Chapter 5 Cole
Cole
MY BOYS ARE WICKED SMAHT
MILLER
YOOOOO
FREEZE ARE YOU SERIOUS
COFFEE TO THE FACE
LANDON
Dear God. Our starting goalie is trending online for assaulting a fan with a Dunkin.
MILLER
Perfect arc to the throw btw
The sox probs gonna nab you from the NHL
LANDON
Please don’t encourage him, Miller
MILLER
RIP cole’s dunkin. gone but not forgotten.
ROMAN
The real question, friends, is who is the woman in the video?
COLE
No one.
MILLER
YO he replied just to shut that down
Romy I think you’re onto something
COLE
I’m leaving the groupchat because I hate you all.
MILLER
Nah you love us really.
But more importantly ROMY YOU’RE DEFINITELY ONTO SOMETHING
ROMAN
We have a saying in Russian. Very beautiful. It translates to “if you throw a woman’s Dunkin coffee at a fan, it is only polite to buy her a new iced coffee or a beverage of approximate equivalent value”
COLE
So beautiful. Shedding a tear etc.
“What’s up, tabloid star?”
My little sister grins at me from the doorway of my house.
I sigh, stepping back to wave her inside. I guess news travels fast online. “You’re going to get a lot of mileage out of this one, aren’t you?”
“Yup,” she replies, popping the p, “this isn’t going to be fun for you. But thanks for letting me come to stay, anyway.”
Though Jess is six years younger than me, we’ve always had a similar look. She’s tall, has a dark bob, and green eyes. But where I’m contained, she’s energetic and chatty and wild.
She kicks off her sneakers and follows me into the living room, dropping her bag and immediately flopping onto the couch.
She called me last week asking if she could stay in one of my spare bedrooms for a few days.
Apparently she’s seeing friends in Boston, but I got the vibe that she has something to tell me in person, too.
My phone buzzes in my hand.
CASSIE
Hey Cole! Just checking in. Again. Starting to think you gave me a fake number. Let’s talk. I know a great coffee place we could meet at to discuss the assignment.
Wait. Maybe too soon to mention coffee.
Either way, call me back!
Cassie has been texting me intermittently since Rick shoved this idiotic babysitting assignment into her lap a couple of days ago.
It started professional and polite, like she was trying to undo the part where we yelled at each other on camera.
Then, as I kept refusing to reply, it escalated into aggressively friendly triple texts.
I think she’s trying to break me. It might work, too. There’s just something so sweet about her it makes my jaw ache.
Jess’s eyes drop to my phone. “You need to get that?”
“Nope,” I reply, quickly pivoting topics, shoving the thought of Cassie’s sweetness right out of my mind. “How was the drive down?”
“Deflection noted,” Jess says knowingly, but she launches into a long story about her journey down from rural northern Maine anyway. It basically only ever takes one question to get her talking for ten minutes.
Jess lives at home with our parents. She has since last year when she moved back in. After she ended up in the hospital.
It’s just until she gets back on her feet.
I know it’s not exactly her preference, but a selfish part of me enjoys knowing she’s there.
It’s comforting being able to picture my family, safe and secure.
I can see it clearly in my mind. Jess on the couch at our parents’ house, wearing a baggy hoodie with her headphones in.
Jess driving along a winding road to the nearest town to attend a recovery meeting. Jess walking along the rocky coastline.
“Anyway, enough about me,” she says, after we’ve caught up on news from home for a few minutes. “Let’s talk about you, dude. Everyone else is.”
I cross my arms. Better get this conversation over with. “So, you saw the clip.”
“The whole internet saw you arguing with that girl and whipping an iced coffee at some douchebag. But hey, it’s not all bad. You’ve got one heck of a throw.”
I should’ve known she’d see it, even though she doesn’t pay much attention to hockey. Home might feel like a thousand miles from the bustling city life I now lead in Boston, but it’s still New England. Rural Mainers still love the Nor’easters like everyone else in this part of the country.
But growing up, our parents were baseball diehards, and Jess’s interest in hockey is generally limited to texting me after Nor’easters games.
(”Let’s gooooo!!! You’re the GOAT” if we win.
“Try not letting in the puck next time? Just a thought” if we lose.
Receiving either text always puts a smile on my face.
We tease each other, sure, but family is important as hell to both of us).
“I shouldn’t have done that, but he was being an asshole—“ I begin in defense of myself, but Jess interjects.
“Duh. The crap he was saying to you was really messed up. I’m glad you humbled him.
” She sits up on the couch, her expression growing more serious.
Jess isn’t often serious. “Is everything okay with you? You keep making hockey headlines for doing shit like this. I just… I just know you’ve been giving a lot of time to coming home lately, and I know what happened to me last year was hard for you too.
I don’t want to be the reason you’re struggling. ”
Though Jess still lives at home in Maine, it’s true I’ve seen much more of her the past year.
Maybe more than she’d like. She’s given me the talk about how she’s doing better now, how I don’t need to keep checking in on her, that she appreciates it so much but maybe it’s more for my benefit than hers.
But that’s not happening. She can complain about the protective big brother thing all she wants; I don’t care.
Two years ago, Jess got into a minor car accident while in the back of a taxi and fucked up her back.
The doctors put her on pain meds—her back got better, but none of our family realized she’d become dependent on the meds until it was too late.
Until she was in the hospital, just hanging on to her life, and I was playing a hockey game unaware, hundreds of miles away.
I nearly lost my little sister a year ago. And the worst part was, I wasn’t even there to see the slow slide into disaster, to see that she needed help.
So, yeah. I call her a lot. I drive the six hours to our middle of nowhere hometown to stay with my family, which means I’ve been missing more team obligations lately.
I try to help out however I can. I try to stop disaster hitting us again, hitting us harder.
I try to make up for leaving home at seventeen to pursue my hockey dreams and never really looking back.
I can’t make up the countless hours I’ve missed back in my hometown since I first picked up a hockey stick. All the milestones. Joy and tears and growing up and changing. The big stuff, sure, but the little stuff too. The stuff that makes up a life.
I shake my head. None of this is Jess’s fault. I’ve always made my own choices. “No. My head’s just in a weird place. How’s home, anyway?”
She shrugs. “The same as always. Mom goes to book club and makes casseroles. Dad watches baseball highlights from 2004. I take my online classes and wonder why I’m a twenty-five-year-old who still lives in her childhood bedroom.”
“Sounds kinda nice. I miss that. All of it.”
“That’s because you left.” She catches my expression darken and quickly continues. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way. I just meant… you get to miss it because you left. I’ve been thinking, Cole. I think it’s time for me to miss home, too.”
She hesitates, as if she’s scared to continue. A flash of vulnerability passes across her face.
“I’m moving to Boston.”
My stomach drops. “You’re… what?”
“I applied for a internship focusing on social work at a non-profit, and… I got it.” Her voice is nervous—though she enjoys giving me shit, she really cares what I think.
“It’s perfect for me, Cole. I want to make a difference and help people who need it.
People like me, who fell into hard times and need support to make it out. ”
Dread ticks through me. I’m torn. I feel so damn proud of her. But I’m also terrified about what a big change like this could do. She needs stability, right? I can’t shake the image of her in that hospital bed a year ago.
“That’s… amazing, Jess,” I say carefully. “But it could be too much for you.”
“Cole. I’m healthy. I’m happy. I’ve been sober for a year now. But I’d be much happier if I could move past my lowest point and actually go chase my dreams.” She pauses. “Like you did.”
My chest twinges. But it’s not like I did, because what I did was worse. Left it all and barely looked back.
“Plus, I’ll be closer to you,” she adds. “I can come over and annoy you, like, all the time.”
That gets a smile out of me, but I still can’t shake the concern. “I just don’t know if this is a good idea.”
“It’s a bad idea staying out in the middle of nowhere Maine where I have all these bad memories of…” She trails off, clears her throat. “Of stuff I’d rather walk away from.”
“What do Mom and Dad think about this?”
“They think it’s time their adult daughter emptied the nest, for good this time. I know I’m your baby sister, but I’m twenty-five years old. I’ve made my decision. Can you just… support me on this?”
My jaw tightens. “Okay, Jess. I trust you. I’m proud as hell of you. I just…”
Obsess. Ruminate. Overthink.
“You worry,” Jess completes for me. “I know. It’s basically your thing. And I understand why. I scared the hell out of you last year. But you don’t need to worry so much, Cole. Things are good now.”
I wish I could fully believe her. Believe her enough to silence the drone of worry in my chest.
“You’re going to do great at the internship,” I say softly.
“Thanks.” A relieved smile breaks out over her face, which then turns mischievous. “By the way… who was the woman in the video? The owner of the iced coffee? The one you were arguing with right before you paused to chivalrously shut up the guy who heckled her like a sexist basement-dwelling jerk?”
“She works for my agent. That’s all. We were having a disagreement.”
There’s no way I’m telling my little sister about Rick’s plan to fix me using the power of his junior agent until I absolutely have to.
“Hmm,” Jess ponders, “she looked very pretty, and she wasn’t afraid to argue with you, which is actually kind of cool. Maybe you should try asking her out. It’s been long enough since you’ve dated anyone.”
“No,” I say firmly, and I’m definitely not also trying to convince myself of it. “No way in hell. That’s—why would you even suggest that? No.”
“Jeez, okay. Tell me how you really feel. So you’re just going to make her go viral online and then never talk to her again?”
Never talk to her again. Yeah, that’s one idea.
That, or spend every waking minute with her for the next four months.