Page 65 of The Last Guy On Earth
Yay. What a shitty coincidence.
But it makes sense, when you think about it. We’ve been in pro hockey for the same number of years, and his loyalty program balances must look just like mine. We’re both Gold Level dinosaurs with our 1000 thread count sheets and our macarons.
I don’t even like macarons.
I’m so tired.
Ten minutes later I’m ready for bed and lifting the covers when I hear a knock on the adjoining door. My hand freezes on the quilt.
The knock comes again. “Clay,” says a muffled voice. “You up?”
Fuck. I cross the room, unbolt the door, and yank it open. “It’s late, Jethro. Can it wait until tomorrow?”
He stares back at me in flannel shorts and another threadbare T-shirt that shows off his muscular chest. “Do you want me to quit?”
“What?I want you to go to sleep.”
He shakes his head, as if I haven’t heard him. “Gun to your head—do you wish I’d just retire? It’s bad enough being the guy that Detroit threw away. I don’t want to be the guy who fucked up Colorado’s shot at the Cup.”
I blink. “Are you for real? You can’t justquit. This isn’t Starbucks.”
“I could,” he says gruffly. “You know it’s true.”
I stare. “You’d walk away from…what, fifteen million dollars? Because you hada bad game?”
“It’s not just a bad game!Christ. It’s six weeks of shitty playing. I’m sure your GM is already calling around just in case he can find another trade. Don’t pretend like I’m the only one who ever had a crazy idea.”
I turn around and march over to the bed I was so close to getting into. I perch on the edge and put my head in my hands. “Jetty, listen. I don’t think I’m the right person to help you right now.” I’m too twisted up about him to give good advice.
“Nah, Clay. You don’t understand. You’re theonlyperson who can give me advice. Nobody else ever believed in me. I’m not talking as a goalie, but as a person.”
My head swings up to take him in. These are not the kind of words that ever come out of his mouth. “That cannot be true.”
“No, it is,” he says, crossing the room to sit beside me. “I’m trying to look at this rationally. I don’t want to be that guy who holds onto his career with his fingernails while everyone wishes he’d just get a clue and go. You’re the only one I trust to tell me the truth.”
I take a breath. “Jetty, no. This isn’t how it ends for you. This is just the panic talking.”
“Is it, though?” he asks. “My stats haveneverlooked this bad.”
“Yeah, that’s called a slump. Or a bad case of the yips. It happens to everyone, but you get over it, right?”
“If I thought that was true,” he says in a voice more broken than I ever thought possible, “we’d both be asleep already.”
This is new territory. Even when we lived together, we never would have had this conversation. Jethro hadn’t doubted himself like this. Or if he had, he never spoke about it.
The irony. Back then, I would have done anything to hear his most vulnerable thoughts. All I’d wanted was for him to crack open a little bit and share more of himself.
Now I’m out of my element. “Look, when you’re seventy years old, you’ll still be a better goalie than half the league. I know this, but somehow, you’ve forgotten. And no amount of yapping on my part is going to convince you. The only way out of this hole is to try to believe it yourself.”
“Fuck,” he says, clearly miserable. “I’ve never not known what to do.”
I rub the achy spot on my shoulder and try to think. “When’s the last time you remember feeling confident? When you played the game without getting up inside your head.”
He looks up, his dark-eyed gaze steadier. “That’s easy. It was three or four days ago, when I was practicing with you.”
I swallow. “All right. And the time before that?”
He shrugs. “Detroit, I guess. Right before my life blew up. The stakes didn’t feel so high.”
