Page 86 of Slew Foot
Rafe made a face. “Yeah, I can’t …”
“Why did you break up anyway?”
“We had a big fight.” Rafe dragged a hand over his eyes. “It was stupid. Or it started off stupid. We were talking about holiday plans, or whatever. But then it blew up and he was like ‘I can’t fucking do this anymore, Rafe’ and I thought hemeant the argument. But apparently, he meant, like our whole relationship.”
Mickey winced.
“Uhh yeah. I feel stupid now.”
“No,” Mickey protested. “You shouldn’t feel stupid. He should have been clearer about it.”
“Yeah, well …” Rafe’s shoulders slumped again. “He went all distant and shit and we had a bunch of travel and back-to-back games in that stretch and then it was the holidays and I …”
Mickey winced when Rafe got to the part about showing up at Logan’s house and finding him there with his new girlfriend.
“Fuck him,” Mickey said vehemently.
“I mean, he’s not a bad guy,” Rafe said with a shrug. “He … we were on totally different pages about stuff or whatever. I dunno. It just … it sucked. It hurt a lot, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.”
Again, Mickey had never experienced it, but he could certainly imagine. He wouldn’t like playing against his exes either.
Then again, he’d never dated another hockey player.
And it didn’t look like that was about to change any time soon.
Rafe’s stomach was in knots as he prepped for the game against his old team.
It felt strange to be in the visitors’ locker room instead of the one on the other side of the arena.
Rafe was a jittery mess, everything inside him feeling all jangly and weird and he couldn’t stopmoving. Couldn’t stop wondering what it would feel like to play in this arena but as an opponent, not part of the home team.
He went through his usual pre-game routine but he was almost immediately out when they played two-touch.
The guys chirped him and he tried to joke back, tried to act like everything was normal.
But it wasn’t normal. His old teammates. Logan. They were all here. They were here and?—
Mickey touched his elbow. “C’mere,” he said firmly.
He dragged Rafe—who felt confused but curious about what Mickey was planning—down the hall.
Mickey pulled open a door marked “storage” and they both blinked at the sight of Jesse in a comfortable cross-legged pose sitting in front of a framed picture of someone in goalie gear, maybe? With fake candles set up in a semi-circle around the frame.
Noah Boucher, maybe?Rafe wondered as he squinted at the picture. He and Mickey glanced at each other, then backed silently out of the room.
Mickey shut the door behind them and looked at Rafe again. “Goalie stuff?” he said, sounding like he wasn’t sure if that was true or not.
“Goalie stuff,” Rafe agreed.
Because he didn’t understand what he’d seen but he was also very sure he didn’twantto understand it either.
And it was actually a good distraction because he was so busy tryingnotto think about whatever Jesse was up to that he wasn’t even thinking about Logan and the rest of the Minnesota Acorns when Mickey finally found a room to pull him into.
This time, it was empty except for some cleaning supplies and a stack of wet floor signs Rafe almost tripped over.
“What are we doing here?” Rafe asked, tucking his hands in the pockets of his shorts.
