Chapter 6 #2
Out of the box, I play the rest clean. I don’t chase a hit I don’t have. The kid doesn’t come near me. We play different shifts, and the only thing that exists between us for the last twenty minutes is the lip and the cheekbone and the way the third punch opened things up.
In the third, I set up Stanley off the wall on a stretch, and he buries it from the slot. I’m playing the best hockey I’ve played in weeks.
Horn goes. 4-2.
We win.
I skate down the line, and I tap gloves with my guys. I get to Percy at the goal line last. I tap his pads with my stick.
He looks at me through the cage. He doesn’t say anything.
Percy isn’t a long-conversation man. Percy is a man who looks at you through a goalie mask and you understand what he means without him having to say it, and what he means right now — what his eyes are saying through the cage — is that what I did wasn’t necessary.
The hotel is a Marriott two miles from the rink. Four-channel TV. Eastern-conference carpet. An ice machine at the end of the hall.
Benson and I typically always share a room. Last away game, we did. And tonight we are. I drop my bag at the foot of the bed. I sit down on the edge of the mattress, and I start untying my shoes.
Benson sits on the edge of his. He looks at the carpet between our beds. “Can we talk?”
I set my shoe down on the floor. “Yeah.”
He takes a breath. He still doesn’t look at me. “I’ve known you for two years, going on three.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve never seen you like you were tonight.”
“I won us a game, cap.”
He waits. He’s good at waiting. Benson can sit inside a silence longer than anyone I’ve ever met, and most of the people who’ve tried to wait him out have lost.
I don’t fill it.
“Is it your mom?”
I look at him. “No.”
“Your brothers?”
“No.”
He rubs the back of his neck. “The league?”
“No.”
A pause. Long enough that I know what’s coming.
I don’t think I’m ready for it. It’s not something I want to talk about.
But I couldn’t have been any more obvious than calling a May Day the other week and then dipping out on the party last weekend.
Now the game tonight. My head’s been a fucking wreck all week.
He finally looks at me because he knows. We never talk about our feelings, so I can tell he’s treading lightly. He breathes, and then he lays it out for me, “Is it because of the girl?”
I look at the carpet and don’t answer. I was so fucking fast to say no earlier, and now he asks this, and I have nothing to say.
“Do you guys have history?” he asks.
I think about lying.
I’ve lied about this since the sixth fucking grade.
To my mother. To my brother. To every guy in every locker room who’s ever asked me why I don’t take a girl home from a party.
I’ve lied because saying the truth out loud would have made it a thing I had to carry in two places — in my chest and in the room — and I’ve only ever had room for it in one.
But this is Benson. This man’s my best friend.
I bet I’ll be his best man at his wedding with Lucy.
I know he’s deep in shit with that girl.
Melly Sorcha was a name that has never come up between us, but I have mentioned in passing that there was a girl from high school, and he never pressed for more information.
Because when you say something like that, it implies it stays in the past. It’s fucking high school.
I decide not to lie because keeping it in all these years have done me nothing good.
I nod.
Once.
Eyes on the carpet because I can’t face him. Internally, I’m filled with shame, and it’s eating away.
“When?” he asks.
I hesitate for a second. “I’ve known her since sixth grade, and we went to high school together.”
His brows fly up. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
He takes a moment to think and says, “You don’t hook up with girls, man. In two years, I’ve never seen you take a girl home. From a party. From the bar. Anywhere.” His face pulls into a small, dry smile. “Stanley had money on you being gay.”
I look up at him. “Get the fuck out of here, Reeve.”
He’s grinning now. “Twenty bucks.”
I laugh. Once. Through my nose.
“Fuck, dude. You might be a bigger romantic than I thought.”
I shake my head. “I’m not, cap.”
He’s quiet for a second.
“It’s not the worst thing in the world. Being on this side of the fence.
” He says it to the floor. “I didn’t think Lucy was going to go for it.
Not really. After all the shit with my sister, with everything that was already in the way — I figured she’d pass.
But I had to push. If I hadn’t, it wouldn’t have gone anywhere.
That’s the part nobody tells you. The girl’s not going to do it for you. You’ve got to do it.”
I don’t say anything for a long moment, and Benson doesn’t say anything.
“I’m not good at this,” I admit, not recognizing my own voice. I don’t even know why I’m saying it.
“Good at what?” he asks.
I don’t know how to answer that, because the honest answer is everything.
I don’t text her back. I can’t handle being in the same room as her.
And now that I know she has a boyfriend, I don’t even know what to do with it.
And I think, to my dismay, that this is the real fucking problem.
It’s not even about Melly, even though those blue eyes do something to me, it’s actually about me and how I don’t know how to do anything emotionally.
I say nothing.
He nods like he heard it anyway. “Alright,” he says. He’s quiet for a beat. “Why don’t you make a deal with yourself, man?”
I look over at him, waiting to hear what he means.
“Be friends with her first. Push through whatever animosity you have going on. Don’t try to do the big thing. Just — try the small thing.”
I scoff.
It comes out before I can stop it.
He holds up a hand. “Look. If she’s batshit crazy, bro, don’t do it.”
I blink. “She’s not crazy, man.” It’s out of my mouth before I even realize I’m saying it, and honestly, I don’t think it’s the full truth. Stalking is pretty damn crazy, but is it bad if it made me feel good about myself?
See?
I’m fucked.
“Okay,” he says.
I add, “She has a boyfriend.”
He nods and looks down at his hoodie. “That’s perfect friend-zone material.”
The thing that has been loosening since the penalty box at Lowell Forum tightens right back up.
The fist around my ribs comes back, and the anxiety rises up through my chest the slow way it always rises — the way it rose Friday night when I watched her tilt her face up to Chase’s mouth across the kitchen — and I sit on the edge of my bed in a hotel room and think about what Benson has just said.
Be friends with her.
I can’t be friends with Melly Sorcha.
It’s never been like that between us. There’s no version of us in a coffee shop talking about the weather.
There’s no version of me sitting across from her with my hands on a table and asking her how her semester is going.
There’s the way she used to look at me in the cafeteria when we were fourteen, and there’s the night at my friend’s house when we were seventeen, and there are the years of texts I never answered, and that’s the whole map of us.
I don’t have a friend mode for this girl. I never did.
Benson is watching me think. “I’m just going to say one thing,” he says.
“Okay.”