How it’s always prettiest right before the dark sets in.
But it isn’t dark forever. The sun always comes back up.
I watch it set, the night creeping up on me without warning. I have the faintest desire to go grab a burger and a stiff drink.
Go ahead and walk out that door. Be the guy everyone thinks you are. Prove all those assholes right.
I run my hands over my face as I stare up at the ceiling of my car. My phone rings. “Daddy Issues.”
And all at once, it hits me. Really hits me like a fucking brick.
Jordan’s right. I am self-destructive.
I’ve been giving up pieces of myself for so long, letting people hurt me because I stupidly thought discipline and pain were one in the same. I allowed them to be the same.
I silence my phone.
Jordan offered to help, and I walked out the door because I’m an idiot.
Because his voice sounded too much liketheirvoices.
The men who fucked me up.
But he’s not them. He’snothinglike them.
I am more than self-destructive. I’m broken. I don’t know what happened, or how I got here. No, that’s a lie. I know exactly how I got here. One crack at a time.
He didn’t tell me what to do. He gave me achoice.
My whole life I’ve been told who I should be. By my parents, my partners, my teammates. But Jordan didn’t tell me who I should be because he knows who Iam.
I turn the car on, the headlights bright against the darkness. My knee hurts and I’m starving but I don’t think I can eat. My stomach’s too twisted up in knots. I drive the twenty minutes from the ice rink to the edge of town. The forest swallows the town the farther I get, and I swear this drive looks like a scene out of a damn horror movie.
My headlights shine on one stark white truck set against the darkness. The faint glow of light through the living room window tells me he’s home. I turn the car off, biting my lip.
I see him walking across the room, grey sweatpants hanging off his hips with a bottle of water in his hand. He plops down on the couch, and I know he doesn’t see me.
But he doessee me.
He sees the parts of me I thought were invisible. The parts I thought I was hiding.
I don’t want to lose him. I can’t.
I don’t want him to hate me. I don’t want to let him down.
And maybe right now, that’s enough.
Because hope really is a different kind of pain. It’s the worst kind of pain.
Jordan and I have always had this strange relationship. He acts like he hates me, but it’s all a show. Jordan and I understand each other in a way some other people can’t, and maybe if I could get my shit together, he’d be willing to give us a chance because there’s something there between us. Something electrical, something that could besomething.
I get out of the car, shutting the door quietly and head to the backseat to grab my duffel and sling it over my shoulder.
The porch steps creak beneath my feet, and for a moment, I stand in front of his door.
Whatever he’s watching on TV can be heard, and the light shines onto the distressed, frayed slats beneath the window. The air is chilly. Enough to make goosebumps prickle on my skin.
It takes everything I have to knock on his door because the anxiety swells and the vicious voice in my head tells me I should leave. That I’m not worth it. That I ruined this chance too.
