Page 91 of Facing Off
“My biggest fear,” Hughes says. “Didn’t you want to talk about that? You said you wanted to know.”
My throat goes dry. His voice is closer like he’s sitting down, too. Like we’re both leaning against the door, but on opposite sides. For some reason, the visual of that makes strange emotions tumble inside me. I clench and unclench my hands, watching my skin go pink in the spots where my nails pinch my palms.
“It’s… It has to do with why I don’t want to go to Oslo.”
What? How is that connected to his biggest fear?
He doesn’t elaborate. I don’t ask. It’s silent for so long that I’d think Hughes got up, except I’m listening so hard that I can hear him breathing. These low dragging inhales.
He finally speaks, a quietly uttered name. “Jesse Osler.”
My eyebrows squish together. Why does it sound so familiar? Where have I heard it before? Too curious to stop myself, I ask, “This person is the reason you turned down playing for Team Canada?”
“Yeah.” More long, beats of silence pass before Hughes finally adds, “Because it washisdream, and it didn’t feel right fulfilling it without him.”
I’m glad he can’t see my face. There’s shock written all over it.
So many newscasters and fans have been speculating about why Adrian Hughes didn’t go to the World Hockey Championship. Most of them claimed the hockey captain wanted to spend his off-season excessively partying.
I’m still trying to understand. “So he wasn’t invited and you were?”
“No. He, um, would have been invited, if he had the chance.”
“But he didn’t?”
“He… He pa-… He passed away.”
I hug myself as a weird tightness grips me. I don’t know what to say. I’m ill-equipped with words, especially in these situations. My tongue feels thick and unlearned.
“It happened a long time ago,” Adrian says, his voice strained.
“How long?”
“Ten years in nine days. There’s actually a memorial service happening in my home town soon.”
Before I can ask, he confirms, “I’m not going to it.”
“Why not?”
He chuckles, but it’s a rare, hollow sound. “Wasn’t that your advice? To forget the past?”
He’s right. It’s what I’ve done for myself. So why does regret bloat my stomach, thinking about him doing the same? I don’t know how to explain it. To myself or him.
So, once more, I stay quiet.
He does, too.
Maybe neither of us know what to say next.
Meanwhile, I’m doing it again. Digging my fingers into my palms, a nervous habit I’d hate for anyone to see me do. I don’t even remember the last time I behaved this way.
“Sonya?”
“…yeah,” I mumble.
“When did you first start? Always imagining the worst things that could happen to you.”
When I hadn’t said a proper sentence in two days, wondering if my foster guardians would notice. They didn’t. So I extended the experiment to a week. Still, nothing. That made me cry. A lot. Until I laid in bed one night and imagined for hours them never speaking to me again. It hurt, until it didn’t. Until I got used to the idea.
