Terrible Love

“Wait… Wait… Wait,” I couldn’t contain the laughter ripping through my chest as I watched the brunette blush under the moonlight that was illuminating his parents backyard. “You seriously did that? You realty punched him?”

Jon slapped a hand over his face as he pressed his body back into the grass beneath us. Shaking his head, he rolled over onto his side, mumbling incoherent words through his hand. Pressing my hand against his strong bicep, I made a feeble attempt at shaking him, and then felt the laughter rumbling through my body escalate.

“Jon, this is important.” I groaned, my eyes widening as I watched the man roll onto his back and then look at me from between two separated fingers. Shaking his head back and forth, he let out another long groan and then sat back up, his shoulders slumping forward.

Pursing his lips, he glanced from me to his hands in the grass, and nodded a little. “I may have punched Kris Versteeg in the face before he got traded to the Flyers.”

“Jon!” I exclaimed, my hand rushing to my mouth as I pictured the two hot-tempered boys going at it. “You’re an idiot!”

“He… It was… He was being a jerk, and I didn’t like the way he was talking about you, so I set things straight, that’s all.”

“Ridiculous.” I rolled my eyes as I watched Jon look over at me and smile. I knew that was the one word he called me on almost a daily basis, that’s exactly why I decided to use it against him for once.

Shrugging, Jon wrapped his arm around my shoulders and moved our bodies until there was absolutely no air between us. Enjoying the warmth form his body, I tilted my head to the side, resting it against his shoulder, and shut my eyes.

A gentle breeze blew through his old backyard. The plastic lawn chairs and nice patio set were all behind us. Instead, we were sitting in the dirt down by the little pond in his backyard where he first learned to ice skate. The same place he taught me to ice skate when we were six.

“Remember when you almost killed me ice skating?” Jon murmured, his voice barely above a whisper as he rubbed his cheek against my hair.

“I remember you walking me onto the ice and then pushing me. I also remember you laughing when I tried to skate after you and then screaming when I managed to reach you.”

Jon nodded, laughing as he pressed his hand into his face. “I legitimately thought you were going to kill me.”

“Hmm,” I glanced up at the man and shrugged a little. “I should have done it when I had the chance, I guess.”

“Oh stop, where would you be without me?” He joked.

“Probably dead,” the conversation fell into silence as Jon tightened his grip on me, his breathing losing the airy deepness. “Sorry, that was pretty deep.”

Jon shook his head, pressing his lips to my head a few times as he told me that I was really stupid sometimes, but he couldn’t believe that I would be that stupid. I wanted to agree with him, but I knew of the nights in high school where I laid in my bed and daydreamed about my funeral. I had the flowers and picture picked out, I told them I wanted a black coffin and an open casket. I even told them to bury me in an Edmonton Oilers jersey – it was my favorite team before I dropped the NHL and took on the favorite of whatever team Jon was on.

In the will I had written down on a sheet of loose leaf paper had everything of somewhat importance going to Jon and all of the money I had to my name going to charity. There was a sick sense of satisfaction rushing through me when I wrote it. I felt like it was the last chapter of a book, the calm before you closed the cover, the page you read and then sigh about, content with knowing everything would be okay in the world you were about to leave.

“Hey, Aspen, you’re silence is starting to freak me out.” Jon breathed heavily as his whisper against my ear tore through my memory. “You-“

“I thought about it a few times in high school,” I could feel Jon’s whole body tense. “I wrote a will and everything, picked out the flowers and the headshot, I would lay awake wondering who would bother to show up.”

“What the fuck, Aspen?” I felt his body shiver next to mine, “and you never told me this, why?”

I lifted one shoulder, feeling all of the blood in my body rush to my cheeks in embarrassment. As we sat there in a tense silence, I wanted to tell him that he was busy with hockey and didn’t want him to worry about me, but the second I connected being busy and me to Laura telling him she cheated because he was never around for her, I tightened the hold on my lips and shook my head.

“It never happened, so there’s no point in dwelling on it.”

“But you…” Jon huffed and then grabbed my shoulders and pulled us back slowly until we were both lying in the grass, our bodies still right next to each other, my head still tucked away on his shoulder. “I’m glad my parents had wine.”

“Made the ‘what now?’ question a little easier to bear as they practically begged you to say you were moving on.” I joked as I remembered the shimmer in their eyes as both of Jon’s parents stopped eating and stared at him, waiting for his answer while they snuck glances at me chopping away at the Eggplant Parmesan.

Laughing, Jon turned on his side and propped his head up with his elbow. “I feel like they’ve been performing nightly rituals for something to happen that would leave us both single so they would have something to be excited about again.”

Eyes stuck to Jon’s, I let out a loud laugh and shook my head, letting a wave of heat rush through my body and settle in my cheeks. “You’re fucked up.” I huffed, my eyes fluttering shut as another cool breeze blew against our skin.

We laid in silence for a little while longer. The lights in Jon’s old house were all out telling us that his parents had stopped watching us talk and laugh in the backyard and went to bed. They did that for a while when we were younger, at first I thought it was just to make sure we didn’t get kidnapped, but when I noticed my parents doing it, and then heard them talking about waiting to see us kissing so they could decide ‘who won the bet’, I realized their true motives.

“You think we should drive back to your place?” Jon asked, his body swaying a little before he steadied himself. “I mean, I had like four glasses of wine, I’m starting to feel it a little, I probably could, but...” He chuckled as he lifted his hands up and then placed them under his head, letting the short sleeves of his tee shirt ride up, exposing the bulging muscles of his arms.

When I found myself staring at them for longer than a minute, I realized that my two glasses of the deep red liquid were starting to linger in my system as well, and that chancing the drive home was a bad idea. “I’m not in any shape to drive.” I whispered, my eyes not darting back to Jon in fear I would be caught up in his arms again.

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you stare at my arms for that long before, wanna see the rest?” He joked, his words turning into a low purr as he finished his sentence and then reached over and grabbed the section of my thigh right above my knee. Letting out a gasp, I playfully slapped a hand against Jon’s strong chest and felt my body heat up when my fingers pressed into the strong muscles.

“Fuck you and your muscles, Toes.” I cocked my eyebrow and watched as Jon rolled his eyes dramatically and then looked over at me with a less than enthusiastic glare. I knew how much he hated the mispronunciation of his last name, so in times like these, I liked to join that crowd.

Jon and I joked around for another half hour or so before he let out a long yawn and simply pointed to the house and uttered, ‘bed.’ When asking him what me meant, he rolled his eyes and stood up, extending his hand out to me. Taking it, he quickly pulled me out of the grass and onto my feet. Steadying my body from the head rush of getting up so fast, he made a comment about being a lightweight and then proceeded to stumble-run his way to the sliding back doors that lead into the basement.

Not wanting to cause too much noise, I waited until I reached him inside of the cold house to give him a small shove and explain to him exactly why I was off balance when I got up. As he nodded along, not agreeing with a word I said, I huffed and went to drop my body onto the couch in the game section of the basement, when he gave me a small tug toward the stairs.

“That’s not a bed.”

“Yeah, and we’re finding a bed, where?”

“My old room, ya’ jerk, let’s go.”

“You expect us to fit in that little full sized bed?”

“If it can hold our weight, we can sleep in it.” He sent me a wide smile as he grabbed my hand, pushed his fingers between mine, and then led me upstairs, through the house, up the next flight of stairs, and then down the hallway to his bedroom. Pushing the door open, I took a deep inhale, letting the soft smell of vanilla and Jon’s deodorant hit my head and rush me back to when I was a stupid teenager falling in love with her more-than-dorky best friend.

Opening my mouth to speak, I was stopped as Jon swiftly picked me up and then plopped me down in his bed. Letting a laugh rumble through my lips, I watched as he walked over to the door, kicked his shoes off, pulled the tee shirt off of his torso, and then flipped on the little lava lamp on his dresser.

Heart pounding in my chest, I watched as the boy I had been madly in love with walked toward me slowly, his thick, muscular body holding the hues of the blue and purple lava lamp near him. When he reached the edge of the bed, I could barely breathe. I felt like I was fifteen, seeing a boy without his shirt on for the first time. I felt weak at the knees. I felt a pulse in my head, in my heart, and in my stomach.

“Kick your shoes off, I don’t want dirt in my sheets.”

“Oh, shut up.” I laughed lightly as I kicked my shoes off and pushed them onto the floor. Once I had settled into the sheets, Jon pulled the comforter up around us, wrapped his arm around my torso, and then pulled me into his chest. We were so close I could feel his muscles twitch against my back.

“I’m sorry I put you through so much shit in the last two weeks, Aspen.” Jon’s breath was beating down against the sensitive skin on my face, making the closeness to his strong chest and his lips create giant knots in my stomach.

I could tolerate this. I could tolerate the tight embrace and being so close to his shirtless body. I knew how to handle myself through all of this, I had done it before, and I had done it with more alcohol in my system than two glasses of red wine. I knew that any intimate actions with Jon, no matter how small were completely out of the question.

He had literally just got out of a toxic relationship. If cancelling the plans for the wedding, the flower and the tablecloths wasn’t a big enough reality check, telling his parents that everything was officially over definitely was. I was sure that his brain was a mess. There was no easy way to realize that after the last few years the person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with was fucking some loser from her college class.

The thought made my stomach knot.

I still couldn’t get a good grip on the realization that someone could consciously sleep with someone else, for such a long time, while simultaneously putting on a giant show about how excited she was for the wedding. It baffled me how people were programmed to be so secretive, so deceiving and plain disgusting.

“You’re silence gives me heart problems.” Jon joked as he moved his body from mine a little, and looked down at me, running his eyes over my face. Looking up at him, I felt my lips pull into a smile as I watched the purple and blue hues from the lava lamp light up his features.

“I’m groovy,” I joked.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Oh, I haven’t heard that one before.” I watched as the brunette in front of me let out a huge smile and a chuckle as he tilted his head back and rolled his eyes. “Any other new revelations you’d like to tell me?” I shot him a glance and watched as his smile shrunk.

Humming, he shrugged one shoulder and then let out a small sigh. “I came to the full realization that I’m single again after like four years.”

“Congrats, anything else?”

“I’m sleeping in my bed with the most beautiful girl that has ever graced my pathetic life.” He whispered and watched as my features faltered for a second before they regained their sarcastic undertones.

“You had too much wine.”

“Not enough, honestly.” He sighed and then shut his eyes. “I’m kind of freaked out, you know? I haven’t been single almost the whole time I’ve been on the Hawks. The first two years were a blur of stressing myself out and talking to you on the phone. Then when I met Laura, when you got us together, I… I didn’t think about anything else. I didn’t think about what it would be like to sleep with someone else. I had no problem sleeping with her for the rest of my life. Now, now I don’t know what to do.”

I nodded, my lips pressing into a thin line as I watched the pain wash over Jon’s face. I wanted to give him some good advice; I wanted to tell him that he had the charm to get another girl in no time. I wanted to tell him that he could have another stable relationship within a month of being back in Chicago.

But I didn’t want too.

I felt disgusting and selfish for thinking like that. I felt guilty for not wanting to see my best friend happy with another woman. I was tired of hearing him tell me how beautiful I was, how he wanted to date me and how he’s had a crush on me for so long. I was tired of hearing one thing and seeing another.

I wanted my chance, and at the same time I wanted to never speak to him again.

I wanted to move on, and I didn’t.

“Again, with the silence. I wish I could read your mind.” Jon whispered to me, his chin now resting on the top of my head as I curled into his chest.

“No you don’t.” I breathed, the tension and anxiety soaking down to my bones. It hurt to even think about moving. “I think we should just go to sleep, this conversations getting weird.”

Jon let out a small laugh before adjusting his hand around me and then tilting his head to the side. “What are you talking about?”

“Just shut up and go to sleep.” I begged, my mind not stable enough to run over Jon’s words again. I had a strange new feeling rushing through my veins. It wasn’t the burning anger of being strung along by Jon’s words, and it wasn’t the cold feeling of being alone. It was a strange mixture, making sweat drip from the back of my head and warm rushes of liquid paralyzing my heart.

New thoughts started to surface in my mind. I didn’t know how they got there or from what they came from, but they started to freak me out.

Jon was single.

He had absolutely no intentions on trying to pick up the pieces of his relationship with Laura. He had no intentions of trying to put the wedding back together. The thought of marrying her had left him, he was already thinking about moving on, already thinking about being with other women.

My heart was racing as images of him kissing me in the sheets of his childhood bedroom rushed through me. They were images I had thought about when I was stupid and young. They were images I had ruled out completely countless times.

“Aspen, you know I’m serious when I say this shit, right?” He moved his head from the top of my head and then pushed me away, giving us enough room to look up at each other. When my eyes met his, I felt every inch of my skin burn. “It takes a whole hell of a lot more wine to get me drunk.”

I shrugged, my body unable to produce words as my skin tingled form his touch.

No, I can’t fucking think like this. I can’t do this. After all of this time, all of this fucking time, you’re going to pick now to act on your feelings for him? You’re going to do it barely a week after he found out his fiancé was cheating?

I blinked hard, my eyes not being able to tear from Jon’s.

Get a fucking hold of yourself you fucking idiot. You waited so long for this moment, you’ve been through so much with him, you’re willing to throw it away so you can be his fucking rebound?

As soon as the word hit my thoughts, I dropped my eyes down from Jon’s and parted my lips, letting a large flow of air enter my body. My heart was racing, my lungs were working extra hard to keep my body alive, and my nerves were about to burn up and disappear.

I could feel Jon’s breath on my lips. I could almost taste the red wine on his breath. Little tuffs of his brown hair were brushing against my forehead. His hand was on my cheek, and I could feel his other slide down and rest on my lower back. Bringing my eyes up from his chest, they paused on his lips, parted, plump, and so close to mine that I wanted to throw away every single thought I had about how horrible this could turn out and just kiss him.

Kiss him, I just wanted to fucking kiss him. I just wanted to feel his lips on mine, just to see if it was worth wasting my teenage years over, if it was worth all of the horrible fucking stress and anxiety that had been swelling up in my body since he asked me that question what felt like years ago.

“Would I ever have a chance with you, Aspen?”

He would have ended it for me. He would have called the whole thing off just for a chance with me. Not even a legitimate relationship, just a chance. We could have lasted a week, maybe even two days, and he would have thrown away that relationship for nothing.

“Jon, I-“

“Aspen, I really want to kiss.” His words made everything else in my head silence. The low purr of his voice almost sent me into cardiac arrest on the spot.

Dragging my eyes from his lips and up into his eyes, I felt all of the air in my lungs leave me. I couldn’t breathe, I could barely remember who I was or what was going on. I had never seen the look in his eyes. I had seen his eyes when he spoke to his team after a loss, I had seen his eyes when he asked Laura to marry him; I had seen his eyes at almost every single serious moment of his life.

But I had never seen this.

“We can’t do this.” I breathed, surprised that I was able to speak. “I… It’s too soon, it’s-“

“Please?” His lips brushed against mine causing the pit of my stomach to start burning with a strong fire. I could feel the flames rushing through my veins, rushing through my skin. Every inch of my body was on fire; every bit of my skin was tinted pink. My cheeks were radiating so much heat that I thought I was going to start crying form the sting.

I had never wanted to feel someone touch me this badly before.

I had never wanted to actually beg someone to kiss me.

I had never imagined that it would be Jonathan Toews.

Jon’s face filled the gap between us. The lips that had teased me what felt like seconds ago were now firmly pressed against mine. Fire growing, I felt my fingers tremble as they reached up and rested against the side of Jon’s face. Applying a little more pressure, the brunette pushed my body flush against his, keeping his hand firmly on the small of my back.

Parting my lips to breathe, I felt Jon’s tongue run along my bottom lip. I could taste the wine lingering on his tongue as it rubbed against mine. The rush of feeling his body against mine like this sent a rush to my head that left me weak. I wanted to feel his hands move, I wanted to feel his teeth pull at my bottom lip.

It was all too much.

The kiss grew from a tender pressure to quick movements. Dropping my hand from Jon’s face, I could feel his heart beating against the palm of my hand. The fingers pressed against my lower back as I bit down on his lower lip and nibbled on it. When I released it, Jon quickly pressed my body into the mattress and hovered over me, every muscle that was hiding under his exposed skin defining them as he kept himself hovering above me.

“We should stop.” I breathed, my legs shaking as I thought about what another kiss like that could lead too.

Jon simply stared at me, his big brown eyes holding mine for a few minutes before he lowered himself down and placed his lips softly on mine. Holding them there for a minute, he pulled away, kissed my forehead, and then dropped his body next to mine; snaking his arms around my waist and pulling me into him.

Laying there in utter silence, letting our erratic breathing start to drop back to a normal rhythm, I felt Jon press his head against my shoulder. Swallowing hard, I looked up at the ceiling, running my eyes over the pennants and posters of hockey teams that he had idolized when he was younger. Feeling the shake start to leave my body, I looked over at the cork board hanging over his dresser and felt my heart flutter when I noticed that seven out of the twelve pictures still stuck there were of Jon and I.

“I’m sorry it took me so long to do that.” Jon breathed, his voice raspy and cracking half way through the sentence. I could feel the tension running through his body as he held me. I knew that he was just as worried as I was about what that had just done to us. I hoped that he wondered if it was too soon. I hoped that he kind of regretted it like I did.

Blinking hard, I shrugged one shoulder and then looked over at him, his eyes wide and filled to the brim with worry. “It was only a kiss.” I whispered and watched as the boy quickly dropped his eyes from me and nodded.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” I could heard the defeat in his voice.