Page 11 of Wrap Around
Lily is excited to finally decorate, and I see a lot of painting in my future, starting with purple for Addy's room. We picked it out yesterday, right before we took our baby girl to the playground that's only a block away from our house. It was an almost perfect moment, watching Adaline run straight for the sandbox, messy curls bouncing, knowing this is our real life right now.We made it.
It'd be better if Gideon wasn't ignoring Lily's calls. She gets sent to voicemail, texts left on read. He's not even responding to her emails like he usually does. If I wasn't seeing his grouchy ass nearly every day at practice, I'd worry he'd fallen off the earth.
Lily doesn't understand why Gideon is acting the way he is, and it hurts me that I can't tell her. She asked me, point blank, what happened between us to make it this bad, but all I could do was shrug and shake my head. Something's got to give or I'm going to break. Either from the exhaustion of chasing him, or the frustrationof holding all of these secrets inside. And I'm almost at my limit.
When I hit the ice for warmups, my legs feel like they’re made of concrete. Every stride drags like I’m pulling bricks. I haven’t been able to shake this fatigue all week. It’s been bad enough that the trainers were worried I might be getting sick, but I know that’s not it.
Coach keeps throwing me out there with Gideon, and every time, I want to scream at him for being so goddamn stubborn. Both of them—Coach and Gideon.
It’s not that we don’t have chemistry. That’s never been the issue. It isn’t now, either.
It’s the silence between plays. The way Gideon won’t look at me, not even when he’s passing. Somehow, we’re still hanging on in this game, but just barely.
When the clock hits zero and we’re tied 3–3 at the end of regulation, I’m ready to cry. I’m bent over on the bench, elbows on my knees, sucking in air like I’ve just run a marathon. My whole body is screaming to stop, but I can’t. Not yet.
Coach calls our line for overtime.
Gideon skates out ahead of me, all muscle and purpose, and I follow like a shadow. We take the faceoff in the neutral zone. I win it clean and tap the puck to Casey Ives, who moves it fast to Gideon on the wing.
He’s either too tired to keep ignoring me or finally realizes we need to end this now, because he actually passes it back. Then he takes off down the left side like he’s being chased by demons.
I smack the puck forward, watching the defense collapse around him a second too late. He doesn’t force the shot. Doesn’t play the hero.
He just draws the attention and flicks the puck back to me, quick and clean.
I don't hesitate. In one breath, I snap it high, glove side. The goalie doesn't even move, his attention still on Gideon.
The puck hits the net. The horn blares like a war cry. And just like always, Fall Out Boy’s “Light ’Em Up” explodes through the arena.
My teammates explode into their own war cries, celebrating a much-needed win. But I don't move. I'm as frozen as the ice under my skates, staring across the rink, where Gideon is staring right back at me.
And for half a second, maybe less, he smiles. It's barely a twitch at the corner of his mouth. But I know him, and I know that look. I know what he looks like when he's proud of a play we just made.
It's gone as quickly as it came. His eyes shutter and he skates towards the rest of our teammates lining up for handshakes like the moment didn't happen. Like it didn't mean anything.
But I felt it. Felthim.
And that tiny, flickering thing in my chest that's a little too similar to hope for comfort? It sparks to life again.
Back at the hotel, my weary body sinks into the mattress.
"You look exhausted," Lily says with a sympathetic pout. "You should probably take a day off before we do any more projects around here, yeah?"
"Meh," I say, too tired to consider anything past finding a t-shirt before Gideon's done in the shower.
I'mflopped across the bed in my boxers, laughing as Lily recounts their day. She's sitting on the couch with a glass of wine in hand, a fuzzy blanket over her knees, and her hair twisted into a messy bun on top of her head. She looks cute as hell, and it makes me smile. She's telling me about how Addy tried to flush a banana down the toilet today, followed by a stuffed monkey, before she was able to redirect all that toddler energy into a finger painting. Which turned into a food finger painting, on the front of our brand-new stainless-steel fridge. Lily sends me a picture of the work of art in question, and I tell her about the hilarious blog I saw where some parents started putting little frames around all the various ‘artwork’ their kids left on the walls around their house. It feels good to laugh, even if I'm half delirious.
"Your bedtime video worked perfectly, by the way," she says. "She didn't even cry tonight. Just waved to you in the video and said 'night-night, Dada'. It was precious."
My throat clenches. We were worried that moving so far from the home she’s always known would impact her negatively, but she’s doing great. It’s not as if either of us mind giving her whatever extra cuddles and attention she needs.
"Who would have thought she'd be the best thing to ever happen to us?"
"Yeah," Lily says softly. "She's something special, isn't she?"
I hear the shower shut off, and a few minutes later, Gideon walks out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel. He doesn't look at me or acknowledge me in any way, just grabs some sleep clothes from his open suitcase and sits on the bottom of his bed. I do everything in my power not to look at him or imagine myself licking the drops of water that trickle down his abs.
"I gotta go," I tell Lily, my voice a little tight.
