Page 47 of Puck Me

“It’s a shame wishing won’t get us anywhere.” There’s no bitterness in his voice. More like a sad resignation. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him speak so seriously before. It’s almost like I’m sitting with the real Soren right now, with all the jokes and the sarcasm stripped away. What a shame it took something like this for him to drop the act.

“How have you been?” he murmurs. His arm is extended along the back of the bench, and every once in a while his fingers brush my hair or the back of my neck. I don’t have it in me to ask him to stop, mostly because I don’t want him to stop. It’s like every touch brings me closer to myself.

“I’ve been…”Lonely. Miserable. Worried about all of you. Trying like hell to justify my decision.“Busy.”

“Sure. You’re trying to wrangle all of us and keep us playing well together. I wouldn’t want your job.”

“And how about you?” Even feeling as low as I am, I can’t help teasing him a little. “I heard you’ve been back out there, dating around.”

I’m surprised when he grimaces a little before turning his attention to the fountain gurgling in front of us. “I’m trying to move on. I can’t spend the rest of my life missing you the way I do now.”

It’s not like I didn’t know he would miss me, but hearing him say it out loud is sort of nice. I’ve heard too many rumors lately about him getting around, being seen with a different girl just about every night. Does it make me jealous? Sure. And I’ve had to wonder how he could so easily go from being with me to being with some other random girl.

It’s like he’s reading my thoughts when he turns my way, looking sheepish. “They don’t mean anything. I want you to know that.”

“You don’t have to —"

“Please. Let me get this off my chest.” I force myself to keep my mouth shut, even if a whole bunch of word vomit wants to come pouring out. “None of those girls mean anything. Just a lot of one-night stands I hardly remember now. I’ve been trying like hell to get you out of my system, but all it does is make me miss you more. It’s not easy for me to admit that,” he adds, “But I want you to know. I can’t just forget about you. There is no forgetting about you.”

I should tell him to try harder. I should tell him there’s no point in feeling anything for me. But that would be cruel – not to mention a big, fat lie. Because, of course, I still want him. I still want to be with him, with all of them. I wouldn’t be doing either of us any favors if I pretended otherwise.

“I miss you, too,” I whisper. “All of you. You have no idea how much. And what I did… I didn’t want to. I hope you understand that. I did what I thought was best for everybody.”

“I understand. I do, really. You did what you thought was right. We don’t have to always like doing what’s right.”

“Sometimes, we can hate it,” I agree, and he chuckles like he understands.

Right now, it’s enough. Sitting together like this, connecting again, when we’re both hurting and worried… I think it’s what we both need.

31

RYDER

“You’re not serious. That can’t be true.”

Max shrugs and looks as miserable as I feel. “That’s what I heard. That’s what the doctor said.”

“But he couldn’t have meant Ash will never play again. That’s impossible.”

“I’m only telling you what the doctor thinks, man.” He grinds his teeth and grunts like he’s angry. “I don’t like it, either. It fucking sucks, and I hope he’s wrong.”

He needs to be wrong. That’s all there is to it. There’s no way Ash won’t play again. Not him. Not like this.

His room is too full right now for me to go in and say hi, but I can see him from where I’m standing near the door. He’s got one of those collars around his neck to keep his head still, and he’s got all sorts of tubes and sensors and whatnot attached at various places. He must hate it — though if he’s got the kind of concussion the doctor is talking about, he might not even know what’s going on. The idea hurts. It hurts a lot.

Just like it will hurt him if he finds out his career ended today.

I don’t want to think about it. I want to push the idea out of my head with both hands and lock the door behind it. No way. There’s just no way. Not Ash. He’s too good to go out like this. He loves it too much.

It’s childish, thinking things like that. Of course it’s possible. This kind of thing happens all the time. And somewhere in the back of our minds, we all know it. We have to. No, we can’t, like, dwell on it all the time or else we would never play up to our full potential. We’d be too worried about getting hurt. Nobody ever won a game while they were all caught up in whether or not they’d get hurt. The possibility is always out there, hanging over our heads.

It’s just that I’ve never known anybody personally who’s gone down like this. It was never one of my friends. One of my teammates.

And all of a sudden I feel a lot more vulnerable than I did before. What would I do if it were me in that bed? Hockey saved my life. It gave me something to reach for. A goal. How would I have turned out without it? I shudder to think. It wouldn’t have been pretty.

Life is too short to get caught up in bullshit. I already knew that deep down inside, but it’s times like this when it’s more obvious than ever. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. Ash could’ve died out there today. All it would’ve taken was hitting the boards at a slightly different angle, and he could’ve snapped his neck. And I would never have been able to tell him how sorry I am that things sort of fell apart for all of us. I would never have been able to apologize for taking my jealousy out on him. I would’ve had to carry the memory of our ruined friendship with me for the rest of my life.

It’s like having a second chance now, in a way. I’m not going to waste it. From now on, there’s no petty bullshit. We’re not letting personal stuff get between us anymore.

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