Chapter 6
Chapter Six
The Broken Arrow
Perfection.
Greatness. Being at the top. Being the best.
Those are the things that I grew up with.
Those are the things that have been drilled into my head ever since I was a kid and I’d see my soccer legend of a father, Atticus Carlisle, play.
Mostly on the television screen because he passed away when I was seven.
And how do you become the best? How do you achieve greatness and perfection?
You do it by working hard, harder than the others. You do it by being focused. You do it by making sacrifices that others won’t.
You do it by following the rules.
Which is, again, something I grew up with because my mother is the principal of a reform school.
So I’ve always done my homework, eaten my vegetables. I’ve gone to bed at an appropriate time. I’ve gotten straight As. I’ve aced every practice.
In short, rules are how I’ve lived my life.
It doesn’t make sense though that I’m here, back in my hometown of St. Mary’s, for doing the exact opposite of that.
I’m not only back in my hometown but I’m also sitting on a pink couch with printed blue flowers on it. Because I broke the very first rule of soccer. The rule my dad taught me when I was only six or so.
“You never lose your temper, Arrow. That’s the first rule. Soccer isn’t about butting heads. It’s about precision and accuracy. It comes from patience. You gauge the play of the other player before making yours.”
I have to admit that I didn’t understand it at the time but over the years, it became second nature.
Not losing my calm. Not losing my patience. Not losing my fucking temper.
But I did.
I lost my temper and beat up the assistant coach. It doesn’t matter that he had it coming. It doesn’t matter that I would’ve killed that motherfucker if they hadn’t pulled me off. It doesn’t matter that I fucking enjoyed it.
What matters is that I broke a rule – as impossible and otherworldly as it may seem right now – and got kicked off the team.
I got kicked out before I could win the cup and that’s why I’m here.
In the pink and from what I can tell also purple office of the therapist that the team chose for me, Dr. Lola Bernstein.
She’s a woman in her fifties, I think. She also wears glasses and a fuck-ton of jewelry. And she smiles. A lot.
I’ve probably been here five minutes and she’s smiled at me at least ten times. So she smiles twice every minute. Once every thirty seconds, and I already want to punch her glass coffee table.
But I won’t.
Because I don’t lose my temper. I never lose it.
Besides, she’s a Harvard graduate. She has about thirty years of experience and good credentials.
I’ve been told that she’s also worked at a very prestigious facility called Heartstone Psychiatric Hospital, before starting her own practice.
If anyone can help me get rid of this anger inside of me, it’s her.
So I’m going to follow the rules and not punch things around me like I strangely want to do these days.
“So, Arrow.” She cocks her head to the side and her necklace tinkles. “Can I call you Arrow?”
I clench my teeth at her noisy jewelry. “People call me A but sure, yeah. Whatever.”
“I can call you A. No worries.”
She smiles. Again.
I don’t know how to respond to it. Am I supposed to smile back? Am I supposed to ask her what she wants to be called? What, exactly.
Also, how does a Harvard graduate not know what the basic professional attire is? Why is she wearing a hobo-like skirt? How is that going to inspire confidence in her clients that she can fix their problems?
But again, I’m not going to get riled up. Because I never get riled up.
Besides, it’s not like I’ve been to a therapist before. So I don’t know what these people do.
“So,” she begins when I simply keep looking at her. “This is the first time that you’ve had an anger problem, at least to this degree. Is that correct?”
I jerk out a nod. “This is the first time I’ve had an anger problem to any degree.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Are you saying that you’ve never been angry?”
“Yes.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“It’s not. I don’t lose my temper. It’s detrimental to the game.”
“Ah, soccer.” She nods. “So you’re very dedicated to soccer.”
Something about that makes me tighten up my body. “Yes. Soccer is everything.”
She hums and I don’t like that. I don’t know what that hum means. I’m about to say something to her when she asks me another question. “So what happened to make you this angry?”
“Excuse me?”
She shrugs. “You say that you never get angry because it’s detrimental to the game. But something must have happened to make you so angry that you punched someone. So what happened?”
What happened.
She’s joking, right?
Doesn’t she know what happened? It’s fucking plastered all over, what happened.
It’s fucking plastered all over the team that I broke up with my girlfriend and lost my shit.
And I lost it to such an extent that I got suspended because the douchebag I beat up was threatening to press charges against me.
They even told me to get out of the city, work on my issues and come back when I have a doctor’s note saying that I’m fit to play again.
The PR team had to step in and make up a lie about an injury.
All because I broke the first rule of soccer.
“I was under the impression,” I begin, shifting on the pink couch – I cannot fucking get over the color – my body tighter than ever, “that you were hired by the team.”
“I was.”
“So shouldn’t you already know what happened?”
She smiles again and I swear to God, I’m going to destroy her coffee table and that bookcase that she has by the wall, just to get myself to calm down and finish my very first therapy session.
My fingers are already tingling with the effort of keeping still and not curling into fists.
“I do know. But I want to hear it in your own words. So I’d love it if you’d humor me.”
Right.
Okay.
Humor the goddamn doctor so she’ll give me a note and I can go back to where I belong: with my team.
I clamp my jaw and count to three. Then, I count to five.
My gut is still churning but it’s okay. I can do this.
I’ve done harder things on the soccer field. I can talk to a therapist and tell her in my own words what happened.
“I broke up with my girlfriend,” I begin with clenched teeth. “And that made me angry. It made me so angry that I did what I never do: I broke a rule. And now I’m here sitting in front of you, talking about it.”
She hums again and it’s starting to grate on my nerves. “So about the breakup. Tell me about it. How did that happen?”
At this, everything in my body seizes up.
Every single thing.
My muscles strain and I have to clench my teeth as I feel something crawling over my skin. Something like a bug. A hundred bugs. A whole fucking army of them.
They crawl and slither even, getting me hot around the neck, getting my legs jittery and I lose the battle with my fingers and curl them into fists, digging the knuckles into my thighs.
Somehow, I manage to say, “How do you think breakups happen? We had a fight. We broke up.”
Finally, she’s lost her smile and there’s a frown on her forehead. And I’m not sure if I like that better than her constant stretch of lips.
“Well, there must have been a reason, right? Breakups don’t just happen.”
That’s the thing.
It happened. It fucking happened. And I didn’t see it coming.
I didn’t see the knife in her hand.
Not until she stabbed me with it.
I’m sorry, A. I didn’t mean for it to happen…
That’s what she said. After.
After she took eight years of our love and threw it away.
That she didn’t mean for it to happen.
I dig the knuckles deeper into my jittery thighs and say, “Ours did. It happened.”
“Yes. But what happened?”
The bugs have started to sting me now. They’ve started to bite at me. And I’m seriously considering smashing something.
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“I think it’s extremely relevant,” she insists. “You broke up and that’s what has caused everything, so again, what happened to break you guys up?”
You know what, it’s not going to be my fault.
If I do break her table, I mean.
It’s not going to be my fault that Dr. Lola Bernstein is going to lose her glass coffee table and that little cactus she has sitting on it. Because she’s the one asking stupid questions.
Questions that have no bearing on why I’m here.
“How much is that coffee table?” I ask, tipping my chin at it.
She frowns again but this one is lighter. “Why?”
I shrug, cracking my neck slightly. “It’s extremely…” Breakable. “Attractive.”
“You like it?”
I open and close my fists. “Yeah. As attractive as the rest of your office.”
She looks around the office. “I thought you hated it. You didn’t look too happy when you sat down on my couch.”
“I don’t hate your couch. I love your couch. And I love pink. Pink is my favorite.”
She takes her smile one step further. She turns it into a low laugh. “Now I definitely know you’re kidding. Pink cannot be your favorite. Because your mouth is saying one thing and your face is saying something else altogether.”
"What is my face saying?”
“That you’re angry.”
I curl one side of my mouth into a tight smirk. “Huh. And here I thought your job was to not make me angry.”
“My job isn’t to not make you angry. My job is to fix the problem that’s causing the anger.”
“Well, then you should really think about redecorating your office. And not asking questions that have nothing to do with anything.”
“So you don’t like being asked questions?”
“Not particularly, no.”
She nods. “What about them pisses you off, exactly?”
“The fact that they’re stupid and irrelevant.”
She hums and this time she writes something in her notebook.
“What the fuck are you writing?” I can’t help but ask.
She parts her lips in an O. “Was that a question?”
“That’s definitely not an answer.”
She laughs again.
I just lose it then.
Because her laughter is loud. Her jewelry is even louder.