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Eleven
The rest of junior year wasn’t too bad.
It was actually pretty freaking great.
I strived to get good grades because I didn’t want the consequences to fold over into hockey. My time was filled with hockey and school, but I saw Mo surprisingly more than I had before. When she wasn’t competing or I wasn’t playing, we were able to spend a lot of time together.
I heard from Matt that Alex was sent to juvie. Turned out that the weed he stuffed in my locker was only a small amount of what he had, and that he was actively selling it in addition to using it. Alex kissed his future with hockey goodbye and I found myself not really giving a shit.
As for Matt, Ty, and I? Our friendship slowly fell apart. We had East and hockey in common, and when you took away part of that equation…
Well, it didn’t really hurt my feelings.
I also learned pretty quickly that their loyalty was to Alex, but no skin off my nose.
With University school and the guys I met on that team, I learned what true friendships could be. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that the friendship I forged with Logan was one of those life-long ones.
It also helped keep Dad happy.
He liked Logan, so I didn’t have to worry about the strife that came with having a friend your parents didn’t care for.
I’m proud to say I have been off Dad’s shit list for a while now.
He found himself a new superstitious parking spot, too. The first game I played and we won, Dad laughed the entire drive home about how it was all about where he parked the truck.
Speaking of hockey and Logan, Logan and I played well together, something that Coach Max was excited about. Having two excellent forwards in high school hockey wasn’t rare, but the way Logan and I played off one another was something that the scouts talked about more often than not.
Senior year was much the same, and the scouts who came to watch me were not only for colleges, but for NHL teams that weren’t the Enforcers organization.
Did I want to play outside of my dad’s shadow? Out of my brothers’ shadows?
Absolutely.
I’d never been shy about that, and the fact that it was a true possibility was exciting. Many of the scouts loved watching Logan and I play together, but in the end, Logan was deciding to go to college first.
School worked for Logan.
It didn’t work for me.
Last February, Sydney had her and Cael’s second baby, another boy. They named him Brody, and the poor kid looked just like Brandon. I did not envy the years in school where all he would hear would be how much he looked like his brother. A year later, just a few months ago, Sydney was pregnant again. Caleb wouldn’t shut up about the fact they were expecting a girl next.
Ken met a guy who had a kid, and Jonny and Jenna? Unfortunately, they never divorced, as much as we all hoped was the direction they were taking when Jonny showed up to Christmas junior year.
Life stayed the same throughout the end of my high school career until the summer right after graduation.
I broke up with Mo. She wanted to go to college and I honestly wanted that for her. But with her going to school here in Wisconsin and me being drafted to the NHL’s Charleston Rockets in South Carolina, I didn’t want to hold her back. She left for school with a hug and tears in her eyes, a smile on her face. We would always be friends. You couldn’t break the years she and I had together as friends first, lovers second. Maybe in four years when she graduated we’d hook back up.
But before I left for Charleston, my plans changed.
That was when I met her…
