Chapter 5
FIVE
COOPER
Two days after evading Sutton, Elliot walks in through the front door of our house. Jaxon and Chase trail behind her, bickering about which Batman is better.
“You can’t possibly be picking Bale over Keaton.”
“West is a classic we haven’t considered.” That’s Chase.
“No, no, no. Out of the running. I’m putting a red sock in your laundry if you don’t tell me right now how you are picking Bale,” Jaxon threatens.
“Could you even find a red sock?” Chase taunts back.
“You know I’m colorblind, you dick.”
They land on either side of me on our sectional and pick up the other two wireless controllers on the console table. Mindlessly, I restart our racing game to add them in, listening to their debate move to Catwoman.
I don’t know where Elliot disappears to, but I can hear her voice. “You two are insane. The obvious choice is Pattinson.”
Our house is two floors with a basement. Spacious and recently renovated. The finished basement is used solely for parties. Thrifted couches line the perimeter, and Jaxon built a make-shift bar in a corner last summer.
The main area is spacious. All of the expected rooms: living, dining that we actually use for nightly dinners and studying, kitchen, and a laundry room that is exploding with dirty clothes from whoever is up on the schedule.
We have to keep that door shut, even with a diffuser it always smells like someone’s sweaty gear.
Dawson’s room is on the main floor in a converted den.
Beck, Chase, Jax, and I live upstairs. I’m in the primary, and before anyone asks, I did pull the captain card.
Not to be a dick, but there was no way I was sharing a bathroom for another year with Jaxon.
After freshman year, I had paid my dues—luckily, Beck is a clean freak and makes him clean it on Fridays before he’s allowed to go out.
Beck’s dad bought the house. He won’t talk about why it frustrates him when you ask about it, but his eyes become blue-tipped daggers, and he walks away, slamming his bedroom door behind him.
I love our house. The proximity to campus and the rink. The way we’ve allowed it to be a revolving door to our teammates and friends. It’s never quiet, never empty.
It’s a distraction.
Elliot reappears, a bowl of fruit and water nestled in one arm.
“This was at our apartment.” She drops a beanie into my lap.
I look down at it. Run the material between my fingers.
When I walked away from Sutton in the library, I didn’t bother to pick up my hat. I readjusted the backpack hanging off one shoulder, spinning on my heels, and bolting. I didn’t care about anything else, except getting away at that moment.
I felt it when my grip tightened on the chair. A lightning bolt through my body, constricting my heart and suffocating me.
I glance down at the black hat and am struck again.
You’re around people, Carmichael, you can’t do this here, one version of me coaches. They can’t see you like this, what would they think?
I pass the controller to Elliot. “Here. You play. Bottom right screen with the blue turtle shell.”
She takes it from me, an inquisitive set to her face as she watches me leave. Jaxon and Chase are too focused on the race to comment on me getting up, the couch breathing with my removed weight.
The jingle of someone crossing the finish line follows me up the stairs and drifts under my door as I close it behind me and lock it.
My room is dark, only lit by the desk lamp. A yellow haze casts a shadow of me pacing back and forth on the wall.
Did Sutton tell her?
Why didn’t Sutton bring this back? Does she hate me that much?
Is Elliot going to tell my friends? Or who else?
I tug my phone out of my Levi’s. Swipe it open and go to Sutton’s text thread, her contact still the nickname I gave her in middle school, and reread her last message.
Dave
Cooper, don’t make me beg. I don’t have another option.
That was two days ago. I haven’t responded till now.
Did you tell Elliot?
Her response is immediate. Surprisingly. She’s not the best texter—at least in our group text, she never responds, but that could be because of me. I try not to read too much into it, even before she was never the best texter, always preferred passing notes or talking on the phone.
Dave
Huh?
She gave me back the hat I wore to our first session.
Dave
I’d hardly call that a ‘session’ when you stormed off in the first two minutes.
Did you tell her?
Dave
Seriously? I’d never cross that line and put my future career in jeopardy.
Answer the question. Yes or no?
Dave
Carmichael…
She’s your best friend. You two tell each other everything.
Dave
Not everything.
So you didn’t tell her?
Dave
Why would I tell her?
I don’t know, Dave. Call it payback.
Dave
There it is. I’m not as low as you. I’d never ruin a friendship.
Is this you admitting we were friends?
There’s a lapse in her response.
I stop burning a path into the area rug in my room. Inhaling deeply, a looseness in my lungs that hasn’t been there lately.
I want her to say yes. Remember those days like I do.
Not that they ever leave me. What should haunt me in my dreams are instead a life jacket thrown to me when I feel like I’m drowning in my brain.
Her smile is the top buckle. The way she’d grab my hand and interlock our fingers during a scary movie is the middle buckle.
And the bottom buckle is the secrets we’ve kept for each other, the pieces of her she’s only ever given to me, and the ones I’ve given her.
The thing about life jackets is that when you tighten them, you have to be mindful of the excess strap. If not, you can get caught in it, hurting yourself in the process.
My phone buzzes.
Dave
I didn’t tell her.
I’d never do that to you.
Never?
I find it hard to believe, but I try to convince myself otherwise. Give her the benefit of the doubt, as I always do to a fault. I’m immune from anything else.
This could simply be her practicing patient-doctor confidentiality.
Or maybe she means it.
This is Sutton, I force myself to remember.
Between her words, I see the fragments of her promise. Despite what I did to her—for her—Sutton still cares about me.
When you grow up with someone the way we did, they become a part of you, and you grow with them. Sutton is an organ that my body needs. Placed somewhere between my heart and lungs, they adapted her into their functions.
If you were to do a CT scan, you’d see a piece of her there. The one I can’t let go of, even though I know she wants me to.
I think our history is that of a fairytale. We are just caught somewhere in the middle, the conflict between the main characters, but you know they’ll get their happily ever after.
Sutton’s parents are high school sweethearts, and my mom was always their third wheel. Their friendship stretched from coast-to-coast and through college, where my mom met my dad. It was serendipitous that our dads were drafted to the same team out of college.
Sutton’s parents are my second family. Her mom would stay the night when our dads were on away game stretches before they adopted the girls.
Her parents moved three doors down when they were going through the adoption process. Something about manifesting by purchasing a five-bedroom house with a pool, that simply had to be filled with kids running around.
It was a crystal blue day, not a cloud in the January sky, when they brought Sutton and Meave home. Mom had hung a huge banner across their porch.
They had told us they were adopting one little girl. Meave popped out of the car door first before turning around and extending a hand to another little girl.
I’d never seen that color of red hair before, or that many curls. Her hair was in pigtails on the top of her head. Shorter than it is now, but always everywhere.
I didn’t understand the word beautiful when I was six, but that’s what I thought when I said to my sisters, Wow, she’s pretty.
My sisters, Jordan and Molly, teased me for weeks after about having a thing for redheads. One time at Disney, we were at a princess character breakfast, and Ariel was the only character I’d take a photo with. Bright maroon cheeks and a toothless smile that I’ll never be able to live down.
Maybe it is redheads, but I think it’s only Sutton. Always has been.
Sutton behaves as if her purpose in life is to make me not want her. She doesn’t realize, though, that my entire existence is wanting her.
I was always the only boy among the four girls. She never made me feel left out. We were the ones to skate together. I carried her on my back when she fell off her scooter and busted open her knees.
We were inseparable till high school when she became friends with Izzy. That friendship ended with me taking the blame for an Izzy-sized mistake, and my friendship with Sutton snapping like a thin thread.
I’ve been working ever since to sew it back together.
Just like I’ve been trying and failing to sew myself back together.
I fling open my door. Sneakers haphazardly on my feet, one of them untied, and run down the stairs.
“Do you know where Sutton is?” I ask Elliot.
“Should be at the…” She looks down at her phone. “Never mind, she’s at the grocery store.”
I find her in produce, meticulously examining apples. No bruises, firm enough that it’ll crunch when you bite into it. Slightly yellow, especially if they are Honeycrisps.
“Heard that one’s poisonous,” I say, walking up next to her, plucking one from the pile and twisting it in my hand.
“Go away, Carmichael.”
I don’t. She pushes her cart to a refrigerated section of fruit.
I pick up a package of berries, check the bottom, and then place them in her cart.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“For what?” She continues shopping, not minding me trailing behind her or the items I’m dropping into her cart. She has a long, lined piece of paper listing all of her groceries in categories. Little boxes next to them that she checks off as she adds them to her cart.