I take a shaky inhale, and I try to steady my voice. “In the kitchen.”
It doesn’t work. I’m crying again.
And they’re these really loud, pathetic, guttural sobs that echo throughout the apartment.
Bohdan’s frame fills the doorway, and then he’s crouched down in front of me. He’s a bit of a blur, but I think he cocks his head to the side, that his mouth pulls into a frown, that his fingers flex before they tip my chin up. “Baby, why are you on the floor?”
“It’s comfy down here.” I try to smile at him, but it feels all wrong. I squeeze my eyes shut, and another horrible sob sounds from my throat.
I hear him exhale, and he waits until I’m blinking away the tears before he asks, gently, like the way his fingers hold my chin, “What happened? I looked for you before the game, and again after.”
I happened.
Me, and the brain I was born with.
I don’t say that though. It’s not that Bohdan isn’t a safe space—he’s the safest. But one day, he might wake up and realize he doesn’t want to be my safe space. That he wants a nice, normal girlfriend who doesn’t count and doesn’t cry when her clothes feel weird on her skin and doesn’t think about what a colossal loser she is on a regular basis.
He’ll want someone just right.
Not me.
Not someone too much and not enough.
I jerk back, away from his hands, holding my own in the air before trying to wipe away the tears. “I’m sorry. It was an important game and I missed it. You must be so disappointed.”
Bohdan interrupts me with a thumb brushing across my mouth. “I’m disappointed, Sloan, but not in you.”
“That can’t be true,” I whisper with a shake of my head.
He gives me a resigned smile before shrugging out of his suit jacket and tugging off his tie. He tosses them haphazardly onto the kitchen floor and settles beside me against the cupboards. One leg stretched out—he winces when he does it—and the other raised, his hand drumming against his knee before he flips his palm up for me. “Were you here the whole time?”
“Not the whole time.” I sniff, setting my hand gently in his.
His fingers close over mine, and he turns to me, waiting.
I throw my other hand in the air. “I didn’t know what to wear and then there was part of one of those plastic tags stuck in the sleeve of my sweater, and I could feel it against my skin. Nothing fit right. Nothing looked right and I tried to call my mom and she said she didn’t understand and to just pick something and then it was after seven and I’d missed the start of the game and—”
“That’s okay,” he says, like it’s a simple thing and it’s fine that I missed one of the most important games of his collegiate career.
“No, it’s not! How is it okay?” I try to tug my hand away, but his fingers stay firm in mine. “I’m so proud of you and I wanted to be there shouting for you like everyone else, but I missed one of your most important games of the season because of my stupid brain.”
“Your brain isn’t stupid.” Bohdan brings the back of my hand to his mouth, shrugging one shoulder. “And it wasn’t that important of a game.”
“Yes it was!”
“No,” he says firmly, turning to face me. “It wasn’t. It was a qualifier. It won’t even be my first time in the Frozen Four.”
“But it’ll be your last,” I murmur. “You’re a senior, and next year you’ll—”
“Be playing significantly more important hockey games on a regular basis.” He leans forward, pressing his mouth to the tears on my cheeks.
I start to shake my head. “I let you down.”
“You couldn’t let me down if you tried, Sloan,” he says against my skin. “Do you want to talk about it?”
My eyes flutter, and I think my breathing starts to even out for the first time all night. “I don’t know what to say. It’s nothing new. Just me and all the things wrong with me that I’m stuck with and one day you’re going to wake up and realize you don’t want to be shackled to.”
“Impossible.” His lips skate across the apple of my cheek, down the side of my jaw, until they find mine. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
