Page 63 of Friendzone Hockey
It’s hard enough when he’s hanging around. Worse when he steals my damn clothes—or I give them to him.
Last night, though. We were alone. We journaled as we do. It’s a quiet activity, but only if we don’t count the little things that make it loud. Things like our smiles when we look up at the same time. His toes pressing into my fingers when they stop massaging them. The way he yawns and stretches every so often, punctuated by the sweetest of sighs.
Sometimes I cheat and pay extra attention to the relaxed way he lies across the couch or the tiniest microscopic thingslike his biceps flexing when he writes. They’re moments, Dash moments, finite ones. Someday he’ll find someone to do this with, and it won’t be me, so I drink them in and hold them on my tongue for a while.
But when I looked up, it was a frown. My internal alarm bells went off. I joined him in bed that night and I had to stare into hopeful brown eyes that may someday be the death of me, but I finally got it out of him.
“I love you, Stacey.”
“I love you, too.”
“I’minlove with you, Stacey.”
“We talked about this before,” I said in a cold voice that was unlike anything he’s ever heard from me. He flinched because of that voice. I wasn’t icy because I was mad at him, it was because I knew rejecting him this time was going to be worse—so much worse—but it had to be done.
The “I should go,” almost fell out of my mouth, but I remembered what he told me about his mom.
I tried to hug her so many times, and she pushed me off the couch. She stopped me from climbing her lap. She told me to go away.
He’d just told me he loved me, if I did anything other than hold him as tightly as I always did, he’d feel the same sting of abandonment. So, I stayed.
“It’s normal to develop those kinds of feelings for a mentor,” I added.
“You’re my friend, Stacey.” Beautiful anger marred with hurt lit up his face, twisting my insides. Pain bled from his voice, tearing into me
“I’ve helped you through grief, trauma, and loss.” I tried to make my tone as neutral as possible, but my insides were screaming. Dying. Why was he making me reject him again? “I love you, Dash, and I’ll love you forever.”
“You’re saying we can never be a thing just because you were there for me? That’s fucking stupid, Stace.”
“That’s what I’m saying, Dash.”
I scrambled, desperate to stop the avalanche of rejection for him. Hoping to prevent the inevitable awkwardness. The fall on your face embarrassment. “You’re gonna make someone so happy one day.”
Yeah. I said that. You don’t fucking say shit like that, but as much as I’d rehearsed for that moment, when I got there, I fucked it up. The right words didn’t exist. The crushing pain was beyond prediction.
And I kinda get why people say stupid shit like that. It’s what I imagine it’s like to be in quicksand. The advice is to stay still, but I bet the itch to move, to dig yourself out, is too hard to ignore. I wanted nothing more than to pull him from the quicksand of unpleasantness we were drowning in.
He didn’t say anything, and I finally realized I’d said enough. “Do you want me to go?”
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
“Then no,” he said.
I stayed, but I couldn’t fall asleep.
He didn’t want to journal with me tonight. He wanted to hang with Dirk and then head to bed on his own.
I journaled, but it was less journal, more letter to him.
Entry 88
Fucking hell, Dash.
Of course, I want you. I do little else but want you. I live for you. I’d die for you. My heart won’t ever belong to anyone but you.
I know this, but how will others know this? A specific other—his dad. It would kill me to be seen as the icky guy taking advantage of Dash so soon after a grooming incident. Fucksakes. The monster was only just locked away. That makes us even more of a “no”. There aren’t enough signs to say that he’s not simply latching onto me because he can trust me. Him saying so isn’t enough. I need to experience the proof.
