Page 27 of Released from the Sin Bin

“The party started earlier. I can’t drive.” That’s such crap. We’re close enough that he could walk if he really wanted to be here.

“You could walk.” My desperation cracks through the phone as I try not to cry.

“I can barely stand, baby.”

He muffles the phone, but I still hear the female voice talking to him. “I can help you to your room,” she says in a muffled tone.

I close my eyes, hoping I’m just hearing things.

“Come over later.” Vic comes back on. “I have to go.”

“Please, stop doing this.” I mutter through my tears, but I’m not sad. I’m angry. “If you do this, we’re over.”

“We’ll talk later.” The music in the background of his party gets lower. “After you’ve calmed down, you’ll be ok.”

He hangs up before I can say anything, and Jocelyn pats my back to warn me that our head coach has come in to give us his usual pre-game speech.

I’m so mad that he couldn’t do this one thing for me. I know exactly what he’s doing right now, and it involves the woman I heard through the phone. I’m such a fool for letting it happen.

He’s humiliating me. Everyone sees it.

I zone out through Coach Higgins’ speech and through most of the game. I’m on autopilot, but even my muscle memory of skills isn’t helping me get through this.

We’re getting creamed. One of the goals scored against us had been tipped off my stick. It was a scramble in front of the net and no one else saw it, but while trying to get the puck out from the crease, I accidentally tipped it into our team’s net.

Getting desperate, I attempt to stop a player with my stick and nearly take her head off. It’s the first penalty I’ve gotten all year.

I sit in the sin bin, feeling nothing. The small penalty box is where I should stay all game. My team is playing better without me.

Jocelyn keeps passing me by with a shake of her head and then proceeds to focus on rallying everyone else up to come back from my horrible game.

Coach Higgins keeps me on the bench for the first half of the third period, but we’re already losing by two. He puts me back in, and I’m on the ice for less than ten seconds when the other team gets a breakaway and another goal. I was right there. She skated past me and I froze.

All I had to do was chase after her and put on some kind of pressure so she’d miss the goal. I did nothing.

“Fuck,” I scream as the lamp lights up for her goal. In a fit of rage, I wind back and break my stick against the side of the boards. The bottom half goes flying as the wood splinters.

The closest referee blows his whistle in my face, and I’m taken out of the game for unsportsmanlike conduct. They should’ve taken me out sooner.

Carter

Pieces of Willa’s stick fly out across the ice after she angrily slams it into the boards.

“Oh,” all the guys in our house howl as we watch the game from our living room.

“Fuck,” Luca grumbles as his best friend gets taken out of the game over the television.

“She’s going to get suspended for that.” Alex shakes his head.

“Something isn’t right.” Luca gnaws on his lip.

“Aye, that’s not like her,” Finn agrees.

They all have something to say about their friend, but neither one of them moves from the couch to go and find out what’s really going on.

Without saying a word, I slip out of the house and head straight to the source of Willa’s pain. I’ve seen that look on her face many times before, only it’s when I’m looking in the mirror and thinking of the man that ruins my life.

I’m not surprised there’s a party at the Kappa house. They always find an excuse to celebrate. Whether it’s a birthday or someone took a good sized shit, they’d memorialize the occasion with funnels of beer until they pass out.

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