the first one • j. hughes

12

Age 14:

I didn't get how he did it. It was freezing. Crisp late December air bit at my face. Jack didn't seem to even notice the fact that it was as if you took the heat of hell and replaced it with cold. All he did was keep shooting pucks into the net set up in front of the garage.

"Hey," I said after a few minutes of watching. "The moms are thinking of doing a movie night tonight. Requests are open."

He nodded in response. Barely spared me a glance at first. That's when most people would have left him alone. I didn't though. I shoved my hands further into my pockets and huffed a puff of white breath into the air.

Eventually, his little pile of pucks was all in the net. Well, a few weren't from when he tried getting a bit too risky on the shots. He collected them up back to their original pile in front of the net. For a few moments, he stared at the net practically motionless.

"Come over here," he said so quickly I worried I'd imagined it.

I frowned. "What?"

"Come here." He turned to me and I instantly plastered on a toothy grin. I'd gotten my braces off not too long before and couldn't stop showing them off. A smile threatened to spread on his focused face. "Let me show you how to shoot."

"Quinn tried that a few years ago and it didn't work very well. Remember? It managed to bounce off the post and right back at my stomach and I had a bruise for the longest time."

That made him return my smile. "Well, I'm not Quinn. Come on."

If he hadn't been weirdly quiet that whole day, I wouldn't have done it. I was worried though and he was actually talking. It left me with one option. My feet crunched off of the snow and into the shoveled driveway. Jack held the stick out for me to take.

Hockey was never my thing. Once you got past the skating aspect, I sucked. No matter how much I tried I never got anything down that was actually hockey. Something in the way Jack was looking at me made me feel this would be the thing to fix it. He was the only one who never tried to teach me one on one.

"There ya go," he joked as I took it from him. "More than one hand should be on there. You know that much."

"Shut up," I mumbled, still listening to him and dragging a puck away from its buddies and lining up a shot.

Jack cleared his throat. He was pressing a hand to his mouth in a similar way that Jimmy did when a game was going bad. I try to change up my stance and hold a bit. That made his brows furrow so I went back to my original grip. He dropped his hands entirely.

"Prez."

"I'm trying my best," I said, a bite to it.

He matched my tone. "Your best isn't very good."

"You're a bad teacher!" I attempted to snap the puck in and to say the least it didn't work. "Whatever. I'm going inside where it's warm and there's soup and—"

Jack didn't let me finish my rant. He walked behind me. His hands held onto my shoulders while he gently kicked at both of my feet to get me to move them where they apparently should have been. I'll admit, the improvement was pretty instant. Much less awkward.

He stepped closer. Practically with his front against my back. But, there was still some space. Jack took a shaky breath in and I frowned to myself. Why did he seem nervous? It made no sense back then. He reached around me, taking my hands and adjusting them to be right. Then he stuck around.

Snow crunching closer to us made me look up. Luke. Luke who I knew had a crush on me at the time. Luke who I never wanted to hurt even inadvertently. I'd already felt slightly guilty when I told him about my boyfriend. How would he feel about seeing his brother this close to me?

"You get how to shoot it," Jack said. He must have known about Luke's feelings too because he backed up farther than he was before closing that space between us.

Luke held back a laugh watching me get ready. "Let's see it, Ken. Remember it goes in the net."

"You're not funny."

I shot the puck and immediately closed my eyes. Didn't want to see if I failed or not. Luke and Jack burst into cheers, giving me my answer. Sure enough, when I opened my eyes, the puck was in the net. I think I literally jumped a few times. I know I spun around and went ahead and gave Jack a huge hug.

When I turned to celebrate with Luke too, he was practically glowering. His eyes were narrowed only slightly. Nose a bit scrunched upward. Something you could only notice if you knew how his nose looked relaxed. He had gotten a lot better at hiding his emotions on his face. A thing our dads had always pushed on all of us to at least learn.

I smiled. Straight teeth and all. "Luke, your turn. Teach me something."

"What could I even teach you?" He asked. Though his hardened gaze melted.

"How about..." I started walking toward him and, instinctually, he began to back away. "How about you teach me how to fight like a real hockey player?"

"No," he said. "Not happening."

From behind me, Jack shouted, "Get him, Prez!"

That's all it took for me to chase after my best friend. He was taller and his legs were longer. Not to mention he was faster than me even if you took those advantages out. Eventually, I caught up to him and tackled him into the snow. There's multiple videos of it somewhere. One from Jack's point of view, the other out of the kitchen window by Ellen.

Except only Jack's has the part where Luke picked snow up and threw it in my face. He used that as a distraction to practically launch me off of him. At least it felt like he launched me. I only really ended up landing hard on my back next to him. Yet again, my attempt at getting better at one of their dumb sports ended with me bruised.