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Turns out I had the flu, and I watched the game on TV that night from my bed.
I was still watching TV when the plane crashed a few hours after the game ended and the news broke.
When it was confirmed that everyone aboard had died, something broke inside me. The pain and grief of losing all my friends. The realization that I never got to make things right with Kyle. That I was the rotten asshole on the team, and I was spared a horrible death.
I didn’t deserve that grace. I should have gone down with my team. It would’ve been an easy penance.
Now I’m stuck behind, living day in and day out with the knowledge I’m the worst sort of person, and I don’t deserve anything good.
Certainly not a hockey career. My new teammates deserve better than me because they could never truly trust me.
The leaves above me blur, causing me to blink. I stand from the chair and swallow the rest of the beer. Christ, I hate thinking about that time.
Hate that my decisions still plague me and the crash took away my chance to make things right with Kyle. I hate that Darcy put me in that position, and I hate myself most of all.
CHAPTER 10
Tillie
“Okay, drink up,ladies,” Hayley says as she holds her tequila shot in the air. We’ve got the requisite liquor, salt, and lime laid out.
Erica, Ann Marie, and I hoist our shots high.
“To the best friends a girl could have,” Hayley says earnestly, her short blond hair falling across her forehead and obscuring one eye.
I lick the salt from my hand, down the shot, and then suck on the lime before hissing through my teeth.
We do this every few months. There are a handful of pubs in the Coudersport area, but not all are close enough that we can actually crawl from one to the next. As such, Erica’s boyfriend, Hank, plays our designated driver and carts us all around. He’s a good guy, loves Erica mightily, and nurses a Coke at each bar we visit.
Best of all, he doesn’t sit with us. It’s a true girls’ night out, and he usually stays on the opposite side of whatever bar we’re in so we can talk about girl stuff.
This is our second stop of the night, thus our second shot. We’ll hit a few more bars and then Hank will load us up and take us home. We’ll all stay at his and Erica’s place tonight, and then Hank will fix us all a nice big breakfast in the morning.
It’s tradition.
I called for a bar crawl yesterday after my encounter with Coen. I’ve labeled it anencounterbecause if I call it what it was—oral sex—I am overwhelmed with feelings. In no particularorder, they are desire, anger, embarrassment, humiliation, amusement, and disbelief.
It’s singularly the oddest, most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me, and yet it’s left me in a rotten mood because I’m so damned confused as to what it all means.
I texted the girls when I got back to my house, and it was simple:I need a bar crawl tomorrow night. I’ve got something huge to discuss.
Of course, the girls all texted back wanting to know immediately what was going on, but I couldn’t go into it with them without the fortification of alcohol. The whole humiliation angle of letting him do that to me—and enjoying it more than all the ice cream in the world—is going to make it tough to talk about.
But these are my girls, and I’m loosening up. Maybe at the next bar I’ll be ready.
“God, I hope I don’t puke tonight,” Ann Marie laments. “Last time we did tequila, I was hugging the toilet for hours.”
“You drank coffee-flavored tequila,” Hayley points out. “That’s what made you throw up.”
Ann Marie gags at the reminder. We told her not to do it because—eww, gross—coffee-flavored tequila is barf-worthy just from the name.
I glance at Erica to find her staring across the bar at Hank. She has pale blue eyes and long, wavy dark brown hair. She smiles wistfully at him while he cheerfully talks to another guy at the bar, their eyes on a televised soccer match.
“Penny for your thoughts,” I say, kicking her under the table. She doesn’t even jolt, and I attribute that to the fact we’re all a little mellow from the tequila.
She sighs. “Just thinking about after we get home and you drunk chicks pass out, all the dirty things I’m going to do to Hank.”
“TMI,” Ann Marie yells and bangs her shot glass on the table. “More tequila, Sammy.”
