Page 82 of Face Me Off

I need air. I need space. I need...

My phone vibrates in my pocket. With shaking hands, I pull it out, Ryan’s name flashing on the screen.

“Are you home?” The text reads, followed by another. “I’m outside.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

RYAN

I sit backin the kitchen chair and try not to show my frustration. The last thing I want to be is disrespectful, but my mind is not on this discussion.

“If you guys don’t get on the ball, you won’t make the playoffs,” my old man says. He isn’t wrong. The team has been in a slump since Thanksgiving, but we’re turning it around. We won our last game.

“We’ve got it handled.”

I take in Dad’s frail frame: his hunched back, the thinning hair, the worry lines framing his face. His fall and this lawsuit have aged him. I wish there was something I could do to lessen the burden he’s carried these past few years.

But he’s doing better since the night he passed out drunk on the living room floor. At least he hasn’t drank since then.

“Ryan, you need to focus. This is your future we’re talking about. You need to get through school, then…”

Yeah, then off to physical therapy school. Thanks to Maddy, I passed Physics with an eighty-nine percent. My grade point average may not be the best, but it would’ve been crushed had it not been for a certain auburn-haired beauty. My mind flicks back to the library, her face scrunched in concentration as sheexplained the wave-particle duality of light, a metaphor that I had turned into a flirtatious joke.

“Are you even listening to me?” Dad’s sharp tone snapped me back to reality.

“Yeah, I got it. Work hard, make you proud, uphold the family name. Same old, same old.” The words tasted bitter on my tongue.

Before he could launch into round two, my phone buzzed against the table. Blake’s name flashed on the screen. Thank fuck. I could use the outlet.

I snatch it up, already rising from my chair. “Sorry, Dad, gotta take this. Blake probably needs me for … hockey stuff. We’ll finish this later, yeah?”

Not waiting for a response, I stroll out of the kitchen and feel like I can breathe for the first time all day. Blake’s call couldn’t have come at a better time.

I step into my room and shut the door. “Hey man, what’s up? You have no idea how glad I am you called...”

“You wouldn’t know where to find Amanda, would you?” The desperation in Blake’s voice makes me pause. Find her? What the hell does he mean? She’s in Boston. Does he not know this?

I must have taken too long to answer because Blake’s voice screamed, “Hello?”

“I’m here.” I shake my head. “I’m just trying to figure out how you don’t know she’s back in Boston.”

There’s a pause before his frantic voice rings through. “Amanda left already? But we still have a few more days.”

Again, how does he not know this?

“Bruh, she moved her flight up.”

Defeat. That sense of disappointment and failure felt right when the buzzer sounded, and the team lost the game? Yeah, that’s the sound Blake makes when he says, “I can’t get a hold of her. I’m pretty sure she blocked me.”

I exhale slowly, not really knowing what to say. When Amanda and I exchanged goodbyes, she told me to take care of him. She still loved him, but she needed to do what she could to protect herself. “Yeah, I’m not surprised. How are you holding up?”

“Not great. But I need to talk to her.”

“Look, we’ve been friends a long time. You’re like a brother to me, but you need to let her go. Let her heal on her own. Talking to her now will only open those wounds.”

“But my circumstances have changed.”

I listen as he explains, and I crush his optimism by the time he’s done.

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