Page 51 of Finding Her
“I—”
“Oh, that’s right,” I said, not wanting to hear his answer. “Never!”
“You want me to ask?” He yelled. He whipped a paper out of his pocket and held it out. “Fine. Who is this girl and what are you doing with her?”
My heart sank as I realized what the paper was: a print out of the photo Claire had shown me, of Poppy and I kissing on the camping trip.
“Where did you get that?” I asked.
“Answer the question, Levi! Who is she?”
“Her name is Poppy,” I said in a tense voice.
“What were you doing withher?”
I narrowed my eyes, hating the way that he spat out “her”. In that moment, he sounded a lot like Claire.
“Kissing her,” I said flatly. “What do you think?”
He crumpled up the paper in his fist and threw it across the hall. “You know you’re not supposed to be dating.”
“You mean I’m not supposed to be dating anyone unless it’s Claire Thompson. Right?”
“Claire is a respectable young lady?—”
“Claire is a demo. She is possibly the worst person I have ever met, and I could not hate her any more than I do.”
Dad balked at me. “Don’t say that. The Thompson’s are good friends of ours.”
“They’re good friends ofyours! I don’t like them. I’ve never liked them. And I definitely don’t like Claire.”
I’d spent so much of my life pretending that I did. Or trying not to show how much I hated her, at least. I’d been the gentleman that Dad wanted me to be. I was polite. I was civil. I spent countless hours of my life convincing myself that maybe if I just spent a little more time with her, I could grow to care for her. But it was obvious now that could never happen—not withPoppy in my life. Maybe, if the past month hasn’t happened, I could have fit into the mold that Dad wanted me to be. Even if I never loved Claire, I could have tolerated her enough to be with her. But now that I knew what was out there, now that I understood what love was, I could never go back. If I couldn’t be with Poppy, then I didn’t want anybody.
“I don’t want her, Dad,” I said. “And I can’t be with her just because that’s the dream you had for my life.”
Dad let out a long suffering sigh. “Levi?—”
“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear about how Claire is my soulmate, how this is my duty in life, how hockey is everything and I can’t let a girl get in the way of it.” I dropped my chin to my chest and let out a long breath. “I love Poppy, Dad.”
“You love her,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “Love is just a distraction. It takes away from your focus on hockey, on your career.”
“I don’t have a career!” I yelled, the words ripping from my chest. “Don’t you get it? I’m seventeen! I’m not playing professionally, I?—”
“Get off the ice.”
“No.” And just to make a point, I skated backwards.
“Levi Barrett,” he said in a dangerous tone.
“I thought this was what you wanted,” I said mockingly. “For me to put hockey above everything else. For me to never step out of my skates.”
I couldn’t stop the disgust that laced into my tone. Years of resentment and hurt were piling up in this moment and threatening to destroy me. How many moments of my childhood had I missed out on because hockey came first. How many friends had I lost because I could never see them after school or go to their birthday parties, because I had hockey practice? How many nights had he taken me to the rink after school to skate for hours, until I was dead tired and forced to do my homeworkon the bus ride to school every morning? When I thought back to my childhood, all I could think of was hockey. It was what we talked about at the dinner table and what he bragged about to other parents. In public, he praised my gameplay and boasted about how I was going to be a star. In private, he would criticize everything I’d done, to make sure I was a better player next time. There was noyou did greatoryou tried your best. Everything could be improved on and he would find every little error he could.
I wasn’t allowed to have a life outside of hockey. I wasn’t allowed to be anyone outside of hockey. And I was sick of it. It had cost me so much of my life, and I wasn’t about to let it cost me Poppy.
“Because it matters more than anything,” he said.
“No.” I shook my head and backed even further away from him, desperate for my own space. “No it doesn’t matter more than anything, Dad. And I don’t care enough to make it matter—sometimes, I wish I did. I wish I could love it as much as you do and let it be my life, the way you want it to be. But I can’t. It’s not everything I want to do.”
