On My Mind

The bedroom door closing almost scared Sidney.

He watched Kaia pad across the hardwood toward him, his eyebrows drawn together at the frustrated expression on her face. “What’s up?”

“My dad,” she muttered, sliding back into bed beside him. She threw her phone—which had rang almost fifteen minutes before—down beside her, and pulled her laptop back into her lap. “He’s being a pain in the ass.”

“Why?” Sidney tried to play it cool, looking casually at his own laptop in front of him, but he was genuinely curious. She didn’t talk about her family often—he knew that she had three older brothers, but that was mostly the extent of his knowledge.

“Nothing,” she said grumpily, shaking her head. “It’s seriously nothing.”

He didn’t want to let the conversation drop, but he did, and watched silently as his girlfriend sunk further under his comforter, looking back and forth between her laptop and the notebook propped up next to her. It was a Wednesday morning, and she was studying for upcoming finals while he was shooting emails back and forth with his agent about interviews and a photoshoot he had coming up.

He would be lying to himself if he said that didn’t wish all of his mornings could be like this: the night before, after his game, Kaia came back to his house and spent the night, and he woke up with her pressed against him, the smell of her all in his bed sheets. They hadn’t moved since, Kaia donning one of his sweatshirts as they both settled in, sitting quietly with each other.

“He’s just mad at me,” Kaia said after a while, her voice small. “I’m not going home for Thanksgiving, and he thinks I’m mad at him, or something—I’m not, obviously, but now he’s acting all upset. It’s stupid. I don’t get why he’s being so, like, immature about it—”

“Why aren’t you?” Sid didn’t try to hide his curiosity. “Isn’t that a big deal?”

“It’s such an expensive trip.” She looked out the window sourly. “I can’t really afford to drive all the way up there just for a few days. It’s, like, a day of driving just to get up there—so that's Wednesday, and then another day to get back—I have class on Monday, and homework to do—”

“I get why he’s upset,” he said quietly. “But I’m glad you’re staying down here.”

“He thinks I’m staying down here because of you,” she said then, voice low.

Sid looked at her seriously. He hadn’t known that her dad knew about them—but, then, why wouldn’t he? Kaia talked to him almost every day on the phone. “Are you?”

She scoffed. “You wish, huh?”

He smiled, shaking his head. “You told your dad about me?”

She looked at him blankly for a second. “He sort of inferred that we were together, but—yeah. Back when the heat in my apartment was all messed up still, I was telling him that I was staying with you, so—” She stopped, looking at him with what could have been concern. “Is that okay?”

He almost laughed at the scared look on her face. “Kai, we’re dating. I think that’s alright.”

She shushed him with a roll of her eyes, but grinned to herself as she looked back at her laptop. A few seconds after, she groaned. “I hate school.”

“You’re almost done,” he offered, eyes not moving from the screen of his laptop.

“It feels too far away,” she muttered, and lay back on the bed, her hands over her face. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“Just keep going,” he said distractedly,

“I’m going to do something,” she mumbled, and slid out of bed. “Come with me.”

“I’m working,” he said stubbornly, trying to keep his eyes trained on the email he was writing. His sweatshirt fell down her thigh, and he knew—he knew—that the only thing under it was a pair of white lace-trimmed underwear. “You should be too.”

“We’ve been working forever,” she huffed. “Come on, Sid.”

“I’m working,” he repeated, glancing up to see her disappear through the door. When it swung shut behind her, he let out a groan, deciding to finish the email before he went after her.

The living room, dining room, and kitchen were empty when he got downstairs, and he made work of checking all of the other rooms on the first floor, slowly feeling confused when he found all of them empty. She was hiding from him. Naturally. In a house as big as his, it would be easy—he could remember the exact words leaving her lips during one of their first nights together, when he was giving her a long overdue tour. He felt himself smiling as he swung down the stairs into the basement, peaking in both directions. At one of the hallway, there was the theatre, which she had ooh’d and ahh’d at just enough to inflate his ego, and at the opposite end, only a few feet from where he stood, the hallway spilled out into an open room with a bar and pool table, the walls decorated with his old sweaters and other hockey memorabilia from over the years.

She was standing with her back toward him, hands in the front pocket of his sweatshirt, studying one of the jerseys that was framed on the wall.

“What’re you doing?” Sid called, smirking when he saw her shoulders jump at the sound of his voice.

“Jesus,” she muttered, casting him a look over her shoulder. “Don’t scare me.”

“Or what?” He stepped down into the room, stopping behind her. “Why’re you looking at this one?” It was his Shattuck St. Mary’s sweater—almost ten years old.

“It’s smaller than all of the other ones,” she said, and brought a gentle fist to Sid’s flat gut. “You’ve gained some over the years, huh?”

He shook his head with a smile. “I guess you could say that, huh?”

“I wanted to play pool,” she said absentmindedly, and leaned back against him. “But then I realized I don’t actually know how.”

“C’mon.” He put his hands on her shoulders, directing her toward the other side of the room. “I’ll teach you.”

“You will?” She gave him a fake shocked expression, mouth open in an O. “Why, thank you so much.”

He sized up the cues hanging on the wall and pulled one down for her, extending it gently in her direction. “Don’t make me change my mind.”

She giggled in a way that made him grin, the Kaia that he always missed on roadtrips grinning in wait for him on the opposite side of the pool table. She focused intently on the cue, practicing a hit—badly—on the white ball outside of the triangle of stripes and solids, and then looked at him with her eyebrows drawn together, frustrated.

“Okay,” he said, reaching to pull the plastic triangle off the table. “Basically, you just want to hit whatever balls are yours into the pockets, okay?”

She nodded seriously. “Which ones are mine?”

“We have to break these first,” he said. “You can go. No—okay.” He grabbed the stick before she shot it, moving behind her to hold it in place. “Hold it like this. Yeah, there you go.”

Sid kept his eyes on her as the game continued, reminded—briefly—of the hockey match they had watched together before they were dating because of the look of focus on her face. The focus slowly dissolved in frustration as she missed shot after shot, groaning and leaning against him, her body small against his. He could only hold in his laughter. She was adorable when she was mad—her blue eyes narrow, face screwed up in a pout.

“It’s just a game,” he reminded her after one particularly bad shot, retrieving one of the balls from the floor after it went airborne. “Kaia.”

“I’m so bad,” she muttered, wrapping her arms around him from behind, her nose pressed into his upper back.

“You’re going to make me mess up,” he muttered, elbows held up to avoid hitting her. He heard her mutter good just as he hit the ball, his last solid ball sinking into a pocket on the far side of the table. “Alright, game done.”

“What?” She let out a cry of outrage, her head whipping around him to look at the table. “Why?”

“Because I sunk all of mine,” he said slowly, pulling her into his chest. “All of my balls are off the table.”

She looked at the table with her eyebrows pulled together and groaned, closing her eyes as she leaned back against him. “I don’t like pool anymore.”

Sid shook his head, his fingers dusting over the bare skin on her thigh where his sweatshirt ended.

Kaia let out a noise that Sid could only describe as a squeal, pushing him away. “Don’t tickle me!”

It took him a moment to process this, and he grinned wickedly, shaking his head as she wiggled her way out of his arms, practically running to the other side of the table. He looked at her with an attempt at innocence. “I won’t,” he said, holding his hands up. “I promise.”

She looked at him cautiously, arms over her chest. “Now you’re just making me nervous.”

Sid’s eyes were locked on her as she almost scurried past him, keeping a wide berth, and flung herself down onto the couch, arms and legs sprawled out around her. “What’re you doing?”

“I could sleep here,” she muttered, seeming unaware of Sid coming closer.

His sweatshirt had ridden up, giving him a view of her ass and the practically see-through lace panties that he had seen her put on earlier that morning. He took a moment to appreciate the athletic curve of her legs and ass before he sat down beside her, pulling her up into his lap.

“I’m so bad at pool,” she muttered, her head against his chest. “I’m hopeless.”

“You are,” he said with a laugh, earning a reproachful look in return. “You can’t be good at everything.”

“You’re good at everything.”

“No I’m not,” he said. “I suck at soccer.”

She grinned at that, nodding a little. “That’s true.”

Sid pressed his lips against her forehead with a smile, drawing her in closer. He liked her this way—tucked against him, the way she always made herself small against him. “I am pretty good at most things, though.”

She scoffed into his t-shirt. “Check your ego, Crosby.”

He didn’t say anything, his chin on top of her head.

“You’re such a dork,” she murmured, and pushed away from him, looking up at him with her blue eyes. “I don’t get why they all like you so much.” She swung one of her legs over his so that she was straddling him, her face a few inches from his. One of her hands moved his face this way and that, her eyebrows pulled together as she surveyed him, lips pursed. “I just don’t get it.”

She was so close to him that Sid saw the moment her blue eyes darted down to his lips and then back up to his, the look of inspection replaced with almost-curiosity, her hands resting on his shoulders. He closed the gap, pushing his lips up against hers softly at first, feeling her hands reach up to cup his cheeks. Between kisses, she mumbled his name, hips grinding into his.

When he pulled his sweatshirt over her head, she hesitated at his mouth for a moment, and tugged at his own shirt, pulling it up and off of him, and then her hands moved toward his sweatpants. He let her, watching as she pulled the fabric away from his waist and down his legs, moving onto his briefs after that.

A curse flew out of his mouth almost involuntarily when her mouth met his erection, his head falling back as she stroked him, her tongue flicking over and around him in a pattern that has him seeing stars.

“Is that good?” She looked up at him almost expectantly, her mouth finding the head of his cock almost sweetly, her lips poised over him.

He groaned something that he hoped she understood, looking down at the blonde bobbing over him in ecstasy. He wanted to pull her back up on top of him, to find where she was hot and wet between her legs, but—he couldn’t control the grunt that escaped his lips as her tongue glided over the tip of his cock again—he didn’t want to interrupt the sweetness on top of him.

“Fuck,” he grunted, shifting his hips to meet her mouth. “Kaia.”

She hummed against him, slowly sliding away, and got to her feet, a wicked smile on her face.

“What?” He managed, wary of the mischief painted across his girlfriend’s face.

A giggle left her mouth—lips swollen from kissing—as she started away, bouncing a little so her ass shook as she went. He could hear her on the stairs, still giggling. “Come find me!”