AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Really?”
“Yeah. Two left feet. No coordination, no balance, terrible reaction time. I was a mess, no matter what sport you tried to put me in. And believe me, I was in all of them. Because of my dad.”
Zoey nods in understanding, urging me to go on.
“My dad was a college football player, but an injury took away his chance at the pros. He wanted to live through his sons, and expected all of us to take to sports just like he did. And my two brothers did, right away. But I didn’t. Instead, I loved drawing from a young age.”
I let out a chuckle, reliving memories of faking being sick when dad wanted to take me to try-outs and practices so I could sit on the windowsill of my room and sketch what I saw outside.
“Your dad didn’t support your interest in art?” Zoey guesses.
I let out another chuckle, a more bitter one this time. “Yeah, you could say that.Art’s for sissies. That’s what he’d say. He’d shame me over being into something like that instead of being good at sports and athletics. My brothers followed his lead and bullied me over it constantly.”
Zoey’s lips sink into a frown, something I hate seeing on her face. “Liam, that’s awful.”
I shrug. “I learned to hide my drawing. I kept it to myself. Eventually, I found hockey. At first, I wasn’t great at it—I just wasn’t as bad as I was at other sports. But I got tired of my own brothers, my own father, giving me shit about not being any good at the only thing they valued. So, I worked hard. Eventually I got good. Really good. Better than either of my brothers ever were at anything, better than my dad was at football. My dad never made it to the pros, and even if he didn’t get injured, he had practice squad talent at best. My brothers played college sports but had no professional prospects. I’m the one who’s going to go pro. Talk about irony, huh?”
“And you just kept your artistic talent hidden?” Zoey asks.
I nod. “Yep. I learned that lesson early on. It was a part of me that just wasn’t accepted. But I loved it too much to let it go. So, I kept it to myself.”
Zoey shakes her head and lets out a small, sad sigh. “That’s not right.”
“It is what it is,” I say. “Maybe I should thank my father. I mean, I’m going to be more successful because of hockey than I ever could have been doing anything else.”
“That’s no excuse,” she counters, and I’m taken aback by the stridency in her voice. “What I don’t understand is why you still keep it hidden. Would the other guys on the team make fun of you for it, too?”
“No way,” I answer. I know they wouldn’t. The guys on the Hot Shots are like brothers to me, and I know we’ll be best friends for life. We always support each other. “It’s just … this is something I’ve gotten so used to hiding, it’s like second nature. It’s like jumping when someone yells boo behind you. It’s just part of my reflexes at this point.”
“But … it doesn’t have to be.”
“I don’t know,” I reply. “Maybe it does. Imagine I tell the guys.Hey, everyone, I’ve kept this huge hobby I have hidden for three years, check out the piles of sketchbooks I’ve filled and hid from everyone in my closet, that I never even talked about. They’d think I’m nuts.”
Her lips pout sympathetically. “I don’t think that’s true. Especially not if you tell them why you hid it.”
I shake my head, letting out a sigh. “It’s not something I like to talk about.”
“You talked about it with me.”
I feel like I’m swimming in the pools of her clear, blue eyes as our gazes tether. I know I was just thinking that it’s a good thing she’s mad at me, a good thing that she’s a little bit hurt over me not texting her back after Halloween, because those emotions can help fortify a barrier that we both need to stay strong, to keep us from screwing up both of our lives.
My spot on the team is on the line for me, and one of the most important classes in her major is on the line for her.
But after what I just shared with her, I don’t want her to be angry with me anymore. And I sure as fuck don’t want her to be hurt.
“Zoey, the reason I didn’t text you back three months ago …”
She breathes in a quick, sharp breath of air, almost flinching, as if me bringing this up is like touching an exposed nerve.
“It’s not because I didn’t want to,” I say. “It’s because my phone broke that night. I smashed it falling down trying to break up a fight. Your number wasn’t backed up and couldn’t be recovered from the storage system.”
“Really?” Her voice is guarded.
Anyone could forgive her for not buying that story, but it’s the truth. I just hope that she realizes, after what I just shared with her, that I wouldn’t lie. Not to her.
“Really,” I say. “It’s the truth. For three whole months, it fucking killed me that I couldn’t contact you.”
Suddenly, everything around us melts away.
