7. Jack
JACK
SHE’S NOT A USUAL GIRL
The door opens and it’s not her. I’m getting my hopes up for nothing.
It hasn’t been her all night. Or at the last party, or the one before that. But I look up every time anyway. Jude leans in on his way past. “Who are you waiting on?”
“Nobody.”
“You’ve been staring at the door all night.”
“I like doors.”
He laughs and keeps moving. I go back to thinking about Chloe. It's basically all I’ve done all week. She only ever came to these things to keep Britt alive but right now, Britt is across the room in Smitty’s lap doing just fine. Somebody’s keeping Britt alive tonight, and it isn’t Chloe.
The one place I could count on running into her, and she’s cut it entirely out of her life.
It takes me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out why. When I finally do, I put my beer down on the counter and go home.
She’s not avoiding parties. She’s avoiding me.
It’s been nineteen days since I drove her home from her exam. I know it’s nineteen because I counted. I have never counted days over a girl in my life. Not once.
She talked the entire drive home. Mostly about hockey.
She talked about it way more eloquently than half the guys on my actual team.
We argued about our power play like she had it figured out and I didn’t.
I made her laugh for real. I’ve replayed that sound in my head more than any goal I’ve ever scored.
Thursday, I have the worst practice of my season. I gap up wrong twice in the exact same drill. I force a stretch pass that gets picked. Then I force the exact same pass again, like I’m aggressively trying to prove the first one wasn’t a fluke.
Coach watches all of it with his arms crossed. When we’re done, he waves me over to the boards.
“Whatever it is,” he says, “figure it out or leave it in the parking lot. I don’t care which.”
“There’s no it.”
“Son, I’ve been coaching guys your age for twenty years. There’s always an it. And it’s usually a woman. Fix it.”
And now, I can’t even bring myself to text her. I knew she wouldn’t text me first. But so much time has passed that reaching out now feels like I forgot about her. I haven’t. I just don’t know how to explain any of it to her.
I’m the guy who’s good at texting women. Light. Easy. A little funny. That’s the entire problem. Every light, easy, funny thing I type reads back exactly like the guy she’s already decided I am.
Hey stranger. Delete.
Miss me yet? Delete.
How’s the car? Delete. That one wasn’t even a line, just boring.
Last week at one in the morning, I typed out a whole paragraph. I read it twice then deleted it so hard I almost threw my phone across the room. I’ve actually thought about calling her. Calling. Out loud. Like it’s the nineteen-nineties. That’s where I’m at.
Smitty catches me at it in the locker room after practice. Phone out, thumb hovering.
“So you caught it for Toronto girl,” he says. “The one who wouldn’t even wear your jersey to the game you got her tickets for.”
“She’ll wear mine eventually.”
“You sound pretty sure for a guy who hasn’t gotten a date yet.”
“I’m working on it.”
“You want my advice? Treat her like one of the usual girls.”
“She’s not a usual girl.”
“They’re never a usual girl until they are.” He pulls his jersey over his head. “Give it two weeks. You’ve never once wanted the same one two weeks running.”
“It’s been almost three.”
That shuts him up for a second. Then he just shrugs because he’s got years of evidence on his side.
We walk out of the arena together and there’s a girl waiting by the players’ exit. She’s wearing a massive smile aimed right at me. The kind of smile that means we definitely know each other. Probably a lot more than just know each other.
“Jack,” she says, like seeing me is a nice surprise.
“Hey…” I say. “...You.”
Which is exactly what I say when I’ve got nothing. No name. Not even the first letter of one. She watches me actively not remember her and she frowns.
“It’s Megan,” she says.
“I know.” I did not know. “Meg. Hey. Sorry, it was a long practice.”
Behind me, Smitty turns a laugh into a cough.
I get her out of there as quickly as I can and then I stand in the players' lot feeling like an absolute asshole. Which is the new part.
I have forgotten a truly staggering number of women. I once confused two girls’ names at the same party and just started calling both of them “babe” as a blanket policy. It’s never cost me a thing because there was always going to be another Friday.
Watching Megan leave mad, I don’t want another Friday. I want the one specific girl who won’t give me the time of day. She saw straight through me and my fifty Megans. She just didn’t want to be number fifty-one.
Dean Barrett’s the last guy in the lot. Our captain. He does this thing where he lingers by his truck until he’s counted everybody out of the building. He’s leaning against his door right now with his keys in his hand, watching me fail to have my life together.
“You look like you lost a bet,” he says.
I did not come out here to talk to Dean Barrett about my feelings. What I do instead is walk straight over to his truck and hear my own mouth say, “How’d you know Lorelei was it?”
He doesn’t laugh. That's the first surprise, since Dean never passes up an opportunity to chirp someone.
“I grew up next door to Rory,” he says. “I was best friends with her brothers, so for about fifteen years she was just the little sister who wouldn’t leave us alone.
Turns out she kept a scrapbook of my junior scores and points the whole time.
I didn’t find that out till way later.” He laughs.
“Then I got drafted and left. While I was gone, she went and got engaged.”
“What’d you do?”
“Nothing. I told myself I was happy for her. And then one night I’m alone in a hotel in a city I couldn’t even name for you now and it occurred to me that she’s the only person I’d ever actually wanted.
I never noticed because she’d always just been there.
” He shrugs. “So I flew home. She was miserable. Anybody with eyes could see it except the guy she was marrying. And I told her, look, maybe I’m not the one either.
I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure he’s not.
If you marry him you’re gonna miss out on a whole lot of happiness, but at least I can give you an adventure. ”
“That’s a hell of a swing.”
“She moved across the country to live with me four days later. Her brothers were furious.” He grins. “Best thing I’ve ever done.”
He looks at me. “So who’s got you out here asking a married man for directions?”
“…She won’t talk to me. She thinks I’m—” I stop. The honest end of that sentence is a perfectly accurate description of me. “She’s not wrong about me.”
Dean nods, like that’s actually good news. “Then be wrong about yourself for a while. See if it sticks.”
At home, I drop onto the couch. I try to picture forgetting her the way Smitty swears I will but instead my brain keeps replaying all the little moments I’ve had with her so far.
Her tapping the Toronto crest. The little nose wrinkle.
Her laughing in my truck. The sled dogs.
The way she came up out of her seat for my goal before she could stop herself.
I want more of it. I want to talk hockey with somebody who can out-argue me. I want to get her back on a dance floor, because she can definitely dance, no matter what she says. Three weeks of this and I should be completely over it. Instead, I’m worse.
And that's the part that actually scares me. I’ve never wanted something I wasn’t sure I’d get. It always just came to me. This might not. I can feel it. It's the exact same way you feel a lead slipping late in the third period.
So I throw out the playbook. Which takes a while, because I know a lot of plays.
Then I text her an invite to a party. I read it back four times. It’s not smooth. There’s no angle in it. There's no casual way to walk it back if she says no.
I hit send before I lose my nerve. Then I sit there staring at the screen. Because for the first time in my life, I’m actually scared of the answer.