, and she gave him short, bland answers until he moved on to talk to someone else.
While they'd been talking, Tyler had left the table altogether. Kelsey stuck it out a while longer, half participating in conversations that revolved mostly around catching David up on what he'd missed since he'd moved to the City, but it wasn't what she wanted to be doing. It wasn't who she wanted to be spending time with.
Courtney kept silently checking on her, but no one else was paying much attention to Kelsey, and it was easy enough for her to tell Courtney she was leaving and slip away from the table. The bar had gotten much more crowded since they got there, but Kelsey looked around for the tallest group of guys in there and made her way toward them. She'd chosen correctly; Tyler was there with Cal and a couple of their other teammates, beers in hand as they talked.
Cal noticed her first, and nodded at Tyler, who turned and then took a few steps away from the group to meet her.
Kelsey looked up at him, meeting his eyes and the cautious warmth there. It was like the noise and the crowd of the bar all dropped away and left just the two of them in a bubble of space. "Give me a ride home?"
She didn't think she was misreading his surprise, and she let him just look at her for a moment.
"You sure?"
Kelsey nodded, absolutely and completely sure that what she wanted was to go home with Tyler.
"Okay." Tyler found a place to put his beer bottle down, and then he led her out of the bar with a hand at the small of her back.
His truck was familiar to her by now, and he helped her up into it with an ease that showed off just how strong he was.
Kelsey watched him as he drove, as best she could in the light that filtered in from the streetlights they passed. She felt calm, settled, certain about what she was doing, even more so than the first time he'd driven her home.
Tyler followed her into the building, up the stairs, into her apartment, a comforting presence at her back. They stopped inside the door, and Tyler bent down to untie his shoes while Kelsey lifted each foot up and undid the buckles on her shoes one-handed. She stepped out of her shoes and onto the floor with a sigh - they looked good, but she was glad to be out of them.
Tyler was so much taller than her when they were barefoot. She had to look up and up to meet his gaze. He smiled at her, cupped her cheek in one hand, and bent to kiss her.
Kelsey smiled into it and looped her arms around his shoulders.
They kissed slowly, gently for a long time before Tyler stopped kissing her, one hand still on her cheek, the other lightly running up and down her back. "Bedroom?"
Kelsey nodded and leaned up to kiss him lightly. When she slipped out of his hold, his hand slid across her back and he caught her hand in his.
Kelsey laced her fingers with his, the solid connection tethering her to the ground, and led him into her bedroom.
Kelsey turned on the light, and Tyler pushed the door shut, and then they were closed in together, the light shining brightly on both of them, and Kelsey's heart felt full to bursting with how much she wanted him.
She turned her back to him, swept her hair over one shoulder, and dipped her head. He took the hint without her having to ask, and one of his large hands rested on her shoulder while he unzipped her dress with the other.
There was a rush of cool air as her dress parted, and then more when Tyler pushed it off her shoulders. Kelsey shook her arms out of it, pushed it down over her hips. She was still standing inside the circle of her dress at her feet when she turned around.
Tyler's eyes skimmed down her body, and back up, and then he put one arm around her and kissed her while he pulled her close. Everything had a slow, hazy quality to it, and Kelsey relaxed into it, relaxed into his kiss, relaxed into letting the heat between them build slowly.
She put her arms around Tyler and pushed her hands up under his shirt, feeling for the solid warmth of skin and muscle below it. They kissed for a while longer before Tyler stopped touching her long enough to pull his shirt over his head and toss it to the side. There was more skin for her to touch then, and Kelsey put one hand on his chest while she wrapped the other arm around him.
When Kelsey's neck started to get sore from the angle she had to hold herself at to keep kissing him, she stopped kissing him, letting her head drop a little. "Come to bed," she said. She waited a moment for Tyler to let go of her, his hands sliding along her skin and away.
Kelsey took off her bra and panties, too focused on that to watch Tyler take off his pants and boxer briefs. She got into bed and reached for Tyler when he came to join her. He laid down next to her, and she turned on her side to face him.
"You're beautiful," Tyler said, and he leaned in to kiss her gently while he ran his hands over her body. He cupped her breasts, let a hand rest on her hip for a moment, lightly ran his fingers over the dip of her waist, trailing heat and desire over her skin.
Kelsey let her hands roam as well, over the tight muscles of his abs, the sharp line of his collarbone, the lines of his back. It was April and his season was drawing to a close. He was leaving, and it might be her last chance to see him. She wanted to memorize everything about him, the way he looked, the way he felt, the way his nearness and warmth made her wet.
Tyler's cock was hard between them, and Kelsey reached down to stroke it gently, feel the heat and strength there.
Tyler groaned, kissed her, and slipped his hand between her legs. She was already wet, and he groaned again when his fingers dipped inside of her.
Kelsey shifted her legs apart, giving him more room to touch her. He trailed his fingers up and down, too light to make her come, but every touch sending shivers of feeling through her.
When he started to touch her with more intent, she let go of his cock and pushed his hand away. "No, wait," she said. "I want you in me."
"Kelsey," Tyler said, sounding strangled. He surged forward and kissed her, rolling her onto her back with the force of it, and reached across the bed to get a condom out of her nightstand.
Kelsey spread her legs and drew her knees up, making space for Tyler while he tore open the condom package. He paused, condom in his hand, and bent down to kiss her, equal mix of tenderness and heat in his kiss.
Kelsey took in a shuddery breath when he sat up again, and blinked back the urge to cry for how good it was.
Tyler paused, condom on, and ran his hand from her inner thigh up to her knee. "Okay?"
"Yeah," Kelsey said. She reached her arms out toward him. "Come on."
Tyler guided himself into her, hot and hard and perfect, and then he stretched out over her, where she could wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his shoulder. He whispered her name, and then he bent his head and kissed her temple. It was enough to make Kelsey stop hiding and kiss him instead.
Tyler stroked her side, hand traveling from the side of her breast to her hip. "Still good?"
Kelsey nodded. "Perfect." It was. He felt so good in her and over her, and she wanted to stay like that almost as much as she wanted him to move in her. She tipped her head up to kiss him again. "Please," she murmured against his lips.
Tyler kissed her again, deeply, hungrily, and then he started to move, soft thrusts that were more of a grind than anything else. It was just right, just what she needed from him.
Kelsey dug her fingers into Tyler's back, making sure he wouldn't go anywhere. It felt so good to have him in her, moving against her, kissing her. Every thrust caught her most sensitive spots in just the right way, and Kelsey just held on and kept kissing Tyler as much as she could between gasping breaths.
She was getting closer and closer, and then Tyler pulled away from her. She cried out in complaint and gripped his shoulders.
He nuzzled at her neck. "Shh. I'm gonna get you there." He reached between them, getting his hand on her just where she needed to be touched before he got close again, his hand between them making it even better. Every slow, grinding thrust pushed them together, making Kelsey feel so good, sparks running through her body, her orgasm getting closer and closer.
He was going to make her come like that, she could feel it, and she clung to him, wanting him to be right there with her. She gasped out his name, wanting him to know how much she wanted him there with her.
Tyler kissed her hard, and he was still kissing her when her pleasure crested into an orgasm that shook through her and made her cry out into his mouth. Tyler broke their kiss to let her breathe, and then he was kissing her again and again while he thrust into her until he came.
Kelsey held on to him all the way through it, and kissed him afterward, wanting to keep him close even though they'd both come. Tyler pulled away from her to deal with the condom, but he came right back to her, curling in close around her, the two of them exchanging soft, quiet kisses and Tyler seeming just as reluctant as she was to stop touching.
After a while, they weren't even kissing much anymore, just lying on their sides looking at each other. Tyler ran his fingers over her cheek, across her forehead, brushing her hair back. Kelsey had one hand resting on his side, not wanting to stop touching him. It was just as perfect as everything else had been, and she wanted to keep him there with a fierceness that was exactly what they'd said they weren't going to do.
"I should go," Tyler said after they'd been lying there for long enough that time had lost meaning.
The word "stay" was on the tip of Kelsey's tongue, but she swallowed it back and nodded.
Tyler kissed her, soft and sweet and too short, before he got out of bed. Kelsey watched him bend over to pick up his clothes off the floor, and then she stopped watching to get out of bed herself and pull on her robe.
When she turned around, Tyler was pulling something out of his wallet. He held up a piece of paper, and then put it down on her nightstand. "Our season ends next week, and we've got a pretty packed schedule, so this is probably the last time I'll see you." He nodded at the paper. "That's where I'll for most of the summer, if you're ever in Toronto." He met her eyes, his deep and blue and serious. "I know we're not, you know," he waved between them, "but in case you're ever in Toronto and you want," he finally dropped his gaze, "well, whatever."
Kelsey wanted to cry again, and she wanted to pull him back into her bed and keep him there, at least until the morning. She didn't do either of those things. She crossed the space between them, tipped her head up to his, and kissed him.
Tyler put his arms around her while they kissed, but he didn't linger, drawing away and letting his hand slide down her arm. He took her hand and laced their fingers together. "Walk me to the door?"
Kelsey nodded. "Of course," she said, not as lightly as she'd meant to.
Tyler squeezed her hand, and they walked together to the entryway. Tyler let go of her hand then, and bent to put on his shoes.
His eyes were serious and a little sad when he looked at her after that. Kelsey stepped forward, unable to resist anything about him, and wrapped her arms around him. She pressed her face to his chest, willing herself not to cry.
Tyler's arms came around her, and he held her just as tightly as she was holding him. He kissed the top of her head after a minute, and then tipped her face up to his and bent to kiss her. It was so sweet, and it was also goodbye, and Kelsey's heart hurt when he stopped and pulled away from her.
He left without saying anything else.
Kelsey let him go and locked the door behind him with shaking hands. She hadn't meant to feel the way she did about him, and it didn't matter because he was leaving, gone from her life now. That was cold comfort when she went back to her empty bed.
*
Kelsey didn't see Tyler again, and didn't even hear about him much. She saw Jason a few times, but he went to play in Philly - Kelsey watched him on TV with Courtney - and didn't mention Tyler, at least not to Kelsey.
Kelsey told herself sternly, and repeatedly, to stop thinking about Tyler, and she did her best to focus on the end of the semester.
Finals week was rough, having to take tests and turn in papers when she was so close to being done. Not that she had anything certain to move on to, but graduation would mark the end of this chapter in her life, and then maybe it would be easier to put Tyler behind her and move on.
It didn't work out quite as well as she hoped. It was easy enough to focus on graduation during graduation weekend, but she still didn't know what she was going to do next, and every time she tried to think about it, what she really thought about was Tyler. It didn't stop her from applying to jobs all over - Glens Falls, the City, Albany - but she didn't, admittedly, put her best effort into it.
The weekend after graduation, Brie and Sarah came over to Kelsey and Courtney's for a girls' night in, their last chance before Sarah left for her job in New York and Brie and Kevin went home for the summer before grad school in Vermont. Courtney was sticking around until September, when she would go wherever Jason was, which meant Kelsey didn't absolutely have to decide whether she was moving out of the apartment and where she would move to until the end of the summer.
Mostly girls' night meant wine, pizza, and whatever movie they could find on TV.
Kelsey got up at the end of the movie they were watching to put leftover pizza in the fridge and open another bottle of wine.
"Wait," Brie said after Kelsey had poured them each a new glass. "Let's toast." She held up her glass and the rest of them followed suit. "To us, and to four years of friendship. And to finding ways to do this again even when we're living far apart."
They all toasted to that, and Sarah flung her arms around Brie, just barely managing not to spill wine all over the carpet. "I can't believe we're all going to be apart."
Brie patted her arm and Courtney said, "You're leaving first."
"I know," Sarah said, "and it's freaking me out."
"You're going to be great," Kelsey said. "And you have a ton of friends there already."
"I know, I know," Sarah said. "It's still freaking me out." She let go of Brie so she could drink her wine. "What about you? Have you figured out what you're doing?"
"Nope." Kelsey downed half her glass of wine.
"Do you have any idea what you want?"
Kelsey started to answer her, but then her eyes filled with tears, and maybe she should have talked to Courtney about it earlier, or not had quite so much wine.
"Oh, shit," Sarah said, sitting up all the way. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel bad about it. It's okay if you don't know what you want to do!"
"It's not even that," Kelsey said, and then she was really crying enough that she had to put down her wine.
Courtney put her arms around her, and then Sarah was getting off the floor and sitting on the other side of her on the couch, the two of them hugging her between them. A minute later, Brie held out the Kleenex box, and Kelsey took one, even though it all just made her cry harder.
Kelsey tried to get herself back under control, to take some deep breaths and stop crying. She probably should be more worried about what she was going to do with her life, but it was her heart she couldn't stop thinking about.
It took a few minutes, but eventually she blew her nose and wiped her eyes.
"Here," Brie said, handing over a fully refilled wine glass. "Drink more."
"I don't think that's going to help," Kelsey said, but she drank anyway.
"You said it wasn't about what you want to do," Sarah said. "Are you going to tell us what it is about?"
Kelsey gulped down more of her wine. "Tyler," she finally said, and it felt so strange to say his name after so long since she'd last said it.
Courtney's arms tightened around her. "What did he do?"
Kelsey leaned into Courtney's hold. "Nothing," she said. "He's perfect." She sniffled and reached for another tissue out of the box. "I love him. I really tried not to, but I do, and he's gone." She looked at Sarah, "I do know what I want, but what I want is him."
Courtney and Sarah kept hugging her, but no one said anything for a minute.
"I didn't even know you knew him that well," Courtney said.
Kelsey shrugged a little. "We had dinner together a couple of times."
Courtney hmmed. "You didn't tell me that."
Kelsey squirmed out of the hug sandwich enough to get at the bottle of wine and refill her glass. "I didn't want it to be a thing. Neither of us did. We were just, you know, hooking up." She drank her wine. "I only hooked up with him the first time because he said he wasn't looking for anything."
"Wow," Sarah said. "That's usually more my thing."
"Yeah, but it just stays hookups for you," Kelsey said.
"What happened?" Brie asked. "That it didn't stay that way?"
Kelsey shook her head. "I don't even know. We just kept seeing each other, and we hooked up and talked, and it was all so easy." Her eyes teared up again, and she grabbed for a tissue. "Being with him was easy, and it was fun."
"How was the sex?" Sarah asked. "What?" she said in response to Brie's hissed, "Sarah." "That's important."
"It was good," Kelsey said. "He made me come every time, even the time I cried in the middle."
"You cried in the middle?" Courtney asked. "You didn't tell me that either."
"I know," Kelsey said. Courtney didn't sound that hurt, but they were supposed to be best friends, and Kelsey had told her all kinds of things before Tyler. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to make it real by talking about it. I was just trying not to think about it." She outlined the time she cried for them, told them about being upset because it would have been her and David's anniversary, about Tyler telling her about his own heartbreak. She didn't tell them the details of what Tyler had told her; that wasn't her story to share.
"Wow, yeah," Brie said when she was done. "He sounds great."
"He is great," Kelsey said miserably. "And he's gone and not coming back to Glens Falls."
"Is it just you?" Brie asked. "This whole feelings even though you were just hooking up thing?"
"I don't think so," Kelsey said. "I don't think I could have felt that close to him if it hadn't been, and he seemed sad to leave. He left me his address for the summer."
"So how much do you want him?" Sarah asked. "Enough to go see him? Enough to go with him to Allentown next year?"
It wasn't rational. It didn't make any kind of sense in terms of figuring out what she was going to do with her life after college. It probably wasn't smart. But when Sarah asked her that, all Kelsey felt was a longing deeper than she'd ever felt for any of the jobs she'd applied for or any of the places she'd thought about moving.
Kelsey nodded. "Yes," she said. "It doesn't make any sense, but yes."
"I think you should go," Sarah declared.
"Really?" Courtney asked from the other side of Kelsey. "You're all about hookups."
"For me," Sarah said. "But I like knowing romance is alive out there. You don't think she should go?"
"I think she should do whatever she wants," Courtney said. She looked at Kelsey. "I do. And if you want to be with Tyler, then you should at least try. I'll probably be in Allentown next year, so it's not like you wouldn't know anyone."
It was a relief to have them support her, to validate that she wasn't insane for wanting to upend her whole life for a guy.
"What do you think?" Kelsey asked Brie.
"I think you need to do whatever's going to make you happy," Brie said. "If that's going after Tyler, then go after Tyler."
Kelsey drank the end of her wine and refilled her glass. "I want to," she said. "I think it'll make me happy. If he wants me too."
"He'd be an idiot not to," Courtney said, and she wrapped her arm around Kelsey's shoulders. "We'll still be here for you no matter what happens."
*
Kelsey was already on the schedule to work, so she asked Mary Anne for time off and waited for her to do the next round of schedules and give her a few days off.
Courtney had offered to get Tyler's phone number from Jason for her, but Kelsey had turned that down.
"I think I need to go," she'd told Courtney. "I need to see him in person and make sure it's real for both of us and not just about, you know, panicking about life." She'd said it with a little bit of a smile, but she didn't think that was going to be the result, not for her, at least.
Courtney hugged her goodbye the night before she left, saying, "Good luck. Tell me how it goes."
"I will," Kelsey promised, and she hugged Courtney tightly.
Despite her words to Courtney, Kelsey wasn't sure about what she was doing. She had doubts when she got into the car early in the morning, doubts when she stopped in Utica for a snack, doubts as she showed her passport at the border into Canada. But there was certainty there too, certainty that Tyler was what she wanted and that at least she would never have to live with the what ifs that would come from never following through on that.
The address Tyler had given her was a very large building a sea of similarly large buildings. Kelsey followed the directions on the slip of paper she'd kept safe ever since he left it for her and found the parking garage. Tyler had left a code on the slip of paper too, and Kelsey had a moment of worry that it wouldn't get her into the garage, but it let her in, and she carefully navigated to a visitor's spot.
It took her a minute before she felt ready to get out of the car, and that was on top of the minute she spent brushing her hair and reapplying her lip gloss. It was possible that what she was doing was completely stupid and was going to be an awful, humiliating disaster. But it could also be the best thing she'd ever done in her life, and it was that hope that propelled her out of the car and into the elevator.
If she hadn't figured out from the outside that it was a really nice building, the immaculate, well-kept elevator and hallway would have clued her in.
Kelsey found the door with the apartment number Tyler had given her, and she stood looking at the number for a moment, taking a few deep breaths before she rang the buzzer.
A guy answered the door, but it wasn't Tyler, some other guy, good looking enough, big like Tyler's teammates, tattoos all down both arms.
"Can I help you?" the guy asked.
"Um, hi," Kelsey said. "Tyler said I could come by if I was ever in the area." Probably better not to tell a total stranger she'd driven six and a half hours just to drop in.
The guy raised his eyebrows kind of skeptically, but seemed to decide she wasn't a threat and opened the door wider, nudging a large dog out of the way.
"Marshall, no," he said to the dog.
It was probably stupider than any of the other decisions she'd made, but Kelsey went into the apartment, and followed the guy across the large room the door opened onto.
"It's a girl," the guy said. "She says Tyler said she could come by."
There were other guys in the apartment, two of them sitting at a counter between the open room and the kitchen, and two more in the kitchen, all of them looking at her now. Kelsey ignored most of them, the guys at the counter and the one in the kitchen saying something that started with, "I don't remember," because the other guy in the kitchen was Tyler.
Seeing him brushed away any last doubts Kelsey had about what she wanted. She could feel herself reacting to him already, without him even having said anything, the thrum of want in her veins and the way she wanted to reach out and touch, that connection she'd always felt with him in spite of herself.
"Kelsey," Tyler said, and the other guy in the kitchen stopped talking.
"Hi," Kelsey said. She managed a smile, but she knew it probably looked as uncertain as she felt. What she wanted was only half of what she needed to know.
Tyler seemed as frozen in place as she was. "What are you doing here?"
Kelsey lifted one shoulder in a shrug more casual than how she felt. "I wanted to see you." She met his eyes across the room, that deep blue that met hers with an almost electric shock.
There was a long, breathless moment, and then Tyler came around the counter. He stopped right in front of her, and smiled at her, one of those soft, real smiles. "Hi."
Kelsey smiled up at him, happiness bursting in her chest. "Hi." She leaned up while Tyler bent down, and it was one of the softest, most perfect kisses she'd ever had. And it meant he felt for her at least some of what she felt for him. Kelsey's eyes prickled with tears of relief.
Even after they stopped kissing, Tyler kept his arms wrapped around her, and Kelsey turned her face into his chest, soaking up the comfort of his familiar warmth.
"So, uh, are you going to introduce us?" one of the other guys asked.
Kelsey and Tyler turned away from each other enough to face the other guys. Tyler kept one arm around her, and she leaned against his side while he introduced her to his friends.
The guy who'd answered the door was Jesse, the other one in the kitchen was another Tyler - "You can call me Segs," he said - and the two guys at the counter were Fred and Brendan.
"Lunch is almost ready," Segs said, "if you're staying."
Kelsey glanced up at Tyler for confirmation before she agreed.
"We can sit at the table," Segs said, and he pulled plates out of cabinets and gave them to Jesse to set the table.
"Why me?" Jesse elbowed Fred on his way to the table, a giant, wooden thing set off from the kitchen.
"Because you're already standing," Segs said. He grinned across the counter at Kelsey, or maybe at Tyler, and made Fred and Brendan get up and get everyone drinks.
They settled around the table, and it wasn't that different from hanging out with a bunch of her friends, or hanging out with Tyler and Jason and their teammates. There was some hockey talk Kelsey didn't quite follow, and a lot more general talk she did.
Tyler's friends asked a few questions about her, getting to know her without being too nosy about it. She asked a few questions of her own; if she and Tyler were going to be a part of each other's lives, his friends would also be part of her life. Segs seemed to know a little bit about her, but it was obvious from their questions that the others hadn't even heard of her.
And through it all, there was Tyler, smiling softly at her, listening to what she said, putting his arm across the back of her chair when they were done eating but still sitting around the table.
Segs waved off Tyler and Kelsey's offer to help clean up. "We've got it."
"What do you mean we?" Brendan asked.
"We've got it," Segs said. "You two catch up."
Tyler threw him a thankful look, and then turned to Kelsey. "Want to take a walk? Marshall probably needs to go out."
Kelsey said, "Sure," calmly, but it made her heart beat faster, their chance to talk with some privacy, or at least without Tyler's friends listening to every word.
Tyler got Marshall's leash and Kelsey grabbed her purse, and then Tyler held the door open and they walked out into the hallway together, the dog bounding ahead of them.
"How long are you in Toronto?" Tyler asked her while they were waiting for the elevator.
"Um," Kelsey said. "I have three days off." She stepped into the elevator ahead of him. "I drove up to see you." She didn't turn around until after she'd said that.
Tyler had followed her into the elevator, but he was just staring at her.
Kelsey reached past him and hit the button for the lobby, and Tyler caught her close with one hand on her shoulder.
"You really came up just to see me?" he asked, like he couldn't believe it.
"Yeah," Kelsey said. "Yes." She risked looking up to meet his eyes, and the warmth there made her glad she did.
Tyler bent down and kissed her, warm and sweet, and too short because he stopped when the elevator dinged and the doors opened.
Marshall bounded out first, with Tyler taking Kelsey's hand as they followed him out. Tyler pushed the door open for the three of them, and they stepped out into the sunshine.
"I'm glad you're here," Tyler said. He smiled at her before he unhooked the sunglasses from the collar of his shirt and put them on.
Kelsey smiled back at him and squeezed his hand.
They let Marshall lead them, pausing when he paused to sniff at whatever smells there might be for a dog to investigate.
"How was graduation?" Tyler asked while they waited for Marshall to sniff at a doorway.
"It was good," Kelsey said. "Everyone's parents came for it, and all of Courtney's siblings, so it was pretty busy. But we all graduated."
"That's the important part," Tyler said. They moved on when Marshall was ready to pull them farther down the block. "That's actually really great. Most of my friends haven't graduated from college."
"They're doing other things," Kelsey said with a shrug, "but, yeah, being a college graduate is pretty cool. How's your summer?"
"Oh, pretty good," Tyler said. "Went home to see my family and my dog, spent some time on the lake. We haven't started doing hardcore training yet, so mostly taking it easy."
They walked slowly, ambling along and holding hands, while Tyler told her about his dog and the summer so far and she told him the stories from graduation. They didn't talk about the future. Kelsey couldn't know what Tyler was thinking about that, but she held off because it seemed like a conversation to have in private.
When they looped back around to Tyler's building, he asked, "Do you have a suitcase or something? I mean, if you want to stay with me."
"Yes," Kelsey said. "I do and I want to. It's in the car."
They took the elevator down instead of up and Kelsey fished her keys out of her purse while they walked to her car.
"I'll get it," Tyler said, and he handed her Marshall's leash. "Here. He's pretty well-behaved."
Kelsey's bag wasn't very heavy, but she still appreciated the flex of Tyler's muscles as he lifted it up and shut the trunk.
When he caught her looking, she shrugged unapologetically and leaned in to kiss the strong line of muscle in his arm. "I like looking at you."
A dull flush stole up Tyler's cheeks, and he leaned down to kiss her. It wasn't one of the soft, sweet kisses. It was one of the heated ones that made Kelsey's knees weak enough that she clung tightly to Tyler. Only the tug of Marshall pulling against the leash she still held pried one of her hands away from Tyler.
"Marshall," Tyler said, firm warning in his voice. Then he looked at Kelsey with heat and affection both. "Walk me home?"
Kelsey put her free hand on his cheek and pressed a swift kiss to his lips. "Yes."
They stood close in the elevator on the way up, Tyler's arm around Kelsey's shoulders while she leaned against him, drinking in his warmth and the way he made her feel.
Tyler's friends were spread out over the large couch when they got back to the apartment. Tyler set down Kelsey's bag to bend over and unclip Marshall's leash.
"My room's upstairs," he said after that, and Kelsey started up the stairs without looking to see what kind of looks his friends were giving them.
There were a doors at the top of the stairs, and Tyler put a hand at the small of her back to guide her toward one of them. It opened onto a bedroom that she didn't pay much attention to because as soon as Tyler closed the door behind them and set down her bag, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him.
Tyler put his arms around her, holding her tight against his body while he kissed her deeply. Kelsey clung to him, anchoring herself against the flood of heat and want that swept through her.
It wasn't enough after a moment, and Kelsey got her hands on the hem of Tyler's shirt, tugging it up until he took over and pulled it off. In the moment they were apart for him to do that, she pulled her shirt off as well. He watched her, his gaze as palpable as a touch, while she reached behind herself and unhooked her bra, then slid the straps down her arms and tossed it to the side.
They crashed together again, skin on skin and Kelsey feeling like she couldn't get enough of him.
He pulled her forward by her hips, one of his thighs slotting between hers, and she gasped at the friction, at how she felt like she was burning up with wanting him and the certain knowledge that he wanted her too.
She broke away from his kiss to gasp out, "Bed, take me to bed."
Tyler picked her up, hands sure and firm on her ass. Kelsey pressed her mouth against his neck, wanting to feel him like that too but careful not to distract him too much while he carried her over to the bed.
He set her down gently, and he looked at her, his eyes hot and her skin tingling with the force of his gaze, as he unbuttoned his shorts.
Kelsey unbuttoned her jeans by feel, not looking away from him while they both got the rest of their clothes off. He looked just as good naked as she remembered him looking, strong muscles and hard cock.
He didn't waste any time joining her once they were naked. His bed was small, smaller than either of theirs in Glens Falls, and he settled between her legs when she spread them to make space for him.
He hovered there, so close she could feel the heat radiating off of him, for a moment that seemed suspended in time. They were looking straight into each other's eyes, serious and breathless, and then Tyler smiled at her, and she smiled right back at him and laughed with joy as he settled himself on top of her and kissed her.
Her laughter faded away quickly, replaced by the heat he was stoking in her body with every kiss and every touch. She didn't need much of that, glad to be touching him but already so wet and turned on that she just wanted him in her.
She squeezed his arm. "Condom?"
"Uh, yeah." He looked at her, eyes glazed over with lust, before he reached over and rummaged through the nightstand. It took him a moment to come up with a condom, and it didn't have to mean anything, but it might have meant he hadn't been with anyone else. Every bit of Kelsey hoped it was that, and then he was pulling away from her enough to roll on the condom, and she stopped caring about anything but getting him in her.
Kelsey let out a moan as he slid into her. It was so perfect, just what she wanted, Tyler's cock filling her up just right, his body against hers, their mouths meeting in a careful, slow kiss before he started to move.
He hadn't forgotten what she liked, and his hips made small, grinding movements that ratcheted up her pleasure. She kissed him while he did, and grabbed at him, one hand across his back, the other on his gorgeous ass, both hands keeping him close, not that he was trying to go anywhere.
He murmured her name against her neck, and then he got one of his hands between them, touching her in a way that sent sharper sparks of pleasure through her.
"Tyler," Kelsey gasped out.
He smiled at her, so much affection on his face that she went completely breathless for a moment. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah," and the words didn't actually mean anything, but they sounded like a promise and an affirmation, and he was following through on it, touching her and kissing her and making her feel so cared about and taken care of that it all melded into a pleasure that suffused everything she was, body, mind, and soul.
It couldn't last, she couldn't hold that much feeling forever, but it built and built before it starburst out into what might have been the best orgasm of her life.
There were aftershocks, smaller sparks, as Tyler kept moving in her, and she pressed her lips to his cheek, keeping that contact too until he threw his head back as he came.
They kissed sloppy and off-center after that, breathing hard into each other's mouths until Tyler had to pull out of her and take care of the condom.
His bed was small enough that they had no choice but to cuddle close together when Tyler rejoined her in it. Kelsey didn't mind that in the slightest, and she reveled in the feeling of Tyler's legs tangled with hers and the knowledge that neither of them had to leave the bed.
Tyler draped his arm over her waist, occasionally sweeping it up and down her side. Kelsey rested her hand on his chest, feeling the muscle there and the rise and fall of his breath.
They made out for a while, slow and easy, taking breaks to just look into each other's eyes. For all that what she felt was strong, it was all so easy, just like almost everything else with him had been.
That was what made Kelsey brave enough, in one of the pauses between kisses, to tell Tyler the full truth of why she'd come to see him, but not brave enough to watch his face while she did. She kept her eyes focused on the way her hand looked so small against his chest when she said, "I love you." Her voice only shook a little. "I know that wasn't what we said we were doing and I tried not to, but I do."
He said her name so softly she almost didn't hear it, and he tipped her chin up so she had no choice but to look at him. He wasn't smiling outright, but she knew him well enough to see the happy softness around his eyes.
"Yes," he said. "Me too."
Kelsey had hoped for that, but she hadn't been sure, and the certain knowledge of it burst into the kind of happiness she wasn't sure she could fully contain. She surged forward and kissed him, smiling into it, and laughing when he tightened both arms around her.
"What about next year?" Tyler asked after a little while, that softness still around his eyes but a more serious set to his mouth.
"I don't have any plans for my life now," Kelsey said, no reason to hold back any of the truth anymore. "The only thing I could think of that I knew I wanted for sure was to be with you. I'll move with you."
Tyler ran his thumb across her cheekbone. "You know I might not be in Allentown. I don't have a contract yet. I might end up somewhere else, maybe even in Canada."
"I know." Kelsey met his eyes straight on, no holding back anything anymore. "I'll go with you, wherever you're going." Then she said, because she knew his history and her own, "But I don't think we should live together right away. We should take that part slow."
Tyler nodded and stroked her hair, kissed her softly. "I think that's a good idea."
Kelsey smiled at him, the last of the tension lifting off of her shoulders. "Okay," she said, "okay." She kissed him lightly. "That's what we'll do then."
"Okay," Tyler agreed. He gave her a smile that was almost a smirk. "And you should give me your number."
Kelsey laughed and kissed him. "I will," she promised.
*
Epilogue
"Hi," Kelsey called out as she let herself into Tyler and Cal's townhouse.
"Hey," Cal said, waving at her from the couch.
Tyler's greeting was accompanied with more of a smile, and he came out of the kitchen to kiss her hello. They stood together for an extra minute, arms wrapped around each other, and Kelsey leaning against the solid bulk of Tyler's chest.
"How was your day?" Tyler asked when they separated.
"Good." Kelsey followed him toward the kitchen and settled herself onto one of the stools on the other side of the counter. "I got assigned to a team today."
"Yeah? That's good, right?"
"Yep. It means they want to keep me and think I'm going to stay." The first few weeks of her job at the consulting firm had been more of an orientation than anything else, learning the business and the way they dealt with clients. It was also, she thought, something of a tryout. While she hadn't witnessed it herself yet, she'd started to hear rumors and stories about people not lasting long enough to get assigned to a team.
"That's great," Tyler said, and he smiled across the counter at her before he turned to the stove.
"How was your day?"
Tyler shrugged one shoulder. "Good. Same as most of them. Practice and workouts. I got a couple shots past Cal in practice." The last was said loudly enough to carry out to Cal in the living room.
"It was two," Cal shouted back. "And you got Konan and Oliver to screen for you."
Tyler threw a grin over his shoulder at Kelsey. "Still counts."
Kelsey laughed, and let the familiar rhythm of their chirping wash over her. It was good to come over to their place after work and feel like she belonged there, like it was becoming her home as much as her apartment was.
When dinner was almost ready, Kelsey got out plates and set the table. That, too, felt like belonging, and so did sitting down for dinner with Tyler and Cal, like they did most nights the two of them were in town.
They hung out at the table, still laughing and talking, for a while after dinner, until the looks Tyler was shooting at Kelsey started taking on a heated cast that made her want to drag him to bed.
Cal noticed them looking at each other after a while, and he rolled his eyes as he got up, taking all three of their plates with them. "I'll clean up," he said.
Tyler acknowledged that with a nod, and then said to Kelsey, "Give me three minutes, and then come upstairs."
"Three minutes?" Kelsey asked.
Tyler smiled at her. "Three minutes." He kissed the top of her head on his way toward the stairs.
"I don't know what he's planning," Cal said when he came to take the serving dishes, "but I'll probably sleep down here on the couch tonight."
Kelsey laughed a little and got up from the table so Cal wouldn't see the way her cheeks were heating up. She took her purse into the downstairs bathroom, where she reapplied her lip gloss and took her hair down from the chignon she'd had it in for work. She judged it had been about three minutes when she was done brushing her hair out, and she left her purse by the door, not even taking her phone with her, and went upstairs.
She pushed open the door to Tyler's room and stepped inside, and then stopped, looking around her. There were lit candles on every flat surface, all of them safely contained in candle holders or on plates, none of them too close to the bed or the curtains.
"Tyler," Kelsey breathed, and she looked up at him, the way he was looking at her as lovingly as he ever had, the way the candlelight cast his jaw into sharp relief. "What?"
He took a step toward her, hands coming down to settle on her hips. "It's our anniversary," he said. "Sort of. We met a year ago today."
Kelsey huffed out a laugh. "How do you know that? I don't even know that."
Tyler smiled at her, his thumbs rubbing up under the edge of her blouse. "I had to ask Jason and look at a game schedule for last season."
Kelsey laughed again, amused by the dedication it had taken for him to figure it out and also just plain happy. "Happy anniversary then," she said.
"Happy anniversary." Tyler bent down and kissed her, and she could feel the lightning spark of it race through her, just like that first time in his truck. "Hey," he murmured after a moment, "I bet I can make you come first this time."
Kelsey burst into laughter again, and it didn't settle even when he lifted her up to carry her to bed. "I bet you can."
"You went home with Tyler again last night," Courtney said in the morning. She put her cereal bowl in the sink and sat down next to Kelsey on the couch. "Am I right that you don't want to talk about it?"
Kelsey didn't have to think about it for very long before agreeing that she didn't want to talk about it. There could be comfort in talking to Courtney, but she also didn't want to make how she felt about Tyler any more real by putting it into words.
"Can we talk about my relationship?" Courtney asked. "Or is that going to be weird?"
Kelsey turned off the TV and turned so she was facing Courtney. "No, we can talk about it."
Courtney sighed. "They're leaving."
Kelsey blinked. "Like on a road trip?"
"No," Courtney said. "Like out of Glens Falls. The Phantoms are moving to Pennsylvania after this season."
"Oh," Kelsey said. She hadn't heard that, but then, she hadn't paid that much attention to local sports news, and it wasn't one of the things she and Tyler had talked about.
"Yeah." Courtney slumped against the back of the couch. "I'm thinking about going with."
That was even more surprising. "Really?"
Courtney nodded. "This thing with Jason is really good, and I love him. I think I love him enough to move to Pennsylvania with him. Or wherever. There's a chance he'll end up somewhere else."
"Wow," Kelsey said. "I knew you were serious, but I didn't know you were that serious."
Courtney sat up. "I don't know if I am, but we're graduating. Things were always going to change at the end of this year anyway."
Kelsey put her arm around Courtney's shoulders. "I was supposed to be going somewhere with David."
Courtney nodded. "And I was going to have to figure out if I wanted to get a job here or go to New York or Albany or what I wanted." She put her head down on Kelsey's shoulder. "Will you hate me if I go to Pennsylvania with Jason?"
"No," Kelsey said. "I could never hate you. I guess I'll be the one trying to figure out what I want to do."
"Whatever it is," Courtney said, "we'll still be best friends." She held up her pinky.
Kelsey hooked her own around it. "Best friends forever."
*
The bell over the door rang at five minutes to closing. Mary Ann had a policy that they would help any customer who came in before they locked the door at closing time, which meant that Kelsey's day had just gotten longer. Usually she didn't mind that much, but it was spring break, and she was really looking forward to going home and not having to do homework.
Kelsey put on her best helping the customer smile and looked up, only to see Tyler looking around curiously. He looked good, tall and strong, if out of place in the shop.
"Hi," she said. "This doesn't really seem like your kind of place."
He half smiled at her, meeting her eyes easily. "Not really."
"So what are you doing here?" Kelsey asked, not exactly trying to get him out of there, but still hoping she could go home soon.
Tyler shrugged his shoulders a little. "Can I buy you dinner?"
That wasn't what Kelsey was expecting. They'd already agreed they weren't dating, hooking up and their one previous dinner together aside.
"I know we're not doing this," Tyler said when she didn't have an answer for him right away. "But you're on spring break and Courtney's with Jason, so if you want to get dinner and have some company, I'll buy you dinner. If you don't have other plans."
Kelsey was just as surprised by the thoughtfulness of the invitation as she was by the invitation in the first place. He'd even given her a graceful out, and she could say she had other plans and go home like she'd originally planned. But she enjoyed his company and she would have fun if they went out to dinner.
"Okay," she said. "I have to close, but then we can go."
Tyler smiled at her. "Cool. Do you want me to wait outside?"
Kelsey smiled at him. "No, you can stay." David had come to meet her at the end of the day when they were dating, and Mary Ann had never had a problem with him being there. It would be fine for Tyler to hang out with her for a few minutes.
Kelsey locked the front door and flipped the sign to closed when the clock ticked over. Tyler stayed out of her way, checking messages on his phone, while she went through the rest of the closing up routine.
Kelsey had been taking advantage of the quiet afternoon to straighten displays and make sure the place looked good, so there wasn't much she had to do before she could leave, and it wasn't much later that she locked the back office, turned out most of the lights, and unlocked the door so she and Tyler could leave.
Tyler put his phone away and followed her outside, and then waited while she relocked the door and tucked her keys into her purse.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"The Brewpub?" he offered. "Unless you want to go somewhere else."
"No," Kelsey said, "that sounds good." The Brewpub was nice without being too nice, and they could walk there.
It wasn't a long walk, and it was a quiet enough night that they didn't have to wait for a table once they got there.
Kelsey put down her menu when she'd decided what she was having, and waited a moment for Tyler to do the same.
"No big spring break plans?" Tyler asked after he put down his menu.
"Not this year," Kelsey said. "I think Courtney and I are going to go shopping in Albany on Friday, but that's it." She shrugged. "Courtney wanted to stay here with Jason, Brie and Kevin went to Vermont for a romantic getaway, and Sarah went to visit some of her high school friends in the City. We're all graduating this year, and it would have been fun to do a group vacation like last year, but it just didn't work out."
"Where'd you go last year?" Tyler asked.
"Montreal. Brie and Kevin thought it would be fun, so we got a whole group to go."
"My family's from there," Tyler said.
"Really?"
Tyler nodded. "Yeah, my parents grew up there. They moved to Ontario before I was born, but a lot of our family still lives there."
"Is that where your grandma lives?" Kelsey asked.
Tyler smiled a little. "Yeah, both sets of grandparents."
Their waitress interrupted them to list the specials and then, when that didn't make either of them change their minds, write down their orders of burgers and beers.
"You're graduating this year," Tyler said when the waitress was gone. "Do you know what you're going to do after that?"
Kelsey made a face. "No. I guess I should start looking for jobs, but I don't really know if I want to stay here or go somewhere else or what." She didn't know if he knew anything about what Courtney was thinking about, and plans for after graduation wasn't really a topic she wanted to talk that much about anyway. "I heard you're leaving at the end of this year too."
"Yeah," Tyler said with a sigh. "The Phantoms are moving next year. I'm RFA this summer." Something of how meaningless that was to her must have shown on Kelsey's face because he said, "Restricted free agent. It means if anyone else makes me an offer and the Flyers match it, I have to take the Flyers' offer. I want to stay with them, but," he shrugged, "my stats aren't great this year, and they might not re-sign me."
The waitress came by to put a beer down in front of each of them. Kelsey and Tyler both thanked her, and Kelsey picked up her beer.
"What would that mean?"
"I'd play somewhere else," Tyler said. He sipped his beer. "All I want to do is play hockey, so that part would still be good, but I like this team and these guys."
Kelsey wasn't quite sure what to say to that, so she said the only thing that could really apply to both of their situations. "Change is hard."
"Yep." Tyler made a face. "Sorry to bring things down. That isn't really the fun I was suggesting."
Kelsey laughed. "I guess it's better to know we're not alone in not knowing what we're going to do next year."
Tyler smiled at her, one of his barely there smiles that required attention to notice. "Yeah, that's better."
Kelsey met his eyes, and they just looked at each other for too long while their smiles dropped away. Neither one of them was alone in how they felt, not at all, and they kept finding themselves right back in the middle of that togetherness.
Tyler looked away first.
Kelsey hadn't quite regathered herself when Tyler asked her about her trip to Montreal last year, but she shook it off and told him one of the stories their group liked to retell about that trip, and then asked him about his travels.
Exchanging travel stories took them all the way through until the waitress brought their meals, and then the food occupied their attention.
Kelsey finished her burger but not her fries. Tyler was being subtle about it, but she could see him eying them, so she pushed her plate toward him. "You want the rest of them?"
Tyler looked guilty at that. "You sure?"
Kelsey smiled at him. "Yeah. Go for it." She sipped the end of her beer while she watched him eat the rest of her fries, dipping every third one in ketchup.
They declined dessert when the waitress came by to take their empty plates and ask them about it, but they lingered even after Tyler had handed over his card and gotten it back. They weren't talking about anything important, but Kelsey was enjoying herself, the warmth of holding Tyler's attention, of laughing and making him laugh, just as good as any spring break vacation.
Only after their waitress came by for the third time to see if they wanted their water glasses refilled did Tyler look around them and say, "I guess we should go." He sounded as reluctant about it as Kelsey felt. But it was getting later, and the place was emptying out.
"Yeah, I guess," Kelsey said.
They pulled on their coats and smiled at the waitress on the way out of the restaurant. It had cooled down outside, and Kelsey pulled the collar of her coat up against her neck.
"Where's your car?" Tyler asked. "I'll walk you back."
"In the lot," Kelsey said, "this way."
Tyler stayed close on the walk, close enough that Kelsey could have hooked her arm through his or reached for his hand. It took more effort than she would have thought to keep from doing either of those things. Tyler didn't push that, but he did rest his hand at the small of her back when they had to walk closer to let other people pass them on the sidewalk.
Kelsey dug her keys out of her purse and clicked the button to unlock her car as they crossed the parking lot toward it. She stopped when they got to the door and turned to look at Tyler. She'd parked under a streetlight that threw the angles of his face into relief, left enough light for her to see his eyes meeting hers.
"Thank you for dinner," she said.
Tyler smiled at her. "Thanks for coming with me." They just smiled at each other for a long moment before Tyler leaned in, slowly enough for her to gauge his intentions and move away if she wanted to, and kissed her. It was a soft, sweet kiss, no urgency or hurry in it.
Kelsey let her arms come up and wrap around Tyler, settling in against him as he put his arms around her and kept kissing her with the same slow sweetness.
Kelsey leaned against Tyler when they stopped kissing, resting her forehead on his chest and feeling warm and safe in his arms.
She could invite him home, and she thought about doing just that as she stood there in the circle of his arms. But it hadn't really been that kind of evening. It had been more like a first date than anything else.
Tyler let her go easily when she stepped away, and he reached past her to open her car door for her.
"Thank you," she said again. "I'll see you around."
Tyler smiled a little. "Yeah," he said, "I'm sure." He closed her door once she was in the car. He stepped away from the car, but stayed, watching, until she drove away.
Kelsey took that warm feeling of being cared about all the way home with her.
*
Going out on a Wednesday night was Kevin's idea, or at least Kevin was the one who brought it to the rest of them; Kelsey had the vague impression it might have started as a plan somewhere in the farther reaches of their social circle.
Whatever the original reason, it had swelled into a large number of people, and it took a while for Kelsey and Courtney to make their way around the bar, saying hi to their various friends from school and also to the members of Jason's team who'd come along.
They got drinks at the bar, and then settled in around the central table, a few bar stools for people to sit on but most of them standing, Courtney sliding into the space next to Jason.
They hadn't been there very long when Tyler slipped into the space next to Kelsey.
"Hi," he said, one of those soft, barely there smiles on his face.
"Hi." Kelsey smiled up at him. It had been a month since they had dinner over spring break. That stretch of time hadn't done anything to dim the way she felt about him. She wanted to curl up against him, or drag him out of there and home to her bed. She didn't do either of those things, just smiled and turned back to the conversation.
Tyler didn't do anything overt, like put his arm around her the way Jason had his arm around Courtney, but he stayed close, exchanged smiles with Kelsey when the conversation hit on something they'd talked about before. It felt like they were together, and she let herself feel his warmth at her side and the certainty that they would be leaving together later.
The noise level in the bar had been rising steadily, and Kelsey was so focused on their group at the table that it was only when someone at the edge of their table yelled, "David!" that she noticed the cause of some of the noise.
There was David, beer bottle held casually in one hand as he hugged people with the other arm, making his way around the table.
Courtney shot Kelsey a glance, and Kelsey just shrugged at her, letting Courtney hug David and introduce Jason.
David eventually got to her, and Kelsey stepped back half a step so he wouldn't try to hug her. She had the space for it because, without her even noticing, Tyler had shifted away from her, making space between them.
"Hi, Kel," David said, using the nickname only he had ever called her and that he didn't have a right to use anymore. "You look good."
"You too," Kelsey said, and objectively it was true. He was still the grown-up version of the guy she fell in love with, and he still had the smile she'd always liked, the dimple in one cheek. But she didn't feel the same way about him, had no urge to get closer to him or even, really, to talk to him.
David asked her about school, and about the shop, and she gave him short, bland answers until he moved on to talk to someone else.
While they'd been talking, Tyler had left the table altogether. Kelsey stuck it out a while longer, half participating in conversations that revolved mostly around catching David up on what he'd missed since he'd moved to the City, but it wasn't what she wanted to be doing. It wasn't who she wanted to be spending time with.
Courtney kept silently checking on her, but no one else was paying much attention to Kelsey, and it was easy enough for her to tell Courtney she was leaving and slip away from the table. The bar had gotten much more crowded since they got there, but Kelsey looked around for the tallest group of guys in there and made her way toward them. She'd chosen correctly; Tyler was there with Cal and a couple of their other teammates, beers in hand as they talked.
Cal noticed her first, and nodded at Tyler, who turned and then took a few steps away from the group to meet her.
Kelsey looked up at him, meeting his eyes and the cautious warmth there. It was like the noise and the crowd of the bar all dropped away and left just the two of them in a bubble of space. "Give me a ride home?"
She didn't think she was misreading his surprise, and she let him just look at her for a moment.
"You sure?"
Kelsey nodded, absolutely and completely sure that what she wanted was to go home with Tyler.
"Okay." Tyler found a place to put his beer bottle down, and then he led her out of the bar with a hand at the small of her back.
His truck was familiar to her by now, and he helped her up into it with an ease that showed off just how strong he was.
Kelsey watched him as he drove, as best she could in the light that filtered in from the streetlights they passed. She felt calm, settled, certain about what she was doing, even more so than the first time he'd driven her home.
Tyler followed her into the building, up the stairs, into her apartment, a comforting presence at her back. They stopped inside the door, and Tyler bent down to untie his shoes while Kelsey lifted each foot up and undid the buckles on her shoes one-handed. She stepped out of her shoes and onto the floor with a sigh - they looked good, but she was glad to be out of them.
Tyler was so much taller than her when they were barefoot. She had to look up and up to meet his gaze. He smiled at her, cupped her cheek in one hand, and bent to kiss her.
Kelsey smiled into it and looped her arms around his shoulders.
They kissed slowly, gently for a long time before Tyler stopped kissing her, one hand still on her cheek, the other lightly running up and down her back. "Bedroom?"
Kelsey nodded and leaned up to kiss him lightly. When she slipped out of his hold, his hand slid across her back and he caught her hand in his.
Kelsey laced her fingers with his, the solid connection tethering her to the ground, and led him into her bedroom.
Kelsey turned on the light, and Tyler pushed the door shut, and then they were closed in together, the light shining brightly on both of them, and Kelsey's heart felt full to bursting with how much she wanted him.
She turned her back to him, swept her hair over one shoulder, and dipped her head. He took the hint without her having to ask, and one of his large hands rested on her shoulder while he unzipped her dress with the other.
There was a rush of cool air as her dress parted, and then more when Tyler pushed it off her shoulders. Kelsey shook her arms out of it, pushed it down over her hips. She was still standing inside the circle of her dress at her feet when she turned around.
Tyler's eyes skimmed down her body, and back up, and then he put one arm around her and kissed her while he pulled her close. Everything had a slow, hazy quality to it, and Kelsey relaxed into it, relaxed into his kiss, relaxed into letting the heat between them build slowly.
She put her arms around Tyler and pushed her hands up under his shirt, feeling for the solid warmth of skin and muscle below it. They kissed for a while longer before Tyler stopped touching her long enough to pull his shirt over his head and toss it to the side. There was more skin for her to touch then, and Kelsey put one hand on his chest while she wrapped the other arm around him.
When Kelsey's neck started to get sore from the angle she had to hold herself at to keep kissing him, she stopped kissing him, letting her head drop a little. "Come to bed," she said. She waited a moment for Tyler to let go of her, his hands sliding along her skin and away.
Kelsey took off her bra and panties, too focused on that to watch Tyler take off his pants and boxer briefs. She got into bed and reached for Tyler when he came to join her. He laid down next to her, and she turned on her side to face him.
"You're beautiful," Tyler said, and he leaned in to kiss her gently while he ran his hands over her body. He cupped her breasts, let a hand rest on her hip for a moment, lightly ran his fingers over the dip of her waist, trailing heat and desire over her skin.
Kelsey let her hands roam as well, over the tight muscles of his abs, the sharp line of his collarbone, the lines of his back. It was April and his season was drawing to a close. He was leaving, and it might be her last chance to see him. She wanted to memorize everything about him, the way he looked, the way he felt, the way his nearness and warmth made her wet.
Tyler's cock was hard between them, and Kelsey reached down to stroke it gently, feel the heat and strength there.
Tyler groaned, kissed her, and slipped his hand between her legs. She was already wet, and he groaned again when his fingers dipped inside of her.
Kelsey shifted her legs apart, giving him more room to touch her. He trailed his fingers up and down, too light to make her come, but every touch sending shivers of feeling through her.
When he started to touch her with more intent, she let go of his cock and pushed his hand away. "No, wait," she said. "I want you in me."
"Kelsey," Tyler said, sounding strangled. He surged forward and kissed her, rolling her onto her back with the force of it, and reached across the bed to get a condom out of her nightstand.
Kelsey spread her legs and drew her knees up, making space for Tyler while he tore open the condom package. He paused, condom in his hand, and bent down to kiss her, equal mix of tenderness and heat in his kiss.
Kelsey took in a shuddery breath when he sat up again, and blinked back the urge to cry for how good it was.
Tyler paused, condom on, and ran his hand from her inner thigh up to her knee. "Okay?"
"Yeah," Kelsey said. She reached her arms out toward him. "Come on."
Tyler guided himself into her, hot and hard and perfect, and then he stretched out over her, where she could wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his shoulder. He whispered her name, and then he bent his head and kissed her temple. It was enough to make Kelsey stop hiding and kiss him instead.
Tyler stroked her side, hand traveling from the side of her breast to her hip. "Still good?"
Kelsey nodded. "Perfect." It was. He felt so good in her and over her, and she wanted to stay like that almost as much as she wanted him to move in her. She tipped her head up to kiss him again. "Please," she murmured against his lips.
Tyler kissed her again, deeply, hungrily, and then he started to move, soft thrusts that were more of a grind than anything else. It was just right, just what she needed from him.
Kelsey dug her fingers into Tyler's back, making sure he wouldn't go anywhere. It felt so good to have him in her, moving against her, kissing her. Every thrust caught her most sensitive spots in just the right way, and Kelsey just held on and kept kissing Tyler as much as she could between gasping breaths.
She was getting closer and closer, and then Tyler pulled away from her. She cried out in complaint and gripped his shoulders.
He nuzzled at her neck. "Shh. I'm gonna get you there." He reached between them, getting his hand on her just where she needed to be touched before he got close again, his hand between them making it even better. Every slow, grinding thrust pushed them together, making Kelsey feel so good, sparks running through her body, her orgasm getting closer and closer.
He was going to make her come like that, she could feel it, and she clung to him, wanting him to be right there with her. She gasped out his name, wanting him to know how much she wanted him there with her.
Tyler kissed her hard, and he was still kissing her when her pleasure crested into an orgasm that shook through her and made her cry out into his mouth. Tyler broke their kiss to let her breathe, and then he was kissing her again and again while he thrust into her until he came.
Kelsey held on to him all the way through it, and kissed him afterward, wanting to keep him close even though they'd both come. Tyler pulled away from her to deal with the condom, but he came right back to her, curling in close around her, the two of them exchanging soft, quiet kisses and Tyler seeming just as reluctant as she was to stop touching.
After a while, they weren't even kissing much anymore, just lying on their sides looking at each other. Tyler ran his fingers over her cheek, across her forehead, brushing her hair back. Kelsey had one hand resting on his side, not wanting to stop touching him. It was just as perfect as everything else had been, and she wanted to keep him there with a fierceness that was exactly what they'd said they weren't going to do.
"I should go," Tyler said after they'd been lying there for long enough that time had lost meaning.
The word "stay" was on the tip of Kelsey's tongue, but she swallowed it back and nodded.
Tyler kissed her, soft and sweet and too short, before he got out of bed. Kelsey watched him bend over to pick up his clothes off the floor, and then she stopped watching to get out of bed herself and pull on her robe.
When she turned around, Tyler was pulling something out of his wallet. He held up a piece of paper, and then put it down on her nightstand. "Our season ends next week, and we've got a pretty packed schedule, so this is probably the last time I'll see you." He nodded at the paper. "That's where I'll for most of the summer, if you're ever in Toronto." He met her eyes, his deep and blue and serious. "I know we're not, you know," he waved between them, "but in case you're ever in Toronto and you want," he finally dropped his gaze, "well, whatever."
Kelsey wanted to cry again, and she wanted to pull him back into her bed and keep him there, at least until the morning. She didn't do either of those things. She crossed the space between them, tipped her head up to his, and kissed him.
Tyler put his arms around her while they kissed, but he didn't linger, drawing away and letting his hand slide down her arm. He took her hand and laced their fingers together. "Walk me to the door?"
Kelsey nodded. "Of course," she said, not as lightly as she'd meant to.
Tyler squeezed her hand, and they walked together to the entryway. Tyler let go of her hand then, and bent to put on his shoes.
His eyes were serious and a little sad when he looked at her after that. Kelsey stepped forward, unable to resist anything about him, and wrapped her arms around him. She pressed her face to his chest, willing herself not to cry.
Tyler's arms came around her, and he held her just as tightly as she was holding him. He kissed the top of her head after a minute, and then tipped her face up to his and bent to kiss her. It was so sweet, and it was also goodbye, and Kelsey's heart hurt when he stopped and pulled away from her.
He left without saying anything else.
Kelsey let him go and locked the door behind him with shaking hands. She hadn't meant to feel the way she did about him, and it didn't matter because he was leaving, gone from her life now. That was cold comfort when she went back to her empty bed.
*
Kelsey didn't see Tyler again, and didn't even hear about him much. She saw Jason a few times, but he went to play in Philly - Kelsey watched him on TV with Courtney - and didn't mention Tyler, at least not to Kelsey.
Kelsey told herself sternly, and repeatedly, to stop thinking about Tyler, and she did her best to focus on the end of the semester.
Finals week was rough, having to take tests and turn in papers when she was so close to being done. Not that she had anything certain to move on to, but graduation would mark the end of this chapter in her life, and then maybe it would be easier to put Tyler behind her and move on.
It didn't work out quite as well as she hoped. It was easy enough to focus on graduation during graduation weekend, but she still didn't know what she was going to do next, and every time she tried to think about it, what she really thought about was Tyler. It didn't stop her from applying to jobs all over - Glens Falls, the City, Albany - but she didn't, admittedly, put her best effort into it.
The weekend after graduation, Brie and Sarah came over to Kelsey and Courtney's for a girls' night in, their last chance before Sarah left for her job in New York and Brie and Kevin went home for the summer before grad school in Vermont. Courtney was sticking around until September, when she would go wherever Jason was, which meant Kelsey didn't absolutely have to decide whether she was moving out of the apartment and where she would move to until the end of the summer.
Mostly girls' night meant wine, pizza, and whatever movie they could find on TV.
Kelsey got up at the end of the movie they were watching to put leftover pizza in the fridge and open another bottle of wine.
"Wait," Brie said after Kelsey had poured them each a new glass. "Let's toast." She held up her glass and the rest of them followed suit. "To us, and to four years of friendship. And to finding ways to do this again even when we're living far apart."
They all toasted to that, and Sarah flung her arms around Brie, just barely managing not to spill wine all over the carpet. "I can't believe we're all going to be apart."
Brie patted her arm and Courtney said, "You're leaving first."
"I know," Sarah said, "and it's freaking me out."
"You're going to be great," Kelsey said. "And you have a ton of friends there already."
"I know, I know," Sarah said. "It's still freaking me out." She let go of Brie so she could drink her wine. "What about you? Have you figured out what you're doing?"
"Nope." Kelsey downed half her glass of wine.
"Do you have any idea what you want?"
Kelsey started to answer her, but then her eyes filled with tears, and maybe she should have talked to Courtney about it earlier, or not had quite so much wine.
"Oh, shit," Sarah said, sitting up all the way. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel bad about it. It's okay if you don't know what you want to do!"
"It's not even that," Kelsey said, and then she was really crying enough that she had to put down her wine.
Courtney put her arms around her, and then Sarah was getting off the floor and sitting on the other side of her on the couch, the two of them hugging her between them. A minute later, Brie held out the Kleenex box, and Kelsey took one, even though it all just made her cry harder.
Kelsey tried to get herself back under control, to take some deep breaths and stop crying. She probably should be more worried about what she was going to do with her life, but it was her heart she couldn't stop thinking about.
It took a few minutes, but eventually she blew her nose and wiped her eyes.
"Here," Brie said, handing over a fully refilled wine glass. "Drink more."
"I don't think that's going to help," Kelsey said, but she drank anyway.
"You said it wasn't about what you want to do," Sarah said. "Are you going to tell us what it is about?"
Kelsey gulped down more of her wine. "Tyler," she finally said, and it felt so strange to say his name after so long since she'd last said it.
Courtney's arms tightened around her. "What did he do?"
Kelsey leaned into Courtney's hold. "Nothing," she said. "He's perfect." She sniffled and reached for another tissue out of the box. "I love him. I really tried not to, but I do, and he's gone." She looked at Sarah, "I do know what I want, but what I want is him."
Courtney and Sarah kept hugging her, but no one said anything for a minute.
"I didn't even know you knew him that well," Courtney said.
Kelsey shrugged a little. "We had dinner together a couple of times."
Courtney hmmed. "You didn't tell me that."
Kelsey squirmed out of the hug sandwich enough to get at the bottle of wine and refill her glass. "I didn't want it to be a thing. Neither of us did. We were just, you know, hooking up." She drank her wine. "I only hooked up with him the first time because he said he wasn't looking for anything."
"Wow," Sarah said. "That's usually more my thing."
"Yeah, but it just stays hookups for you," Kelsey said.
"What happened?" Brie asked. "That it didn't stay that way?"
Kelsey shook her head. "I don't even know. We just kept seeing each other, and we hooked up and talked, and it was all so easy." Her eyes teared up again, and she grabbed for a tissue. "Being with him was easy, and it was fun."
"How was the sex?" Sarah asked. "What?" she said in response to Brie's hissed, "Sarah." "That's important."
"It was good," Kelsey said. "He made me come every time, even the time I cried in the middle."
"You cried in the middle?" Courtney asked. "You didn't tell me that either."
"I know," Kelsey said. Courtney didn't sound that hurt, but they were supposed to be best friends, and Kelsey had told her all kinds of things before Tyler. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to make it real by talking about it. I was just trying not to think about it." She outlined the time she cried for them, told them about being upset because it would have been her and David's anniversary, about Tyler telling her about his own heartbreak. She didn't tell them the details of what Tyler had told her; that wasn't her story to share.
"Wow, yeah," Brie said when she was done. "He sounds great."
"He is great," Kelsey said miserably. "And he's gone and not coming back to Glens Falls."
"Is it just you?" Brie asked. "This whole feelings even though you were just hooking up thing?"
"I don't think so," Kelsey said. "I don't think I could have felt that close to him if it hadn't been, and he seemed sad to leave. He left me his address for the summer."
"So how much do you want him?" Sarah asked. "Enough to go see him? Enough to go with him to Allentown next year?"
It wasn't rational. It didn't make any kind of sense in terms of figuring out what she was going to do with her life after college. It probably wasn't smart. But when Sarah asked her that, all Kelsey felt was a longing deeper than she'd ever felt for any of the jobs she'd applied for or any of the places she'd thought about moving.
Kelsey nodded. "Yes," she said. "It doesn't make any sense, but yes."
"I think you should go," Sarah declared.
"Really?" Courtney asked from the other side of Kelsey. "You're all about hookups."
"For me," Sarah said. "But I like knowing romance is alive out there. You don't think she should go?"
"I think she should do whatever she wants," Courtney said. She looked at Kelsey. "I do. And if you want to be with Tyler, then you should at least try. I'll probably be in Allentown next year, so it's not like you wouldn't know anyone."
It was a relief to have them support her, to validate that she wasn't insane for wanting to upend her whole life for a guy.
"What do you think?" Kelsey asked Brie.
"I think you need to do whatever's going to make you happy," Brie said. "If that's going after Tyler, then go after Tyler."
Kelsey drank the end of her wine and refilled her glass. "I want to," she said. "I think it'll make me happy. If he wants me too."
"He'd be an idiot not to," Courtney said, and she wrapped her arm around Kelsey's shoulders. "We'll still be here for you no matter what happens."
*
Kelsey was already on the schedule to work, so she asked Mary Anne for time off and waited for her to do the next round of schedules and give her a few days off.
Courtney had offered to get Tyler's phone number from Jason for her, but Kelsey had turned that down.
"I think I need to go," she'd told Courtney. "I need to see him in person and make sure it's real for both of us and not just about, you know, panicking about life." She'd said it with a little bit of a smile, but she didn't think that was going to be the result, not for her, at least.
Courtney hugged her goodbye the night before she left, saying, "Good luck. Tell me how it goes."
"I will," Kelsey promised, and she hugged Courtney tightly.
Despite her words to Courtney, Kelsey wasn't sure about what she was doing. She had doubts when she got into the car early in the morning, doubts when she stopped in Utica for a snack, doubts as she showed her passport at the border into Canada. But there was certainty there too, certainty that Tyler was what she wanted and that at least she would never have to live with the what ifs that would come from never following through on that.
The address Tyler had given her was a very large building a sea of similarly large buildings. Kelsey followed the directions on the slip of paper she'd kept safe ever since he left it for her and found the parking garage. Tyler had left a code on the slip of paper too, and Kelsey had a moment of worry that it wouldn't get her into the garage, but it let her in, and she carefully navigated to a visitor's spot.
It took her a minute before she felt ready to get out of the car, and that was on top of the minute she spent brushing her hair and reapplying her lip gloss. It was possible that what she was doing was completely stupid and was going to be an awful, humiliating disaster. But it could also be the best thing she'd ever done in her life, and it was that hope that propelled her out of the car and into the elevator.
If she hadn't figured out from the outside that it was a really nice building, the immaculate, well-kept elevator and hallway would have clued her in.
Kelsey found the door with the apartment number Tyler had given her, and she stood looking at the number for a moment, taking a few deep breaths before she rang the buzzer.
A guy answered the door, but it wasn't Tyler, some other guy, good looking enough, big like Tyler's teammates, tattoos all down both arms.
"Can I help you?" the guy asked.
"Um, hi," Kelsey said. "Tyler said I could come by if I was ever in the area." Probably better not to tell a total stranger she'd driven six and a half hours just to drop in.
The guy raised his eyebrows kind of skeptically, but seemed to decide she wasn't a threat and opened the door wider, nudging a large dog out of the way.
"Marshall, no," he said to the dog.
It was probably stupider than any of the other decisions she'd made, but Kelsey went into the apartment, and followed the guy across the large room the door opened onto.
"It's a girl," the guy said. "She says Tyler said she could come by."
There were other guys in the apartment, two of them sitting at a counter between the open room and the kitchen, and two more in the kitchen, all of them looking at her now. Kelsey ignored most of them, the guys at the counter and the one in the kitchen saying something that started with, "I don't remember," because the other guy in the kitchen was Tyler.
Seeing him brushed away any last doubts Kelsey had about what she wanted. She could feel herself reacting to him already, without him even having said anything, the thrum of want in her veins and the way she wanted to reach out and touch, that connection she'd always felt with him in spite of herself.
"Kelsey," Tyler said, and the other guy in the kitchen stopped talking.
"Hi," Kelsey said. She managed a smile, but she knew it probably looked as uncertain as she felt. What she wanted was only half of what she needed to know.
Tyler seemed as frozen in place as she was. "What are you doing here?"
Kelsey lifted one shoulder in a shrug more casual than how she felt. "I wanted to see you." She met his eyes across the room, that deep blue that met hers with an almost electric shock.
There was a long, breathless moment, and then Tyler came around the counter. He stopped right in front of her, and smiled at her, one of those soft, real smiles. "Hi."
Kelsey smiled up at him, happiness bursting in her chest. "Hi." She leaned up while Tyler bent down, and it was one of the softest, most perfect kisses she'd ever had. And it meant he felt for her at least some of what she felt for him. Kelsey's eyes prickled with tears of relief.
Even after they stopped kissing, Tyler kept his arms wrapped around her, and Kelsey turned her face into his chest, soaking up the comfort of his familiar warmth.
"So, uh, are you going to introduce us?" one of the other guys asked.
Kelsey and Tyler turned away from each other enough to face the other guys. Tyler kept one arm around her, and she leaned against his side while he introduced her to his friends.
The guy who'd answered the door was Jesse, the other one in the kitchen was another Tyler - "You can call me Segs," he said - and the two guys at the counter were Fred and Brendan.
"Lunch is almost ready," Segs said, "if you're staying."
Kelsey glanced up at Tyler for confirmation before she agreed.
"We can sit at the table," Segs said, and he pulled plates out of cabinets and gave them to Jesse to set the table.
"Why me?" Jesse elbowed Fred on his way to the table, a giant, wooden thing set off from the kitchen.
"Because you're already standing," Segs said. He grinned across the counter at Kelsey, or maybe at Tyler, and made Fred and Brendan get up and get everyone drinks.
They settled around the table, and it wasn't that different from hanging out with a bunch of her friends, or hanging out with Tyler and Jason and their teammates. There was some hockey talk Kelsey didn't quite follow, and a lot more general talk she did.
Tyler's friends asked a few questions about her, getting to know her without being too nosy about it. She asked a few questions of her own; if she and Tyler were going to be a part of each other's lives, his friends would also be part of her life. Segs seemed to know a little bit about her, but it was obvious from their questions that the others hadn't even heard of her.
And through it all, there was Tyler, smiling softly at her, listening to what she said, putting his arm across the back of her chair when they were done eating but still sitting around the table.
Segs waved off Tyler and Kelsey's offer to help clean up. "We've got it."
"What do you mean we?" Brendan asked.
"We've got it," Segs said. "You two catch up."
Tyler threw him a thankful look, and then turned to Kelsey. "Want to take a walk? Marshall probably needs to go out."
Kelsey said, "Sure," calmly, but it made her heart beat faster, their chance to talk with some privacy, or at least without Tyler's friends listening to every word.
Tyler got Marshall's leash and Kelsey grabbed her purse, and then Tyler held the door open and they walked out into the hallway together, the dog bounding ahead of them.
"How long are you in Toronto?" Tyler asked her while they were waiting for the elevator.
"Um," Kelsey said. "I have three days off." She stepped into the elevator ahead of him. "I drove up to see you." She didn't turn around until after she'd said that.
Tyler had followed her into the elevator, but he was just staring at her.
Kelsey reached past him and hit the button for the lobby, and Tyler caught her close with one hand on her shoulder.
"You really came up just to see me?" he asked, like he couldn't believe it.
"Yeah," Kelsey said. "Yes." She risked looking up to meet his eyes, and the warmth there made her glad she did.
Tyler bent down and kissed her, warm and sweet, and too short because he stopped when the elevator dinged and the doors opened.
Marshall bounded out first, with Tyler taking Kelsey's hand as they followed him out. Tyler pushed the door open for the three of them, and they stepped out into the sunshine.
"I'm glad you're here," Tyler said. He smiled at her before he unhooked the sunglasses from the collar of his shirt and put them on.
Kelsey smiled back at him and squeezed his hand.
They let Marshall lead them, pausing when he paused to sniff at whatever smells there might be for a dog to investigate.
"How was graduation?" Tyler asked while they waited for Marshall to sniff at a doorway.
"It was good," Kelsey said. "Everyone's parents came for it, and all of Courtney's siblings, so it was pretty busy. But we all graduated."
"That's the important part," Tyler said. They moved on when Marshall was ready to pull them farther down the block. "That's actually really great. Most of my friends haven't graduated from college."
"They're doing other things," Kelsey said with a shrug, "but, yeah, being a college graduate is pretty cool. How's your summer?"
"Oh, pretty good," Tyler said. "Went home to see my family and my dog, spent some time on the lake. We haven't started doing hardcore training yet, so mostly taking it easy."
They walked slowly, ambling along and holding hands, while Tyler told her about his dog and the summer so far and she told him the stories from graduation. They didn't talk about the future. Kelsey couldn't know what Tyler was thinking about that, but she held off because it seemed like a conversation to have in private.
When they looped back around to Tyler's building, he asked, "Do you have a suitcase or something? I mean, if you want to stay with me."
"Yes," Kelsey said. "I do and I want to. It's in the car."
They took the elevator down instead of up and Kelsey fished her keys out of her purse while they walked to her car.
"I'll get it," Tyler said, and he handed her Marshall's leash. "Here. He's pretty well-behaved."
Kelsey's bag wasn't very heavy, but she still appreciated the flex of Tyler's muscles as he lifted it up and shut the trunk.
When he caught her looking, she shrugged unapologetically and leaned in to kiss the strong line of muscle in his arm. "I like looking at you."
A dull flush stole up Tyler's cheeks, and he leaned down to kiss her. It wasn't one of the soft, sweet kisses. It was one of the heated ones that made Kelsey's knees weak enough that she clung tightly to Tyler. Only the tug of Marshall pulling against the leash she still held pried one of her hands away from Tyler.
"Marshall," Tyler said, firm warning in his voice. Then he looked at Kelsey with heat and affection both. "Walk me home?"
Kelsey put her free hand on his cheek and pressed a swift kiss to his lips. "Yes."
They stood close in the elevator on the way up, Tyler's arm around Kelsey's shoulders while she leaned against him, drinking in his warmth and the way he made her feel.
Tyler's friends were spread out over the large couch when they got back to the apartment. Tyler set down Kelsey's bag to bend over and unclip Marshall's leash.
"My room's upstairs," he said after that, and Kelsey started up the stairs without looking to see what kind of looks his friends were giving them.
There were a doors at the top of the stairs, and Tyler put a hand at the small of her back to guide her toward one of them. It opened onto a bedroom that she didn't pay much attention to because as soon as Tyler closed the door behind them and set down her bag, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him.
Tyler put his arms around her, holding her tight against his body while he kissed her deeply. Kelsey clung to him, anchoring herself against the flood of heat and want that swept through her.
It wasn't enough after a moment, and Kelsey got her hands on the hem of Tyler's shirt, tugging it up until he took over and pulled it off. In the moment they were apart for him to do that, she pulled her shirt off as well. He watched her, his gaze as palpable as a touch, while she reached behind herself and unhooked her bra, then slid the straps down her arms and tossed it to the side.
They crashed together again, skin on skin and Kelsey feeling like she couldn't get enough of him.
He pulled her forward by her hips, one of his thighs slotting between hers, and she gasped at the friction, at how she felt like she was burning up with wanting him and the certain knowledge that he wanted her too.
She broke away from his kiss to gasp out, "Bed, take me to bed."
Tyler picked her up, hands sure and firm on her ass. Kelsey pressed her mouth against his neck, wanting to feel him like that too but careful not to distract him too much while he carried her over to the bed.
He set her down gently, and he looked at her, his eyes hot and her skin tingling with the force of his gaze, as he unbuttoned his shorts.
Kelsey unbuttoned her jeans by feel, not looking away from him while they both got the rest of their clothes off. He looked just as good naked as she remembered him looking, strong muscles and hard cock.
He didn't waste any time joining her once they were naked. His bed was small, smaller than either of theirs in Glens Falls, and he settled between her legs when she spread them to make space for him.
He hovered there, so close she could feel the heat radiating off of him, for a moment that seemed suspended in time. They were looking straight into each other's eyes, serious and breathless, and then Tyler smiled at her, and she smiled right back at him and laughed with joy as he settled himself on top of her and kissed her.
Her laughter faded away quickly, replaced by the heat he was stoking in her body with every kiss and every touch. She didn't need much of that, glad to be touching him but already so wet and turned on that she just wanted him in her.
She squeezed his arm. "Condom?"
"Uh, yeah." He looked at her, eyes glazed over with lust, before he reached over and rummaged through the nightstand. It took him a moment to come up with a condom, and it didn't have to mean anything, but it might have meant he hadn't been with anyone else. Every bit of Kelsey hoped it was that, and then he was pulling away from her enough to roll on the condom, and she stopped caring about anything but getting him in her.
Kelsey let out a moan as he slid into her. It was so perfect, just what she wanted, Tyler's cock filling her up just right, his body against hers, their mouths meeting in a careful, slow kiss before he started to move.
He hadn't forgotten what she liked, and his hips made small, grinding movements that ratcheted up her pleasure. She kissed him while he did, and grabbed at him, one hand across his back, the other on his gorgeous ass, both hands keeping him close, not that he was trying to go anywhere.
He murmured her name against her neck, and then he got one of his hands between them, touching her in a way that sent sharper sparks of pleasure through her.
"Tyler," Kelsey gasped out.
He smiled at her, so much affection on his face that she went completely breathless for a moment. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah," and the words didn't actually mean anything, but they sounded like a promise and an affirmation, and he was following through on it, touching her and kissing her and making her feel so cared about and taken care of that it all melded into a pleasure that suffused everything she was, body, mind, and soul.
It couldn't last, she couldn't hold that much feeling forever, but it built and built before it starburst out into what might have been the best orgasm of her life.
There were aftershocks, smaller sparks, as Tyler kept moving in her, and she pressed her lips to his cheek, keeping that contact too until he threw his head back as he came.
They kissed sloppy and off-center after that, breathing hard into each other's mouths until Tyler had to pull out of her and take care of the condom.
His bed was small enough that they had no choice but to cuddle close together when Tyler rejoined her in it. Kelsey didn't mind that in the slightest, and she reveled in the feeling of Tyler's legs tangled with hers and the knowledge that neither of them had to leave the bed.
Tyler draped his arm over her waist, occasionally sweeping it up and down her side. Kelsey rested her hand on his chest, feeling the muscle there and the rise and fall of his breath.
They made out for a while, slow and easy, taking breaks to just look into each other's eyes. For all that what she felt was strong, it was all so easy, just like almost everything else with him had been.
That was what made Kelsey brave enough, in one of the pauses between kisses, to tell Tyler the full truth of why she'd come to see him, but not brave enough to watch his face while she did. She kept her eyes focused on the way her hand looked so small against his chest when she said, "I love you." Her voice only shook a little. "I know that wasn't what we said we were doing and I tried not to, but I do."
He said her name so softly she almost didn't hear it, and he tipped her chin up so she had no choice but to look at him. He wasn't smiling outright, but she knew him well enough to see the happy softness around his eyes.
"Yes," he said. "Me too."
Kelsey had hoped for that, but she hadn't been sure, and the certain knowledge of it burst into the kind of happiness she wasn't sure she could fully contain. She surged forward and kissed him, smiling into it, and laughing when he tightened both arms around her.
"What about next year?" Tyler asked after a little while, that softness still around his eyes but a more serious set to his mouth.
"I don't have any plans for my life now," Kelsey said, no reason to hold back any of the truth anymore. "The only thing I could think of that I knew I wanted for sure was to be with you. I'll move with you."
Tyler ran his thumb across her cheekbone. "You know I might not be in Allentown. I don't have a contract yet. I might end up somewhere else, maybe even in Canada."
"I know." Kelsey met his eyes straight on, no holding back anything anymore. "I'll go with you, wherever you're going." Then she said, because she knew his history and her own, "But I don't think we should live together right away. We should take that part slow."
Tyler nodded and stroked her hair, kissed her softly. "I think that's a good idea."
Kelsey smiled at him, the last of the tension lifting off of her shoulders. "Okay," she said, "okay." She kissed him lightly. "That's what we'll do then."
"Okay," Tyler agreed. He gave her a smile that was almost a smirk. "And you should give me your number."
Kelsey laughed and kissed him. "I will," she promised.
*
Epilogue
"Hi," Kelsey called out as she let herself into Tyler and Cal's townhouse.
"Hey," Cal said, waving at her from the couch.
Tyler's greeting was accompanied with more of a smile, and he came out of the kitchen to kiss her hello. They stood together for an extra minute, arms wrapped around each other, and Kelsey leaning against the solid bulk of Tyler's chest.
"How was your day?" Tyler asked when they separated.
"Good." Kelsey followed him toward the kitchen and settled herself onto one of the stools on the other side of the counter. "I got assigned to a team today."
"Yeah? That's good, right?"
"Yep. It means they want to keep me and think I'm going to stay." The first few weeks of her job at the consulting firm had been more of an orientation than anything else, learning the business and the way they dealt with clients. It was also, she thought, something of a tryout. While she hadn't witnessed it herself yet, she'd started to hear rumors and stories about people not lasting long enough to get assigned to a team.
"That's great," Tyler said, and he smiled across the counter at her before he turned to the stove.
"How was your day?"
Tyler shrugged one shoulder. "Good. Same as most of them. Practice and workouts. I got a couple shots past Cal in practice." The last was said loudly enough to carry out to Cal in the living room.
"It was two," Cal shouted back. "And you got Konan and Oliver to screen for you."
Tyler threw a grin over his shoulder at Kelsey. "Still counts."
Kelsey laughed, and let the familiar rhythm of their chirping wash over her. It was good to come over to their place after work and feel like she belonged there, like it was becoming her home as much as her apartment was.
When dinner was almost ready, Kelsey got out plates and set the table. That, too, felt like belonging, and so did sitting down for dinner with Tyler and Cal, like they did most nights the two of them were in town.
They hung out at the table, still laughing and talking, for a while after dinner, until the looks Tyler was shooting at Kelsey started taking on a heated cast that made her want to drag him to bed.
Cal noticed them looking at each other after a while, and he rolled his eyes as he got up, taking all three of their plates with them. "I'll clean up," he said.
Tyler acknowledged that with a nod, and then said to Kelsey, "Give me three minutes, and then come upstairs."
"Three minutes?" Kelsey asked.
Tyler smiled at her. "Three minutes." He kissed the top of her head on his way toward the stairs.
"I don't know what he's planning," Cal said when he came to take the serving dishes, "but I'll probably sleep down here on the couch tonight."
Kelsey laughed a little and got up from the table so Cal wouldn't see the way her cheeks were heating up. She took her purse into the downstairs bathroom, where she reapplied her lip gloss and took her hair down from the chignon she'd had it in for work. She judged it had been about three minutes when she was done brushing her hair out, and she left her purse by the door, not even taking her phone with her, and went upstairs.
She pushed open the door to Tyler's room and stepped inside, and then stopped, looking around her. There were lit candles on every flat surface, all of them safely contained in candle holders or on plates, none of them too close to the bed or the curtains.
"Tyler," Kelsey breathed, and she looked up at him, the way he was looking at her as lovingly as he ever had, the way the candlelight cast his jaw into sharp relief. "What?"
He took a step toward her, hands coming down to settle on her hips. "It's our anniversary," he said. "Sort of. We met a year ago today."
Kelsey huffed out a laugh. "How do you know that? I don't even know that."
Tyler smiled at her, his thumbs rubbing up under the edge of her blouse. "I had to ask Jason and look at a game schedule for last season."
Kelsey laughed again, amused by the dedication it had taken for him to figure it out and also just plain happy. "Happy anniversary then," she said.
"Happy anniversary." Tyler bent down and kissed her, and she could feel the lightning spark of it race through her, just like that first time in his truck. "Hey," he murmured after a moment, "I bet I can make you come first this time."
Kelsey burst into laughter again, and it didn't settle even when he lifted her up to carry her to bed. "I bet you can."