Page 130 of Friendzone Hockey
The man deserves an explanation. He deserves to be loved by someone whose heart doesn’t belong to someone else. It can’t be me. Even now, all I want is Stacey. Stacey might never get over himself enough to be with me, but I have to end things with Syd. I’m an asshole for not realizing it sooner.
Syd stirs. He opens his eyes, smiling. An arm slides up to grip mine. “Good morning, bright eyes.”
Fuck. This is going to be painful, isn’t it?
“I tried to move you to the bedroom, but it upset you, so I let you sleep here. I was worried about you, so I slept on the floor.”
“Isn’t that bad for old people?” I tease, stretching.
“I’ve still got some life in me yet. How about you wash your face, and I’ll make coffee?”
I take him up on the offer, so I can pull myself together. How do I do this? “Rip the Band-Aid off” style? Plead for forgiveness? I let go a heavy exhale. There’s no easy way to do this.
When I head out to the kitchen, he’s got hot coffee ready. All I can think about is Stacey at home drinking “first coffee”, the most sacred coffee of the day, according to him. I slide into a seat at the kitchen island.
“So,” Syd begins. “Does your confession have anything to do with the phone call I got from Newlands Golf Course last night? They phoned while you were asleep.”
My stomach flips. Shit.
I rely on old self-soothing movements, rubbing my right hand up and down my left forearm.
“I didn’t mean to scare you, Dash,” Syd says. He places a hot cup of coffee in front of me.
“I’m not?—”
“You’re rubbing your arm. You don’t think I’ve figured out what that means? I might not know as much about you asStacey, but I pay attention. I intend to know as much.”
Shit. The way he said Stacey doesn’t bode well. “Stacey is?—”
“Your best friend and the man who put a thirty-thousand-dollar deposit on our wedding venue, Mr. Alderchuck.”
“Um …”
“Care to explain?”
“It … it started off innocent,” I begin, but then I remember the really not innocent kiss. “It was a pissing contest.”
“A pissing contest?”
“Yeah, because even off the ice we’re testosterone-fueled clowns.”
“Ooookay. Clearly, something hockey-culture related I’m probably not going to understand, but I’m following.”
“But it kinda began about a couple of weeks ago when he kissed me.” I don’t know how accurate that is. It’s when our most recent mess began, but Stacey and I began forever ago. “And I kissed him back.”
He nods, but he’s quiet as he processes what I’ve said. “The name Alderchuck came up a lot.”
Stupid tears fill my eyes. I don’t want them. Syd will crumble for them, and he shouldn’t. I deserve whatever I have coming to me for this—yelling, names, the whole works.
There’s a reason for it all, a long-ass story’s worth of shit that happened, leading me to this exact point in time, but there’s no excuse. I said I’d tell him about what happened to me, seeing as he already knows the gist of it—still not happy about that—but I can’t. I don’t want to.
Can’t, don’t want to, but oddly compelled to blurt it all out as if it’s the only way to purge it from my bones.
“When I was eighteen, my dead mom’s boyfriend chained me to a bedpost on the floor to prove how well I could behave for him. I had to dislocate my thumb to escape, or I might be there still. Fuck, sometimes, when I sleep alone, I am there.” I check in to see how horrified he is, but for once I don’t wanna puke while saying the words. I think Billy would call that progress.
“That’s … Dash, I’m so sorry.”
“Everything’s better with Stacey. I’ve been told more times than I can count that a person’s not supposed to heal you—you’re supposed to heal yourself. But Stacey heals me. Over and over again. When I wilt from time to time, all I have to do is sit near him and it’s as if his very energy wraps around my insides, eating up all the bad shit threatening to take me down.”
