Chapter 10 #3
I pant, looking down. I fucking ran out of pucks. I’m not even close to being done. I skate to the corner where most of them have collected and stand there for a second. My breath is fogging hard in front of my face. My shoulder is making a noise it does not make when it’s fine.
I take three breaths.
I skate back to the line and hit the same puck twenty times in a row. Wrist. Wrist. Wrist. Wrist. The puck cracks against the boards and comes back to my stick, and I wrist it again.
My mind’s racing on a fucking loop.
Boyfriend. Mustache. Bed. Hug. Ignored.
All of it like a sick fucking symphony in my head. A song on repeat.
My head always does this, and this is why I run. I can’t handle the aftermath. I can’t handle my own fucking emotions. It’s all too much, ricocheting in my fucking head.
It’s me. I’m the fucking problem.
I skate one slow circle. Then another. My shoulder is screaming at me to fucking stop.
My breath is fogging the inside of my cage.
I stop at center ice, and I stand there with the half-lit ceiling above me and the empty seats around me and the small, distant hum of the building’s heater somewhere in the walls.
This isn’t helping.
The only peace I’ve felt in years was last night when she was in my arms, rubbing my back. I haven’t hugged anyone like that in years. Fucking years.
I skate fast around the rink, feeling like I’m falling apart piece by piece. I can’t be fucking doing this, not when I’m trying to achieve more than what’s currently possible. I need my edge. I need this drive to build the success. Without it, I don’t have a fucking thing.
I collect the pucks slowly. Each one. One at a time.
The rage is gone now. What’s left is the hangover and the shoulder and the smudge that won’t come off.
My head’s not empty, but I’ve shoved it in a fucking box before it drives me up the wall.
I dump the basket back behind the bench.
I skate to the gate. I open it. Step through. Pull it closed behind me.
The locker room is cold. I sit on the bench and strip out of the gear slowly. The shoulder is the worst it has been since the season started. I will pay for the rink tomorrow. Fuck it.
I get dressed quickly.
The drive back home takes longer than normal.
The house is spotless when I walk in. The kitchen archway is clear — somebody has unhooked the pumpkin lights and coiled them on the counter.
The red cups are gone. The dining room table décor is gone.
Greg the skeleton is back on his hook by the bathroom door.
The veggie tray is in the trash and the trash bag is tied off and waiting by the back door.
The kitchen smells like bacon and coffee.
Stanley, Benson, Rowan, Percy, and Lucy are around the island.
There’s breakfast. Eggs in a pan on the stove. Bacon on a paper-towel-lined plate on the counter. Toast in the rack. A bowl of fruit. Rowan is committed to being the cook of the Hawthorne House, and I’m glad about it.
They all look up when I come in.
Stanley, with a cheek full of toast, says, “There he is.”
Benson nods. Lucy gives me the small soft smile she gives me. Rowan does not turn from the stove. Percy is at the end of the island with both hands around a fresh mug and his eyes on me and his face doing nothing.
They were talking about me while I was at the rink. I can feel it. Lucy is in one of Benson’s shirts and is too kind to look at my collarbone, but Benson is not. His eyes go to the smudge for half a second and then back to my face, and he doesn’t say a word.
“Come eat,” Stanley says.
“I’m not hungry.”
I walk past and take the stairs.
My bedroom door is the same way I left it. I throw the gear bag against the wall. It hits hard. The shit inside shifts. The bag drops to the floor. I stand in the middle of the room.
The bed is still unmade.
The dent in the pillow is still there.
The trash can is still beside the bed.
I walk into the bathroom.
The shower goes hot in two seconds. I drop my clothes in a pile and step in. The water hits my face, so I close my eyes. I let the water run over me.
I am not thinking.
I am not thinking.
Then I am thinking.
I’m thinking about her on top of me this morning.
The weight of her chest on my chest. Her hand under my shirt at my ribs.
The way her mouth was open against my throat.
The way her hair was across my collarbone.
The way she fit against me. The way she has always fit against me.
The way she fit against me at his captain’s house when we were seventeen, and I didn’t move for a full hour because I didn’t want her to wake up.
I wanted her then, and I want her now.
Fuck, I’m hard.
I’m hard for a girl who walked right past me this morning like nothing happened last night.
I hate it.
I grab my raging dick anyway.
I think about her in the jersey last night.
I think about her in my hoodie this morning.
I think about her dancing with me. The way she throws her head back and laughs.
The way her blue eyes gleam just for me.
I think about every almost I have ever had with her, every single one, the whole drawer of them.
I come against the tile.
This is the second time I’ve done this.
I don’t feel better.
Go figure.