Page 120 of Rookie Recovery

His thumb rubbing over my pinky while he sequestered the shots from me so that I didn’t have to drink, and in the process, getting totally wankered himself.

Cooking him breakfast the next day.

Skating with him.

Fucking him in his kitchen.

You’re impossible.

You have no idea how long I’ve been thinking about these lips.

You’ve got talent like nothing this team’s ever seen before.

I want you, Bowie. I want you so fucking much it hurts. I don’t stop thinking about you. About the way you always seem to find the one single most inappropriate thing to say, that nobody in their right mind would ever dream to say, and you fucking say it. Every time. Just to wind me up.

They’re not gonna let you go over a preseason shoulder injury.

I bet you could ride the bench the whole season and still have a starting spot next year.

I’m not going to sign your release to play any games if you can’t be rational about this.

I’m here.

I let out a frustrated scream and opened my eyes. At once, thankful and heartbroken, I was still alone.

I crossed the locker room to the showers, slammed on the water and peeled my clothes from my body, tossing them over to a nearby bench. I didn’t even have a towel. Didn’t think it through. I just needed one thing.

To stand under the near scalding water as it crashed down around me. The temperature too hot to feel pain and the splashing too loud for others to hear my cries.

I slept like shit again. At Rowan’s apartment because I didn’t want to be alone, and I thought being around my teammate might help psych me up for the game tomorrow. It didn’t.

Rowan insisted we watched footage from old games, to analyse our opponents’ weaknesses. Claimed he did it before every game, despite spending the entire evening staring down at his phone.

He ordered us ‘dirty’ burgers from the place at the end of his block. Two for him. When I shot him a questioning eyebrow raise, his reply was, “Once I ate two Beat’s Burgers before a home game and we won five-one, so now it’s just a thing I have to do.” And then, as an afterthought, he added, “Katie does not need to know about this.”

So we watched hockey, while my burger went cold, and we avoided any form of boy talk. Rowan danced around the subject of Jamie, even though it was screamingly obvious I wanted to chat about nothing else. And I didn’t bring up Gus Lövgren, my former teammate. I got the feeling Rowan was both grateful for this and disappointed by it.

The next morning, Rowan drove us, in his fucking Lambo, to the arena for team talks and a pregame skate. I tried to keep my thoughts on the ice, on my hands, on keeping loose. Not on Jamie fucking Sullivan.

But it was impossible. I spent the whole day floating from point A to point B. Being shunted around by Rowan, or Aaron, or Turner. I had to get my head in the game. I needed to focus. This was the opening game of the season. A home game. It was a big fucking deal.

My gear was hanging in the Bobcats’ locker room when we arrived. Sandwiched between Aaron and Zac’s. A sea of blue and gold. The orange and gold cartoon vinyl bobcat snarled up from the floor at us.

I took my place on the bench and Aaron gave the team a garden-variety, albeit impassioned, We’ve Got This pep talk. I caught only snatches. “Keep your heads up … Don’t let them play the body … Keep it clean.” Aaron looked at Rowan and added, “Ish.”

Rowan smirked.

“You okay?” Aaron asked me after his speech had finished. We began stripping down. “It’s okay to be nervous. But you’ll get out there and it’ll be like you never stopped skating.”

“I’m not nervous,” I said, because it was the truth. I wasn’t nervous. Rarely suffered pregame nerves. This was … something else.

“This about the doc, then?”

I peeled my shirt off to avoid answering the question. The truth was, I hadn’t stopped thinking about him. Seeing him when I closed my eyes. Hearing his voice on a constant loop in my mind.

I heard him then.

That deep, gravelled baritone. A voice with the power to both soothe and arouse at the same time. I closed my eyes again and leant into the sound. Realised I probably wasn’t imagining it anymore.

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