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“Did you love her?” For God’s sake, Kelly—why did you ask that?

He scoffs. “If you ask her, she’d tell you I’m incapable of love. But I guess I did at one point, at the very beginning, when she made me feel special. When I caught her cheating? No. It was probably the complete opposite. She wasn’t a very nice person, Kelly. But I fell for the show she put on. She followed me around for months before we started dating. Came to all my games, made out she was really into me, and I fell for it. But she didn’t want me. She wanted money and the status of being a ‘WAG’ or whatever—except, she didn’t want me to play. She didn’t want me to have friends. But you probably know yourself, when you’re with a guy on a team like ours, you’re not just with the guy. It’s like one big family. The guys are back and forth, and that’s how it is.”

“I’m so sorry that happened to you. She must have really broken your trust. No one deserves that,” I say.

“Well, I’m a fucking failure, aren’t I? So, what does it matter?”

His words hit me hard, knocking the air out of my lungs. “What do you mean by that?”

“Forget it,” he says, and he reaches for the dial of the stereo and turns the music up. Volume twenty-five hits different when there’s a bad mood in the air.

I twist the dial down again. “You don’t get to do that, Johnny,” I say. “You can’t lay that one on the table, then refuse to talk about it.”

“I need some time,” he says, setting the volume back to twenty-five.

Volume down.

“Why are you shutting me out?”

I realise I have no right to ask him that. Because, after all, who am I to Johnny?

And as if the evening couldn’t get any worse, the console of his car chirps with a new text message.

Sarah

Can we talk?

He glances down at the screen, then straight back at the road, still choosing to say nothing.

As much as things simmer under the surface, I realise he’s retreated twenty steps from where we were an hour ago—this is an alternate version of Johnny that I don’t know. And by the time we pull up outside my place, I’m on the brink of tears, frustrated and upset that I started to think that Johnny was becoming comfortable with me, and that he was enjoying my company. And I was really starting to like him.

I’ve got my hand ready on the door handle, so as soon as he stops the car, I’m climbing out.

“You’re right, Kelly. I am emotionally unavailable. I’m sorry I ever put you in a position where you thought this may become something. I’m sorry that I led you on.”

I hold back the tears. “It was all a show anyway, right?”

I don’t wait for him to reply. I climb out of the car, slamming the door shut behind me just in time for the tears to come.

I can’t get to my front door quick enough, just like a replay of that night I saw Johnny’s poster at the rink. I get inside and press my back up against the door as I sob.

It’s one of thosetimes where I don’t even remember driving home, but suddenly I’m sitting in the parking lot of my building, and I’m sending Kelly a message. It’s all I can muster right now, but I can’tnotsay anything.

Johnny

I’m sorry.

She reads it but doesn’t reply, and I take it as what I deserve.

I’m so angry with myself. And I understand if I go back to her place to speak with her, I’ll end up saying a whole load more stuff I shouldn’t because I can never find the right words.

“Well, I’m a fucking failure, aren’t I? So, what does it matter?”

Sarah used to call me that all the time. And in an instant of seeing her, all the things she used to say to me came flooding back. All those times she told me I was a waste of oxygen, and I wouldn’t amount to anything.

My mind quickly becomes overwhelmed, running the events of the evening over in my head, over-analysing every single little detail.

Sarah was the catalyst that fucked it all up.