The crowd watched and waited for the young couple on the screen to notice they’d been chosen, but my brain was already in strategy mode for when we popped up.
Becauseof coursewe would.
The cameras had already panned to us multiple times since the game started, though I wasn’t sure if Duffy had noticed or not. She gotveryinto the game, so her eyes were almost always fixated on the puck (while her mouth was always moving).
I fucking loved it.
But I didn’t want our first kiss to be on the big screen with the world watching.
With her kissing me because the camera was telling us to.
I didn’t know if I was ever going to get the opportunity to kiss Duffy Distefano for real because I still hadn’t figured out if I even had a shot with her, but I had zero interest in participatingin a jumbotron-pressured version of what that could possibly look like.
But I also didn’t want to leave her hanging.
Everyone fuckinghatedthe assholes who refused to kiss on the kiss cam.
Duffy didn’t need the hate, and she definitely didn’t need the public to think I didn’twantto kiss her.
Just as I was working through all the bullshit buzzing around in my brain, it happened.
We popped up on the screen.
Duffy and Connor on the kiss cam.
After her initial shock, she glanced over at me, her smile fake and nervous, and she swallowed.
I didn’t know what she’d want—hell, I didn’t really knowherat all in the overall scheme of things—but I knew I needed to do something.
So I reached out my arm, pulled her close into more of a headlock than any sort of embrace, where she was trapped in the crook of my elbow, and I speed-planted kisses all over the top of her head in a manner that was more playful than anything.
It wasn’t romantic, but technically Iwaskissing her.
And the way she immediately started cackling and squirming made me feel like I’d done the right thing. I breathed a sigh of relief as the camera switched over to another couple.
“You,” she said as she giggled and pulled back to look at me, “are ridiculous.”
“I know,” I said, raising my hands helplessly.“And I’m sorry if I was out of line with—”
“No, I get it,” she said, giving me a smile that made me feelsome fucking way. Warm, maybe? It made me want to do all the good things, just to get her to smile at me like that again. “And it was perfect.”
I just gazed at her for a second like an absolute buffoon, no words at the ready because I got tripped up in her sparkling brown eyes squinted in joy.
What were words when eyes smiled that way?
I cleared my throat.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
“Do you need another beer?” I asked, thinking a trip to the concession stand was probably a good idea right about now.
She glanced down at her can, lifting it a little to judge its weight. “I will soon,so yes, please.”
“Be right back.”
I tried clearing my head as I left to fetch beer, but getting away was impossible because for starters, people wanted to joke about what just happened on-screen. I walked by no less than ten people who teasingly said things like “Nice work on the kiss cam, Cunningham,” which just kept my mind on her pink cheeks and laughing eyes.
I couldn’t escape my irrationally romantic thoughts of her.