I try not to let myself get angry, but questions are running through me like a pack of wild horses. Stampeding against this current version of us, leaving it in the dust.
I’m not sure how much time passes. Enough that Cooper and his roommates are finally home. I can hear them. Closing cabinet doors, groans and laughter, and stomping around the first floor. Loud, thumping music that decreases at the start-up of a gaming station turns on.
Footsteps echo up the stairs.
Cooper swings his door open. His smile is weak and forced, but brightens when he finds me on his bed.
“I’m so excited to see you. You have no?—”
“Why do you have this?” I hold up the bracelet, letting it dangle between my thumb and pointer finger.
COOPER
My mouth hangs open. The words on the tip of my tongue.
When we pulled into the driveway, I didn’t see her car, but I knew she was here. Walking into the house, I felt her. The string—once frayed, that I pinched to keep together—tying us to one another, goes taut, pulling me to her.
I wish I was happy to see that damn bracelet, but I’m not.
“I-I—” The truth fumbles out of me. “I found it.” I take a step toward her, coughing to clear my throat. “The day after our fight. When I got to school, it was in the mulch out front.”
“And you didn’t think to give it back to me?”
“I did.”
I take another step forward. My approach is hesitant with the stirring her hazels are doing. Amber and flecks of onyx swirl in them.
My response isn’t a lie; I had every intention of returning the bracelet to her. Maybe even be her hero for finding it. Suttonlovedthis bracelet.
Stupidly, I only attempted to give it to her once. A smarter man, or someone who wasn’t rounding the corner of puberty, would have tried again.
We were going over to her house for Sunday dinner. Mom and Dad loved to do family dinners, and since the Davises have always been family, we did them together. Rotated weekly which house we went to.
Our dads—attractive professional hockey players that never lost a toothandcan whip up a mean potato gratin and roasted chicken—cooked. Even though I believed Mrs. Davis prepped everything.
It was almost a month after our big fight and her injury. Sutton hadn’t uttered a word to me in the weeks following, blatantly ignoring me and turning the opposite direction at school, switching assigned seats in class. When we showed up that week to her house, I wasn’t supposed to be there, but our team bonding was cancelled. As soon as Sutton saw me, she bolted upstairs as quick as someone on crutches could. Her bedroom door slammed shut. Meave chasing after her. Five minutes later, they were back down the stairs, Meave hot behind her, trying to convince Sutton to stay.
Sutton told her parents she forgot she had a school project that needed a poster board, and left with keys tight in her fist.
Her bracelet was snug in the front pocket of my jeans. I slipped one of my hands in the pocket and played with the beads—a weird tick I still have. Honestly, probably why I’m attached to it the way I am now.
“Really fucked that friendship up,” Jordan said, kicking me under the table.
“Jordan. Language,” Mom scolded.
Sutton’s mom laid her hand over mine. “She knows the injury isn’t your fault. That day upset her and…don’t worry about it sweetheart, it’s only an association. She’ll get over whatever happened between you two.”
Yeah, I’m afraid not.That’s what I wanted to tell her mom then, and little did I know that it would take over five years for her to be remotely over it.
I didn’t want to lose or misplace the bracelet. Terrified to accidentally wash it, I started wearing it. It was dainty enough that it fit under long-sleeved shirts and sweatshirts. The only time I took it off was to sleep, shower, or play hockey.
One day, I forgot to take it off and had the best game of my life. When I took off my gloves and gear in the locker room after, I saw it there on my wrist.
I’ve worn it every game since—except tonight.
When the stress of the game and my future blurred my love for hockey, the bracelet became more than luck. I’d run my fingers over it or slip it off and play with it during a press conference after games, at home on the couch, and reading a new article about my insufficiencies. I clung to it to steady my racing mind.
There’s always been a steadying aura with Sutton, even when she wanted nothing to do with me. Finding ways to insert myself into her life might have made her loathe me more, but at least she was feeling something toward me. Gave me pieces of her energy, her mind…of herself along the way. Whether she realized it or not.
