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“I want you to just go, okay? Don’t make this any harder than it already is. Just go.”
“Stella”
“Ben, please. I know what I need and that’s for you to just go. Don’t make it hurt worse than it already does.”
I hear him stand up from the couch. “I don’t want us to leave things like this.”
I broke down in front of him several times yesterday over my mom, but I don’t want him to see me break down over him. That gets harder with every passing second, though.
Walking across the room, I say, “I’m going upstairs now. When I come back down, I expect you to be gone.”
I almost make it to my bedroom before I start crying. Even knowing I’m partly to blame for this doesn’t help. If I hadn’t made such a big deal over him not telling me how he felt sooner, maybe he wouldn’t be leaving.
I’m not second-guessing myself, though. I felt how I felt, just like now. When I hear the front door closing behind him, I don’t feel betrayed, but alone.
For the first time in my life, I’m completely, terrifyingly alone.
Chapter Eighteen
Ben
Six months later
“How’s that three-fourths cut feeling?” our equipment manager Andre asks me.
“I like it. Gives me great glide.”
He nods. “You gonna stay there for a while?”
“Yeah. Keep some five-eighths blades on hand for me, though. I’m planning to use three-fourths tonight, but if I don’t like the feel, I might want to switch.”
I’m trying a more shallow hollow on my skate blades to help me move faster and easier on the ice. My teammate Beau swears by the adjustments he recently made to his blades.
At this level, advantages can be measured in small increments. Sixteenths of inches, in this case. But I don’t miss chances to be even a tiny bit better. Everything, down to what I eat and drink on game days, is calculated.
“Felt good, right?” Beau asks me with a grin when he walks into the locker room after our pregame skate.
“Hell yeah. I’m trying that cut out tonight.”
“Nice. Let me know how you like it.”
“Will do.”
I grab my Air Pods and head into the training room in Chicago’s visiting team locker room. We’re playing the Blaze tonight; it should be a tight game since we’re first in league standings and they’re second.
It’s been a hell of a season so far. For the first time since an explosion leveled our arena a couple of years ago, we’re consistently playing good hockey. Our owner has brought in top talent and our new arena is under construction. In the meantime, our home ice is the rink at a local community college in Denver, which we’re making the best of.
The training room has shiny red and green tinsel garland strung from the ceiling and multicolored lights twinkling on a Christmas tree in a corner. Christmas is five days away, and before I return my mom’s call, I brace myself because I know that’s what she’s calling about.
Our team’s schedule isn’t exactly a secret—my parents know I’m off on Christmas Eve and Christmas, so I couldn’t get out of going home. I’m not looking forward to it, though. Even though he calls me about once a month to catch up, things are still tense between me and Owen.
And even worse, I haven’t heard from Stella since I walked out of her mom’s house on that June day. I hoped that if I put the ball in her court, I’d hear from her after she’d had a couple of months to be on her own.
Instead, though, she took me telling her she needed time alone as a rejection, which isn’t how I meant it. I think about her every day and dream of her often. The only picture hanging up in my locker is of us in Maui. It’s one Sean took of us that day at the waterfall, Stella and I looking at each other instead of the camera.
For the first few months, it hurt to look at it. It still does, but it also brings me back to a moment in my life when I had everything in the world I wanted, even though it didn’t last.
I stretch out on a mat and take out my phone, figuring it’s as good a time as any to get this call to my mom over with.
“Hi, honey,” she says warmly. “I hear it’s snowy in Chicago today.”
“Yeah, I think they got five inches.”
“We’re next. There’s a cold front on the way and we’re supposed to get a lot of snow.”
“Guess it’ll be a white Christmas.” Since I’m alone in the training room, I put her on speaker and stretch one of my arms across my chest.
“Speaking of Christmas, what time will you be getting in on Christmas Eve?”
“I think my flight lands between one and two. But don’t pick me up, I’ll Uber from the airport to your house.”
