Chapter 22 #2
For the first time in over a year, Gabby was looking at me like she used to. Like I was someone she wanted to be, someone she could trust with everything. I focused all my efforts on blinking away the pressure behind my eyes.
“I’m sorry for calling you a coward,” she said, and then, after a moment of hesitation, she added, “What if I want you to know her too? At least, the person she is now.”
I was already ready with my answer. The idea had come to me while I was lying in bed this morning, unable to sleep. “If you agree to start seeing a therapist, I’d be willing to give her a chance,” I said, and disbelief flashed behind the blue of her eyes. Our mother’s eyes.
“You’ll meet with Mom?” she asked excitedly.
“What if I start by reading one of her letters? Baby steps, okay?”
“Yes,” she said with a nod of agreement. “But I have my own conditions. You have to go to therapy too. We’ll do it together.”
I held out my hand, extending my pinky finger for her. It was a promise.
“What else? You said conditions.”
“It’s more of a question, really . . .” Gabby bit her lip, looking suddenly unsure of herself. “Did they really love each other back then—Mom and Dad? They’re so different from each other now.”
“They’ve always been like that, even when you were a baby.
From what I remember, Mom was the opposite of Dad in a lot of ways: talkative, loud, even dramatic.
She made mundane things like going to the grocery store seem like an adventure.
Dad was her anchor, and she was his sail. They balanced each other that way.”
Gabby smiled at me, and it felt like a beam of sunlight shining down on my face after months of nothing but overcast skies. My dad had been right after all. Seeing a spark of happiness in Gabby was worth the ache in my heart that came with speaking about our mother.
>> <<
Sebastian
Saturday morning came with a world of pain, in more ways than one. Outside the obvious symptoms of my hangover, which included (but were not limited to) a torturous throbbing in my head and an unrelenting bout of nausea, there was the resounding realization of having fucked up spectacularly.
“Your parents are here.”
Bryce wouldn’t look me in the eye. In the twenty minutes since he’d woken me from the floor of my bathroom with a cup of cold water to the face, he hadn’t said more than a few words to me.
It was for the better considering that I could barely think straight, let alone speak.
The same five words cycled through my mind on a loop: I’ve made a terrible mistake.
“Sebastian!”
That was definitely my mom. When I glanced up from my hands, Bryce was no longer standing in the threshold of my room.
Slowly but surely, I dragged myself out of bed and made my way downstairs.
They were waiting for me in the living room, my mother sitting cross-legged on the sagging leather couch and Bill pacing back and forth over the creaky floors.
“You scared me to death!” she exclaimed.
“How much did you drink last night?” Bill asked.
I’ve made a terrible mistake. I’ve made a terrible—
“Tell me what’s going on, Sebastian.” This time, when my mother spoke, her voice was soft. There was concern etched onto her face, concern that I didn’t deserve.
“I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out a hand to brace myself against the wall as a powerful wave of queasiness hit.
“You should sit down,” Bill suggested.
Numbly, I did as I was told, slumping onto the cushion next to my mom.
“What happened?” she asked.
I didn’t know where to begin. After leaving DuLane, everything turned a bit blurry. All I knew was that last night had ended with me at the bottom of a whiskey bottle, failing to drown out the look of horror in Grace’s eyes as I told her we were over. What the hell is wrong with me?
“I ruined everything.” There was no other way to put it. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Not Grace, not my future in hockey. I blew it all up.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t matter? Is Grace the girl you’ve been neglecting to tell me about?”
“Like I said, it doesn’t matter. I ruined things with her and with hockey.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” she said, but there was so much my mom didn’t know, so much that I’d been terrified to share with her.
“You’re not the first guy to lose his cool on that ice, and you won’t be the last. Don’t they let you do that stuff in the big leagues? I’m sure they see it as you getting in some practice,” she continued.
She was right. Fights were bound to happen in hockey, but this was about more than a fight. Detroit had been radio silent these past few months. If they were still planning to sign me, I’d have heard from Duncan or another representative by now.
“They don’t want me anymore,” I admitted.
“Why would they send a package over to the house if they weren’t going to sign you?”
My head shot up. “What do you mean?”
“I was going to tell you after the game. On Wednesday, we received a package from the office in Detroit. It’s loaded with Red Wings gear: shirts, sweats, some branded compression shorts, and a couple of water bottles. I figured they wanted you to wear them around campus—show off your future team.”
I shook my head in confusion. “That doesn’t make sense. I haven’t heard from Duncan, not even for my mid-season report. He hasn’t answered a single one of my emails or phone calls.”
The color drained from her face. I couldn’t bear to the see the disappointment in her eyes, so I hung my head in shame.
“I’m so sorry, honey, I must have forgotten to tell you.
We got some news in the mail over Thanksgiving break.
Duncan is no longer with the Red Wings. I don’t know much, but they ended on bad terms. They sent your report and some other information to the house because that’s the address they have on file. ”
My heart stopped. “Are you serious?”
Disbelief. I was in utter disbelief. There was no other way to describe the tingling in my chest.
“I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I forgot to tell you,” she said, reaching over to clasp my hand in both of hers. “I was planning to send you home with everything after winter break, but you left in such a rush because you wanted to make it back to school before the storm hit.”
“I’ve spent the last three months thinking they didn’t want me anymore. Three months feeling like a fucking failure. Knowing that I let him down.”
My ears rang loud enough to muffle the sound of my mother’s voice. She must have said something to Bill because a moment later, he kissed the top of her head and left the room.
“You could never let your father down, Sebastian,” she said, gripping my hand tighter. “Why would you think that?”
“Dad gave up everything to help raise me. I just wanted to make him proud. Do what he never got the chance to do because of me.”
“Your father didn’t give up anything. He got a job in town because he wanted to see you grow up.
He didn’t want to be away all the time. You were no sacrifice to him, and I know that he’s proud of you.
” She shook her head, tears pooling in her eyes.
“Your dad was so happy to share his passion with you, but that doesn’t mean it has to be your future.
He just wanted to spend as much time with you as possible, and hockey was something he knew he could teach you.
” She let out a small, sniffling laugh. “You were so good right from the start. I remember him rushing into the house every time you learned something new. To him, you hung the moon.”
A lump formed in my throat. All I could do was squeeze her tight and soak in the words as she told me everything I’d ever wanted to hear.
“The Red Wings want you. But you don’t have to accept a contract if you’re only doing this to make your father proud. You’ve already done that. You do it every day.” After a long moment, she added, “You haven’t let anyone down, Sebastian, least of all your father.”
Was that still true after last night? A half laugh, half sob escaped me.
I’d never imagined I’d feel so miserable learning that my dream was going to come true.
Everything I’d worked for was about to pay off.
If what my mother said was true, I’d be playing for Detroit in a matter of months, living the life I’d set out to achieve when I was only twelve years old.
But I could no longer see that perfect picture I’d painted of my future, the one where I was standing alone.
It hadn’t been that way since I’d met Grace, even if I hadn’t realized it until now.
I needed to fix this—to go to her and explain how fucking sorry I was for everything I’d said.
“I need to find Grace.”
My mom must have sensed the urgency in my tone because she didn’t question me as I raced from the living room in pursuit of my phone. But in my haste to reach my bedroom, I nearly collided with Bryce at the top of the stairs.
“She’s not here, Sebastian,” he said flatly, and I realized he must have been standing up here, listening to our conversation. “Grace left to go home last night.”
“She left—because of me?”
He made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. “Not everything is about you.”
“Then why did she leave?”
“First, tell me what was going through your head last night.”
Bryce’s face was tense—all furrowed brow and flattened lips, a hard look in his eyes that made me want to take a few steps back. “I know I fucked up. I let down our teammates—”
He let out a bitter laugh, and the sound stunned me into silence. “I was referring to the best thing that’s ever happened to you: Grace. You know, the girl you completely destroyed after your little tantrum on the rink.”
Destroyed. The word brought forth an image of her standing in the concourse at DuLane.
I could still see the devastation written across Grace’s face as I tore into her deepest vulnerabilities.
The things that I’d said—there was no coming back from that.
Bryce was right, I’d destroyed Grace. How could she ever trust me again?
“What were you thinking?” he asked, and I shook my head, unable to find the words.
In only a few months, Grace had become the most important person in my life.
That was why I’d been so torn up when I’d realized she wasn’t there last night.
For the first time since my father died, I was going to look into the crowd and see someone I cared for, someone I loved, someone who truly understood what hockey meant to me and appreciated every moment on the ice for how special it was.
“I built up this stupid moment in my head, and when it didn’t come true—” I stopped short at the sound of my own words, realization dawning on me. Last night was no one’s fault but my own, and there was no excuse for how I’d acted.
“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing that it wasn’t enough. “I’ve been such a self-centered asshole since the accident.”
Bryce gave me a slow clap, his lips twisting into a sardonic smile. “I’m glad you finally figured out that the world doesn’t revolve around you.”
A crushing weight pressed down on my chest. The people in my life deserved more from me: Bryce, Grace, my teammates—Kate.
“When you’re with Grace, you’re like the old Sebastian, the one who was fun to be around and didn’t blame everyone else for his problems.”
He was right. I’d let my life be defined by hockey, and when that was taken from me, I’d lost myself. But Grace had helped me realize that I was someone outside of the rink. She was the best thing about me, and last night, in a moment of selfish rage, I’d thrown it all away.
“I’m going to make things right.”
“It’s not going to be easy, not after what you said to her. Not after—” He stopped himself short.
“Not after what?”
A telling silence hung in the air between us. I was missing something.
“Why isn’t she here, Bryce?”
His lips pressed together in a slight grimace before he said, “Her dad had a heart attack. She was rushing off to the hospital to see him when you . . .”
When I accosted her. Shame wrapped itself around my body in a smothering embrace.
“Is he okay?”
Bryce gave a solemn nod, though it did little to ease my conscience. I’d ruined everything over a split-second feeling of betrayal that wasn’t even real. I had to make things right, even if hell was more likely to freeze over than Grace forgiving me.
“She needs time at home to heal with her family. Give her that.”
“And in the meantime?” I asked, feeling at a complete loss for how to move forward.
“Figure out what the hell you’re going to do to make things right.”