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“You’re a hockey player.” There’s a slice of something honest and angry in her gaze. “You have everything. You don’t need to care about other people. Women fall all over you and no one’s ever said the wordnoto you.”
“I care about other people.” The words come out more terse than I mean for them to, and I try to force a teasing smile, but I can’t. I hate that she thinks we’re the same. “I’m not McKinnon, and I don’t like being compared to him. I’ve never cheated. I’m not like that.”
“Maybe you haven’t cheated, but I know you.” She’s wearing this sad expression that breaks my fucking heart, like she’s waiting for me to realize what she knows.
I hate that look. My mom wore that look when she left my dad.
“Women are just there for entertainment for you.” Her throat works. “We’re disposable.”
“No.” I stop skating, paying zero attention to the people whizzing past us. “What gave you that fucking idea, Hazel?”
She drops my hand. “Ashley,” she says, like I should know what she’s talking about.
“Ashley who?” Frustration tightens in my body, and I hate that she has this picture of me in her head.
“Ashley Peterson from high school.” Off my baffled look, she says, “You took her out and made her feel special and she had this huge crush on you.”
I’m shaking my head because I don’t even remember this girl. High school was a blur of five a.m. practices, trying to keep up in my classes so I could at least graduate, and endless gym sessions with personal trainers who pushed me to my absolute limit. Getting drafted was all that mattered, and I was never allowed to forget it. Tutoring sessions with Hartley were the one bright spot.
“Blond?” I ask as the vague memory of this Ashley girl filters into my head.
Hartley looks at me with disbelief. “Yes.”
I scrub a hand down my face as it starts coming back to me. This Ashley girl and I made out, I think? “Hartley, this was like a decade ago. I don’t remember what happened.”
She blinks, looking both furious and sad. “I’ll remind you. You dumped her the day before the dance.”
I dated in high school, but it was always casual. I couldn’t handle having a girlfriend. I could barely keep my head above water with school and hockey.
And no one seemed as good as Hartley.
I don’t remember asking this Ashley girl to the dance. I give Hazel awhat giveslook. “Okay?”
She exhales a frustrated breath. “I convinced her to go to the dance anyway. We walked in, and you had your tongue down another girl’s throat.”
The memories hit me. She’s right. I did that, and I didn’t really care about this Ashley girl’s feelings. A kernel of self-loathing hardens in my chest. I’m an asshole, just like Rick Miller.
“She cried in the bathroom. You made her feel like there was something wrong with her. You made her feel small and insignificant and worthless.”
The intensity in Hazel’s voice cuts through me. There’s an undercurrent of emotion to her words that makes my stomach turn.
“Do you know how shitty that is?” she continues with pain in her eyes. “Do you know how”—she points at her head—“damaging and traumatic that is?”
I hear the quiet close of the door as my mom leaves. I hear it again as Lauren, my dad’s next girlfriend, leaves a few years later. I hear the aloof way he tells me that he and his next girlfriend are no longer together.
My life is going to mirror his. It already does. I’ll be fifty-five and waiting for my current girlfriend to leave me like the others. Shame and frustration wrap around my chest, squeezing like a band.
“Hartley, it was a decade ago. I’m sure she’s over it.”
Fury rises in her gaze, and I can see her pulse going in her neck. “You sure about that?”
I shrug, brushing it off. Please. Please, can we fucking move on from this conversation? “I would fuckinghopeshe’s over it by now.” The words tumble out of my mouth, fueled by this crushing, cold feeling inside my chest. “How pathetic is that to be moping around a decade later over some guy who didn’t even care about you? I doubt she even thinks about me anymore, and if she does, she doesn’t have enough going on in her life.”
I hear the words, but I can’t stop them. Shame has me by the throat, choking me. Hazel looks like she’s been slapped, blinking at me with hurt and shock before she lets out a quiet laugh.
“I don’t know why I said yes to this. This is exactly who I thought you were.”
My stomach sinks.
