Page 21 of Rookie Recovery

I dragged a hand through my hair. Just what I needed. To remind myself of my actual problems. Maybe that’s why I was letting myself get all caught up in Bowman. He was a distraction. Something pretty to look at.

“If you don’t pass it, so what?” Katie poked her straw in her iced tea, rattling the ice cubes around. “You take it again. Your business waits a year. Or two. What does it matter?”

It mattered because I was tired of lurking in my old life. It was time to get out. Move on. Stop lusting after the past in the form of bright-eyed lithe-framed hockey boys I shouldn’t pay attention to, let alone think about days after the fact …

“It matters because I don’t want to keep reliving that last game—” I stopped talking very, very suddenly. Where the hell had those words come from? My fingers dragged through my short hair almost hard enough to hurt. “I’m ready to move on, that’s all.”

Katie crossed her arms on top of the table and leveled me with a very stern, real stare. Truth was coming. “It’s not just the job keeping you from moving on, Jamie.”

My shoulders stiffened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean”—Katie didn’t blink—“you’re stuck in the past not because you don’t have a future, but because you don’t have a present. You’re drifting in the middle, waiting for someday.”

Bam. There it was. Jamie: back-down on the mat, blinking away stars from Katie’s chokeslam of truth.

I chewed on my lip. Didn’t have a response to that one. And Katie barreled on ahead while I was still reeling. Still on my back, listening to the countdown, too stunned to get up and fight.

“You have to find something to anchor you here, now,” she said. “Not someday. Not a business or a dream. Today. That’s how you stop reliving the past.”

I stared out into the park, the trees, the soft grass. The August heat and humidity sat like a weight on my shoulders, turning the skin under my loose grey T-shirt clammy and uncomfortable.

Or maybe Katie’s words were doing that, each a heavy blow against my sternum.

“When was the last time you did something fun?” she asked.

I winced. “We come here every Wednesday. And we went hiking last week—”

“How about with someone besides me?” Her dark brow angled up towards her hairline. “Or JJ. Someone not on the team?”

That one was a bit of a reach. “My brother was here two weeks ago.”

She huffed; she’d forgotten about Dave’s visit. “When was the last time you went on a date?”

I flinched.

“Low blow.” I didn’t have the memory bank to dig back that far. It was practically ancient history.

“Do you even remember it?”

No. I did not. “That’s a below-the-belt hit—”

“Come on, J.” Katie rolled her eyes. “Nobody’s touched you below the belt in years.”

“For fuck’s sake.” I opted not to mention a certain starboy’s drunken handsiness to disprove her theory. Technically, I suppose, he hadn’t gotten to anything … important. “None of this is relevant.”

“It is, though!” Katie broke off as the perky blonde waitress returned with our food. Set my sandwich—with fries—in front of me. Katie’s burger before her. Beamed a megawatt smile at each of us, then hopped off to throw sunshine on another table.

I dug into my lunch, sending pleading prayers to all the deities out there that the food was sufficient enough distraction from Katie’s runaway train of conversation—

“You need to start doing now things.” Katie set down her burger to look me dead in the eyes. So much for my prayers. The deities had left me high and dry. Again.

“I do now things,” I huffed. “We’re here, aren’t we? Enjoying the summer sunshine?”

Katie jabbed a french fry at me. “We’re here every Wednesday. I mean fun, spontaneous things. Not business things. Not plans. Not dreams. Not pre-planned outings where you eat the same sandwich because it’s familiar.”

“I do plenty of other stuff.” I opted not to elaborate for fear of disproving my hollow argument.

“Eat the fries.” Katie’s gaze slid across the tiny table to the aforementioned fries on my plate. “Do it.”

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