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“Yeah, they went to bed before the second period.” She gets up, and I walk her to the door, holding my breath when she opens it and steps outside. I wait for her to get in her car before I close the door and walk over to the step. I sit down on the step and stupidly wait for him to come back, but after fifteen minutes, I give up. Taking off my shoes and walking upstairs, I go through the motions and try not to think about my heart that hasn’t even healed yet but is broken once again.
CHAPTER TWENTY
christopher
I skate into the neutral zone next to Cole, who passes me the puck, but I miss it, and the defenseman steals it from me. I’m so frustrated I slash his stick with mine, and I see the referee's hand go up in the air. “Motherfucker,” I mumble while I lift his stick and touch the puck with mine, stopping the play.
“Number eight Pittsburgh, minor penalty, slashing,” he says, chopping his right arm.
“Fucking bullshit call, Pete,” I bark when I skate by him.
“Dude, are you okay?” Cole asks when he skates over to me, pushing me to the box and making sure I don’t go after the referee.
“I’m fine,” I huff, going into the box and slamming the door. I remove my helmet and gloves, grabbing the green Gatorade bottle and squeezing it, squirting water into my mouth.
I watch the Jumbotron while they replay the slashing play, and all I can do is shake my head. It’s a horrible, fucking rookie mistake, and I shouldn’t be fucking taking stupid-ass penalties. It takes the team one minute and four seconds to score the goal. I put my helmet back on and my gloves, skating with my head down from the penalty box over to the bench.
“Stone,” my coach says from behind me, “cut that shit out.” He glares at me, and all I can do is nod. I look at the game, trying to hide my disgust that I let my team down. We end up losing five to two, and I barely listen to what the coach says in the locker room. This road trip has been disastrous, to say the very least. Our last game against Nashville was even worse. I got three penalties that game and even dropped the gloves to fight. Now this game, I got two. Anyone who knows me knows that isn’t the way I play. I think I got a total of eight the whole last season. Now I have six in two games. It’s been a long fucking week, to say the least.
I head out to the bus waiting to take us to the plane and head straight home. It’s a three-hour plane ride, so we will get home after one o’clock. The plane ride home is pretty much silent. No one is really talking, as a couple sleep while others watch shit on their phones. I sit with my head against the plane, looking out the window, thinking about this whole week.
How I went from being on top of the fucking world to walking with the biggest chip on my shoulder. I don’t even know what to say. All I know is that I’m fucking miserable. Actually, I’m worse than miserable, but I can’t come up with a word that would make it feel worse. It’s been five fucking days since I last saw or spoke to Koda, and it feels like an eternity. I fucked up in a way that I don’t think I can come back from. There was nothing I wanted more than to take her in the house and kiss the living shit out of her, but I couldn’t cross that line. Benji bought her that house. They made a life for themselves in that house. He kissed her good morning in that house. He kissed her good night in that house. I know it’s probably stupid, but I can’t fucking help it. It’s enough that I have this guilt I’m with her, making it feel like I’m being disrespectful to him. I just couldn’t do it. I just can’t do it. Closing my eyes, all I can see is the hurt on her face, making my chest tight. She was straight-up pissed the fuck off, and she let me know it. She told me to go fuck myself and slammed the door in my face. I got back in my car and pulled away, driving to my house, but I couldn’t even go inside. Instead, I drove back over to her house and sat in my car for about an hour, trying to convince myself to call her or go and knock on the door. Each time I would get the courage, the guilt would creep up and grab me.
In the end, I went home and lay in bed all night long, watching the hours creep by. The next day, I busied myself with working out in my home gym for hours, trying to tire myself out so I could just crash that night. Even though I crashed early, the dreams were all of Koda. Her smiling at me and then her with tears running down her face. The days following weren’t much better, and now I was returning home to an empty house.
We touch down a little after one thirty in the morning, the wind gushing through me hair as I walk from the plane to my parked truck. Tossing the bag onto the seat beside me, I make my way home. Taking the new route I do now, which includes driving past her house, the pressure on my chest makes it really difficult to breathe. My house is dead quiet when I arrive as I make my way from the mudroom off the garage toward my bedroom, not turning on a single light.
I toss my bag in the closet as I strip down, leaving everything in the middle of the floor. I lie on my side, hoping sleep comes to take me, but only when the sun rises do my eyes give in and shut. When I wake up, I turn to the side, seeing it’s past one o’clock in the afternoon.
I grab my phone, and I have over forty missed texts. I blink my eyes a couple of times, opening up the text app and checking to see if any are from her. My stomach sinks yet again when I don’t see her name.
The top of the text thread starts with my uncle Viktor.
Viktor: You want to give me a call?
I sigh when I go to the next one from my father.
Dad: Call me when you get up. And I mean today and not in a week.
“Ugh.” I roll over from my side to my back, feeling like I’m ten again, and my father is going to ream my ass.
The next one is a text chain with my uncles Matthew and Max.
Matthew: What the fuck was that play?
Max: That was a peewee move if I ever saw one.
“Thanks for that,” I say and make the mistake of clicking the cousins group chat.
Michael: The fuck is in your head?
Stone: That was so bad.
Dylan: Like you guys haven’t made dumb plays before. STFU.
Chase: Why am I in this group? I don’t even play hockey.
Stefano: I don’t even watch hockey.
