10 | you make me nervous
As per usual, maybe I should have thought things through before opening my mouth.
Asking Brie to watch today's practice would be a great idea in itself if she wasn't Brie Sheridan and if I hadn't taught her terrifyingly massive older brothers how to play hockey, accidentally giving them plenty of vital knowledge on how to ruin my life. I failed to remember she hates hockey, something she's always been outspoken about, and I fear I might be asking for too much here.
Does this feel manipulative to anyone else or is it just in my head? Am I gaslighting myself right now?
As we make our way towards the ice rink, I start wishing I had the ability to shut off my brain whenever I need to instead of needing external distractions to do it for me. Just now, speaking to Brie kept me focused on the conversation itself, making me forget all about our surroundings (the whole world could have exploded and I wouldn't have noticed a thing), but it also made me forget about my physical presence and how it impacts everything else.
It feels ridiculous to be this concerned about having left my hand on her thigh. I'm not judging her hesitation and discomfort, no; most of all, I'm judging myself for assuming she'd be okay with it considering our history and chastising myself for not paying attention.
Part of me assumed she wouldn't mind, as we've technically agreed to do whatever it takes to sell the story, which includes supposedly spontaneous displays of affection. For fuck's sake, I do this all the time when I'm chatting to a girl I'm interested in—I let my fingers brush against theirs, place a hand on their hip or on the curve of their waist, lean in while we're talking like a dance. Maybe that's the main issue here. Maybe I need to make a mental reminder that I absolutely cannot behave around her exactly how I'd behave around those girls, even if the end result is somewhat similar.
It's only similar in public, where people can see us, and sometimes it's wise to assume someone is always watching. I'm not trying to be cocky here, but I know people pay attention to me and care about what I do, so I've grown used to the feeling of being watched even when I think I'm alone, which makes me sound unbelievably paranoid and obsessed with myself.
It's true, though.
She slips her hand into mine as we walk, arms touching, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world, like she can't tell how the warmth emanating from her turns into electricity the very moment we touch. She doesn't know the effect she has on me, how attuned to her every inch of my body is, and it's simultaneously endearing and frustrating.
I'm floating with every step I take, wondering how much of this conversation is serving as a way to forget what just happened and how much of it is real, an olive branch, a step towards a mended relationship, no matter how small. My anxiety over this relationship, my career, my relationship with my family, and life in general isn't her responsibility to fix or her fault, but, if we want things to work out, if we want to go back to being friends, we need to be able to talk about this.
Pretending to be okay is one of my many talents, but there's always only been one person I've been capable of being fully honest with and that's my therapist, and I'm not pretending to date him.
Well, technically, there have been three. One of them was Brie until I screwed it all up, and the other . . . the other is in part responsible for the worst summer of my life. Some would go as far as calling this summer the lowest point in my life, and I can't blame them for it; I was an utter mess, and it shows, even now.
"I'd hate to ruin the moment, but I really need to say something," I begin, sincerely hoping the shakiness in my voice is just in my head. Brie looks up at me, eyes clouded with concern. Whether it's over me or over how it impacts her, I can't tell. For the sake of protecting my ego, I choose to believe the former. "I really am sorry about that whole hand on your thigh thing. It's a normal thing that I do whenever I'm talking to a girl I'm interested in and, since there were people around before, I didn't even think about what I was doing. It would've looked suspicious to ignore you, especially around my friends, who all know I don't do relationships."
Brie sighs. "I know. To be honest, it wasn't bothering me that much that you left your hand on my leg long after they were gone, but I think that what scared me there was exactly how . . . good and normal that felt."
"Oh?"
She swallows. "Yeah. For a moment there, I almost forgot about how fickle and fake all of this is." She raises our intertwined fingers to prove a point. "Something so natural is completely fabricated, and this comes from someone who's obsessed with fictional love stories. It's different when the lie in question actually involves me. It's even more different when the lie involves me and you specifically. I feel normal, okay, and comfortable, and then I remember this is something you regularly do without caring who you're doing it with. You're a natural flirt. I'm a monogamous relationship kind of girl. We're not the same."
"So what you're trying to tell me is that you don't want me to treat you the same way I'd treat other girls?"
"I'm trying to say I get the point of needing to be believable, and I understand that you usually don't have to think twice about how you're acting around those girls because it's easy to know what to do when you know how the night will end, but it's different with me. I know what I agreed with, and I didn't agree to be someone you sleep with and then forget about." She avoids my eyes now, staring straight ahead, and it's hard to tell which of us feels the most awkward by having to talk things out like this. I want to see it as a necessary evil, but there's a part of me that's terrified the relationship will be over before it actually takes flight, and there go all our dreams and plans for reconciliation. "I'm not doing this because I want to sleep with you. I don't want to want to sleep with you, for that matter, and all I'm asking for is a little bit of patience while I rewire my brain to be able to separate things. I need to separate my real feelings for you from my fake ones, and I can't do that when you're apparently forgetting all about what we went through."
I haven't forgotten about it, not even for a second, but I suspect that arguing with her about it will have the exact opposite effect I want it to, and I've learned throughout the years that sometimes it's best to drop the subject and let things go. Arguing with people is something that takes a lot of mental energy, something I don't currently have, and locking myself in a cyclical argument I can't win doesn't strike me as the smartest decision I can make right now.
Someone like Brie can go on and on about something for hours on end, easily finding counterarguments to every point other people raise, and my debate team days are deeply buried in my past. Antagonizing her when she's raising valid concerns and being honest about her feelings completely defeats the goal of having these conversations; even if she hurts my feelings, is it comparable to what I did to her?
"Thanks for letting me know," I tell her. She abruptly stops walking, pulling me back so hard she nearly pops my shoulder out of its socket, and confusion is all I find when I look at her. "I wasn't thinking about what I was doing because, yes, it's something that feels normal to me, and I'm not trying to make you feel like you're disposable. I don't want those other girls to feel disposable, so I'm always honest about what I'm looking for and make an active effort to only go after girls who want the same thing. I'm not here breaking hearts left and right and leaving a trail of lovelorn girls behind me."
Her dark eyes narrow. "That's a novelty."
"Maybe so, but I'll be more careful moving forward. Making it right by you matters to me, and we'll take things slow if need be. We'll move at the pace that feels more comfortable to you when it's just the two of us."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that," I echo, giving her fingers a gentle squeeze. "Tell me whenever you feel like things are moving too fast or too slow, and we'll find a way of making it work. But you need to talk to me, Brie, and be straightforward with me like you just were. This is all new to me and it's territory I don't know how to navigate." She sharply inhales, nodding slowly. "My . . . complicated feelings about you, about this are also confusing so, even if it looks like I know exactly what I'm doing or that I'm not second guessing everything I do and say, that might not actually be true. I'm figuring things out as I go, but you make me nervous."
Her teeth tug at her bottom lip. Something in my chest roars, wanting my teeth to be the ones doing that to her lips, and I quickly reel it back in before I do something regrettably stupid. "In a good way or in a bad way?"
"In a good way. Always in a good way."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
Then, she slowly raises her free hand, tentatively brushing her fingers against my chest before her palm rests softly right above my heart. She can feel how fast and hard it's beating, I'm sure of it; it beats so hard the ground is shaking beneath my feet, threatening to collapse every building, and I can only hope it will swallow me whole.
Maybe it's a good thing she can feel all of it, as it might provide her with some insight on how this—the fake relationship, the pressure on my shoulders, even her mere presence—is affecting me. If just her touch can nearly make me have a heart attack, I don't want to think about what will happen when we inevitably have to take things a step further. It will be destructive. It will be catastrophic.
It may even be the best feeling in the world.
"You've changed, Rhett," Brie murmurs. "I don't know what prompted it or why you're making an effort to be the person you are now, but I think I might have jumped to conclusions a bit too quickly. Maybe we can make this work." When she timidly glances up at me, auburn hair looking perfectly at home among the autumnal colors, I feel about to collapse. "Maybe there's hope for us, after all."
???
When I walk into the locker room, the snickering and the hollering start almost instantly.
Though they're a loud, rowdy, and occasionally bothersome group of people, these guys are my second family. Though I'm not a big fan of the screaming in my ears and being tossed around like a rag doll toy when I've done nothing to justify this kind of typical behavior, I'd be extremely hypocritical to say I've never taken part in these odd celebrations of arbitrary success.
It's usually about girls, which is pathetic to admit aloud, and some of them can be genuinely chauvinistic at times, but nothing bad has ever happened. I know how horrible that sounds and I'm not trying to excuse any predatory or abusive behavior, but acting like teenage boys celebrating random romantic accomplishments is the closest thing this team has to locker room talk. All in all, this would be considered respectful behavior; no slurs, no objectifying comments are being tossed around. It's just about basking in the glory of manhood and compulsory heteronormativity.
While being half naked. How's that for dismantling toxic masculinity?
"I never thought I'd see the day someone managed to lock you down," Andy de Haan, our goalie, my roommate whenever I couldn't find my own room after a night of drinking (when I still drank), and my best friend comments, elbowing me right in the ribs, and I wince. His elbows are strangely bony for someone his size, towering above me by, at least, five inches and around thirty pounds of lean muscle. "The world might be about to end."
"The horrors, the horrors," Jeff Jefferson jokes, dramatically lounging on one of the benches like in those historical portraits of women in distress. His name is not Jeff, but no one actually calls him Scott. It's a trend Andy's younger sister Paige came up with during orientation in their freshman year, while I was helping out with the campus tour, and it stuck, much to Jeff's dismay.
I suspect the tension between them is partially due to him having been trying to hook up with her since then, only for her to never pay him any sustained attention—just enough to keep him wrapped around her finger. They have fun like that, but I don't think Andy would approve of him making a move on Paige right under his nose anyway.
It's one of the multiple instances of guy code being enforced within the team, and it's treated as something sacred. Each other's sisters are strictly off limits; with Lorelai being older than me, it's something I've never had to worry about, but she's always been so academically oriented that she never showed much availability when it came to dating.
There's Brie now, though; with our relationship being a new conversation topic, they're obviously not allowed to go after her, even though we're not actually together. They don't know that and I fear that, if she was just watching me practice under the label of a friendship, they'd be all over her like Pavlovian dogs salivating over a piece of steak. The mere thought of them getting their hands on her makes me sick to my stomach, even though she'd be free to do whatever she wanted with them if the circumstances were different.
I don't even have the right to feel jealous. We're not really together and owe nothing to each other, regardless of what the terms of our agreement detail. Not to get all alpha male in this locker room—and I trust Brie to be smarter than that—but I don't trust some of these guys around her, especially guys like Jeff, but I'm not that much better than them. At least I know women deserve far more than the bare minimum of human decency, but it also doesn't mean I've been the model for male behavior.
"Yeah, it's been great," I say, once I feel like I've been quiet for too long, stuck in my head. "It's a bit scary because it's so new, but it's been great so far. Brie's great."
"Good, good," Andy supports, closing the door of his locker with a metallic thud. "Just don't do anything I wouldn't do."
"I mean, Price's better off doing everything you don't do if he doesn't want to finish his senior year as a daddy," Jeff unhelpfully adds, though it earns him a few chuckles here and there. Andy doesn't laugh, rolling his eyes to avoid saying something mean, but I think we've all been there. It's a rite of passage in a way; everyone on the team has wanted to punch Jeff in the face at some point in their lives.
Andy is a dad, and it's a touchy subject he uses to, hopefully, pass down some wisdom to everyone else. Be careful, use protection, and learn how to prioritize the right things and the right people.
One night turned into three years of parenting and, frankly, I don't know how he and Jackie do it; it's our senior year and they've somehow managed to make it work, staying together through it all, and little Daisy is an honorary team member. Andy has found a magic way of balancing hockey, fatherhood, a long term relationship, and his studies, so I'd much rather learn from him and do what he does, as he appears to be doing everything right.
I know it's not as easy as he wants it to seem like, and exhaustion is his middle name, so we've also learned to hype each other up and cover up for blind spots and weaker moments. I don't see him as weak by any means—it's quite the opposite—but he has never asked us for pity or special treatment. We've simply given him 'special treatment' by helping him out in every way we can. The team moves as one.
We're moving as one as we make our way towards the ice rink and I finally feel at home, even though everything's about to descend into chaos. Coach Gonzalez is waiting for us, a colossal titan of a man, and I'm shivering under my uniform, the bite of the gelid air burning my nose.
In spite of the low temperatures, this rink is my favorite place in the world. You usually don't want to be hugged by someone who's constantly freezing, but skating laps, scratching the freshly polished ice with my blades, and watching my teammates move in unison gives me a feeling of belonging that nothing else has ever come close to comparing.
I risk a glance up at the bleachers, slowing down so I won't accidentally crash against the glass while I'm this distracted. There are a few people here to watch us practice, mostly the girlfriends and the occasional puck bunnies, but there are also some guys who are interested in making it into the team. Tryouts won't start until next week, so they're just trying to get acquainted with what we do on the ice, which I appreciate. It shows respect and a sense of commitment.
The same can't be said about me according to my family, even though I've never missed a practice in my life, and spend the entire offseason eagerly anticipating the moment I'll be skating again. I've pushed my body to the limit, withstanding injuries that could have ended my career, missed out on social events, and adapted my diet to those followed by professional athletes. This is my Roman Empire, but, for some reason, they don't think I'm serious about it. Not enough.
Maybe it's me who's not enough, not my level of commitment. That's a much harder thing to come to terms with.
Then, I spot Brie. She, too, is shivering like a mad woman, but she's snuggled under my varsity jacket. Ironically, that sends a rush of warmth across my body, and I'm convinced there's nothing I can't do.
I'm unstoppable.