Page 24 of Friendzone Hockey
“Not feelings, dude, fucking soul-shattering love?—”
I love my brother, but I’m not above strangling him. The fact that he’s stopped talking means he sees it in my eyes.
“Well, c’mon. Mom’s room? And not even for him, but the bestie that’s more like his own personal bodyguard because you’ll know Dash will ask because Dash knows Dirk will ask.”
Storming past him, I lay on Mom’s bed. I haven’t dared touch this bed since I originally washed and replaced the sheets. I’m sure it’s ripe with dust mites by now, but I don’t care. It has her smell, and I’m losing my mind because, yeah, I’m going to get rid of Mom for him.
Casey joins me, laying his head on my stomach, looking up at the ceiling, letting his thick body hang off the bed. “I miss her,” he says.
“Me too.”
“Mom wouldn’t want this, her memory stuck in this tomb. She’d want you to move in your super-secret forbidden crush.”
“I’m gonna punch you so damn hard.”
He laughs.
But as much as I will punch him if he goes on about it, I know what he’s doing. It’s the same thing Mom would have done. They were very into humor as a coping mechanism for all things. They were always working in sync to get me to loosen up. How could I, though? They were free spirits, someone needed to be responsible.
Plus, he’s right. Mom would have wanted me to move my super-secret forbidden crush in. She would have called it that too.
“For the record, I’m one hundred percent in support of the idea. For you and for Dash. Trav and Dash’s relationship will drastically improve when he moves out. But you’ll always be my number one priority, and I have to ask, will you survive it?”
Will I survive it? Having Dash in my living space?
“I don’t know.”
“Hey, remember that time you had a date, but you cancelled it because Dash needed you?”
“Yeah, I remember, jerkface.”
“Tell me Dash is gonna be okay with you dating.”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“Ooooh, boy. Do I really have to spell it out for you? You don’t think it’s at all suspicious that he needed you right before you were about to go on a date?”
“No, I don’t. He didn’t even know about that date … unless you told him.”
He smirks. I punch him in the arm. Hard. “Ow! I’m telling Mom.”
It’s stuff like him saying that, preventing me from giving him a real pummeling. It makes me smile inside. It makes it like Mom’s still here.
“Why’d you do it?”
“Because of something Dirk said. Dash was missing you.”
“That’s not new. We were missing each other. You know what we were like before we left for training camp.”
“Which is just another point you shouldn’t get me started on, but anyway, Dirk told me that he’s lived in that old T-shirt you loaned him. He said he had to pin him down and rip it off him so he could wash it. Dash wouldn’t talk to him for a week after that because it didn’t smell like you anymore.”
More like stole with permission. Casey spilled queso on him. I got him one of my shirts. He ended up leaving it on, and I never saw that shirt again. I also didn’t ask after it with the hope that he was maybe wearing it as pajamas or something. I liked the thought of Dash wearing my clothes.
“I can give him new shirts.”
“Are you being purposefully obtuse? Anyway, I wanted to test a theory.”
I see where he’s going, and I want to be happy about it, but my inappropriate crush is bad enough. There can’t be two of us.
