Maybe she got tired of the chaos.
I was constantly calling the emergency squad, every time I found my mom passed out and half dead from alcohol or drug abuse. She’d get clean for a while, promise me she’d stay that way, then spiral right back down.
The men she dated were worse. I took more punches than she did some nights, just trying to pull her out of the line of fire.
My dad left right after I started high school. He refused to pay child support, and now I know why. Addicts don’t exactly make reliable parents, and he was just as much of a fuck up as she was.
My mom bounced from job to job, alwaysstarting fresh, always getting fired. Turns out full-blown addicts aren’t known for their consistency.
I came from trash. I only had hockey, and hockey was what made college possible.
Hockey was going to change my financial situation. Then I’d be good enough for someone like Emma.
I thought if I made it big, I could finally buy a house, start a family, and build the kind of life I never had growing up.
What a joke.
Turns out, hockey didn’t fix shit.
My dad’s dead, but I’m stuck paying off his insurmountable debt to the Irish mafia, and my fifty-two-year-old mom is living in assisted care because her liver and her brain are shot from decades of booze.
I might as well light my fucking paycheck on fire every month.
So yeah. I’m not good enough for Emma.
Never was. Still isn’t.
Her sister knows it too. She made it clear then and again tonight. I can’t even be mad about it.
By the time my Uber arrives, I’ve almost convinced myself I don’t care. That she’s the past, a ghost I need to keep buried.
But the second I slide into the back seat, her face flashes in my head again. Those eyes, that mouth, the body that used to fit perfectly against mine, like they were made for me.
The driver’s a chatty guy in a Cubs hat with a half-empty coffee cup rattling in the console. He keeps glancing at me in the mirror.
“Rough night, man?”
I huff out a humorless laugh. “You could say that.”
“You win or lose?” he asks, like it’s some bar fight or a bad poker hand.
I stare out the window, watching the city lights blur past. “Depends what game we’re talking about.”
He chuckles as he gets it. “That bad, huh?. Woman trouble.”
I look up, catch his eyes in the mirror for half a second. “Something like that.”
He nods like he’s been there, probably has. “Well, whatever it is, it ain’t permanent. Nothing ever is.”
I don’t answer. Just press my hand against the bruised spot on my ribs and keep my gaze on the city.
He doesn’t know how wrong he is.
Some things can be permanent.
Especially, the things that cut deepest usually are.
She’s permanent.
