My mother’s desserts are rotting into sludge in my belly. “I can’t fight. I don’t…I don’t have it in me,” I whisper brokenly.
“Oh, sweetheart.” She comes over to my side and kneels down next to me. “I know you’re tired. Your heart’s been through so much.”
The breath I had spools out of me, only to be replaced by a string of painful hiccups.
“You probably won’t want to hear this, but if you truly love this man, you need to fight for what you had. Think about your brother. Your brother didn’t fight for love, and he lost his fight. I don’t want you to go down the same path. You’re a fighter, Aeris. I know you are. You have been your whole life.”
She’s wrong. I haven’t been fighting. I haven’t been living. I’ve been letting myself drown, wave after excruciating wave. Everything I do, every relationship I have—it’s all dictated by the trauma from my past. It’s like I don’t know how to function without pain.
“I’m not a fighter.”
“You are. You’re the strongest person I know. I haven’t done a lot with my time on this Earth, but the one thing I’ll always take pride in is having you. I’m so proud of how you turned out,” she cries, the turbulent movement of her chest actively working against her words.
A sleet of tears sluices down my cheeks, and my nostrils sting. “I love you, Mom.”
Water floods my mother’s face, hope flickering behind her sad eyes. She embraces me, and even though it’s been a lifetime since we hugged, I still remember her touch vividly.
“I love you, Aeris. When you leave, I want you to fight for the life you had with him. If he’s there, laying his heart out for you, offering you the love I know you deserve, then consider taking it.”
I mop the rest of my tears up, only having the physical energy to nod.
“I heard you and your father talking last night. I…I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to come to terms with how horrible he’s treated you,” she says, and for the first time in forever, anger snags on her words.
I’ve never seen my mother angry before. I didn’t think she had a mean bone in her body.
“I should’ve left him a long time ago. And after seeing you again, I realize now that I can’t put it off any longer. I want to be able to see you all the time. I want to be able to have a relationship with my daughter. Michael, he never—”
“It’s okay, Mom. I don’t blame you for what Dad made you do. I’m just glad you’re going to get out. And if you ever need a place to stay, you’re welcome to come live with me,” I tell her.
She cups my face in her hands and knocks her forehead against mine. “I’m going to move in with an old friend from high school. But I’m going to come see you as soon as I get settled, okay?”
In that moment, something in my mother switches. Her hands don’t feel so cold anymore, and there’s a tint of color in her cheeks.
My lips sling into a smile. “Okay.”
Amidst everything that’s happened—from my fallout with Hayes to confronting my father—I didn’t think I’d be capable of feeling happiness again until weeks or months of mental recovery. But here, with my mother, making up for lost time, I feel it.
I feel the tiniest spark of happiness that reminds me I’ll be okay.
38
A LAST CHANCE AT REDEMPTION
HAYES
It’s been two days since Aeris broke up with me. And I’ve deserved every miserable second of it.
The cold bite from the bench has my ass half-frozen, and I’ve been watching my teammates practice for the upcoming game. I feel useless not being able to help them—even though I’m pretty sure I’d do more harm than good in my current mental state.
I fucked up. I lied. I had so many chances to come clean, and I didn’t. I protected my ego when I should’ve been protecting her. I’m a coward.
But I knew how this story was going to end, didn’t I? I knew it from the moment I agreed to this “fake relationship” plan. I played the part of the villain, and I can’t act surprised when I don’t get the girl.
Aeris is my whole world, and she always will be. She’s the salve to my hockey-inflicted wound. There will always be a part of me that belongs to her, no matter where we go, or who we end up with.
I’ve had an epiphany for the first time in my twenty-four years of life. I’ve always been surrounded by girls, by options, and I’ve never had to go looking very far for them. It’s like I’ve been following a broken compass this whole time, pointing me east, west, and south, but never north. Never true north. Never home. Aeris is home.
I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life without her. I can’t imagine not seeing her face next to me in the morning. I should’ve fought harder.
“You look like shit,” Bristol notes, taking his first break of the hour.
“Gee, thanks.” I scratch my fingernails against the peeling tape on my stick, fixating my gaze on a spot of ice that doesn’t look particularly fascinating.
I haven’t told anyone about the breakup yet. I didn’t want their pitiful looks. I didn’t want to breathe it into existence. I didn’t want it to be real.
His body lists closer to mine. “What’s going on, H? Is this about the suspension? You’ll be able to play again in a month.”
I wish it was about the suspension. I wish I could blame the suspension for being the reason I haven’t slept, eaten, or showered in days.
“It’s not about the suspension,” I say, a long-winded sigh filtering out of my lips.
I know Bristol’s trying to console me, but it’s only making me feel worse. He’s staring at me so intently that it feels like he’s trying to dig through my memories and pinpoint the exact moment everything went downhill.
“This is about Aeris,” he says.
“She broke up with me.”
The tone in his voice is raw with pity. “Hayes…”
I place my head in my gloved hands. “She found out, Bri. About everything. I should’ve told her. I should’ve been honest with her from the beginning.”
Her words echo in my mind. There shouldn’t have been an us, Hayes. This whole ‘relationship’ was built on some stupid ruse to better your reputation.
I’m not going to let someone ever treat me like that again. And that includes you.
Water streams from my eyes in steady rivulets, pooling in the canyon of my mouth, where saliva and phlegm suction my lips together. My rapid pulse is an urgent melody bombarding my ears. There’s perspiration on my skin, and the frozen fire charring my insides rivals the cold chill worming up my spine.
I feel like I can’t breathe.
I take my helmet off, and then I begin to rip off my gloves.
My hands claw desperately at my throat to relieve my constricted airways. A thick film of blurriness falls over my eyes, distorting everything in my line of sight. It’s like everything’s moving around me in slow motion, and I can’t keep up, no matter how fast I move. Bristol is reduced to an abstract blob in my peripheral, and the faint, warbled tone emanating from his direction suggests that he’s talking to me.