Page 101 of Divorced from Number Thirty-Eight
So, I don’t push.
I let him pull back and lightly brush his lips over mine, let him give me the soft, sweet words that are a way to gloss over what’s just happened. “I appreciate you looking out for me, Red.” He cups my cheek. “I appreciate you.”
He seals his lips over mine.
“And you’re right,” he says when he pulls back, cupping my jaw. “There will be more games for you to watch.”
I nod, hold him tightly again, hold him until he’s releasing me, coaxing me to finish getting ready because he really is going to be late unless we get moving, and then I drive him to the practice rink, where the team’s bus is waiting.
There are reporters outside, trailing him as he walks to the bus, calling out questions that have his shoulders going stiffer and stiffer.
As I watch him, I know it’s the right call to skip the game.
I just can’t know later…
That this was the moment I should have pushed.
Thirty-Three
Gray
“What’s it like to be a real-life hero?”
“Will you kiss me after rescuing me too, Roberts?”
“I hear he’s doing a fireman’s calendar too!” A beat. “Will you stroke my hose good and hard?”
Shit talk from the players on the other team.
It’s not unexpected.
Razzing is part of hockey, and it’s smart to do everything in your power as a player to try and get your opponent off their game.
It’s a sport of inches, of milliseconds, of grinding it out until the very end.
If you can fuck up someone’s game so they’re holding their stick a little too tight, so their shots are off, their passes don’t connect…
It can work.
But the heckling wasn’t why I played poorly.
Neither were the questions that continued to come up during media.
It was…
The disappointment in Faye’s eyes when I didn’t talk to her.
I spent the last couple of days remembering the flash of sadness through her brown eyes, the way she tucked it away and plastered on a smile as I deliberately moved the conversation on…and trying to ignore the sense that I’m seriously fucking this up.
No wonder my game was off.
Courtney wouldn’t have let it go.
She would have pushed.
I would have pushed back.
And we would have ended up in a knockdown, drag-out fight that had me playing mean.
