Page 106 of Rookie Recovery

I forced my gaze back to the laptop perched on my thighs. The text swam across the screen, unreadable. And though the booze was muddying my mind, I knew it wasn’t responsible for the way my brain refused to latch onto the letters.

I needed to pass this test. It was the first step to the future. The gateway to my new life. My ticket out of the world of pro sports, where I’d forever be reliving the past, in every athlete and every injury. I needed to pass this test because clearly, I’d lost my ability to be objective about shit like this.

Maybe I’d open a practice in California.

Colorado. They had amazing hiking out there. Alaska. Bet people needed PT in Alaska. I could go anywhere. Do anything I wanted. Get the fuck away from this team, this city, this sport. Forever. Never look back.

Leave the past behind once and for fucking all.

But I couldn’t make the words on my screen make sense.

When my phone buzzed on the coffee table, I nearly tossed the laptop onto the floor in my eagerness to shoot forward to grab it. Even Brady dragged herself out of her nap to glare at me.

Katie: Sully! Why are you ignoring me? I ain’t that ugly.

I stared at the message until the screen went dark. Stared at my reflection without seeing it. Like if I sat here without moving, without thinking or doing, I could will him back into my life. Or at least onto my phone in the form of a text message.

Even a spiteful fuck you I could have worked with. At least I’d know he was thinking of me. Feeling something for me, even if it was anger. This cold emptiness was so much worse.

I needed a distraction. Something. Anything. Except I’d tried all my normal distractions—gym, run, study. Plotting for the future, for getting out and running away, like he’d said I was doing. And when all that had failed, I’d fallen into the rum.

None of it made any difference.

My brain was still spinning. Now I was drunk and depressed on top of it. And even after all the studying I’d somehow crammed in, I couldn’t pass this test or the class. Couldn’t move on. Not with Archie fucking Bowman still skating circles around my head.

He’d left a stick leaning against the wall next to the door, and I couldn’t stop staring at it.

It was untaped. He liked to tape them while watching TV, before he spent the entire rest of the show stick handling. Which was way more riveting to watch than whatever was on. For me, anyway, because he never looked down.

Then he’d rip the tape off, save the re-tape for the locker room. And—

I slammed the laptop closed, still open to the test, and tossed it onto the table on top of the piles of papers that had accumulated over the weeks. Reached for the bottle, only to find it empty. Drained dry. All that booze was in my blood instead of in the glass.

I threw that onto the coffee table, too.

Scattering papers, like I’d scattered all the other good things in my life. And what now? What now, Sullivan? Now it was me and my empty condo and the silence ringing through the walls the way I wished it’d ring through my head.

But there was no silence for me, no rest for the wicked. I kept seeing his face, over and over, that broken expression. Cocky grin nowhere in sight. Fear and desperation and anger all warring for control as the person he’d trusted to be there for him instead betrayed him in a misguided attempt to protect him.

My chest ached at the memory. The thought that I’d caused his pain. I’d benched him. Taken away his dream. He was so fucking beautiful, so goddamn fucking talented, and he deserved everything, deserved so much more than me.

Maybe that was why I hadn’t texted him.

Or maybe I was afraid he was too mad, that I’d try to apologize, and he’d slam the door in my face again. Or maybe, at the root of it all, I was afraid that he was right, that I was letting my paranoia get the better of me. That I’d made the wrong call. I couldn’t trust myself, my judgment, my instincts, and I didn’t know what to fucking do with that.

That’s why I’d been slamming back business classes faster than shots of rum, wasn’t it?

Pain wrapped my ribcage in a vise so tight, it felt like breathing shards.

I needed to get the fuck out of this dark, lonely condo. Get out of my head, find something to distract me. Two days ago, I’d have called Bowie. Ten years ago, I’d have walked down the street to a bar, flashed a smile, and had a guy on his knees in the bathroom five minutes later.

I wondered how many times Bowie had done that. How many times he’d do it during the upcoming season. While I sat here. Drunk. Alone. Pining and moping and not passing my business class. Not moving on.

No.

I was done replaying that awful afternoon over and over, wondering if I’d made the right choice. I’d chosen what was best for him, what someone should’ve chosen for me. If he hated me for it … So be it.

I was done thinking about it.

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