And right beside me, Darcy and Rose absolutelylose their minds.
"OH MY GOD!" Darcy shrieks, leaping a full foot in the air, champagne flying out of her glass in a glittering arc that catches Rose square in the face.
"YESSS!" Rose is jumping, fries scattering, her own cocktail launching sideways, both of them screaming and bouncing and clutching each other like the world is ending in the best possible way.
And me?
I'm standing here. Like one bigdisappointment.
"Josie?Josie!?"I can barely hear my mother's voice on the phone I'm still pressing to my ear. "What onearth—"
I look up to the scoreboard, watching as it ticks over:BEARS 1 -0.
I should be smiling. I should be jumping for joy like my friends.
Instead, I'm standing here, still as a statue, holding my phone with shaking hands. I could hang up, I guess. But is there any point? She'd just call again. Just to remind me how much of a failure I am.
Down on the ice, the celebration's winding down.
The teams reset across the rink and Declan glances up at the box as he skates back to center. He spots me and the phone pressed to my ear.
He must see the panic that's written all over my face, but he throws a fist in the air and points up at me through the glass, claiming the goal, claimingme, likethat one was for you, Whitfield.
For one heartbreaking second, I wonder what this call would sound like if it were my dad on the other end. He wouldn't be sighing. He'd be losing his mind. He'd be screaming like an absolute lunatic, just like Darcy and Rose beside me, who are STILL chanting.
"BEARS! BEARS! BEARS!"
Mom's voice finally cracks through the line again.
"Oh, for goodness sake. I'm hanging up, Josie. Call me when you've grown up a bit. Your father filled your head with so much nonsense. I always knew it would only break your heart.Goodbye."
The line goes dead.
The lights flash and blaze around the arena. The chant rises around me.
The Bears are winning.
It should be the best night of my career.
But all I can feel is the cold weight of a family who will never, ever understand that beingdifferentwas never the thing that broke me.
They were.
And somehow, I have never felt so completely, devastatingly alone.
Chapter 10
Declan
We won.
Not just won, butwonin front of thousands of screaming people who came back from intermission with their voices already shredded and somehow found more energy for me to feed off.
Then right after the final horn blared, there was this moment where I looked up into the stands, and genuinely didn't believe what I was seeing.
Final score: Three to one.
Beck got the empty-netter, which means we'll be hearing about it for the rest of our natural lives. Finn got the game-winner and immediately tried to do an Irish jig on the ice and ate shit so spectacularly that the jumbotron replayed it four times.
