Chapter 21 Colt
Colt
“I’m sorry,” I start, after having carried Stella to my bed. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“What are you apologizing for, exactly?” she asks.
“For letting him see you when I should’ve covered you up? For settling an argument I had with him by using you? I don’t know, Stella. It was just a fucked-up thing for me to do.”
Ever since Stella and I started seeing each other, I’ve caught Beau looking at her, checking her out.
In the beginning, when he tried to ask her out all those weeks ago, I knew he was just messing with me.
Kind of. He’s a slut, and he owns it. If he likes what he sees, he’s going to try his damnedest to have it.
I think it’s one of the side effects of growing up rich.
He’s my best friend, but he’s used to getting what he wants.
As it went on, though, I think he was genuinely interested in her. She’s a total smoke show, I know, but it’s a shitty thing to do—crushing on your best friend’s girl.
I genuinely love Beau. He’s my brother. He’s not a perv or a creep. But he was pissing me off. Maybe he thought that Stella and I weren’t serious, and he had a chance with her later on. I’m not sure.
I confronted him about it, starting a huge argument.
He said I needed to break up with her, but wouldn’t give me a solid reason why.
I accused him of wanting her for himself, and he didn’t deny it.
He just kept telling me that he didn’t think she was good for me.
The whole thing blew out of proportion and led to him going and sleeping at Booker’s place.
He’s been gone ever since, and I genuinely didn’t expect him to show up tonight, or I never would’ve had Stella naked on the couch.
Once he walked through the door, though, I knew I had two choices. I could hide her from him and let him keep pining after her from afar. Which, I suspected, would probably just cause the rift in our friendship to grow.
My single-celled caveman brain decided that option number two was the better answer: show his stupid ass that she was mine. She’s not going anywhere. Period.
Stella saw him before I did. She didn’t try to cover herself from him. Her inner muscles even clenched around me. I’m not sure if she knew it was happening, but I felt a wave of moisture leak onto my fingers when he saw her.
After I explain all this to her, trying to sort my jumbled thoughts, she responds by saying, “You don’t have anything to apologize for. I—I liked it. I like it when you lose control, remember?” She crawls toward me on the bed, stopping where I sit on the edge.
I meet her eyes, reading that she’s genuinely okay with what just happened. “It’s not something we discussed doing,” I say.
“How am I supposed to know what I like until we try it?” she retorts with a playful half-smile.
“So, you’re telling me you’re into exhibitionism?” I gape at her.
“I wouldn’t go that far. But I’m into…you. You knew he was crossing a line, and you pushed him back into place. I would’ve stopped you if I didn’t want to do it.”
“Promise?” I ask.
“I promise,” she assures, climbing into my lap. She pushes me back so that I’m lying down, her naked body straddling my hips. “And I think we should pick up where we left off before we were interrupted.”
“Okay, seriously, you two need to get over whatever this shit is,” Booker says when I walk into the locker room before practice, not saying a word to Beau.
“I’m over it,” I reply coolly, opening my gear bag.
“Yeah, you seemed real ‘over it’ last night,” Beau shoots back, causing the entire locker room to fall into silence.
My body stills as I rein in my anger. My emotions have been running rampant the last couple of weeks, hitting all-time highs when I’m with Stella and then bottoming out when I think about Beau. It’s a side effect of getting off my medicine, and I was told that it’ll pass.
We’ve never let a girl get between us. We’ve never let anything get between us. I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why he’s acting like this. He barely knows Stella. The only reason he knows her at all is because of me.
“You really want to do this here?” I ask, turning to face him, my practice jersey is clenched in my fist.
Beau just holds my stare, his own fists clenched just as tight.
“Alright, boys, everyone out,” Booker commands. “Now!”
The rest of the team files out, shooting curious and not-at-all subtle glances at me and Beau. They may not know what we’re fighting about, but they know we’re as close as brothers, and that this behavior is not normal for us.
When they’re all gone, only Booker and Drew remain. Drew breaks the silence. “What the actual fuck is going on?”
“For real. One of you better start talking. Warren, man, I love you, but I’m sick of your ass sleeping on my couch,” Booker adds.
“He’s the one with a problem,” I say, trying to defend myself. “Did you even tell them why you were staying there?”
Beau shakes his head. Of course not. He knows he’s in the wrong.
“Do you want them to leave?” Beau asks me, surprising me with his question.
“I’m not leaving until you motherfuckers figure this out,” Booker states.
Beau just levels me a questioning look. If he’s asking me that, it’s because he wants to talk about me. My issues. What could that possibly have to do with him and his behavior toward Stella?
“Fuck.” I drop my jersey and run my hands through my hair. “No. They can stay, I guess,” I consent, closing my eyes and tilting my head back to the ceiling. This is not at all how I thought this conversation was going to go.
“What are you talking about?” Drew asks, mirroring the look of confusion on Booker’s face.
“Colt’s dad is dead. Has been for two years. And he’s been on antidepressants ever since.” The silence that follows Beau’s statement is heavier than the vacuum of space. No one moves.
“That has nothing to do with what’s going on right now,” I say quietly.
“It has everything to do with it!” Beau all but yells. “Because ever since you got with her, you stopped taking your fucking medicine!”
Now it’s my turn to be shocked. How does he know that? What does that have to do with his behavior toward Stella? I’m more confused now than I was before.
“Colt, man, I don’t think you’re supposed to just quit that stuff,” Booker says, bursting the bubble of silence.
“I—I didn’t just quit taking it,” I say, shooting a glance to him before bringing my focus back to Beau. “This has nothing to do with why we’re fighting! You’re the one who won’t quit checking Stella out like she’s your next fucking conquest! That’s what the problem is.”
Drew sits down on one of the benches and leans his elbows on his knees. “I’m so confused,” he mutters. Booker nods but doesn’t say anything.
“For the love of God, I wasn’t checking her out!
Maybe at first, but after I realized you had stopped taking your meds, I was just trying to figure her out.
Did she tell you to do it? Don’t think I forgot that day you got that PR at the gym.
You weren’t yourself that day, and it was because of her.
I don’t think she’s good for you.” Beau’s explanation hits me like a truck.
He thinks Stella is—what?—manipulating me? Made me stop taking my medication?
“I went to the doctor, Beau. I had an appointment, and we decided I could try to quit taking them. They were low-dose to begin with.” My response is barely above a whisper.
I don’t know if I feel angry at him for jumping to conclusions, sad that this whole fight was over a misunderstanding, or grateful that he’s just trying to look out for me, even if he’s missed the mark by a mile.
Drew, forever asking unhinged questions, says, “So, you aren’t going to off yourself, Crosby?”
I laugh humorlessly. “No, Drew. Never tried before, and I don’t plan on trying it out any time soon.”
It’s Beau’s turn to look confused. He scrunches his eyebrows and glances down at my arms. “But my mom said…. You were sent away because…”
And suddenly, everything becomes ten times clearer. The realization slams into my chest with the force of a train. Mrs. Warren never told Beau that day she found me in the bathroom had been a false alarm. I never brought it up because I thought they had told him what had happened when I was gone.
For the last two years, Beau has spent every day thinking that I would try to harm myself if I got too upset or if something bad enough happened.
Oh, God.
I look him in the eyes. His are red-rimmed as if he’s holding back a tidal wave of emotion. “I never did that, Beau. I never tried to kill myself. Your mom found me after I had broken into the liquor cabinet; the glass cut my arms, but it was an accident.”
Booker and Drew are wearing matching expressions of shock and pain. They look like they want to leave, but can’t bear to move away from this conversation. Neither of them ever asked about my scars, either, and I’m sure they didn’t expect to hear about it today.
Beau, though, looks wrecked. Dejected. Lied to.
“I—after Gracie, I couldn’t—I thought I needed to protect you…” Beau’s voice cracks, and suddenly I’m there, catching him in my arms. Gracie, his sister. He lost her, couldn’t protect her. He’d spent all this time thinking that one wrong move and I was going to leave him, too.
Beau’s shoulders shake in silent sobs. He’s bigger than me, taller, but I’m not comforting my friend right now.
I’m holding that seventeen-year-old boy who lost his little sister.
The boy who never let anyone see him lose it because he was trying to be strong for his parents.
The boy who, two years later, thought his best friend had tried to kill himself, and thought he was going to be alone.
Neither of us has had an easy life. The thing is, we never discussed it. We were each other’s safe space. Beau and I, and hockey. We escaped the dark thoughts and the hard times together on the ice.
And I’m now realizing that this conversation was long, long overdue.
Booker and Drew sneak out, going to join practice, and probably tell Coach Winchester that the two of us may be a while.
Beau pulls back and sits down on the bench in front of his locker, and I drop down next to him. Neither of us says anything for a long while. Eventually, I’m the one to break the silence.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was never about Stella when I brought it up?” I asked.
“Because it was, and it wasn’t, I guess.
I thought maybe you two would fuck around for a while and then it’d end.
And then I saw that you were getting serious and she wasn’t reciprocating, and I started getting pissed.
I thought she was messing with you, and in my head, I thought she was going to send you into another spiral when she left you. ”
“She’s not like that. She’s had her own things to deal with. She wasn’t using me or whatever.”
“I didn’t know. All I saw was you falling for someone who didn’t feel the same.
And then you started spending every spare moment with her, and I knew it was going to crush you.
And then I saw your empty pill bottle in the trash, and I knew you had to have flushed them because—well, I used to count them, to make sure you were actually taking them.
“You’ve got to understand, C, I was operating under the impression that you were fucked up in the head. My mom took you to the hospital that day, but I got home and saw the blood on the floor.”
He glances at my forearm, where the two long, pale scars stand out in stark contrast to my skin.
My memories of that day are fuzzy. I was drunk, hurting, broken in a way that felt unfixable. I had finished off the bottle of whiskey Mr. Warren had sitting out at his drink station, and it hadn’t been enough.
When I realized the grand wooden liquor cabinet he kept for display was locked, I got so mad that I punched the glass in the door without thinking.
I grabbed a bottle of vodka with my right hand, slicing open my arm both on the way in and the way out.
Then, I decided I needed a second bottle, so I reached in with my left hand and did the same thing.
I don’t remember walking to the bathroom, but I do remember that I felt bad for bleeding all over the Warrens’ expensive floors.
“I’m sorry,” I say, not knowing how else to respond. “I didn’t know that you didn’t know.”
He’s quiet for another short stretch before asking, “So, you and her are…good? I mean, um, good for each other?”
“We’re the least toxic couple you’ll ever meet, but I might be biased.” Stella and I have both been through too much to let something as trivial as toxicity come between us. Communication is a staple in our relationship.
“I don’t know if I buy that. Last night felt pretty toxic to me,” Beau says, the corner of his mouth tilting up.
“That was solely for your benefit, asshole. I was going to beat your ass into next week if I saw you looking at her again.” He almost cracks a smile, but it’s gone as soon as it appears.
“I wasn’t looking at her like that. I’d never try to steal your girl. This whole time, I was trying to figure out her angle.”
“She doesn’t have an angle. She’s been through just as much fucked up shit as us. It just took her a while to trust me.”
“Do I need to…apologize to her?” he asks.
“Maybe just clear the air? She may be under the impression that you want to bone her, and she isn’t safe unless I’m around.” I wince, knowing it sounds so much worse out loud.
“Bro, what the fuck?”