The Hockey Guy

Chapter One

My name's Lilly. There's not much to know about me other than I'm a senior in high school living in a shitty town. My town consists of 11,000 people who own white picket fences and golden retrievers. Nothing wrong with white picket fences or golden retrievers, but seeing the same people day by day for the past eighteen years of my life can become a little dry. I craved variety, something new to happen in my life. Which was hard to get when your mom tracks your phone every five seconds and you have a grand total of ten dollars in your bank account.

It was a regular, Thursday afternoon. The Christmas season was up and coming as Thanksgiving had just came and went. I babysit for a living. I hate children. Well, I like to put up a persona I hate children. In reality I love them. I quit my shitty job at a shitty ice cream shop just so I could drive eight year olds around and watch them for six hours a shift. I was sitting in math class, attempting to ignore everyone sitting behind me and talking to one of my friends about when the next time we will be able to drink alcohol. I don't have many friends. I have a shit ton at school, people who I can talk to and not hate, but friends who I see outside of school and spill all of my complete and utter shit to? I have only four. I have a best friend. She's gorgeous and I'm the mediocre friend with pretty eyes. I've never been the type of girl who put herself out there. I'm sure I could have managed to score a couple guys here and there if I put my mind to it, but I could have never been bothered to do so.

As my friend was talking about our plans for the following weekend, I got a text from an unknown number. It was from a mom, who was mutual friends with my parent's friends, who wanted me to babysit for her children. Nothing struck my eye. I got text messages like these all the time. I babysit for an entire friend group of mom's, I swear they duke it out for me sometimes. The text was lengthy so I got distracted by the conversation I was half partaking in. My mind focused back and I continued to read her text. Three kids. Ages varying from 6 to 8. Housing an eighteen year old hockey player. Would like to meet me next week.

Wait.

What.

My brain jolted back to "We house an 18 year old hockey player".  My eyebrows crinkled in confusion. Why would they need me when they have a teenager living with them? Not going to lie, I was pretty fucking stoked when I read that. Who the hell knows what this is? I don't. And I fucking love that. I was praying for something to happen in my slow paced life. I quickly texted the mom back, saying that I was available one week from now to meet her and her family. And their "adoptive" hockey player.

After math, I didn't think much about that text.

...

The weekend came and my liver was prepped for some damage. I eat extremely healthy during the week and walk into school with green smoothies just so I can drink my body weight in alcohol on the weekend. I call it balance.

All my friends and some others sat in the basement of the friend from math class. I was three beers in and already asking people if I was ugly. Some of my friends don't enjoy drinking and stick to smoking weed. In my personal opinion, weed is not my favorite extracurricular activity in the world. My feet propped up on the table, I take a swig of the watered down cup of vodka my friend gave to me. They always do that. Water down my vodka. Idiots don't think I realize. I groggily mention to everyone the text I received in math class. Once everyone heard that a hockey boy was involved they all decided to pay attention. The guys in the room diverted their attention to the joint being passed around.

Let me describe my friends to you. There's not much to know about them. Sydney is my best friend. I've known her since I was five. We became friends because neither of us had any. She enjoys partying, more than me, and is what you can describe as "popular". I'm the uglier friend, we all know it. Alice is the quiet one, but boy is she fucking sassy. Her personality is amazing once you actually talk to her, which is very rare if you're not friends with her. Alice doesn't drink or smoke, which I'm thankful for when it's time to finesse my drunk ass a ride home. Alice is someone who I can say I relate to most in my small group of friends, our personalities are quite similar, except for the part where I enjoy talking to new people. Lucy is weird. Lucy looks a lot like me, people always mistake us as sisters, more so than her actual sisters. She likes to talk, but is awkward. Her and I enjoy making fun of ourselves together. She's the person I call at midnight when I want food from a diner or want to drive down to the beach for a day and get drunk. She'll get drunk with me. I probably hangout the most with her; Lucy may be weird, but I always have a good ass time when I'm with her. Abbie is someone who I'm not so close with, we recently became friends because of Lucy. She's loud and confident, it always seems that her and I never mesh very well, but I don't mind her. We can keep a conversation together and I'm fine with that.

Alice, who observes everyone all the time, was the only one who heard me at first and asked me to repeat what I said. Once everyone was attentive, I explained to them my situation. They were all excited for me. Abbie told me that she can cover for me whenever I'm not available to babysit for them, that one made me roll my eyes. But I always roll my eyes so nothing is new. We all talked about what could possibly come out of this until we got bored of the subject. I ended the conversation with saying much will probably not end up happening. Whoever this guy is, he will not talk to me and I will not talk to him. Nothing bad about having something to look at while I attempt to manage three hyperactive children.

Alice drove home early so I decided to walk home, which was protested by many of my guy friends in the room. It wasn't far. I'd be fine. As I began walking in the cold, dark street, I thought about this hockey guy I knew nothing about. This is kind of like a book, right? When does this ever happen to someone, a teenage guy stays at the house they babysit for? This situation can either not affect me, turn out to be drastically horrible, or drastically amazing.

And I have no idea which one I was hoping would happen.

A hockey guy, I thought, I smirked to myself as I messily walked onto the sidewalk.

Can't wait.