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My phone beeps. It takes me until it goes off a second time to peel my creased face off my pillow and have a look.
PUCK BOY
SO WHAT HAPPENED WITH JOJO LAST NIGHT? HOPE IT WENT WELL.
Shit. The Hunters always have Thanksgiving lunch, and soon, he’ll be back in the Canyon after staying in the city. He’ll see what I did to his sister. Flashes of Joey’s face flicker in my mind—her red-rimmed eyes. Her pink nose and puffy lips swollen from crying. Overme. Overmystupid decisions.
Logan will be livid. But part of me is grateful Joey will have someone to talk to about it all. As much as I’d like to pretend this is all a terrible dream, I can’t play dead forever, so I tell Logan what happened.
ME
CHLOE CAME YESTERDAY. JOLIE ENDED IT WITH ME.
The ellipsis coming from Logan’s typing and presumably erasing and typing again lasts forever. But I don’t care. There is no reason to get out of bed today anyway. It’s not like I’m in a hurry to get up and live life. Not even for my dad’s insane gravy that I could drink straight.
Finally, my phone beeps.
PUCK BOY
WHAT’S YOUR PLAN?
For the first time in hours of being comatose, I sit up. My plan? What the hell does he think I’m going to do? Jolie doesn’t want to hurt Fletcher. And understandably, she doesn’t want to be dragged through the mud.Idon’t want her dragged through it. Chloe has a good relationship with the press, and I know what kind of damage she could do.
PUCK BOY
IF YOU GIVE UP NOW, I’M NOT GOING TO BE YOUR BEST MAN. AND MY SPEECHES ARE THE BEST.
Logan’s positivity almost makes me feel better, until I realize that any sweeping, grand gesture to get Jolie back involves dealing with Chloe, or hurting my family, more likely both. I’ve already run through every possible reverse blackmail situation I could muster. There are a few. Chloe isn’t such an innocent little sweetheart. She’s done drugs in the bathrooms at parties. She got caught shoplifting when she was nineteen so, it’s on her record. And, of course, she cheated on me, not the other way around.
But none of that changes the information she has about Fletcher.
PUCK BOY
MEET ME AT THE POND BEFORE FOOD STARTS.
The pond is more like a gigantic puddle than anything, but the thing about it is, being so shallow, it usually freezes over early, and Logan and I would get to mess around on its uneven surface and tight space even when our parents wouldn’t take us to the most local ice rink.
ME
BE THERE IN TWENTY.
After sneaking past my mom while she had her head in the pantry and Dad was outside fetching logs, I arrive at the pond. Logan is already parked up and skating on its brown surface where he set up a few sticks and jumps over them.
I sit at the edge of my car and lace up my skates, then head over with my stick. Logan and I have been here a million times before. I know the drill. He’ll have a puck out there, and we’ll pass it back and forth. Talk. Sure enough, he skates to the side, grabs his stick and a puck, and by the time I step onto the rippled and unevenly frozen surface, he sends a pass my way.
The black biscuit slips across the ice in hypnotic motion, back and forth. Our focus is on the puck, and yet our muscle memory allows us to do this with ease and relax into the action as a meditation. Some have walking therapy. Logan and I have the pond. We’ve had some ofour best chats here. But it’s been a long, long time. The last one we had was the day we realized we were being signed by different teams and wouldn’t play together anymore.
That was a day full of joy and melancholy. Today, I just have melancholy.
Logan pushes the puck over. “One thing I know about you, bro…” He receives my return pass because we’re only several feet apart. “Is that you always know the right thing to do.”
“I’m stuck this time.”
“Talk me through the options.”
I receive the puck and we begin the methodical movement back and forth between us, a hockey player’s hypnotherapy. “I can put the shits up Chloe and threaten her back.”
“Not your style.” He flicks the puck back to me.
