I gulp, hard, and it’s audible in this empty, quiet gym. My gaze hits the ceiling, as if looking up will stop gravity from sending my blood south.
Finley takes mercy on me. “I grew up with three hockey-playing brothers and their friends. I had no chance to be a delicate little flower.” She jabs her finger in the air. “But stop distracting me... you’re not in a relationship, and you’re not trying to meet cute college girls. Care to explain?”
She jumps to the lower bar, legs out straight, feet pointed. When she catches it, she folds her body in half while raisingherself. In a flash, she’s perched there, stomach pressed into the bar, legs dangling below her, hands wrapped so tightly, her knuckles turn white.
I cross my arms over my chest and lean against a set of bars beside the one Finley is on. “Because being in a relationship means I can’t think only about myself. And right now, I need to be selfish. Iwantto be selfish.”
I leave out my uncertainty about dating, period. It’s become both easier and harder since I’ve become a professional hockey player. Growing up short, scrawny, and a total goofball never meant girls scribbled in their notebooks about me. They took more notice as I got older, especially when recognition of my hockey skills increased, which put me in the tough position of judging people’s intentions.
I’m not smooth. I stumble and crack weird jokes and overshare. I wish I could skip the dating-around phase and fast forward to living with someone who doesn’t mind my idiosyncrasies, who likes them.
Finley jumps from the low bar to the high bar, performing the same maneuver that allows her to rest her stomach on the bar. “Maybe you need someone who understands?”
“That they’re less important? Sure, yeah, what a great sell.”
My eyes won’t leave her, my stomach swimming with nerves while she’s so high off the ground. It’s ridiculous, coming from a hockey player whose brains were mushed into the ice last week. Still, I can’t help but blurt out, “Should you talk while doing that?”
She smirks. “What? This?” She pushes off the bar, swinging her legs for momentum, before rising to a handstand above the high bar. One moment, she faces me, and the next, she switches her grip and turns one hundred eighty degrees. “Maybe you need someone with the same priorities as you.”
Finley swings out of her handstand, then does a quick flip off the high bar, and flawlessly catches the low bar. Well, flawless as far as I can tell. I don’t know much about gymnastics, but I’m aware perfection is hard to come by in this sport.
“I need a girl who loves hockey and napping and video games as much as me?”
Finley drops off the low bar and turns to me. “Something like that.”
“Is that what you’re waiting for?”
She barks out a laugh, her head falling back from the force of the apparent hilarity of my statement. “Someone who likes hockey and naps?”
I shake my head, trying to navigate back to serious ground.Jesus. The realization that this girl makes mewantto be serious knocks me on my ass. “Someone who understands you.”
“If I were, I’d be waiting a long, long time.” She looks away as she brushes errant strands of hair out of her face with the back of her hand.
I don’t tell her it wouldn’t be so long, not with the way I’m making study of her my main focus. Instead, I say I need water and walk away, putting distance between us before I scare her away.
8
Finley
“So how’s my favoritecollege student doing?” Dr. Warren asks when I join our video chat.
I usually look forward to my weekly check-ins with Dr. Warren, but a ball of guilt sits uncomfortably in my gut at what I’m hiding from her. After my first doctor prescribed a medication that put me into a void of nothingness, she helped me climb out and find my way back to myself, to a life of hope and enjoyment… and sadness and disappointment and anger too.
Good emotions don’t exist without tough ones.
“Wait—don’t you have a kid in college?” I ask.
Dr. Warren smiles. “That sharp memory will serve you well in school. Let me rephrase, how is mysecondfavorite college student?”
I settle deeper into the pillows on my bed, my tense muscles loosening. “Mostly good. Logic is kicking my butt. I didn’t expect it to bemathwithout numbers, but I’m getting help.”
“And living with Matt and Gemma? How’s that been?”
I roll my eyes and give an exaggerated shrug. “As expected. I don’t see my brother much, because, you know,hockey.And when I do see him, he runs down a checklist of questions like the good little babysitter he is. Gemma’s cool though. He married up, for sure.”
“It sounds like he’s concerned about your well-being,” Dr. Warren says in the practiced careful voice she uses when she’s saying something I might not agree with.
“I suppose, but it’d be nice if he believed when I said I’m fine. If I wasn’t fine, I’d tell someone.”
