CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
KAYLAH
“Can you stop doing that?”
I turn around to find Tamarah in my face, and by her tone and expression I already know how this will go.
“What am I doing?”
“Blocking me.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
She rolls her eyes. “You do it all the time.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” I say honestly, because I’m careful enough to not regularly block teammates.
“So you’re calling me a liar.”
“You’re putting words in my mouth.”
She looks around. Our game is just finishing, but we still have members of the other team, and ours lingering around while some may make their way to the exit. It’s not hard to see the number of people pretending they’re not watching, but doing a very bad job of it. “You’re fucking annoying.”
“I’m not doing anything to you.” My tone is strong enough to hopefully get my message across.
Leave me alone.
“I just told you, you were blocking me,” she says.
“And I just told you I won’t do it again.”
“No, you never said that actually.”
“Okay, well I’m telling you now.” I’m not surprised when I see her opening her mouth again, so I cut her off to deliver my next words. “But while we’re at it, stop with the attitude.”
“I don’t have attitude.”
I step closer to her now. “You have attitude with me all the fucking time, and I’m sick of it.”
“Well, as long as you’re on this team, I’ll have attitude with you.”
I throw my hands up in defeat. “I’ll just leave because you want me to, then.”
“Great, because I’m not the only one who wants it.”
I don’t doubt that her words are true. Everyone here, apart from my three roommates, and a couple others have made a pointed effort to ignore me as much as they can. But I don’t let that stop me from saying, “We’re supposed to be teammates, so I’m asking you nicely to stop starting on me.”
“And I’m asking you nicely to leave.”
“No.”
“You don’t even have a single friend on the team. The fact that you’re Captain is laughable.”
I knew that this was what it boiled down to from the very beginning. And I can understand that it would be frustrating to want the role of Captain, and watch that get handed to someone who has just joined.
But this is a new team, and I work just as hard as they do to be the best I can be at Hockey. I never want to apologise for being me, I’ve done enough of that in my life already.
“If Coach wanted you to be Captain, he would have made you Captain. Don’t take that out on me,” I say.
“Maybe I should get expelled and then that will make me suitable for the role.”
Her words stun me into silence.
First Julius, and now her. But in all the memories I can conjure up, I don’t remember revealing anything about me being expelled from my last university.
It’s the one thing I try my hardest not to reveal.
And there’s no way that fact is available online to anyone. Not only do I check it regularly in case I’m forced to speak about it, but the whole point of the way things have ended up is for this shit to remain hidden, like the dirty secret I’ve been led to believe it is.
So how could they possibly know that?
I’m still reeling from the conversation I had with Julius the other day. It was supposed to be a nice post sex session, but I couldn’t have imagined that he would catch me completely off guard, which then turned into me dodging questions about being expelled.
He found me by the team bus early the next morning, instantly starting the conversation with, “I’m sorry.”
My first thought was that he sounded genuine, and we could have made plans to meet up in someone’s room later to pick up where we left off.
But there’s something about last night that stopped me from saying anything other than, “Thank you,” to him.
The question he asked me, it wasn’t a piece of my life I thought he would be interested in, and I didn’t know whether my mind was taking me to strange places by wondering whether any of it was linked to my anonymous texted thinking Julius is trying to get me off the team.
I didn’t believe it when they first said it to me, but reviewing how things have gone down between us made me see things from a different perspective.
Treating me like I’m invisible on the ice.
Letting the others feel comfortable not pass the puck to me on the ice.
Fighting for his right to be the only team Captain.
And now, trying to get information from me that could make me look bad.
I go on a journey replaying all these moments back as best as I can remember them.
But then the argument gets heavier on the other side when I remind myself that he apologised for all these things. Julius is not a man who speaks for no reason. If he’s saying something, it’s because he cares enough to say it. And his first apology is what got us here in the first place.
Maybe it’s just easier for me to think the worst so we can end this thing that we’re doing for good.
It gets more intense the more we do it, and despite knowing that sex doesn’t always need a direction, it can just be casual, so much of our lives are intertwined together that the same rules don’t apply for us.
I can convince myself these worries are why questioning his intentions, but the truth is simple enough.
He might be lack self awareness sometimes, but he’s not a cruel person.
And to conspire to get me off the team would be cruel.
I meant it when I told him I trust him with my body, and that’s not an easy thing to do.
Maybe it was the contrast between how talking about how uneasy experience at my old University would make me feel and how relaxed I felt with Julius then.
Maybe it was the prospect of that being the start of him knowing me, and the start of him not wanting to know any more.
A whole heap of possibilities cross my mind, leaving me in a state of restlessness ever since it happened all those days ago.
It’s part of the reason for my poor mood right now, and clearly it’s the whole reason for me watching Tamarah walk away from me right now.
I can imagine she was probably waiting for a response after the line she was so proud to throw out, but I thank my thoughts for keeping me busy, because I didn’t have one.
Before I can make my way to the exit myself, Coach shouts, “We’re done! Get out! Kaylah, outside. Now.”
I get done quickly in the locker room, noticing the eyes on me as I head out and find coach outside.
I pace up and down for a bit, until the sight of him in front of me reminds me where I am.
“What the fuck was all of that?” he says.
“Nothing, it was just a conversation.”
“It didn’t look like just a conversation.”
“I don’t know what to say to that,” I respond.
He sighs. Are you aware that a lot of your team mates don’t want to try to know you?”
My response is quick. “No, it slipped my attention.”
“The sarcasm is funny,” he says, wagging a finger in my direction.
“But none of that here. Listen, you’re one of the best I’ve seen at Hockey.
That’s why I made you Captain.” His words send a sliver of ease through me.
“That said, you’re also one of the quietest I’ve seen.
That’s also why I made you andJulius Captain.
Because if I just had you guys on the team you wouldn’t make effort with anybody and you wouldn’t be doing it on purpose, I get that, that’s just how you are.
But I just can’t have that on my team. I need my players to trust each other.
I need my players to like each other. I need my players to know each other.
They don’t trust you. They don’t like you.
They don’t know you.” I feel that ease slowly evaporating.
“It’s not good and I need you to figure it out.
It’s embarrassing to see any of you arguing with each other, least of all one or both of my Captains.
When we’re out at a game, the opposing team will look for any weakness they can spot and lack of cohesion is one of the easiest weaknesses to find in a team.
” I nod, because I’ve always thought the same and seen the evidence for myself with other teams. “None of you are kids. Which is why I’m not telling you how to sort it out.
But I am telling you to sort it out,” he continues. “Can you do that for me?”
“Yes, Coach.”
“Good. Bye.” He says, and I take the cue, ruminating over his words as I walk away.
The journey home consists of me going over everything he said some more, but my thinking comes to a halt the moment I finish dressing myself after my shower.
I take a deep breath before answering. “Hello.”
“What’s wrong with you?” is the first thing I hear.
“Nothing.”
“I’m your Mother, I know when something’s wrong.”
“We’ve just started the conversation?” I say.
“And I can still tell.”
I fall back on my bed, hating that this time of the month has come so soon. “I’ve just had a long day.”
“With Hockey?” The derision in her tone is the same as always, but I’m especially not in the mood today.
“Yeah, mostly,” is all I say.
“How is everything else?” and I appreciate her topic change being swift. I don’t care to talk about Hockey with someone who doesn’t care to talk about it with me.
“Fine.”
“Your studies?”
“Fine.”
“Do you have another adjective?”
I pause. “I can’t think of one.”
I can tell she’s shaking her head, which brings a little smile out of me. Though it vanishes when she says, “I have a question for you. Are you making friends? Or are you stuck in your room again?”
It’s hard to have a conversation with someone when everything they bring up is a no go zone.
But I answer anyway with, “I’m making friends.”
“Is that a lie?”
“I’m not lying,” I say plainly.
“Well, I know what you’re like. The whole reason you didn’t make friends last year is because you didn’t leave your room. Who’s to say it wouldn’t happen again this year?”
I let her hear my sigh, but she probably has no awareness of the fury radiating through me.
“I didn’t leave my room because I was depressed,” I explain to her, hoping she finally gets it this time.
But when she bites back with, “I told you to stop using that word,” I accept that she doesn’t want to.
“It’s not a dirty word,” I argue.
“It is to me.”
Thinking about the argument with Tamarah earlier, the conversation with Coach after, and now this, I don’t have any more patience left in me today for infuriating conversations.
It’s been at least five minutes for sure, so I’ve fulfilled my end of the bargain for this phone call, and I’m happy to let the conversation die so I can prepare for this torture again in fourteen depressing days.
It always seems tk come quicker than I thought.
With that in mind, I say, “I have to go to Practice.”
“At this time?”
It is nine at night, to be fair.
“We have it at all times of the day,” I say, which isn’t a lie. “And we have a game in a few days.”
There’s disappointment in the air, but I know it’s because I’m cutting her off from lecturing me, and not because she actually cares to talk to me on a personal level as a human she respects. “I’ll call you in two weeks, then.” I think those have become my least favourite words to hear.
“Okay.” It’s one syllable too many, but I’m glad it closes the conversation out as I lock my phone.
Another call down, at least.”