10. Chapter 9 #2
The arena chooses that exact moment to surge with noise—a near-miss down low, the crowd roaring up to a fever pitch—and I clamp the phone to my ear and spin away from the glass, pressing my free hand over my other ear.
"Mom! Hi! Hey!" My voice is at least three octaves too high. "I can barely hear you, it's a little loud where I am—"
"Where ARE you? It sounds like a stadium."
On the ice below, the Bears are setting up in the offensive zone, Declan cycling the puck behind the net to Spencer Holland.
"Mom? Can I maybe call you—"
"I've been trying to reach you for days, Josie. You haven't answered any of my calls. I was starting to worry."
"Sorry, I've been busy. A lot going on. I can call you back—"
"Busy doing what, exactly?"
The crowd erupts again. A near-miss, a scramble in front of the net. I cover the speaker with my hand, trying to muffle the noise, but it's useless.
"Are you—" My mother pauses. The silence on her end stretches out. "Are you at a hockey game, Josie?"
Beside me, Darcy and Rose are frozen, watching me like I'm a bomb about to go off.
"No, I'm—" I start, but the words die in my throat.
Because Declan Morrison is down on the ice, skating past our box, and he winks up at me.
My grip tightens on the phone. My pulse is a war drum in my ears.
Could I just… tell her?
I glance around the arena. The stands are fuller than they've ever been. The crowd is alive, thrumming with energy.
I did this.
I did this, and I've got no one to share it with.
I should be proud. My father would be proud. He'd be dancing right alongside Darcy and Rose, who, by the way, have completely forgotten about my situation and are now leading a chant in the nearby section, their arms waving wildly in the air.
They are absolutely not helping me muffle the sound of this hockey game.
"Mom, I—"
"Don't lie to me, Josie. You promised me you were done with this sports…
business." She sighs so heavy I feel the disappointment through the phone.
"I just don't know what to do with you anymore.
You move across the country, you won't tell me where you're living, you won't tell me what you're doing.
And now I find out you're still just floating around at a hockey game.
" Each word lands like a slap. "After everything we've been through as a family. "
Ah huh.
There it is. The card she always plays.
As if losing him without warning, without time to say anything that mattered, was somehow my fault for loving the same things he loved.
He didn't get a goodbye. He didn't get a warning. None of us did.
Just tell her. Tell her you did this.
Tell her you finally found the place where you belong.
"Mom." My voice cracks. "Mom, listen. I have something to tell you. It's… it's a good thing. It's actually a really good—"
"Josie."
But she cuts me off, the way she always does.
"I don't understand why you can't be more like your sisters. They settled down. They have proper lives. And here you are, twenty-six years old, chasing little boys playing a game on a frozen pond."
A tear threatens to fall from my eyes, but as I reach up and swipe at it, a low rumble builds around me.
I look down, and in a blur of blue and gold on the ice, Declan wins a battle along the boards. He shakes off the opposition and snaps it to Beck at the point, Beck fires the final pass, and Finn MacAllister, our Irish import, tips it past the goalie.
The arena detonates.
"GOOOOOOOOOOAL!!!!!"
An explosion of noise slams through the glass, shaking the building as the bass of the goal horn blasts so loud the floor trembles under my sneakers. The bear roar shakes the entire building.
And right beside me, Darcy and Rose absolutely lose their minds.
"OH MY GOD!" Darcy shrieks, leaping a full foot in the air, champagne flying out of her glass in a glittering arc that catches Rose square in the face.
"YESSS!" Rose is jumping, fries scattering, her own cocktail launching sideways, both of them screaming and bouncing and clutching each other like the world is ending in the best possible way.
And me?
I'm standing here. Like one big disappointment.
"Josie? Josie!?" I can barely hear my mother's voice on the phone I'm still pressing to my ear. "What on earth—"
I look up to the scoreboard, watching as it ticks over: BEARS 1 -0.
I should be smiling. I should be jumping for joy like my friends.
Instead, I'm standing here, still as a statue, holding my phone with shaking hands. I could hang up, I guess. But is there any point? She'd just call again. Just to remind me how much of a failure I am.
Down on the ice, the celebration's winding down.
The teams reset across the rink and Declan glances up at the box as he skates back to center. He spots me and the phone pressed to my ear.
He must see the panic that's written all over my face, but he throws a fist in the air and points up at me through the glass, claiming the goal, claiming me, like that one was for you, Whitfield.
For one heartbreaking second, I wonder what this call would sound like if it were my dad on the other end. He wouldn't be sighing. He'd be losing his mind. He'd be screaming like an absolute lunatic, just like Darcy and Rose beside me, who are STILL chanting.
"BEARS! BEARS! BEARS!"
Mom's voice finally cracks through the line again.
"Oh, for goodness sake. I'm hanging up, Josie. Call me when you've grown up a bit. Your father filled your head with so much nonsense. I always knew it would only break your heart. Goodbye."
The line goes dead.
The lights flash and blaze around the arena. The chant rises around me.
The Bears are winning.
It should be the best night of my career.
But all I can feel is the cold weight of a family who will never, ever understand that being different was never the thing that broke me.
They were.
And somehow, I have never felt so completely, devastatingly alone.