Page 117 of The Breaking Point

I probably should’ve called in sick, because we ended up having one of our worst games of the season. I couldn’t concentrate, not with my mind going every which way. It didn’t help that seeing Coach made me think about Grace, and then I couldn’t stop seeing Ben’s car wrapped around that fucking tree.

We lost—spectacularly. I missed more than one goal, to the point that Coach pulled me from the game early. But at that point, we were too far gone and couldn’t regain the ground we’d lost.

Coach was so pissed that he didn’t even speak to us after the game. We were all exhausted and pissed at each other. Iknew that if one person said something to me, I’d probably start punching like I’d punched that random guy at the bar last night.

“Carmichael!” Coach yelled as I left the locker room. He motioned at me. “My office. Now.”

Mac shot me a look. “Good luck, man,” he mouthed at me.

At this point I didn’t even care what Coach had to say to me. How could shit get any worse?

Coach was just shaking his head when I came into his office. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but this ain’t it,” he said. “You won’t have a job or a girl if you keep acting like this.”

I was flabbergasted. “That’s all you have to fucking say to me?”

Coach pointed a finger at me. “Don’t swear at me, Carmichael.”

“What do I care about this team or my career when I don’t have Grace?” I felt like everything around me was crumbling before my eyes. “And you know whose fault that is? Yours. You were the one who said I could never tell her the truth.”

Coach reared backward. “I did it for your own good. I did it for my daughter’s own good. How can you not understand that?”

“Well, Grace knows everything now. She knows I gave those damn keys to Ben, and now she won’t speak to me. I guess that makes you happy since you never wanted us to be together anyway.”

Coach was silent. His lower lip trembled. I wondered whether he was going to start crying. I almost wished he would. At least I wouldn’t be the only one feeling this kind of pain.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Coach, his voice hoarse. “Get out of my office. Now.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. Coach could be pissed at me all he wanted.

If he wanted me off the team? Fine. Who gave a shit? I had nothing if I didn’t have Grace in my life, anyway.

I ended up at a bar not far from the rink. I knew I should’ve gone somewhere farther away where I wouldn’t have been recognized, but I didn’t care anymore.

Eventually, fans realized I wasn’t interested in being friendly and stopped coming up to me for autographs. I sat at the bar and drank the night away because that seemed like my only solution.

I was plastered when the old man next to me said, “You okay there, son?”

I shot him a smile without any humor in it. “No. But that’s okay. I have all this.” I motioned at my empty glasses of booze.

The old man shook his head. “You’re too young to be drinkin’ like that.”

I couldn’t help but point out the irony that the old man was also knee-deep in his own drinking.

“I ain’t got nothin’ left,” the old man said, shrugging. “I’ll go out and sleep on the sidewalk and do the same thing tomorrow. Nothin’ really matters. But you’re too young for that shit. I can tell.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

The old man chuckled. “Why do I get the feelin’ you’re gonna tell me?”

He was right. I spilled my guts to this random old man, who nodded and just listened without comment. It was freeing in a way that I would never have thought possible.

Of course, by the end, I asked him what I should do next. The old man had kept drinking through my spiel, and now he was nodding off and about to fall asleep.

“I told ya,” he kept saying, his eyes rolling back into his head. “Nothin’ really matters.”

I laughed, but it sounded like sobbing. I groaned. How the hell had I ended up like this?

But to my surprise, the old man roused himself enough to say, “I let my demons get to me. It ain’t worth it. There’s a lot more to life than drinking it away.”

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