My jaw goes just slightly numb from how hard I end up clenching it.
I freeze for a second until Mack’s voice comes from right behind me, answering the question that hasn’t even left my lips yet. “Jacob uh… got reassigned.”
A lot of emotions run through me. Disappointment at not seeing him. Confusion as to why he would reassign himself when he loves hockey. Anger that he ran away instead of facing me. I end up sticking with anger.
“Good,” I huff, and even as the word leaves my mouth I can feel this strange, stabbing disappointment tearing through me.
Lauren’s head turns toward us like she hears the tension in my voice but before I can process anything else, Hughie appears at the edge of the room.
He’s watching me with this expression I’ve never seen him wear before. He looks at me like I’m not a friend or a teammatebut instead, I’m absolutely disgusting to him. And then he looks me dead in the eye and, without hesitation, lets out this derisive, almost bitter laugh that feels like a slap.
“You’re a real piece of shit, Thatcher,” he says, voice flat and exact.
And then he turns and walks out of the room, leaving me standing there with everyone looking at me like this is somehow my fucking fault.
I stareat the damn text for way longer than any sane person should ever sit staring at their phone.
I read it once.
Then again.
Then another time, slower, like maybe if I look at it hard enough I’ll suddenly understand what I’msupposedto do with it.
Because I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know how to respond. I don’t know how to feel. Every possible reaction I could imagine feels like a catastrophe in slow motion.
I think about him a lot more than I want to admit. I think about the way he smiled at me when we talked about dumb shit like pizza and video games, like it was normal and easy and warm. I think about the way he laid against me that one morning, safe and quiet, warm beneath my arm with no expectations and how that was one of the most comfortable, least complicated things I’ve experienced in a long fucking time. I think about the softness of his laugh, the way it warmed something in my chest that I didn’t even realize needed warming.
But then I think about the other side of it, the side that gnaws at me constantly, and I wonder how he wasn’t laughing about what an idiot I was. How I didn’t even know my own teammate was fucking my girlfriend. How I stood there blameless and clueless and then got punched in the chest by reality hard enough to make my lungs forget how to work.
And then, just like that, his message stares back at me in cold white text.
Jacob: I know I hurt you. I know that you’re upset but I didn’t think I was so intolerable. This feels really low and mean. Can we please talk?
My thumb hovers. He thinks that I am being low and mean? He thinks he can blame me for the way I am feeling? I wasn’t the one who fucking asked to be reassigned. That’s all on him for choosing to run away from his problems instead of facing them. He thinks he can fucking call me mean when all I needed was some fucking space to work through my goddamn feelings?
Something inside of my chest just kind of cracks.
Griffin: We have nothing to talk about. We hooked up and it was a mistake. Spending any time with you was a mistake that I will always regret. Stop fucking texting me like a needy girlfriend.
I send it before I can stop myself. Before I can pause and think and use any modicum of emotional intelligence that doesn’t resemble a toddler with a baseball bat. And the second I hit send, this hollow, sinking feeling blooms in my chest like I just slammed a fist into it.
Because that’s not me. That’s not who I am.
I’m not mean. I’m not vindictive. I’m not some petty asshole who punches first and thinks later.
But somehow? That’s exactly what I just did.
I sit there with my phone in my hand, thumb still hovering over the screen like I might delete it or retract it, but I don’t. And despite how stupid and unnecessary it was, I don’t apologize.
I don’t text him again.
I don’t reach out.
I don’t check in.
I don’t ask Hughie how Jacob’s doing.
I don’t answer questions from Mack or Terry about him.
