Page 118 of Dear #47, You're the Worst
But I don’t say any of that. Some things are still too raw, too complicated to put into words.
Later, after Juliet has gone to take a shower and I can hear the water running through the walls, I pull out my journal. It’s filled with practice notes and play diagrams and random thoughts I don’t know what else to do with. It also has letters to my mom, to my brothers, and to my old coaches.
Anybody that I wanted to scream at, but couldn’t.
I flip past the lists and sketches and scrawled observations about weak spots in opposing teams’ defenses. I land on a blank page and pick up a pen.
Dear Dad,I write, then stare at the words for a long time.
What do you say to a dead man? How do you start a conversation that should have happened years ago?
I’m playing the best hockey of my life. You’d probably be proud. Or maybe you’d find something to criticize. Hard to know.
I met someone. She’s... complicated. Smart. Way too good for me. She makes me want things I didn’t think I could want.
I wish you were here to meet her. See how I’ve grown up. I wish you were here to tell me how to navigate this minefield I’ve trapped myself in.
I close the journal before I can write anything else. Some conversations are better left unfinished.
When Juliet comes back, hair damp and smelling like my shower gel, she finds me on the couch flipping through my sketchbook. It’s another old habit, something that keeps my hands busy when my brain won’t shut up.
She settles next to me, close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from her skin.
“What are you drawing?”
I look up at her. Normally, I would hide my notepad and make a sarcastic comment. That’s my go-to. But since I just painted her with my cum, I’m feeling a little soft. Lying to her seems wrong.
“Isketch,” I clarify. “And I write. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, it helps me to get out whatever’s bothering me.”
She peers over my shoulder as I flip through the pages. There are rough sketches of plays, a few landscapes from road trips, random observations of teammates in unguarded moments.
And then I flip to a page I forgot was there.
It’s her.
Not sexy or romantic or posed. Just Juliet reading on this same couch, feet tucked under her, hair tied up in a messy bun. Soft. Still. Safe.
I drew it weeks ago, some night when I couldn’t sleep and she’d fallen asleep with a book open on her chest. I didn’t intend it to be anything. Just my hands working while my brain processed things I didn’t want to think about.
She says nothing about it.
But her silence makes it worse.
That sketch wasn’t for her. Wasn’t part of the game or the PR plan or anything I know how to explain. It was just for me. I wanted to remember what she looked like when she didn’t know I was watching.
Now it’s out in the open, and I feel like I’ve been gutted.
“That’s...” she starts, then stops.
“It’s nothing,” I say quickly, flipping the page. “Just something to do with my hands.”
“Hunter.”
“Really, it’s not a big deal.”
But it is a big deal. It’s the biggest deal. Because that sketch proves what I’ve been trying not to admit even to myself.
My feelings for her have morphed from fake and ridiculous to… something else.
