Shredding Ice

chapter four

Harding was going to go insane.

"I think it's kind of cool, but Amelia always tells me not to bring it up because it's inappropriate to mention nipple piercings in public. But I basically had boobs—they were so infected."

Sunny—he had told every person on the hockey team his name, individually—wouldn't shut up. Not for a single second.

The team had thrown a fit when they arrived at the rink and people were already on it. They had gotten there when the sun was barely in the sky, and they still wouldn't get smooth ice. Plus, they had to share with figure skaters. If it weren't for Sunny, Harding would have thought the situation couldn't possibly get worse.

The older man had quickly decided to ignore him. He was fully geared up, pads covering almost all of his front. His large body took up a large portion of the net behind him. His eyes darted all around at the circling players in front of him, ready for any shot from any of the pucks being passed around the ice.

"They went all purple too. I basically soaked them in hydrogen peroxide, which was definitely a bad idea; it hurt more than the time I broke my wrist when I was eight. I fell off the monkey bars at the park on my own birthday." Sunny jumped seamlessly into a toe loop, landing smoothly with one leg in the air behind him. "My cast was this super pretty blue that I absolutely loved. I made sure everyone at school signed it, and my parents, and the neighborhood kids, and their parents. Oh, and my doctor."

Harding grunted when he missed another shot, the puck barrelling into the back of the net. He glanced enviously to the other side of the rink, where Sunny's coach was working quietly with the other figure skater.

"Anyway, I had to take the piercing out and the holes ended up closing before my nipples could heal. I got them pierced again a month later though, so I guess it was fine. Now I have a fun story to tell when I'm in the locker room at school or at competitions, or when I go to the beach or the pool."

A puck whizzed by Harding's skate, sliding easily into the net.

"I actually got those pierced before my ears, which I guess is a bit backwards for a lot of people, most I know got their ears done first but it's not like I'm the only one to do it that way. But yeah, I got my ears pierced about four months after I redid my nipples, and luckily those didn't get infected."

Another puck.

"I was a lot better at cleaning those because huge earlobes didn't sound fun at all; don't you think it would be annoying to have weights hanging from your ears? I mean, not earrings, I choose light ones of those, but I bet they would have been super heavy if they got infected."

Harding spun so fast and stuck his skate into the ice so quickly that a small divot formed at his toe pick. "Shut up." He spoke through his teeth, trying not to attract too much attention. As if the goalie turning toward the net suddenly didn't get his teammates' attention. "I'm trying to focus. Keep your thoughts in your head, and leave me the hell alone."

He turned back to his teammates, giving a group of them a nod when he noticed lifting brows and pursed lips.

"Sorry, did I annoy you?"

Holy hell.

"Amelia is better at noticing when I do that. Just a couple days ago she pulled me away from the janitor—have you seen him? The red head?" Sunny did a series of turns, lowering his body until he was sitting on the heel of one foot and reaching to the other in front of him. "I think we're friends now, but I don't know his name. When we first met, he fell down the stairs and we had this whole conversation about cleaning and dangerous floors. But then Amelia dragged me away; she said I should talk to him when he wasn't doing his work so I did yesterday before my practice."