Chapter 31 Griffin
Griffin
I head down the stairs of our house toward the front door, my normal meeting point for Terry and Mack before practice. I’ve stopped moping and now I’m just pissed. Not resigned, not sad anymore, but genuinely angry.
Angry at Sabrina.
Angry at Connelly.
Angry at Jacob.
Angry at myself.
I have a future…a real future. I have hockey to focus on, and school to finish, and goals that matter. Things I worked my fucking ass off for. Yet somehow that doesn’t ease how enraged I am under my skin.
“You ready?” Terry asks, standing by the door with his bag slung over one shoulder and that serious, almost uncharacteristically clipped tone he’s been using since everything went sideways.
I haven’t actually talked to him about what he’s thinking but whatever’s bouncing around in his head has him really fucking pissed off. He hasn’t smiled once since the blow up.
I nod, trying to make my jaw unclench enough to breathe normally, just as footsteps come from behind me.
I turn and see Connelly on the bottom step, looking like absolute shit. His hair is messy, his posture slumped, eyes flickering with this guilty, haunted sort of look that says he knows he’s in the wrong room at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.
He stares at me for a second that feels too long and then, as though that’s the best thing he can scrape together, “Hey.”
It’s low, awkward, and utterly insufficient for the chaos of what’s happened.
I don’t respond. I just turn on my heel like his greeting was never spoken, and I fall into step beside Terry and Mack.
Neither of them respond to him either and that makes the weight in my chest lighten up a bit.
I’ve been a shit friend, completely fucking ghosting them both, and yet, they still support me in my anger.
Connelly stays on the stairs for a beat longer, shoulders slightly hunched, but there’s nothing left in me to offer.
I have no desire to talk to him or hear him out.
Even if he argued that he was completely in love with her it wouldn’t matter.
He should have told me if that was the case but he didn’t.
He fucked my girlfriend, acted like a dick for the start of the season, and then kept it from me.
He’s a shit friend and a shitty teammate.
The ride to the arena feels like driving through thick fog even though the world outside the windows is bright and clear, because the air in the truck with Terry and Mack is stifling in that way where everyone wants to say something but no one dares to open their mouth first.
I stare out the window telling myself that I need to get my head in the game. I’m trying to remind myself that practice will help, that hockey is what I have left, that this season still matters, that most of all, I will not let this bullshit derail my future.
When we get to the arena, I get out of the truck and I don’t look at Terry or Mack because I don’t want to see concern in their faces.
I walk through the doors and head straight to the locker room to change into my gear. Then I head toward the training room with this tight, anxious tension in my shoulders.
I’m not ready to see Jacob.
I’m not ready for that collision of memories.
If I have to be cold…fine. I can do that. I will do that.
I can be professional and ignore him while I work through the shit happening in my chest.
But the moment I push the door open, I can already tell something is off. Because Lauren is here, which isn’t all that strange. But instead of Jacob, there’s some red headed guy in a training polo who I have never seen before.
My jaw goes just slightly numb from how hard I end up clenching it.
I freeze for a second until Mack’s voice comes from right behind me, answering the question that hasn’t even left my lips yet. “Jacob uh… got reassigned.”
A lot of emotions run through me. Disappointment at not seeing him. Confusion as to why he would reassign himself when he loves hockey. Anger that he ran away instead of facing me. I end up sticking with anger.
“Good,” I huff, and even as the word leaves my mouth I can feel this strange, stabbing disappointment tearing through me.
Lauren’s head turns toward us like she hears the tension in my voice but before I can process anything else, Hughie appears at the edge of the room.
He’s watching me with this expression I’ve never seen him wear before. He looks at me like I’m not a friend or a teammate but instead, I’m absolutely disgusting to him. And then he looks me dead in the eye and, without hesitation, lets out this derisive, almost bitter laugh that feels like a slap.
“You’re a real piece of shit, Thatcher,” he says, voice flat and exact.
And then he turns and walks out of the room, leaving me standing there with everyone looking at me like this is somehow my fucking fault.
I stare at the damn text for way longer than any sane person should ever sit staring at their phone.
I read it once.
Then again.
Then another time, slower, like maybe if I look at it hard enough I’ll suddenly understand what I’m supposed to do with it.
Because I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know how to respond. I don’t know how to feel. Every possible reaction I could imagine feels like a catastrophe in slow motion.
I think about him a lot more than I want to admit.
I think about the way he smiled at me when we talked about dumb shit like pizza and video games, like it was normal and easy and warm.
I think about the way he laid against me that one morning, safe and quiet, warm beneath my arm with no expectations and how that was one of the most comfortable, least complicated things I’ve experienced in a long fucking time.
I think about the softness of his laugh, the way it warmed something in my chest that I didn’t even realize needed warming.
But then I think about the other side of it, the side that gnaws at me constantly, and I wonder how he wasn’t laughing about what an idiot I was.
How I didn’t even know my own teammate was fucking my girlfriend.
How I stood there blameless and clueless and then got punched in the chest by reality hard enough to make my lungs forget how to work.
And then, just like that, his message stares back at me in cold white text.
Jacob: I know I hurt you. I know that you’re upset but I didn’t think I was so intolerable. This feels really low and mean. Can we please talk?
My thumb hovers. He thinks that I am being low and mean?
He thinks he can blame me for the way I am feeling?
I wasn’t the one who fucking asked to be reassigned.
That’s all on him for choosing to run away from his problems instead of facing them.
He thinks he can fucking call me mean when all I needed was some fucking space to work through my goddamn feelings?
Something inside of my chest just kind of cracks.
Griffin: We have nothing to talk about. We hooked up and it was a mistake. Spending any time with you was a mistake that I will always regret. Stop fucking texting me like a needy girlfriend.
I send it before I can stop myself. Before I can pause and think and use any modicum of emotional intelligence that doesn’t resemble a toddler with a baseball bat. And the second I hit send, this hollow, sinking feeling blooms in my chest like I just slammed a fist into it.
Because that’s not me. That’s not who I am.
I’m not mean. I’m not vindictive. I’m not some petty asshole who punches first and thinks later.
But somehow? That’s exactly what I just did.
I sit there with my phone in my hand, thumb still hovering over the screen like I might delete it or retract it, but I don’t. And despite how stupid and unnecessary it was, I don’t apologize.
I don’t text him again.
I don’t reach out.
I don’t check in.
I don’t ask Hughie how Jacob’s doing.
I don’t answer questions from Mack or Terry about him.
I actively avoid any interaction that might remind me that he exists.
I walk around practice like I always know what I’m doing, change my gear like I’m not carrying this lump of shame and anger and confusion in my chest, show up for drills and meetings and evaluations like I’m a pro with a brain that functions normally.
But inside? It feels hollow like something vital was pulled out and I’m still discovering all the ways the missing piece used to make me whole.
I keep this up for months…
I keep it up through The Draft. Then Graduation as I walk across that stage. And then the beginning of my professional career.
I pretend I don’t care.
I pretend I don’t think about him.
I pretend that none of it ever mattered.
But the truth is, I did care.
I did think about him.
And part of me still does, whether I want to or not.
But I don’t reach out. I don’t apologize or bridge the gap. I cut him off so completely that we don’t speak again.
I burn that bridge and I don’t make any effort to fix it.