PROLOGUE

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SHE WAS NERVOUS. And that's just to put it mildly. The knots that formed and tightened in her stomach, the condensation of sweat collecting in the palms of her hands, an almost suffocating weight sitting on her lungs, making it hard for her to breathe. She readjusted her fingers along the edge of the box she was holding, tightening her grip. Her parents trailed down the long hallway behind her, and in their hands were a plethora of boxes full of her belongings.

It was move-in day for the University of Michigan, and the start of Anastasia's first year at college. So, of course she was nervous.

The door to her assigned dorm room was slightly cracked when she arrived, making the girl furrow her eyebrows. Anastasia nudged the door open with her hip, the hinges of the door making an excruciating groaning sound. The girl that was sitting atop of an uncovered mattress moved her attention from her phone to Anastasia at the noise, a smile ghosting over her full lips.

She uncrossed her legs and hopped down from the bed, and walked over to her, taking the box from her hands and setting in on the mattress she just came from, "Oh my god, Stassie!" the girl squealed, practically jumping in excitement towards the nervous girl. She let her eyes analyze the enthusiastic girl that stood in front of her; a pair of mid length Nike shorts adorned her thighs, along with an oversized t-shirt that swallowed her frame. The sunlight that brightly shined through the windows of their dorm room soaked into her dark brown skin. She had missed her best friend.

Anastasia let out a small chuckle at Lola, before she jumped into her open arms, and wrapped her legs around her waist, while she buried her head in her friend's neck. "Holy shit, I missed you Lo," she breathed in Lola's vanilla scent, which almost instantly calmed her eager and buzzing nerves. She brought her legs down from her friend's waist, and placed a chaste kiss on her soft cheek.

Lola and Anastasia had been best friends since the eighth grade, when both of them didn't understand what and how the quadradic function worked. And ever since then, they had been each other's rock, comforting the other when a boy broke their heart, or sharing excitement when Lola finally lost her virginity; Anastasia's still working on that one. So when they found out they both got accepted into the University of Michigan, the two couldn't be more ecstatic. Even though they're both majoring in two completely different things, Lola being musical performance and Anastasia sports medicine, they still knew the one thing they wanted to do:

Be the athletic trainers for the hockey team.

Yes, it sounds random, but there's thoughts behind this elude decision.

You see, freshman year, the two girls were accidentally placed in a sophomore level class, they made friends with this guy named Mark Estapa, who was the first one to question their placement in the class. And since then, the group of three became an inseparable trio. The girls went to every one of his hockey games, even when he graduated high school and began playing for Michigan, they continued to commute back and forth just watch their best friend play.

Anastasia remembers Mark's first game as a wolverine, and the text she received quickly after the third period ended,

mark🧸
You & lo meet me at the locker room entrance

stassie😜
where tf is that

mark🧸
Just stfu and meet me there

So with an annoyed sigh she showed Lola the conversation between her and Mark, who also shared an annoyed expression. Their friend was so needy. The two girls ventured off to the ground floor of the arena, their jaws open slightly as they stared at the building around them in awe, and the sheer fact that their friend had made it here, they were proud of him, and if you asked, both of them would deny the tears that threatened to leave their eyes when Mark first took the ice.

Anastasia screamed as a large body engulfed her and lifted her off the ground. She made eye contact with Lola who just held a dopey smile on her lips at the sight in front of her, so Stassie knew she wasn't in any trouble for still being in the arena after the game was well over. "Mark, if you don't put me down right now I swear to god," she felt the vibrations of his laughter against her back, as her feet were placed back on the ground.

She turned around, to be faced with a sweaty Mark, who was still in his hockey uniform, a bright smile on his lips, just happy to see his best friends after a month away at college. "Or what, Stassie? You gonna rip my dick off?" He teased, as he walked over to Lola and practically buried her body with all of his pads. Anastasia couldn't help but smile at the sight of Lola's burning cheeks.

Lola had always had a thing for Mark for as long as Stassie could remember. A few things had happened between them; stolen kisses here and there, a few make out sessions that had been interrupted before anything could progress further, but nothing official. It was like a mutual agreement between them, but Anastasia hoped that her two friends will eventually end up together.

Mark placed a quick kiss on Lola's forehead as she pulled away, and Anastasia couldn't help but nudge her with her shoulder when she returned to her side. Lola gave her friend a look that read 'don't even think about it' before she turned back around to face Mark. She sighed loudly, crossing her arms across her chest in annoyance. It wasn't that she wasn't happy to see her best friend who's been off at college for the past month, it's just that she was tired and wanted to get off of her feet. "Okay not that it's not amazing to see you and you're adorable smile," Anastasia watched as his smile got impossibly bigger at her words. "But why are we here?" "'Cause I wanted you to come meet the boys,"

The two girls shared a look that could be determined as judgement. "There's no way that you just said 'the boys'," Lola teased, bringing her fingers up in quotation marks. He disregarded their playful banter, as he walked towards the girls to stand behind them, and started nudging them towards the closed doors of the locker room. The girls started up in a protest, saying things along the lines of 'it'll smell like shit in there' and 'I don't wanna see naked boys' but Mark paid no mind to them, having already spoken to his teammates not to get changed yet because he wanted to introduce them to some people.

He opened the doors to the locker room, and placed his hands along the girls' waists.

God, Anastasia hoped she didn't have to meet every single fucking person in this room.

To be honest, exhaustion started to set in the second they stepped foot into the locker room, the space being filled with sweaty bodies, some still clad in their full hockey padding, some just without their jerseys, and some who were just parading around shirtless. I mean, not that Anastasia was complaining; by this point in the school year, she had already known that she had gotten accepted into the University of Michigan, and what she planned to do with her life. But who could blame her for checking out some of the bare torsos that were surrounding her and Lola?

Her attention was startled from her thoughts when she felt Mark's hand tighten its grip around her waist. "Lo, Stassie, I'd like you to meet Luke, Dylan, Mackie, and Ethan." He gestured his free hand to the four men that sat in front of them. When Lola moved to stand directly at her side, Anastasia didn't know. But all she knew was that she was grateful for the comfort that just Lola's presence provided her.

It was weird, that she was nervous. She was surrounded by both of her best friends, but she was meeting new people- which always made some type of anxiety boil in her stomach. So for her, it wasn't an unusual feeling.

She made eye contact with each of the guys that were sitting in front of them, offering a small quirk of the corner of her mouth, being too tired to offer up a full-blown smile. Luke, Dylan, Mackie and Ethan.

It was like a scene out of a movie. The unusual was the feeling of blood rushing to her cheeks, and her body temperature rising. She mentally cursed herself when her breath caught in her throat, knowing damn well that Lola, who stood impossibly close to her heard. Anastasia's mouth ran dry, and a fluttering feeling appeared in her lower abdomen.

Her hearing was as well as dead, given then fact that all of the blood in her body had seemingly rushed into her head, flooding her senses, and making her unusually dizzy feeling. But her dimmed out hearing did happen to pick up Lola's low chuckle, that she disguised as a laugh.

Ethan was leaned back in his fold-up chair, his hands hooked behind his hands as his legs were spread wide. His hockey gear was put up in the locker behind him, his jersey looked like it had fallen from the back of his chair, and was piled up on the floor behind him, but he paid no mind. His torso was clad in nothing but a thin, white t-shit, the cotton material of is being slightly damp due to the game he has just played. His hair, well good God, his hair was probably her favorite thing about this man whose name she had already forgotten. It laid across his forehead, its light brown color shining in the florescent lights. His skin- olive and covered in a thin layer of sweat. And holy shit, Anastasia thought she was going to pass out in that very moment.

Lola's lips tightened up in a smile, as she nudged her friend's hip, who stood star-struck-like beside her. "Stassie," she whispered teasingly. Anastasia wasn't a ditzy type of girl, so she was cursing herself like no other at the way she was behaving.

"What?" She responded, annoyance obvious in her tone. Mark moved his arm that was on her waist and slung it around her shoulders, his laughter making her look up at him with furrowed eyebrows, and a small pout on her lips. "I said, 'meet Luke, Dylan, Mackie, and Ethan'." Of course she had heard him before. But, to her dismay, Mark stepped forwards towards the seated boys, his arm still around Anastasia, and whispered, "She's a bit shy." Like a father excusing his child's behavior.

This made Anastasia's cheeks flush an even brighter shade of pink, her jaw dropping as she slapped Mark's chest in protest, "I am not!" She tried to act annoyed, but she couldn't help the smile that was tugging at the corner of her lips.

Mark brought her into his chest, enveloping her into a suffocating hug. It was almost like he was trying to embarrass her.

When she broke free from his grip, she stood a little closer to Lola, in hopes that he wouldn't dare to try anything else. Anastasia and Lola gave the four boys a tight lipped smile.

The feeling of the back of her knees hitting the wooden bed frame of her bed cause her to break from her thoughts.

She sat down on the thin dorm room mattress with a loud sigh. Holy shit, she was a college student. The sound of other students walking up and down the hallway was easily heard given the open door to their room, but neither of them cared, both of them too buzzed on the excitement of finally getting moved in for their first year.

Lola walked up and sat next to Anastasia on her uncovered mattress, "Have you texted him?" Her voice was small, almost as if she was scared that if she were to speak any louder, she would summon him. "Who?" Anastasia questioned, quirking her head to the side, a rouge piece of hair falling on her forehead from her bun. "You know who," she urged on, nudging her with her shoulder.

Anastasia shrugged her shoulders, "I really don't. I mean you could be talking about Mark, or my dad, or Luke or-" "I'm talking about Ethan you dumb shit." Lola said harshly, although a teasing undertone let her know that she was only joking.

Even at just the sound of his name made a fluttering feeling appear in her stomach, and her cheeks blush a faint shade of pink, making her freckles show more than usual. "No, I haven't texted him," she tried to play off her words nonchalantly, by going on her phone and scrolling through all the endless Snapchat stories of their high school friends moving into their colleges as well. "Why would I?" She shrugged.

Lola let out a huff, "Hmm I don't know, probably because you guys basically sexted all summer." She was overdramatic with her words, but she knew she pretty much got her point across.

Ever since that Saturday night last December, the two of them had been texting back and forth. Whether it be iMessage games, random thoughts, or the nightly rants they would tell each other, she always looked forward to seeing his name pop up on her phone. Even if it was just a snapchat notification, it never failed to make her stomach erupt in butterflies.

They had been each other's number one on Snapchat for two months now.

Now yes, Stassie knows that it sounds childish, and immature. It was just texting and snapping back and forth for crying out loud– but everything that had to do with Ethan just felt so much more intense, even if it was just words in a screen. They never spoke when Mark had introduced them, given the fact that Anastasia was scared about the fact that if she were to say anything, she would just vomit on the floor.

So here she is, about to start her freshman year of college with her best friends at her side, both literally and on the ice. She wishes to pursue a career in sports medicine, and thank God for Mark for scoring places for her and Lola to be the hockey team's athletic trainers. But a pit couldn't help but form in her stomach, out of nervousness or excitement, Anastasia couldn't tell. All she knew was that she couldn't help but be excited to see that stupid smile again.

AUTHORS NOTE

never in my life would i imagine writing a book for a COLLEGE HOCKEY PLAYER. but what can i say😜

so a little back story, all of the versions of the umich hockey team are my own personal versions of them, and how i want them to be betrayed in my book. also for the sake of the readers, the ocs are 19 and the sophs are 20-21! just to clear things up

hope you guys are excited 😈