I roll toward him, wrapping my arms around his broad shoulders as he cries for the friend he lost. I don’t know how long we stay in that position, but eventually Dean goes still and falls asleep with his cheek pressed up against mine. For the first time in seven days, I feel a tiny flicker of hope. Hope that the emotional release he’d just experienced will ease some of his grief, lead him closer to the road of acceptance.
The worst thing about hope, though?
More often than not, it leads to disappointment.
31
Allie
Over the next two weeks, all I can do is stand idly by and watch Dean spiral. He has a new routine. He wakes up in the morning. He goes to class. He goes to practice. Then he comes home and drinks or smokes himself into a stupor.
Amazingly enough, he still finishes his course readings and turns in assignments. When I sneak a peek at one of the papers he’s written, I discover that it’s good. It’s like he handed the reins over to the intelligent brain he doesn’t like people knowing about, and is now operating on autopilot. He’s doing it on the ice, too. Just letting his strong, athletic body and his years of training take over and do the job for him. His heart—hell, his consciousness, I’m starting to think—doesn’t play a role.
Neither does his libido. That’s gone, too. Well, no, not quite. It rears up at a certain threshold of his fucked-up-ness, somewhere between buzzed and unconscious. But I turn him down every time, because the guy who’s flashing me those cocky grins? Who’s whispering dirty things in my ear and whose skillful hands are attempting to work under my shirt or into my pants? It’s not my boyfriend.
My boyfriend doesn’t want to fuck me only when he’s drunk, and my boyfriend’s carefree grins aren’t drug or alcohol induced.
Dean Di Laurentis fucks because he loves to fuck, and he smiles because he goddamn loves to smile.
This drunk, stoned Dean is an interloper. He doesn’t even care when I tell him I’m not in the mood, because he isn’t in the mood either—the substances surging through his blood are just making his body think he is.
He’s grieving. I repeat these words to myself a hundred times a day. I remind myself that Beau Maxwell is dead, and that Dean misses him desperately. I chide myself for getting angry over the fact that he’s handling Beau’s death in a different way than I would.
But…damn it, I don’t know how to handle the way he’s handling it. What am I supposed to do, take him to rehab? He’s not an alcoholic. He’s not a drug addict. And the worst part is, the booze and weed have no effect on his academic or hockey life. He just rolls out of bed in the morning and skates like a champion or aces a test.
There’s one thing missing from his routine, however—the Hurricanes. After the news of Beau’s death broke out, time kind of stood still for a week. Dean and Logan were excused from hockey practice because they were close with Beau, and Dean bailed on the middle school practices too. I thought it was a temporary hiatus. Grief leave, if you will. But now three weeks have passed and Dean still refuses to go back. I urged him to reconsider, but all that got me was an emphatic no. He flat out said he doesn’t want to work with the kids anymore.
I suspect it’s because working with them brings him joy. And right now, he doesn’t want to feel joy. He doesn’t want to feel anything.
Me, I’m feeling plenty of things. Sorrow. Frustration. Anger, which then leads to guilt, because he lost his best friend, for fuck’s sake. I’m not allowed to be angry with him.
Today, I’m feeling determined. I’ve decided that Dean can’t wallow in grief forever. At some point, he’ll find a way to pull out of this tailspin he’s caught in, and when that happens, I don’t want him looking around and discovering that he lost something important to him.
The Hurricanes are important to him.
I park Dean’s car in front of the arena and kill the engine. He was already on his fourth beer when I left the house, where I’ve been staying ever since Beau died. I told him I needed to borrow his car so I could buy tampons. Life hack: if you don’t want someone asking you questions, say the word tampon? and the conversation ends.
I enter the small building and walk down the hall, past the vending machines and toward the double doors leading to the rink. A chill hits my face as I push through the doors. On the ice, the boys are in the middle of a fast-paced drill that involves skating super fast and then stopping super hard. I don’t really get it, but sure.
Turning my head, I catch sight of a lone figure in the bleachers. Dakota. Her face lights up when she spots me. I wave at her, then hold up one finger to indicate I’ll be a minute.