Chapter One #2
“Get in the house, Mo.” His voice is gruff with sleep.
I peek a look at the time on the clock in the foyer.
Two-thirty-six a.m. He looks tired—older than I sometimes remember he is.
The disappointment is etched in every single line of his face.
“Sleep it off. We’ll talk tomorrow. Don’t throw up on my carpet. ”
He shuts the door behind me, locking it back up, and I stumble to the couch in his living room.
I have a room upstairs, but I know I’m not going to make it all the way up there.
The cushions of the couch fold around me, and I wiggle into the soft fabric.
It smells like my dad, and for a brief second I’m eight years old again and nothing is wrong.
Guilt tugs at me. This man wrangles twenty-three cocky, insufferable NHL players every single season—and now he has to deal with me, too.
Sleep drags me under fast, but not before I feel the weight of a soft blanket settling over my shoulders. A soft kiss pressed to my temple. A heavy sigh and a mumbled, “Love you, Mo.”
I don’t deserve him. Even in my alcohol-induced haze, I know that much.
* * * *
I’m not so lucky when morning comes and the blanket is ripped off of me.
The air is cold against my back and the sunlight streaming in from the large living room windows feels like it’s assaulting me, golden rays piercing the backs of my eyelids and digging directly into my brain.
The memory of last night sits in the forefront of my mind, albeit hazy.
So many drinks. The U.S. Nationals team. Stumbling to my dad’s house. Fuuuuck.
“Get up, Monroe.” My dad is standing in the living room, arms crossed. Guilt rears its head again as he levels a glare in my direction. My head is pounding thanks to my spectacular hangover, though, so that takes precedence.
I slowly rise from the dead and rub the sleep from my eyes. I squint at my father. He is serious as he looks me over, eyeing my clothes from the day before. Mascara is raccooned underneath my eyes, I’m sure. My vodka-laced sweat permeating the air is not helping either.
I used to be more embarrassed for my dad to see me like this. Now, I barely feel anything at all. I shove all those feelings of guilt and shame way deep down where they can’t bother me.
I spent four months recovering from surgery and the reconstruction of my ankle joint, going diligently to physical therapy appointments, taking my prescription pain meds only as directed—only to be told by a stuffy doctor in a too-bright hospital room that I’d never be able to skate at the same level again.
The mobility in my ankle was just never going to be what it was, and the Olympics were off the table.
Maybe I’d skate competitively again, but who could say for sure?
That was eight months ago. What was it all even for, nearly twenty years of skating, if I wasn’t going to compete in the Olympics? What did I spend my entire life preparing for, if not to be the very best?
The drinking had started that night.
My attention returns to my father, where he’s waiting for me to say something. Was he talking to me? If he said something, I missed it.
“I’m sorry.” Lie. “Won’t happen again.” Lie.
“Do not lie to my face in my house.” His words land like weights on the floor. I flinch. He takes a very long time to reach the point of anger, and once he does, there is no going back.
It looks like I’ve finally pushed him past his breaking point. Go, Monroe!
“I have tried so hard to be patient with you, Mo. I know the injury set you back.” He pinches the bridge of his nose.
“I know you’ve suffered an incredible amount of loss in the last year.
” It’s bewildering how he can be both furious and still gentle with me.
“But this,” he gestures to the mess of Monroe that is sitting on his couch, “this cannot go on. I’m not bankrolling your alcohol and drug consumption.
I’m not going to support you throwing your entire life away.
You’re only twenty-one. You have so much life ahead of you, and you’re wasting it. ”
I stare at him, eyes blank. “Get to the point, Dad.” It’s not like I didn’t know this was coming.
Eventually, the credit card was going to be taken away from me.
I’ve played with Daddy’s money long enough.
All of mine from the sponsors and skating competition wins was tied up in an account I couldn’t access until I turned twenty-five.
It was meant to be my nest egg, to set me up to be able to pursue other things comfortably after I finished skating. So instead of blowing all of my money, I’d spent my dad’s. There’s not a person in the world who would feel sorry for me. They shouldn’t.
“The money stops,” he continues. “You’ll get nothing from me but a roof over your head, and barely that. You can keep the apartment, under one condition.”
I huff out a laugh. I’ve already lost my scholarship. I haven’t been to school this semester at all. His money was the only thing keeping me afloat these past months. I sure as hell wasn’t holding down a job. My trust wasn’t accessible.
“What condition?” I ask. I try to sound indifferent and annoyed, but the undercurrent of panic still comes through.
He’s serious. I swallow, bracing myself.
“What about my trust?” The words leave my mouth before I can stop them, but I seriously doubt he’d release it to me after my recent behavior. “Can I access it now?”
He barely reacts. “No.”
Just that. No hesitation. No explanation. Just a brick wall, solid and unmoving.
I clench my jaw. “It’s my money.”
“And you’ll get it when you turn twenty-five. You haven’t shown an ounce of responsibility in the last eight months, Monroe. I love you, but I can’t trust you. You aren’t going to blow through all that money too.”
We stare at each other. A standoff.
Then he continues, “I will pay for your apartment, and you’ll work at the rink and you’ll go back to school. That’s it. No extras, no credit card.”
Oh, fuck that.
“I’m not going back to the rink.” I don’t mention that I failed out the last semester of school, so it’s possible they won’t even take me back. I swallow back the vomit threatening to decorate the carpet in front of me, a combination of hangover and panic.
“You will. Because if you don’t,” he is somehow even more serious now, “you will be on your own. I will not aid any more in your self-destruction, Monroe Abrams.”
I don’t even know how to be on my own.
My dad isn’t going to go back on this. I sure as hell won’t be able to convince him.
He’s going to pull any and all support. I could call Mom, but after my injury?
I am no longer her Olympic-bound prize of a daughter.
As far as Elaine Laugherty-Abrams is concerned, she doesn’t even have a daughter anymore.
“What am I doing at the rink? Skating clinics?” I used to do clinics at the rink where the Wolverines practice.
It’s the same rink I skated at for the Nationals team.
I was absolutely going to run into my old teammates.
And fuck, I didn’t want to get back on the ice.
My worst nightmare was unfolding directly in front of me.
I pinch myself but unfortunately, I am very much fully awake.
“No. You’ll be cleaning the rink, working concessions.
Whatever Elsie wants you to do.” Elsie. My heart hurts when I think about Elsie Patton, the rink manager.
She watched me grow up on that ice. She’s the longest-tenured employee my dad has ever had.
And she’s a hardass. With my luck, I’d probably be scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush for the next year.
She’s yet another person I have let down spectacularly, but as far as surrogate mothers go, Elsie was the best. When my actual mother was busy living vicariously through me, Elsie was the one who gave a shit.
And I ruined that, too.
“I can’t sign up for classes,” I mutter, avoiding eye contact, dropping another disappointing Monroe bomb. “I failed my last semester.”
My dad stares at me, then walks over to the kitchen where a folder of papers is sitting, neatly stacked.
“I know,” he replies, walking back. He does?
“I talked to the dean of admissions last week.” Well, shit.
“They’re willing to extend a special circumstances readmission to you based on your—” He pauses, looking for the right word. “Situation,” he settles on.
My situation. What a joke.
“You’ll be able to re-enroll on Monday. I set up a meeting for you with the admission officer at nine a.m. They’ll go over your options, what classes you’ll be eligible for.
” I hang my head, fingers massaging my temple from the hangover headache that was only growing with every second this conversation continued.
I’d only been one semester from graduating when the injury happened. I had been so close.
“This is the last time I can help you. If you skip the meeting, there won’t be another chance.”
He turned away from me to look out of the side windows in the living room. The sun was streaming in now, light filtering through the glass, making rainbows on the carpet. Such a pretty view for such an ugly discussion.
“I love you, Monroe,” he says softly, before leaving me alone with my thoughts.
I call myself an Uber so I can get back to my apartment. It’s five minutes away.
Ding. My phone pings with an email from Dad.
I click it open and immediately wish I hadn’t.
Admissions meeting less than forty-eight hours away. New work schedule, five a.m., Tuesday.
I groan, sinking deeper into the couch. Five a.m. Fuck me.
Panic threatens to choke me out, but I force it down.
Deep breaths. It had never worked before, but my life was already a disaster—maybe, for once, the bullshit breathing techniques my old therapist swore by would actually do something.
In and out.
In and out.
Spoiler—it did not help.
The honk from the Uber brings me out of my trance, and I gather the few things I had with me—phone, wallet, jacket.
The cool January wind kisses my cheeks as I walk out to the expansive front yard. The driver rolls down his window and squints into the sun. “Uber for Monroe?”
“Yup,” I say on an exhale. “That’s me.” Unfortunately.
“Hey,” he says once I get into the back seat. He turns around to look at me, doing a generous once-over. “Aren’t you that figure skater?”
“I requested no conversation in the app,” I say bluntly, without looking up. We drive the twenty minutes back to my apartment in silence.
As the buildings and trees blur past the car in my peripheral vision, I mull over the conversation with my dad, trying to figure out a way out of it. It was end up homeless, call my mother and beg her for money, or take the job my dad had offered. There truly was only one viable option.
And now I had mere hours to sweat the rest of this alcohol out of my system and rejoin the land of the living.
Here we go, Monroe.