“Youactuallyhit me!”
He thinks he’s such a fucking saint.
I can’t tell who I’m more upset with—the point guard in front of me, or myself for choosing the low road and being entirely counterproductive. I mean, fights are reserved for the ice. I embarrassed Staten, I caused a scene, and my ownteammateshad to haul me out like I was some decrepit, nasty dog who wouldn’t stop biting.
I stop in my tracks, knowing that I’ll be out of breath if we keep walking and arguing at the same time. “Why did you have to bring Staten into this? Why did you have to show up with a new girl just to rub your relationship in her face?”
“You mean playing by her rules? You two have been doing theexactsame thing,” he chastises, finally staring at me with his undivided attention, his eyes reflecting a fury that’s sole purpose in life is to scythe me down.
“Actually, we weren’t doing shit. She was just happy for once, and you were so miserable that you had to make her feel equally terrible.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
I unearth the truth as if it’s a forgotten relic, the quiver in my tone more prominent. “Maybe if you’d used your goddamn brain, you would’ve noticed this was all an act.”
He stiffens. “Act?”
“We…all of this was fake in the beginning,” I confess, a melting pot of resentment and regret purling in the pit of my stomach, right alongside the half-digested helpings from my dinner. Resentment for obvious reasons, regret for the reasons I don’t want to admit.
“You two were never actually dating?”
I shake my head. “It was a ploy to get you to notice her—to make you jealous. But then it turned into something real for both of us.”
A clearing of his throat. A show of mercy before the final coup de grâce. “You two don’t belong together. You do see that, don’t you?”
My old friend envy pays me a nighttime visit, heating up the tips of my ears with a fire that Prometheus himself couldn’t procure.
Leif is just trying to get under my skin. The rational part of me knows that. Fuck. When will I stop caring about what he thinks? We’ll never see eye to eye, even if it’s for Staten’s sake.
Leif resumes his trek to nowhere, and I have to lengthen my strides to keep up with him.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Suddenly, he stops to turn and face me, a disgusted scoff stirring in his throat. “You two are from two different worlds. You don’t have anything in common. She’s too good for you, and deep down, I think you know that.”
The bottoms of my sneakers scrape against the asphalt. My breath catches on every corner of my diaphragm, and my composure disintegrates quicker than chalk in rain—milky streams of watered-down carbonate snaking through divots in the ground.
“Excuse me?”
My heart feels like it’s been crushed in an iron maiden, spewing lifeblood from unsealable lacerations. The world is pulling away from me, and suddenly, Staten isn’t within arm’s reach anymore.
Leif sculpts his words into weapons. Little does he know that it won’t take much to wound me beyond recovery.
“You could never make her happy. I mean, she’s brilliant, at the top of her class, and you’re a collegiate level hockey player. What do you guys even talk about?”
He’s lying. I am enough. Staten thinks I’m enough.
Does she really, though? I mean, Leif has a point. You two are oncompletely different levels. You couldn’t even ace simple English. She’s light-years ahead of you, with a good head on her shoulders and a work ethic that’s going to take her far. If you don’t make it to the NHL, there is no plan B. And if you think Daddy is going to pull some strings and get you a job, you’re sorely mistaken. Not that you’d take it even if he did.
I just want what’s best for her.
And you think that’s you? God, how delusional can you be? Leif Kennedy is the better option—thestableoption.
My lower lip quivers, and my thinly veiled threat is anything but. “You don’t know her, and you clearly don’t know me. You’re just angry that you couldn’t see you had a good thing right in front of you.”
Leif glowers, a snarl ghosting over his lips. He tests the bitterness of his retaliation like one might test the sharpness of a blade with the pad of their thumb—the action cold, methodical.
“I’m angry that she chose you, of all people, to give her heart to. You never would’ve given her the time of day if you hadn’t felt guilty for hitting her with your car.”
