Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
JESSIE
S
So, I went for blueberry pancakes this morning. I’ll hand you this round; they are superior and an excellent pre-shift breakfast.
Mia’s text comes through just as I’m getting ready to board my flight back to Dallas. The thought of going home for four days in the bye week is anything but the rest and recuperation the break in the NHL schedule was originally designed to provide. And based on the phone call I took from Mom last night, I’m about to walk into hell and a whole lot of painful memories. Each step I take toward boarding the plane, my lungs find it harder to inflate.
But hearing from the girl I want to kiss more desperately than I need air right now somehow has me smiling like a fucking Cheshire cat as I hand over my boarding pass to be scanned.
Me
There’s an even better pancake house I go to with the boys on cheat day. I’ll take you there when I get back.
What are you doing, Jessie? You’re supposed to be staying away from her, not fucking taking her out.
S
You’re heading home right now then?
My chest deflates when she doesn’t accept my offer to take her out.
Me
Yeah, about to board, so I gotta go.
Stay away from her. Keep her safe.
Though my body doesn’t get the memo from my brain as my fingers type out another message before I switch my cell to airplane mode and pocket it.
Me
I’ll text you when I land. Have a good shift at work.
I pull off my black hoodie when I step into the Dallas air. It’s only fifty-eight, but the climate is a whole world away from Seattle.
When I played for the Destroyers for a grand total of one season, the team paid for a rental, and I planned to buy a place for myself in the city, using my signing bonus. That never happened though. Somehow, my parents managed to spend every last dime in a matter of months, and when my season hit a tailspin and my drinking increased, I knew I was on my final warning. Good thing I didn’t commit to anything since I’d have another expense in a city I had no reason to be in.
Heading for the pickup zone, I put my bag in the open trunk and climb into a taxi, hesitating as I consider what destination to provide. Mom is my priority, but the selfish part of me wants to head straight to my hotel, grab a shower, and make for the bar. I despise myself for thinking about it, especially when it’s not even one in the afternoon.
“Where are we heading then, buddy?” The driver eyes me through the rearview mirror.
I pull at the back of my neck. Going “home” shouldn’t be this fucking difficult. “South Boulevard–Park Row,” I finally say on an exhale.
The driver nods once and narrows his eyes in question.
I know he recognizes me but is working to keep his reaction hidden. There are two kinds of people when they see a famous athlete from their hometown. The squealers, who don’t know what to do first—jump up and down, grab their friends, or take a photo and post it on their social media. Then there’re people like this guy right here—the play-it-cool types.
But I know what he’s thinking: Why in the hell is Jessie Callaghan heading to the worst part of Dallas in his bye week?
The streets pass by in a blur for the entire twenty-five-minute drive, and when we pull up outside the house I hoped I’d never have to see again when I moved out for college, I’m hit with a repeated realization.
Nothing has changed.
I remember when I was ten, and my dad told me if I painted the front porch, he would pay me twenty dollars. To me, that was like winning the lotto. Three entire days, I worked in the summer heat until I could barely move my wrist. The day I finished, I couldn’t wait for him to get home from whatever bar he was at and show him. The money could buy me more candy than I could carry, but it was his pride that I was really craving. His acceptance of me.
For once, I just wanted his hand around my shoulder instead of in between my ribs. Yet that was exactly what happened when he got back home that night. It was almost dark when he flew into my bedroom and pinned me against the wall, screaming at me that the finish was shit, that I’d missed parts. He pulled the twenty-dollar bill he’d been waving in my face for days and slammed it flat against my forehead, still screaming in my face.
I never did get the money. Instead, I’d gotten an even bigger beating for being a “useless little prick.”
I climb out of the taxi and hand the driver some cash, pulling my bag out of the trunk.
The front yard is overgrown, and the old tan leather couch that was in my baby photos still sits out front—Mom’s favored smoking spot. The porch hasn’t been touched since that day, and as I take the couple of steps and pull open the screen, I don’t know what’s going to give out first—the wood beneath my feet or the door barely hanging on its hinges.
My parents see more per month from me than some families do in a year, but zero of it goes where it should. They wouldn’t even let me buy them a new house; they wanted the money for other things.
I know it’s coming; as soon as I step across the threshold, I’ll smell it—the memories, the pain. Trauma hangs in the air in this place, its presence ingrained in every wall. The few photos my mom hung portray smiling faces, but every square inch of this house is a lie.
If you visit in the daytime, you’ll smell the stench of old cigarettes and liquor. But you’ll have to hide and wait until the sun goes down and nighttime falls to witness the truths. To catch a glimpse into the horrifying secrets the Callaghan family hides.
Still standing in the entryway, I close my eyes and take a deep breath, pushing through the front door.
The living room is like it always is—gray, worn, and a fucking mess. Mom is as she always has been—and probably always will be—passed out on the couch with an open and half-finished bottle of vodka balancing dangerously on the edge of the coffee table.
Fear rocks through me as my heart races in my chest. My body begins to burn from my toes all the way to my cheeks, but my hands feel ice cold as I breathe in through my nose for four seconds, hold for another four, and slowly exhale.
Over and over, I work to center myself and temper the response my body defaults to. When the anxiety attacks first started to happen, I was convinced I was about to go into cardiac arrest. Pain shoots through my arms, tingling into my fingers, and the familiar wave of nausea rolls through my stomach.
Shutting the door behind me, I turn and take in my mom once more. From the outside, you step directly into the living room. There’s no hallway or separating door to the living space, and the outside elements whip around the room, blowing frail strands of blonde hair around my mom’s pale and motionless face.
Her breathing is shallow, but I can make out the movement of her chest underneath the baggy and threadbare sweater she’s worn pretty much every time I’ve seen her.
It’s useless, trying to wake her since she isn’t really sleeping. She’s intoxicated, passed out. Her body is alive, but her mind is dead to the world. The addict in me—which is fighting so fucking hard to break out as it takes her in—feels a sense of envy toward her numbness, her lack of fucks toward herself and the rest of the world. But the fighter in me carries my feet toward the kitchen to find cleaning supplies and a trash bag—a routine I could carry out in my sleep.
An hour later, I’ve scrubbed every countertop and thrown out every bottle and empty packet of noodles and ginger biscuits I could find. I’ve heard Jon, Jensen, and Zach talk about home cooking and meals their parents made as comfort food. Jon would frequently travel home to Bellevue and return a day later, reminiscing about how he could never top his mom’s cooking.
That’s not something I can relate to. The empty food packets stashed throughout this house represent much of what I remember from my childhood. When I was older and she was occasionally sober, I asked Mom to tell me about my brother, about the boy she cried about daily. It was clear she’d never dealt with his death properly, and Dad wouldn’t even acknowledge his existence, throwing out the baby clothes they’d bought for him and refused to use for me.
Just before my papa passed, I remember him pleading with Mom to talk to someone about my brother’s death since he could see the way it was tearing his daughter apart. But she refused, burying away her feelings. Instead of getting the help she needed, she leaned on the familiar and drank herself into submission.
And that’s where she’s been ever since. Locked in a world of pain, only numbed by addiction.
“Jessie?” Mom’s weak voice calls from behind the couch. “Are you home?”
“Yeah, Mom. Just figuring out what you have here. I’ll head out and grab you some food,” I reply, pulling open each cupboard door and then the fridge to discover nothing inside.
“We ran out of money again.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and close one of the cupboards slowly, gripping the loose handle tightly. “I know. You told me on the phone last night.”
“It’s not enough, baby. We can’t get by on it.”
Frustration races through me. “How can twenty thousand every week not be enough?!” I bite out, desperately trying to rein in my anger.
From the kitchen, I see a hand shoot out and snatch the vodka bottle off the coffee table. “Because it’s not. Wayne is spending more, and I can’t keep him out of that account.”
I want to plead with her to come back with me to Seattle. I can get her away from this place, enroll her in a program, and help fix her. The number of times I’ve begged her to pack a bag and leave with me for Seattle. I’d find her a place away from Dad. I’d appoint lawyers since I have connections, dissolve their marriage, and file orders against him coming anywhere near her.
But I don’t think she’s ever been tempted to accept my offer. This house is a link to Will and my dad as the man she fell in love with years ago. She can’t see that he’s morphed from the asshole he was back then into the full-blown monster he is today. Or maybe she does. She cries like she knows it deep down. But to break the perilous cycle she’s in, she has to want to get better, to be better. She has to want change and be prepared to fight for it. Being in this place and seeing my mom in this state chips away at my own armor, and I know too long spent here will inevitably drag me down too.
It already is.
I pull my phone out of my back pocket, and a text from Mia, asking me how my flight was, lights up the screen.
Her words are like a lifeline to me, a tether to another world and a different, happier Jessie. I want to reply, but I know I can’t. I can’t do to Mia what this place does to me. I need to swing by the store, make sure Mom’s okay and fed, and then get the fuck out of here and over to my hotel.