Breaking The Ice

Out Loud

TJ's POV

"Teej, just pick something or we're gonna get locked in here and spend Christmas at Santa's fake North Pole." Harry scoffed, motioning to the line up of kids waiting to see Santa at the mall.

"Will you quit nagging me and just help me. I don't know them the way you do." I said, running out of patience.

Tomorrow was Christmas eve and I'd practically dragged him to the mall so that I could get presents for his family, obviously not about to show up empty handed on Christmas morning after they'd so graciously invited me to spend the holidays with them. But as usual, Harry was making things difficult with his lack of understanding for why I would even get them anything, giving me shit the entire time.

"Well none of it would matter if you just listened to me in the first place and didn't make me come here two days before Christmas and practically fight for my life through all this madness."

"And we could get out of here a hell of a lot faster if you just stopped complaining and helped." I said, raising my eyebrow, earning an overdramatic sigh from him as he threw his arm around my neck.

"Alright, fine." He finally surrendered. "Who you got left?"

"Your dad and your uncle." I said, glad to see we might actually be getting somewhere.

"Okay, golf stuff it is." Harry chuckled as he led me toward the other end of the mall.

I was just as eager to get out of there as he was, considering I'd had my Christmas shopping done months ago, and I'd been able to find things pretty quickly for his Mom, Lulu and Kate, but I also didn't just want to grab something for the sake of it. I actually wanted to get them things they'd like and it was pretty difficult since I didn't know them that well.

"Are you sure they even like golf?" I asked Harry as we entered the sporting goods store and began looking around.

"Uncle Mike is obsessed with it." He nodded. "Picked it up a few years ago, and Dad hasn't been able to go as much lately but he loves a good game once in a while."

The two of us browsed the shelves in the golf section as I tried to figure out what half of the stuff even was, knowing I was gonna need Harry to basically pick something for me because I had no idea about anything when it came to golf. We'd kind of wandered off in our own directions, looking for anything that caught our eye, when I turned the corner to one of the aisles and heard his voice talking to someone.

"Yeah, just trying to find something for my dad and Uncle." He said, and I smiled to myself as I heard the distinctly flirty voice of the sales girl as she responded.

"Do you play golf?"

"Sometimes, but not really. I'm a hockey player, don't have much time for anything else." He said, sounding like he was reading a label on something and not paying much attention.

"Hockey, huh? That makes sense, you look like you're in pretty good shape." She giggled, and I rolled my eyes at her.

"Thanks." He said politely, not really giving her much else to go on.

"I feel like I've seen you somewhere before." She tried again.

"Maybe." He said non-chalantly. "Small college town."

"Do you live on campus?" She asked, and I decided we didn't have time to dilly dally, so I turned the corner to find him standing there looking at some box, completely oblivious, while she twirled her hair and gazed up at him.

I couldn't help the smile that crossed my face at the sight, she was so obviously flirting with him and he could barely be bothered to look at her, but I couldn't tell if he was just distracted in what he was reading or if he genuinely hadn't realized.