9. nick
NICK
CRAWL UNDER A ROCK AND DIE
On a pain scale from one to ten, Tallulah’s rejection felt like someone superglued me to the bottom of an elevator shaft and cut the cords, letting the elevator crush me for shits and grins.
I was flattened.
Defeated.
I lumbered home, pushing open the front door. Some of my teammates stayed behind to play video games instead, proclaiming they were too old for the party bullshit.
Gordo glanced back, a Philly cheesesteak crammed in his mouth. “Hey, you came back early too—”
“I’m going to bed,” I mumbled.
“Nick? Nick?”
I ignored the confused calls of the guys, wondering why I didn’t stick around to chat. The stairs were endless. The walk to my bedroom was endless. The pain was endless. I thumped into bed and dragged the blankets over my head, face pressed into the mattress.
Finally, finally I put the offer out to Tallulah.
And she said no.
It hurt so fucking bad.
There was a knock on the door—Gordo. “Nick? What’s up?”
“Life is meaningless,” I replied, ears ringing. “There’s nothing but pain.”
“Why are you talking like a poet, bud?” He paused, whistling. “Oooh. That girl you mentioned at breakfast. Uh…didn’t work out?”
“She ran a truck over my heart and backed up to make sure the job was done,” I groaned like a wounded animal.
“I remember being twenty-one.” Gordo sighed. “That shit’s awful.”
“Gordo, leave me alone.”
He finally closed the door and darkness consumed me.
Holy shit—I signed on to Joe fucking Tomasini, the Demolition Man for nothing. Gave away my summer to him for nothing. I came to Canada for nothing. Tallulah would never give me another chance, I fucked it up. I fucked it all up.
I grabbed a pillow and put it over my head.
I failed.
I. Fucking. Failed.
Four days. It’d been four fucking days and the pain felt brand-new. With another swing, I let a puck zip across the ice. Practice started at noon. I’d spent forty minutes ignoring everyone else.
Puck in net. Puck in net. Puck in net.
“Kurosawa!” my new team captain, Serge, bellowed. “Can we talk?”
I swung my stick again. The puck ricocheted, almost hitting a teammate in the nuts.
“Fuck, Kurosawa!” another teammate barked. “Watch what you’re doing!”
I didn’t care.
I was depressed. The only time I left the bedroom was for practice and the strict requirement from Tomasini.
He had a six-hour shift for me to sign merchandise crap before it hit the fan stores.
I’d sat in the storage room without air conditioning, sweating my balls off, hunched over the table, scribbling indiscernible signatures for hours, unmoving, my heart broken to pieces and stabbing me with them.
Otherwise I spent my days with take-out boxes and cartons of ice cream. The grocery store down the block had a sale and I thought why the fuck not?
I was sad as shit.
Why not be sad with triple chocolate mocha dream?
Serge yelled at me again, and reluctantly, I made my way to him by the boards. He folded his arms over his chest, nonplussed. “Are you still sad?”
“Love doesn’t exist,” I mumbled. “Life is meaningless.”
“Jesus Christ,” Serge muttered, running a glove over his face. “I can’t have you ‘sad’ on the ice. You get that, right? Tomasini could walk in any minute—”
“Fuck Toma—”
“Don’t,” he warned. “That’s for your own benefit, Kurosawa. He has eyes and ears everywhere. Don’t.”
I fell silent, despondent. Staring at the boards.
“Alright. If you can’t stop being depressed, change your clothes,” he demanded. “At least your gear covers it. Outside of practice you look like you climbed out of a fucking dumpster.”
I shrugged.
He clapped me on the back. “I’m sorry about the girl who shit on your heart or whatever but get your head in the game. Tomasini can’t see this. You know that better than anybody.”
I asked my captain for a fifteen-minute break and he looked relieved. Damn, I really was bumming everybody out. That was a first. Usually I was the fun guy, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Tallulah, Tallulah, Tallulah.
I grabbed my phone from my stall. I knew Tallulah wouldn’t tell Fridge and I needed to blow off steam before my temporary summer team restricted me to the bench. I pulled up my group chat with the guys from Marrs. Nicknamed snap shot sluts! by yours truly.
me
Struck out with a girl and i want to crawl under a rock and die
You guys are my friends
Comfort me
Messages flooded in from my teammates on the Gladiators but they weren’t exactly comforting.
arvid
lol
37sully37
lol
pickles
lol
charliest6
lol
Denali [Captain]
I actually burst into laughter thank you for that Nick
Fridge
Nick, I’m sorry, but lol
A few seconds later, a collection of the shittiest advice in the world came through.
The suggestions were terrible—send her a selfie!
Ask her to reconsider! Mail her a jersey!
Have sex with her friend! Make her jealous!
I would’ve rather swallowed nails than do any of the suggestions my teammates offered.
“These guys don’t know what they’re talking about,” I muttered.
Fridge was the only one with sound advice—to leave the girl alone—but it wasn’t advice I wanted to hear. I scrolled down the chat, stopping at the new message.
The youngest player on our team, Caleb Montoya, almost went pro before an accident on the ice stole his career from him. He was a geek. Really tall, anxious and blubbering through his words. I knew some of the guys took him under their wing for some reason, but I’d never paid much attention to him.
montooooya
I think it’d be a great idea to buy her flowers she’d really like them
I didn’t think anything of it until his personal message dropped in my inbox.
montooooya
She likes black eyed susans
I had no idea what Montoya was talking about until I researched them. Black-Eyed Susans were a bright yellow flower with a protruding black middle, like a weird belly button or a nipple. They were…oddly familiar.
Where had I seen these before?
On campus, at Marrs?
No…
I froze, thinking back to the airport, to the conversation with Tallulah in line for security. Those beaded flowers on her backpack.
Holy fucking shit.
I called Montoya before I could think about what the hell I was doing.
The call went to voicemail and I automatically called him again, phone pressed to my ear. At the second ring, Montoya finally answered. It was silent.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded.
“Nothing,” he quickly replied.
“Montoya.”
“Nothing!”
“Montoya!”
His groan echoed in the call, I could just picture him rocking back and forth on his sneakers. “I know, Nick.”
“Know what?”
“I know,” he said, sheepish. “About you and—erm—Tallulah.”
I sunk down to the bench. “Who else knows?”
“Nobody. Which I thought was kind of weird. I figured somebody would pick up on how you—uh—look at her. But I think everybody has their own thing going on. So they don’t notice it.
And now you two are in Canada so…” He sucked on his teeth, contemplative.
“I guess if you keep texting like that, somebody’s going to—”
I ended the call, my fingers flying across the screen, going to uninstall the group chat app before I physically stopped myself. That was too obvious.
Yeah, like I wasn’t obvious when Montoya realized I have a thing for Tallulah?
“Goddammit,” I muttered, smacking myself on the forehead.
I had to figure out a way to get Fridge to let go of Tallulah. And for Tallulah to give me another chance, a real one. Because that couldn’t be the end, could it? I also didn’t want to hurt Fridge—
And now, the kid on my team knew.
There was a witness to this fucking disaster.
I put my head in my hands. “Fuck me.”