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“What was it, then?”
“Me hating my entire life.” She laughed, dry. She dropped her head. “Me feeling trapped and hating everything about what I do. What I worked so hard toward my entire life that meant so much to me…” She cringed. “Me learning to hate it because of schedules. Because of the glitz and glam. Because of the workouts. The diet.”
“The diet?” I frowned, knowing she liked to eat healthy, but I figured that was a choice.
“Perfection.” Aspen sat up, her back straight. “I have to be perfect. I have to play perfect. I have to make everything we worked for matter.”
“We?”
“My mom.” Her lip moved over the other, her jaw shifting. “She and I have worked so hard. She’s given her entire life to me. From the moment I said I wanted to play, she was there and…” She glanced up. “She’s dedicated everything. She’s been there in the trenches. She’s pushed me to be the best.”
“Yeah, but if you’re not happy, snowflake… If it’s making you hate what you love, then that’s not cool.”
“No, it’s not, but—” She bit her lip. “I’m all my mom has. We’re all each other has, and that got even worse after Joe died.”
I bristled, twitched.
Aspen didn’t notice, her stare on the floor. “I’m assuming you know about that. He was your football coach.”
It was my turn for my gaze to hit the floor. My eyes narrowed. “Your mom took it hard? His death?”
Of course, she had. The two had been engaged, and that was something I’d known back then. We all had. I mean, it was Coach, and we knew about the woman he’d brought around to football camp that summer. He’d brought a woman and her daughter. Their relationship was new, fresh.
The blood pumped into my brain, adrenaline pulsing, and I forced myself through the mental cloud.
Relax. Relax.
My breaths were slow in and out, focused. I wouldn’t get lost in this shit. Especially with Aspen sitting next to me.
“Yeah, Thatcher.” Aspen played with her hands. She brought her legs up again, holding them. “I mean, I barely knew him, but my mom was in love. And when he died and the way he had…”
It was a fire. His house in the country had gone up in flames around him. It’d been tragic. It’d been unfortunate.
I forced my jaw to loosen, to listen to Aspen instead of getting caught in my head. At the end of the day, history was fucking history, and the moments now were not. These moments now I had to be a part of.
And so I took Snowflake’s hand. I made her focus on me, but the action turned out to be just as difficult for me. I braced her little hand, and mine went so white.
Stop shaking.
It was hard, but I made myself. Aspen’s other hand touched mine, and when it did, she gazed up.
“I can’t disappoint my mother. She’s had so many disappointments and…” She had no idea what she was doing to me. That she was calming me down by restlessly rubbing my hand when I was supposed to be helping her. Her touch was like a healing agent, a soothing balm, and that shit calmed every ounce of my fucking soul. “She just wants the best for me. That’s all she wants, so it’s the least I can do. Be the best for her. Do my best?—”
Her hands slipped from mine because I touched her face. I still didn’t like seeing this girl so fucking sad and couldn’t help it. I smiled. “I think your best, snowflake, isn’t having a quarter-life crisis at twenty-one.”
We were the same age, and I remembered that.
My thumb brushed the flush on her cheek. “That’s exactly what happened at Carnegie Hall. You hate what you’re doing, and it’ll eventually make you hate everyone who’s making you do it.”
There might be irreversible damage between her and her mom once it got to that point, and she didn’t want that. Life was too fucking short to hate the people who were responsible for the foundations of your life. You could lose them. You could lose them any fucking time, and it wasn’t worth it.
I should know considering everything with my gram.
I was lost in my thoughts, my fingers lost when I played with some of Aspen’s locs. I liked the way her eyes closed when I touched them and her cheek, and I couldn’t stop. I was addicted.
Touching her slowed my heart.
She fixed my soul in the best way, and now, my thoughts were legitimately here. They were here with her and in this moment. They weren’t on the past, and I didn’t even have to try. Aspen Davis did that to me. She calmed me in every way.
