Page 28 of Need You to Choose Me

“Stop,” I cut her off, feeling my throat thicken with emotion over Dad. “Just…stop.”

Tears pool in her eyes. “I miss him.”

I kneel down, using some of the tissues to try soaking up the mess. Quietly, I murmur, “I miss him too. But Dad wouldn’t want to see you like this. You know that.”

We’re quiet as I try cleaning up the best I can while thinking about the penalty my coach is going to give me for being late.Last time, I had to make up the drills I missed and add three sets of reps to our normal workout routine on the ice. The time before that, I had to help clean the locker room, which was made of nightmares. Maybe if I were honest, he’d go easier on me. But that would mean opening up about my home life, and I have no intention of doing that. I’d take the consequences, no matter how much my body burned afterward.

By the time I’m done, I walk into the living room to see if she’ll try eating a piece of bread. Anything. But she’s sleeping soundly, and it’s the only time she looks peaceful.

Disposing of the dirty dishes into the sink, I sigh at the bright stain on the carpet and decide there’s nothing more I can do.

So, I leave her note about the food in the fridge and go to practice.

Coach Maher makes me skate fifty laps and threatens to sit me out during our next game.

Shaking off the memory, I walk over the soup stain in the beige carpet and head toward the kitchen. The ceiling has a large water stain on it, and I can hear the faintdrip, drip, dripcoming from the crawl space above.

“Great,” I grumble, knowing I’ll have to get someone to deal with that before it becomes a bigger problem. I don’t know how old the roof is, but I know Mom has been told at least twice in the past five years that it needs to be redone. One of the neighbors helped me patch it a few times when small leaks happened around the chimney, but they were temporary fixes at best. It was only a matter of time before the beams would rot and loosen, creating a larger issue than the one staring at me in the face.

Heading toward my childhood bedroom, I stop at the door before it and hesitate to turn the knob. The door jamb is still damaged, stirring old feelings in the pit of my stomach fromwhen I had to break into the room. But I don’t want to think about that—the final straw that led us here.

There were a lot of moments inside this room that made it hard to enter. One time when I checked on Mom inside, it smelled like garbage and body odor, and she’d destroyed almost every piece of clothing she had in a rampage. She’d gotten fired from work because of her attitude and tardiness, causing her to go a week-long tangent of highs and lows that I could barely tolerate. At one point, I went to Dad’s house. But I knew I couldn’t stay because Mom needed me.

I wish I told him how bad it’d gotten.

He would have helped.

At least, he would have tried.

Letting go of the doorknob before I can open it, I back away and walk into my room. The old hockey posters on the wall range from the Boston Bruins to Tampa Bay Lightning—both signed by my favorite players on each team. There are signed baseballs in display cases on the shelf from the games my father took me to as a kid, memorabilia from annual vacations to Cape Cod and Long Island scattered on my desk, and old clothes in my dresser that stopped fitting me when I hit puberty.

Mom has gone on too many rampages to count, but she’s never touched my room. Not even after I left to live at the frat house off campus. She’d call all the time to tell me she missed me, and on really bad days she threatened to sell all my stuff if I didn’t come home, but she never did. Even at her worst, she remembered who she was and how much she loved me.

Swiping my hand over my dusty blue comforter set, I move the curtains out of the way and stare out the window. The backyard is as overgrown as the front, reminding me that I need to hire a landscaping company to keep up with it. If I were smart, I’d pull the push mower out of the back shed and do it myself while I have the time.

But this isn’t where I plan on spending the night.

Grabbing my keys from the kitchen counter, I give one last spare look to the lackluster home I grew up in before locking the door behind me. It’s the first time I can breathe since stepping inside, leaving the walls full of memories behind me.

Giving a fleeting wave to the neighbor across the street, I slide into my car and drive to the bar with anOPENsign flickering in the window.

When I walk in, the owner looks at me with her brows so far up they almost disappear from her forehead. “Surprised to see you here, superstar.”

I offer Judy an easy smile. “I have a little time to kill and wanted to check up on a few things.”

“Things,” she muses with a knowing grin. “Or people?”

I walk over to the bar where she’s stacking glasses on the shelf. “Both,” I reply.

Judy chuckles. “She’s not here, honey.”

“She’s not working tonight?”

She stops what she’s doing and leans on the bar. “Olive is visiting family for a few weeks. It’s just me, Jeff, Kayleigh, and the temps I hired on for the summer.”

Visiting family. I slowly nod. “In Vermont?”

Judy hums. “Thatiswhere her family lives,” she remarks, going back to stacking. She glances over her shoulder. “You got family there, too, you need to check on?”

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