Page 42 of Puck Drop
“How about you draw then?” she tries again. “You got a pencil, right?”
I look around in confusion. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if you have a pencil?” she asks in bewilderment. “Girl, I’ll send you a whole box for ten dollars, tops. I’ll throw in a pad of paper, too, just in case.”
I bust out laughing at hearing that. I laugh so hard that she starts laughing with me.
“Weirdo,” she mutters.
I wipe the tears from my face, wincing in distress when I feel how swollen my cheeks are.
“Thank you for staying on the phone with me,” I tell her. “I’m having a really hard time with everything.”
Mona sighs, but not in annoyance. It’s a sigh full of understanding that contains her own pain as well.
“It’ll get better, Liz,” she tells me. “I promise.”
I laugh through the tears. “I really hope that you’re right.”
“Even if nothing comes out of this, at least you’ll know that you tried,” she insists. “You won’t have to wonder… To constantly ask yourself whether there were things you could’ve done differently…”
It sounds like she’s speaking from experience. I know that she’s still pining after her ex.
“We both need a hard reset,” I tell her. “Send me any potential candidates from your online dating app. I want to be involved because I don’t want you to choose a serial killer by mistake.”
“Ha, you’re a funny girl,” she teases. “Out of the two of us, I’m pretty sure you’d be the one choosing wrong.”
The smile dies on my lips. She is right. I seem to be very good at making the wrong decisions.
THIRTEEN
Logan
I’m still runninghigh on adrenaline even though we ended up losing the game. Tonight has been the best night of my entire career to date. Okay, maybe the only other time that could surpass this feeling is when I made it into the pros.
“Good job, man.”
A couple of the guys walking by fist bump me. They understand how important this was to me.
“Well done,” Ethan Anderson grunts my way, but he doesn’t stay to chat. His eyes seem to be glued to someone in the back of the plane. When I turn my head to look, I realize that he’s staring at Bell. No matter how uninterested I try to be about these two, if any intel dropped in my lap, I wouldn’t look away.
When I glance back to Ethan, I realize that he’s staring at me. I lift my chin at him.
“Thanks.” My response is short and to the point, no real conversation will come out of this.
I pull my phone out and stare at the screen. I texted Elizabeth as soon as I was off the ice. She is the only person I wanted to share my moment with, but she never responded.
Ignoring my teammates as they walk down the aisle, everyone finding a seat before take-off, I tap my thumb against the phone while my knee bounces up and down like I have no control over my own body.
The last few weeks have been so weird. I’ve been hot and cold with Elizabeth because I am so into my own fucking head. Now, as I go over things, I worry that maybe I didn’t give her the attention she needed, and she’s had enough. She seems to be impulsive in her actions, and if she was able to pack up and move to Texas to be with me, who’s to say she won’t pack up and go back to New York?
“Fuck,” I mutter to myself and unlock the phone.
I open a new tab and type in art studios in the Austin area. The results are overwhelming, and I’m not even sure what I should click on. I keep on scrolling, hoping that one of them will catch my attention more than the others.
“Yo, Mantei!” Sebastian drops in the seat next to me. We are officially joined at the hip while on the road. “Did you get a text from Jared?”
I stare at him in confusion. “Our former teammate Jared from back in New York?”
