I’m mashing my back molars together, and my hands are curled into fists in my lap, like I’m going to start throwing punches. That would be bad.

“I was thinking we could go to my place, if you’d like, after we get some food. Unless you want us to cook.”

I glance over at him, surprised, eyebrows temporarily leaving my forehead to hit the roof of Jesse’s car. “I can barely boil an egg. I don’t think cooking is a good idea.”

Jesse mulls this over. “I have some steaks in the fridge. I can make some gravy and baked potatoes with sour cream.”

He had me at ‘steaks in the fridge’.

“Yeah, yeah, I wanna go to your house. On the double.” I slap the dash with my hand to indicate the utmost haste.

And he laughs, finally. It gets me all warm inside, enough that I have to put down the window to get some fresh air cooling the heat in my cheeks. That’s right, I, Maddie Chase, made Jesse Windmeier laugh when he’s totally down in the dumps. Where’s my gold medal and signing bonus cheque? Where!?

Obviously, Jesse’s house is beautiful (yup, an actual house and not a condo like I thought), in North London where shit is even more crazy expensive, but it has its own charm. It’s there, nestled between two other houses, so very different to the house I grew up in—mine had a front yard, a back yard and a swimming pool for the three or four months we call summer in Canada. This is as far as you get without him living in a penthouse unit.

Jesse pulls into his garage, parking the car, and undoing his seatbelt, waiting for the garage door to close behind him like he’s expecting someone to come in and mob him so he doesn’t get out of the locked car first.

Huh.

“Come on in,” he says, as soon as the edge of the garage door hits cement and he gets out of the car, activating motion-sensored lights that practically blind me from the darkness we were in seconds ago. Ouch. I follow him up the little steps that lead to a door that then leads into a mudroom complete with a washer/dryer, and the whole thing just strikes me as odd. Does Jesse do his laundry here, or does he pay someone to do that for him?

I feel weird about the staff doing my laundry for my kits back at the stadium, I couldn’t handle someone looking at my period panties and washing them. No, no, no. I shiver when I toe off my sneakers and carefully place my bag on the ground, like the dinginess of it is going to mar the beauty of the tile I’m currently standing on.

Jesse tilts his head, and I follow him out of the mudroom to the foyer and then into a sprawling kitchen, the like of which I’ve only ever seen on cooking shows where people do magic things like cut up ingredients and then transform them into a whole delicious-looking meal at the end of the show. Maybe Jesse likes to cook? Or does he have someone do that for him? Are we alone in here?

Did I just willingly come to his house so now he has the home-turf advantage?

Jesus, I can be dumb. But I can kick just as good with my left foot as I can with my right, and I know where to aim to cause some serious damage, and even with my injury, I could probably take him. I think. I’ll have to go for his eyes, though, and I’ve become partial to those eyes. They sort of light up when they look at me, and a girl can get used to that real quick, can fall for it, too.

“C’mon then. I’m going to put you to work.”

We prepare supper together. I cut the vegetables as best as I can to make a salad, and Jesse washes the potatoes and then puts them into a preheated oven after stabbing them with a fork. He whirls around his kitchen, while I have to ask where everything is because I’m not a raccoon, scavenging. My mom would hit me upside the head if she saw me doing something so impolite without asking for permission first.

The salad is not the prettiest to look at but doesn’t come out too bad, and my stomach howls when Jesse plates our steaks and takes the potatoes out of the oven, and we finally sit down to eat, sitting across from one another, both still in our after-training gear (consisting of joggers, and loose, long-sleeved shirts with the team’s logo plastered on the front) after we had showers at the complex.

“Thank you for having me. Bon appétit,” I say, palming my fork and knife.

Jesse smiles at me and digs in, making sure I cut into my steak first.

Everything’s super delicious and I might oversell it, but I swear to god, it’s the best food I’ve ever eaten in my entire life, maybe because I had a tiny hand in making it come to fruition. Maybe I should learn how to cook more. That would be cool, I guess, having Jesse over for a home-cooked meal. I bet he’s as exhausted of takeaway as I am. Home-cooked meals just hit differently.

“Do you want to tell me what’s got that frown on your face, or do you want to shelve it for later?” I ask, completely sated some forty minutes later, nursing my glass of sparkling water in small sips. I don’t know what to do now—fill the silence with meaningless conversation so I don’t have to sit here, feeling uncomfortable? I don’t like feeling uncomfortable, it’s shit.

Jesse slugs back his water, then gets up to get himself another glass from the fridge contraption, raising an eyebrow and tilting his head at me, which I take as him asking if I want some more water, too. I shake my head and bite my lip.

Is it time for me to leave now? Should I just get up and make my excuses? Look up the bus schedule on my phone and go back home to my empty apartment?

I don’t want to go home, not just yet.

But I don’t know what I’m doing here.

“Jesse, I want to talk to you about something important.” Jesus Christ, did I have to start it like that? That’s a break-up conversation starter, an ‘I’m sick’ conversation starter, not a conversation starter about feelings and how lost I am with all this. Honesty never killed anybody, it just apparently makes me dumb as a rock.

I hold my breath, then let it out in a long exhale when he comes back to the table, watching me watch him. I place my glass of water on the table and have both my hands on either side of my super empty plate with bits of gravy left over that I wish I could lick off if I didn’t want to make a good first impression. Ha.

I’m staring at my glass, and when I catch movement out of the corner of my eye, it’s to see Jesse moving towards my hand, and I turn my head to get a better look at what he’s doing. My heart starts to race, my palms start to sweat, but I’m stuck in place. He slowly grabs my hand, holding it in both of his like he’s cradling something precious, giving me time to pull away, to say something if I don’t accept his touch.

My hands aren’t pretty—I have calluses from working out, and I don’t have long, beautiful nails because I’m not allowed to play with them when they can act like weapons. I hardly ever wear any jewellery to adorn my fingers, and I crack my knuckles all the time. I’m not careful with my hands, and they’re not delicate. But the way he’s cradling my hand like that, I feel something giving way inside me, like that door I’ve locked my heart behind isn’t really being forced open but being slowly swung open—from the inside out.

My breath catches in my throat, and my palm burns where our skin makes contact.

I’m struck speechless.

“Is this all right?” Jesse asks, and I have no words, so I just nod at him, and he puts our hands down on the table, his thumb stroking some part on the back of my hand that has me practically melting.

I haven’t been touched in that way—ever. Sure, there was some fumbling back in high school when I made up my mind to sleep with a friend of a friend that looked like he might know what he was doing. He did not. And then I just never had the time, and I never made the time for those experiences. If I had to sacrifice something to be the best, to get to where I am now, that was it—having a normal experience with guys as I was growing up.

I’m not necessarily sensitive about it, because I hear the locker room talk, some of us are the same way as I am, and some of us have a steady relationship that they alternate between bitching about and squealing over, and I find myself envying even that kind of experience, sure.

I’m human.

I love that he asks me, too, because even though I’m freaking out, I’m freaking out in a good way.

I nod, and Jesse smiles at me, that special smile that feels like it belongs to me, and to me only.

And I know I’m cooked.