Page 84 of Whirlwind
I glance around the room, looking for Coach. Isla and Cillian are with him and his wife. Isla’s mom puts a hand to her daughter’s stomach, and my own twists with some feeling I can’t quite label.
22
Kit
Tyson changed after dinner. After Isla and Cillian announced their pregnancy, he grew quieter as everyone else celebrated. It’s hard not to overthink the reason for that.
Overall, the night was great. Despite briefly descending down the memory lane of my childhood, I had fun. Us ladies danced together; eventually, the guys joined in. Tyson doesn’t have much more rhythm than Cillian, but it didn’t matter. I liked swaying in his arms, even though he was growing a bit distant.
After a couple of songs, Hugo got bored and goaded me and Letty into a dance-off. It started with samba and quickly escalated to dances like The Running Man and The Tootsie Roll—which is impossible to do in this dress. By the time the event ended, my face hurt from laughing. Hugo’s a good dancer; I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise, considering how he moves in the net. Letty is absolute shit at it, though, and his version of The Electric Slide was the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen.
“Where did you learn to dance?” Tyson asks me on the drive home.
“Self-taught,” I say. “My grandmother loves any show that has dancing. We watched it all, and I mimicked what I could from an early age.” It’s one of the happy things from my childhood. Sheencouraged me to dance with abandon. It was the only time I let go of everything.
I would have loved to have taken lessons and learned different styles. Some things you can’t catch on to by imitation—like tap dancing, which I was obsessed with when I was seven. So much so that I glued pennies to my shoes and jumped around the kitchen like a maniac. My dad was irate.
“If you can’t respect the things I buy for you, then I’ll just stop buying you things,” he’d yelled. Everything he bought me was secondhand, which I never minded. But he stopped doing even that. I squeezed my feet into shoes that were too small, for well over a year, until my grandmother noticed the holes wearing through the toe. From then on, she took me to the thrift stores at least once a year to get the basics I needed. It was never much, but at least my feet didn’t hurt anymore.
“You had a good time tonight?”
“I did. Thank you for taking me,” I say, and again, he grows quiet. “Did you win what you wanted from the auction?”
I know he won something, but he hasn’t said what it was.
“I did.”
Okay, then. Good talk.
I rack my brain for any misstep I may have made tonight. All I can come up with is that I was too morose when the women from the shelter were speaking. But how could I not be? They spoke from the heart about their struggles with domestic abuse. Only one of the three women had children, but I instantly related to those faceless babies.
So, yeah, it affected me. Had he hoped for me to be a plastic woman with a painted-on smile? That doesn’t seem like him.
“Did I do something wrong?” I finally ask.
“No, Isla. You didn’t do anything wrong, of course not,” he says, and all the air leaves my lungs.
That’s not my name, I inwardly scream. My chest tightens, right along with every muscle in my body. It’s hard to breathe or see as the blood rushes through my head. He’s talking, but I don’t hear it—I can’t over the thumping of my heart. The beat, beat, beat that steadily increases.
I’ve never felt more foolish. I knew his feelings for Isla, and I ignored my instinct, in favor of believing him. But I knew. Real love doesn’t just come and go. A night with his ex-girlfriend proved that.
I’m just the stupid girl whose name he couldn’t remember. Who doesn’t have hockey intuition or a face full of cute-as-hell freckles. The one that fell for his sweet charm and patience.
Oh my fuck, I had sex with a man who is still in love with one of my best friends.
“I’m so stupid,” I say. I hear his protest, but don’t listen. “Just take me home.”
“Will you talk to me?”
“I can’t,” I rasp out. Even if I wanted to—which I don’t—I can’t do it right now. All I can do is not break down here in the car, with him to witness it. I don’t want to work through this with him. I feel so alone, yet I can’t wait to get away from him.
“Okay, okay, I’ll get you home.” He tries to take my hand, but I move farther away, tucking them under my thighs.
“Kit.”
“No.”
“All right,” he says, and then, nothing more for the few minutes it takes to get to my house.
