Page 16 of Friendzone Hockey
“Um, I’ll clean up. Promise.”
Fuck the house. We have way bigger issues brewing here than a messy house. “So, who are those lovely creatures in there?”
Stacey stares after them. “Just … just some guys I met. It cool if they stay with us for a bit?”
Is he for real right now? But I don’t want him catching on to my minor panic attack. I’m sure what I’m experiencing is shock and concern. Fucking off without contact and showing up with two gorgeous men he has to have plucked fresh from Benduovr isn’t his MO. It’s so far from his brand that I’d be more inclined to believe Casey and Stacey have had a secret triplet all along.
He’s gone momentarily insane, and I can look past it this once.
“Yeah, totally cool.” Wish I hadn’t said that. It’s so totally not cool. “Um, so long as it doesn’t interfere with your best man duties. You’re still my best man, yeah?”
I hope that’ll spur him into action. Challenge him to say something. It’s hard to know if what I’m sensing is real, or if I’ve fabricated the whole thing. But it’s just … fuck, he left right after that. He didn’t talk to me, but I know he was talking to other people. Kinda hoping to goad him into a confession if I’m honest, because yeah, I’m a little petty about it. He’s always asked for—no demanded—full honesty from me, and now he’s what? Lying? Dishonest?
“There a reason I wouldn’t be?” he says, brown eyes hardening.
Because of the look you get when I bring it up.“Not one I can think of.”
“Of course, I’m your best man. I said I was, didn’t I?”
“Well, we have a lot to plan. The Bobbsey Twinks gonna be down for that?”
“They do whatever I tell them to do,” he says.
My veins burn. Fine. I guess they’re some kinda kinky sex slaves or something. Whatever. I can’t stop staring at all the marks on him. Fuck, I need to stop staring at all the marks on him.
“Guess I can put this away,” I say, gesturing toward the bat. I turn.
“Wait.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re right. I should explain myself.”
The marks, the lipstick, the hickeys—they’re all I can see. That’s not fair. He has a right to those. I’m getting married, and Stacey should get to be with whoever he wants. I’m over him. So over him.
I am.
Then why the fuck do I want to break something?
Maybe because life is fucking unfair. Maybe because I’ve been forced into accepting that the one person I want—the only person I’ve ever wanted in a bone-deep way—told me we’re never going to be a thing.
Yeah. More than once. In ways that severed my fucking heart. Well, what was left of it. He told me I was too dependent on him. Has always been firm that he played too much of a mentor role in my life for us being a thing to ever be appropriate.
I can’t even tell him he was wrong because I can’t exist, can’t function without him—in other words, he’s right. I chose friendzone for life over nothing at all, even though it kills me just a little every fucking day. That’s some kind of codependency I’m sure they haven’t added to the DSM-5 yet. I never want to be anything but honest with Stacey, with the exception of a white lie or five to preserve my sanity. But I’d have to admitthat he’s been right all along. The way we bonded during the hardest time of my life made me need him like air, and I’ve never stopped. I’ve been through enough therapy by now—after a lot of convincing to finally get me to the therapist’s office—to know a real relationship can’t be forged from that kind of trauma experience.
Nothing good can come from trauma-bonded relationships. Everyone says that. Everyone knows that.
Intellectually, I know this, too. But tell that to my heart. It refuses to fucking believe that my feelings for Stacey don’t exist. That they’re some sort of fabricated alternate universe invented by my trauma-muddled mind. It’s just … they’re so real to me, and Stacey means everything to me. I’m led back to the same conclusion: Does it matter how we started, so long as we’re good to each other?
I have to recite reality to myself and out loud.Those feelings don’t exist, they don’t exist, they don’t fucking exist.But my heart beats with those feelings no matter what I do. Dating other people, moving on, even trying to keep my thoughts clean—operative word try.
I never want Stacey to know how much I’m still attached to him. I never want him to know that I’ve never moved on from needing him. It’s the reason he refused to date me, no matter how many times I threw myself at him. And there’s still a small piece of me that’s terrified he’d remove himself from my life permanently if he knew I physically can’t get over him. That I need him in the most visceral way you can need a person.
He's taken the first step. He fucking ghosted you, Dash.
He’s told me time and time again that he’d never leave me, but Stacey does what’s best for Dash. Period. Ask me how I know. If it came down to it, he would if he thought it was something I needed.
Yeah. He’d totally pull an Edward Cullen fromNew Moonand fuck did I ever hate that book for that reason.
