Page 38 of Best Things in Life

“And that is?” I asks.

“For him to beat the shit out of me in front of the team, to win the physical battle over me to climb back from the bottom rung of the hierarchy back to even with me.”

In an effort to control the bubble of anxiety making my heart feel like it’s floating in my throat, I make a face at him. Gulping down the threatening emotion, I try to laugh it off.

“Don’t be so melodramatic.” He sighs so deep and so sincerely it cuts through my protective layer of self-bullshitting and makes my soul bleed. Because I have to acknowledge and face up to the possibility that Nate is right and Bigsby might feel the need to beat him to a pulp, might feel justified. And Nate, who is tough in a way that Bigsby can’t even imagine, will let him—but only up to a point, right? A shiver of fear goes through me as I let my mind go too far down the road of viable truth and I drag the protective shield of willful ignorance back down over me.

“You know I’m right,” he says. “And you know I’m going to own up to the truth and I don’t give a shit if that makes me the team pariah, if it ruins our locker room and I don’t even give a fuck if it costs us the Frozen Four championship when it comes down to it.” He take s a breath and I’m still as a hummingbird, vibrating in place, heart and nerve endings fluttering so fast nothing can touch me except his words.

Chapter 14

NATE

The locker room goes quiet the second Bigs walks in the door. I’m dressed in full goalie gear except my mask and I stand.

“Bigs, let’s talk. “ I nod my head in the direction of the training room because I know it’s empty and the only place we can talk with any privacy. He looks around the room and the stares look away. His face turns read and I know the shit going through his head, can feel the tension, the strain in his self-control and I take a deep breath and head for the training room. He follows and closes the door. As soon as he does, he moves so fast I don’t have a chance to get an arm up to block him and he punches me hitting my eye and cheek with a solid bone-jarring blow.

“Fuck.” I put my hands up and block the next one, then side step him and put the table between us. “Stop the shit. No one’s watching. You can’t save face punching me out in private.” My face is throbbing and I can feel my left eye swelling up. But I thank my fucking luck that he didn’t knock my teeth out. He’s breathing hard and his hands are still fisted, but he’s not making another move at me. For now.

“Come on, Nate. Defend yourself. Or is there no defense for what you did?” He taunts, but I hear the pain in his voice and that hurts me more than his fucking punch.

“No. You know my only defense is that I love her.” I lower my voice. “And that she loves me too.” We both stand still letting that sink in, that she was always the one who had to decide, that it wasn’t all about us and what we wanted.

“Fuck you,” he spits the words, but I hear the agony underneath, the near sob to his voice.

“I’m sorry.” I want to say a million more things about how I get how it feels, but I know this isn’t the time and my role is to play his punching bag right now for the grief and anger and fucking desolation.

“I didn’t want to betray you Bigs. But I knew she didn’t belong with you. Before she knew herself.”

“What makes you so fucking sure about that?”

“I’m not going to—”

“What? Not going to tell me what a pathetic loser I am because Sarina never had any interest in me, she was using me—”

“No, she wasn’t. I never believed that. She cares about you, Bigs. She wanted to feel more than affection, wanted to be in love with you…”

“Fuck you.” His words lack any oomph and his fists relax as he slumps back against the door, anger leaving him to feel the pain. And from experience I know once the anesthetic of anger wears off, the pain is excruciating.

“God damn you.” He covers his face and breaks down and I feel his pain like a punch to my gut. Even though I haven’t been much of a friend to him, too angry and selfish in my desperation for Sarina, I go to him now, putting a hand on his shoulder the way guys in the locker room do when another guy has a setback. Though it’s usually when they’re injured or mess up big in a game that we console each other about. This is a whole other thing usually suffered in privacy.

“I’m so sorry, Bigs. I wish things never happened this way.”

“I wish I never met her,” he says and his words cut me because he’s talking about Sarina.

“Hey, we all have someone in our lives we lose. It wouldn’t be life without setbacks.” I sound like my dad. He snorts.

“You sound like my dad.” I laugh. He quirks half his mouth. “This doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven you, Nate, because you broke the code and you could have waited, could have let things play out and if it’s like you said and Sarina didn’t feel the same way about me—” his words break and he shakes his head. “Then you would have had your chance. You didn’t need to go to the wake behind my back and spend the night with her—” My gut roils with the acid of his accusation because he doesn’t understand how much she needed to have those she cares about around her, how much I needed to be there for her because I knew the pain she was in.

But I don’t say anything.

“We’ve been over this, Bigs. Nothing happened that night. I’m sorry…” I don’t know what else to say because if it were me in his shoes, I’d hate me right now too. I take a deep breath and continue. “I know it’s impossible right now, but I hope someday you can forgive me.” I clear my throat.

We both know the state of the team hangs in the balance, that if we can’t behave civilly, put aside our differences, that the team will be divided and there’s no way we can stand up to the tough competition in the league unless we’re together.

“It’s hard to imagine,” he says and I close my eyes for a beat and it’s as if he’s punched me again, this time in the gut.

“Whatever. Right now we need to think of the team.” My words are firm because they don’t deserve this.