Page 89 of Triple Play
I hear Wyatt grunt through the ceiling and I know exactly what it means.
I’m standing in the kitchen with a beer I’m not drinking, staring at the wall like it holds answers, and upstairs my teammates are making the girl I love fall apart.
The girl I pushed away. The girl I kissed and called a mistake. The girl who’s moved on because I was too much of a coward to fight for her.
Another sound. Muffled. Jordie’s voice saying her name like a prayer.
My hand tightens around the beer bottle so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter.
I should leave. Should get in my car and drive until this feeling in my chest stops threatening to crack me open. But I can’t make my feet move, can’t stop listening to the sounds of them together, torturing myself with what I threw away.
The sounds quiet eventually and I set the beer down. Walk upstairs on autopilot, my body moving before my brain catches up.
I stand outside Jordie’s door and I can hear them. Not the words, just the low murmur of voices, the sound of Jordiebeing sweet and attentive the way he always is, Wyatt’s quieter responses, Elise’s soft laugh.
They sound happy. Content. Like a unit.
Without me.
My hand is on the doorknob before I realize what I’m doing. I could turn it. Could walk in there and—what? Demand they stop? Tell them they’re violating the housing contract? Threaten to report them to fucking Carol?
Make them choose between this and their future?
My fingers tighten on the knob.
I could do it. Could blow this whole thing up. We signed that contract. All of us. Carol explicitly forbade exactly what’s happening in that room. One call to housing and they’re all fucked—evicted, possibly losing scholarships, definitely facing disciplinary action.
I could end this right now.
Make them hurt the way I’m hurting.
The thought sits there. Bitter. Tempting.
Then I hear Elise laugh again. Soft. Genuinely happy.
And I drop my hand.
Because I’m a lot of things—jealous, angry, emotionally constipated according to Jordie—but I’m not that much of a bastard. I won’t destroy her future because I’m too fucked up to deal with mine.
I turn away from the door. Walk downstairs and grab my keys.
The rink is empty at midnight on a Tuesday. I use my captain’s key to get in, flip on enough lights to see, and lace up my skates with hands that are shaking from rage or grief or both.
I hit the ice hard.
Skate until my thighs are screaming. Until my lungs are burning. Until the image of Elise between them, happy andsatisfied and not thinking about me at all, starts to blur at the edges.
It doesn’t work.
I can still hear Wyatt saying her name. Can still picture Jordie’s hands on her the way mine should be. Can still see the way she looked at both of them in the kitchen yesterday morning—soft and affectionate and everything she used to look at me with before I destroyed it.
I skate harder. Faster. Pushing my body past its limits because physical pain is easier than this.
I make it two hours before I puke in the trash can by the bench.
Then I keep skating.
By the time I finally drag myself off the ice, it’s the middle of the night. My legs are jelly. My chest is tight. And I’ve solved exactly nothing.
