The Risk

After hockey practice, Jake receives an Instagram message from Brenna asking to meet. Intrigued, he agrees, and they meet at a coffee shop. Brenna explains her disastrous interview with Mulder and confesses that she lied about being Jake’s girlfriend to save her internship prospects. She reveals that Mulder has invited them, as a couple, to a dinner party that Friday. Brenna asks Jake to pretend to be her boyfriend for one night and attend the party. Jake agrees to the “fake date” but on one condition: Brenna must go on one real date with him in return. Left with little choice, Brenna reluctantly accepts his deal.

Brenna receives a troubling phone call from her ex-boyfriend Eric, who sounds high and asks her for money, a request she denies. Her day worsens when she returns to her basement apartment to discover that it has been flooded by a storm, ruining most of her furniture. Her landlords inform her that the cleanup will take at least a week. 

With nowhere else to go, Brenna is forced to move back in with her father, Chad. Their relationship is strained and awkward, and his comments about her past mistakes make it clear that he no longer trusts her.

On Friday night, Summer calls Brenna, recounting how Rupi turned up at her house and forced Mike to go out on a date with her. They laugh together, agreeing that Mike “needs to feel what it’s like to be harassed” (127). Brenna claims to be going on a Tinder date, unwilling to admit that her date is Jake.

When Jake picks Brenna up, he comments on her pink lip gloss, stating that he prefers her trademark red lipstick. Brenna responds sarcastically while privately admitting that the pink doesn’t suit her. She chose it hoping that a more natural look would make Mulder take her seriously. 

Brenna and Jake arrive at Mulder’s Beacon Hill home for the dinner party. The other guests include Oilers defenseman Theo “Nils” Nilsson and his wife, Lena. Almost immediately, the men separate themselves to discuss hockey, leaving Brenna feeling excluded with the other women. Noticing her frustration, Jake deliberately pulls her into the men’s conversation. Nils agrees with her points and tells her that she knows her hockey, but Mulder condescendingly dismisses it as “cute.” He then lewdly misinterprets Jake’s earnest defense of Brenna’s “talents.”

Throughout dinner, Mulder continues his rude and sexist behavior toward both his wife and Brenna. To calm Brenna, Jake places a hand on her thigh under the table. After the meal, Mulder suggests that the men retire to his den for drinks, and Jake accepts. 

After the party, Brenna is furious with Jake for abandoning her. Recognizing his mistake, Jake takes her to a nearby pub, O’Malley’s, so that they can have a drink and talk through the disastrous evening. At O’Malley’s, Jake apologizes for his behavior. He slides into her side of the booth and says he wants to kiss her.

Brenna and Jake share a passionate kiss. Before they leave, Jake insists that their drink at the pub doesn’t count as the “real” date she promised him. Brenna agrees to go on an actual date with him the following night. 

The next morning, Brenna has another tense conversation with her father when he criticizes her for coming home late. Brenna questions him about his long-standing rivalry with Harvard’s coach, Daryl Pedersen, but he only reveals that Pedersen always played “dirty” and encourages his players to do the same.

Brenna visits Summer and her boyfriend, Fitz. Mike complains that Rupi is “crazy,” but he has agreed to a second date with her. Brenna claims that she intends to spend the evening doing homework.

For their date, Jake chooses a bowling alley located halfway between their respective towns. Brenna borrows her father’s Jeep, claiming that she’s meeting a “friend.” Jake drives his teammate Brooks’s Mercedes. Brenna warns Jake that she’s a terrible bowler, but she’s in a playful mood. To tease him, she enters his name on the electronic scoreboard as “Little Jakey.” Despite her lack of skill, Brenna has a genuinely good time and enjoys Jake’s company.

Jake easily beats Brenna in three games of bowling while they flirt continuously. During their conversation, Brenna reveals that she never had penetrative sex with her previous boyfriend, Josh, because she’s “picky” about who she sleeps with. 

After bowling, they go to the backseat of the car and begin an intense make-out session. When Jake pushes for more, Brenna tells him that he has to “earn” sex with her. He brings her to orgasm manually, and just as she’s about to reciprocate, a phone call interrupts them. She ends the night but agrees when Jake asks to see her again.

By Wednesday, Brenna still hasn’t heard from HockeyNet and continues to live unhappily with her father. During a long phone call with Jake, he shares a story about sleeping with a teammate’s mother in high school, an incident that cost him one of his best friends.

Later, Brenna and Summer go to a bar, Malone’s, where they meet up with Briar teammates Mike, Nate, and Hunter Davenport. They learn that Hunter has angered Coach Jensen by bringing a girl into the team’s locker room. The evening takes a turn when they discover that Harvard players have covered teammate Jesse Wilkes’s car in whipped cream and left a note taunting them about the upcoming finals. Jesse wants to retaliate, but the Briar team captain, Nate, insists that they should rise above it.

Later that night, Jake unexpectedly arrives at Brenna’s house, throwing rocks at her window to get her attention. To avoid being caught by her father, Jake climbs a drainpipe to enter her second-story bedroom. He explains that two of his sophomore teammates were responsible for the whipped-cream prank and promises to handle it. The atmosphere soon grows intimate as Brenna reveals that her “bad” teenage choices strained her relationship with her father. Because of her poor high-school grades, she spent two years in community college before Briar accepted her. Jake reveals that he spends his summers clam diving with his grandfather to pay his college expenses. They begin making out on her bed.

Brenna performs oral sex on Jake, which escalates into mutual oral sex. The noise they make alerts Brenna’s father, who comes to her closed bedroom door and demands to know who is inside, alluding to a past incident involving Brenna’s secretive behavior. After dressing, Brenna has a tense argument with Chad in the hallway and convinces him to leave. Shaken by the near-discovery, Brenna tells Jake that their relationship is too complicated and must end. She dismisses their time together as “a successful fling” and, despite his protests, insists that he leave immediately (204).