The Hockey Captain's Secret Obsession Wasn't Me?! novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Voice at Lunch
Lila hears the hockey captain's thoughts at a cafeteria table and takes them for her best friend; she turns down tutoring and Tori has already said yes.
On Tuesday at noon, in the middle of the campus dining hall, I started hearing Mason Doyle's thoughts.
I had just sat down with a tray of fried chicken.
Tori was next to me, and Mason, the captain of the hockey team, was across the table with a plain turkey sandwich.
It was the first time in a year he had ever sat at a table with us.
I should have felt lucky.
For twelve months I had brought that man sports drinks at home games and breakfast burritos before dawn practices.
We had traded looks and short, dry jokes since the first week of my freshman year, and he had never once asked me out.
Then a voice that wasn't in the room said, [How is she this adorable?]
I looked up.
Mason was chewing, eyes on his sandwich, face completely blank.
[Those star clips. Why do they look so perfect on her?]
[I wish I could eat lunch with her every day. Just the two of us.]
I stopped chewing.
Tori had pinned two glittery star clips into her bangs that morning, and she was telling a story about her chemistry lab with a drumstick in her hand.
In the elevator she had pinned a small star clip above my left ear, for luck, and I had forgotten it was there.
The chicken in my mouth tasted like paper.
I had been so sure that the silence meant something, and now I was hearing exactly what it meant.
It meant Tori.
I put down my fork.
"Uh, you guys keep eating," I said. "Something came up. I have to go."
"Lila?" Tori called after me.
I didn't answer her.
I made it out of the dining hall and around the corner before I started to cry.
We had never even been together, and my chest still felt empty and sore.
I went through the last year in my head, and every piece of it flipped over.
Every home game, I had dragged Tori to the rail so I could hold out a bottle to him.
He had drunk it down in one long pull each time, stone-faced, and I had told myself that was just how he said thank you.
He waited by the gym doors at six in the morning for my burritos.
I had thought he was waiting for me.
He had been waiting for a reason to stand near my best friend.
I couldn't make myself hate her.
That was the worst part.
I changed into my sneakers in the locker room and ran laps on the indoor track until my lungs burned.
I got to my economics class two minutes before it started.
Mason was already in the back row.
The second I stepped through the door, his head came up.
[Is she upset? Why are her eyes so red?]
[Are her grades slipping? Is that it?]
[Maybe if I tutored her, she'd feel better.]
I looked behind me.
Tori had slid into the seat by the door, yawning, with a crease from her sleeve across one cheek.
Of course.
I sat down in my own seat and tried to breathe.
Tori leaned across the aisle. "Why did you bail on lunch to go run?"
"I needed the air."
"You never need air." She dropped her voice. "Is this about a guy?"
"It's about my grades," I whispered. "Both of us dropped a whole letter this fall. My parents are going to lose it."
That was true, at least.
If my GPA stayed under 3.0, I lost the scholarship, and my parents could not pay for this place without it.
Tori nodded slowly. "Okay. Then we get Mason to tutor us. He's a business major with a 3.9, and he owes me for the time I covered for him with Coach."
I looked at the back row.
Mason had his pen on a worksheet, his ears bright red.
[Ask me. Please. I can help her get those grades up.]
[Then I can talk her into the Boston transfer program. Same city. I'd see her every day.]
[I like her so much it's ridiculous.]
Something sour twisted under my ribs.
So that was what the whole year of burritos had been.
I had been the girl who made it easy for him to stand near her.
"I'll pass," I said.
"Lila."
"I can study at home. You two go ahead."
I was not going to sit between them and be the third wheel on someone else's love story.
Tori frowned at me for a long moment.
Then she got a look I should have noticed.
She took her phone out under the desk and started typing with both thumbs.
I turned back to the front of the room, where the professor was writing a formula, and pretended to take notes.
I was done.
I would go to my classes, hand in my work, and let a year of nonsense end in a quiet way.
Under my breath, I told myself the thing I wished I'd said at lunch.
Then say it to her face, Mason.
Two rows over, I heard a pen stop.
"Say what?" Mason asked.
He wasn't looking at the board.
He was looking straight at me.
"Nothing," I said. "Nobody said anything."
He frowned, and his ears went a deeper red.
I decided I had mumbled, and I let it go.
When class ended, my phone buzzed on the desk.
It was a text from Tori, already sent, with a thumbs-up under it: "Told him yes for both of us. Library, 6. Don't you dare bail."
Mason walked past my desk on his way out.
[Good. Six o'clock.]
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