Chapter 3
CASH
September
Several days later, I finally forced myself to do something I’d been avoiding. I walked through the house I’d shared with Nolan and Mason for two years and actually looked around. Really looked. A deep, heavy sigh filled my chest as I took in the sight that greeted me.
Blank walls with shadows of things that once hung on them.
Open floor space where a large sectional and a dining table once sat.
Echoes of memories played like old movie reels, a flickering overlay on the emptiness.
The space felt eerily similar to my life now when compared to ten months ago. Like the house, I had turned from vibrant and full of life into a shell, with only memories of what once was and a haunting dream of what could have been left.
The living and dining areas were completely bare except for the rugs.
My contribution to those spaces. In the kitchen, which opened to the living room, the barstools remained.
Another purchase I’d made to help furnish our house.
They sat pushed under the counter, still equally spaced from where Nolan had arranged them in his last neurotic cleaning fit.
My phone pinged. The noise fed frustration into me like a forward-fed puck into an empty net.
The screen showed the alarm label: time to medicate the gimp.
I needed the meds. Badly. My knee had been throbbing for the last two days.
Maybe I was just hyperaware of it because of all the shitty things my life kept heaping on top of one another until I couldn’t bear to deal with it anymore.
Tears burned in my eyes as I walked through the emptiness to my bedroom. I loved this space. This house had been my first real home. Not a billet where I got a room decorated by the family who housed me. Not a room in a foster home with a bed that who knew how many had slept in, but my own room.
I remembered the first time I lay on the too-large-for-the-room bed.
The whole thing had been brand new. Not new to me.
Brand fucking new. Period. The wide expanse of the king-size mattress still smelled of plastic and the manufacturing creases still lined the bedding.
I bawled that day. My fist shoved into my mouth to drown out the sobs.
Tears had run down my face until I’d jumped from the bed, grabbing a towel to keep the bed tear-and snot-free.
Looking at it and the other furnishings, sparse though they were, I accepted that leaving behind the bed and all the rest was the only option. I couldn’t lift them, and even if I could, I had no way to store or transport them.
A fresh set of tears burned trails down my already raw face. Fuck my life.
No!
I refused to let this be the end of Cash Benjamin. I hadn’t let a motherfucking thing in my past beat me, and I wouldn’t start with this. Like everything else I’d overcome, this setback was only a speed bump in my life.
I yanked open the nightstand drawer and then stared down at the contents in the drawer that were now on the floor since I’d yanked it completely free from the nightstand.
Lowering myself to the ground, pain rushed through me.
Not as bad as when that huge fucker landed on me and ruined my stellar fucking life, but more than normal.
I grabbed the brace that I refused to wear unless I absolutely had to. According to the doctors and therapists, I should wear it whenever I was up on my feet, but fuck them and their shoulds. This damn brace kept me from playing.
Flipping it over in my hands, rage at what it represented had me contemplating beating the fucker against the floor.
Given the state of my finances, I refrained and strapped it on my leg before picking up the mess.
While down there, I popped open the lock box and the pill bottles.
I tossed back the correct doses of the combination of meds, dry-swallowing them, then locked them back in the box and set the timer.
I mustered every ounce of strength and flexibility from years of being a goalie to get my ass up on my feet.
I walked to the closet and pulled out the full set of luggage.
The goalie gear went next to the door. That shit was expensive as fuck and wouldn’t be left behind.
I’d be needing it before long. Suitcases open on the bed, I tore through the closet, filling suitcase after suitcase, thankful I’d purchased the ones that snap together into a single unit.
Breakers’ gear got tossed aside, anger flaring at each glimpse of moody blue-gray, signal orange, glacier teal, and white.
Then the carefully hung jerseys came out of the closet.
I’d saved a pair from every team I ever played for.
Each home and away set made me smile until the large B logo with the wave breaking in the lower loop came out of the closet.
I wanted to fucking hurl. I wanted to rip them both to shreds, but I couldn’t destroy them.
Not if they were the last sweaters I’d ever earn the chance to wear.
Folding them, I placed them carefully into the suitcase, then slowly picked through my team apparel.
As much as I wanted to destroy the jerseys, these items, the workout gear and warm-ups, were as much a part of me as my own skin.
To toss them away as if they meant nothing…
? I couldn’t do it any easier than degloving my body of its outer layer.
So…I folded those too and placed them in the suitcase with the rest of the hockey-branded merch before shutting and latching it.
Then I did the same with the rest of the luggage.
Why, when your life went to shit, did everything feel like it had some creepy symbolic meaning where action resonated more epically than it should?
Every closing of anything—a drawer, a door, a suitcase, even my laptop—felt like yet another nail in the coffin of my life as a hockey player, as if I were locking it all away, never to be seen again.
Sighing, I pushed the heartbreak away. Focusing on the morose shit never did anyone any good.
Instead, I moved my bags to the front door, only to pause at the sight of the street in front of the house, which seemed frightful.
Turning, I left the bags by the door and made my way back to my room, shutting myself inside before dropping onto the bed and pulling the covers over my head. I had a few days to figure my shit out.
“I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” I muttered, closing my eyes to shut out the world.
October
I limped from the bedroom some time later. How much later, I couldn’t say, but enough that a nearly full beard covered the lower half of my face. Running my hands down it, I exhaled, glancing at my luggage and goalie bag while chewing a protein bar and drinking a premade shake. The last one.
My bags still sat near the front door where I’d left them, however long ago. Every time I walked past them, I paused at the door but couldn’t bring myself to open it. The moment I stepped over that threshold, I’d be homeless.
The landlord stood on the front walk with an officer. Fuck my life. I backed away from the door, moving my bags away from the windows so they couldn’t be seen, and hid on the floor behind the kitchen peninsula. What day was it? I was never late on rent. Never.
Knocking echoed through the empty house as I sat there, tears rolling down my face. “Cash, are you in there? It’s Mrs. Patterson. I’ve texted and called, but I’ve not been able to get in touch with you.”
The knocking and Mrs. Patterson’s kind voice went silent, only to be replaced by a knock I hadn’t heard since childhood. The insistent pounding of a fist against the door followed by, “HCPD. Cash Benjamin? I’m Officer Vale. I’m here for a welfare check. If you can hear me, I need you to answer me.”
“Officer…I’m so worried about him. I’ve not heard from him. He was so friendly before the accident. Always—”
“Accident?” the officer asked.
I wanted to yell at them to go away and leave me alone, but…
“He’s a hockey player for the Breakers. He was injured during a game last December. Anyway, as I was saying, he was always happy and smiling and helping out with anything that needed to be done around the house.”
That’s Mrs. Patterson. You cannot derail that woman’s monologues. Only pause them momentarily. She always picks up right where you cut her off.
“You said he’s not paid rent.”
“No. And he’s always paid his rent well in advance.
Sometimes months and months at a time. I don’t know what to make of it.
I don’t care about the rent. I don’t plan to rent the house anytime soon.
My nephew’s daughter is moving to the area for her new job in November, so I’m not worried about the money.
I’m worried about him. I saw him a couple of weeks ago—”
That was a couple of weeks ago? It couldn’t have been. It was the day I came home from the last appointment with the surgeon whose name I couldn’t remember. That was just a few days—
The officer interrupted Mrs. Patterson’s words and my thoughts. “What do you mean you saw him a couple of weeks ago?”
“I live just down the block. This was my sister’s house.
She and her husband didn’t have any children.
The nephew is my brother’s son. Anyway, my sister left me the house, and I rent it out for some mad money.
My George left me well provided for. Anyway, when I saw him a couple of weeks ago, Cash was getting out of one of those cars with the pink and black logos on them… ”
“A rideshare?”
“Yeah, those and Cash…the poor lamb—”
Thanks for that one, Mrs. P. Not that I didn’t feel bad enough without the pity.
“He could barely walk. He’s had trouble since the accident, but he’s been off the crutches for months now. I’m worried he’s incapacitated and can’t answer.”
“Do you have his number?” the officer asked.
Shit! Where was my phone?
A moment later, the phone rang from the other room. It probably still lay in the mess of bedclothes I had only stumbled out of moments before catching sight of Mrs. P with the police.