“It’s not your fault,” she says, and I want to believe her so badly it hurts. “You always did this thing where you let everyone else set the tempo. Even in hockey. Even with me. But if this Darius is worth it? Then you get to decide. No one else.”
I shake my head, but it’s not really a no. “It’s too late.”
“No, it’s not,” she says, with that old edge of stubbornness that always won every fight at the breakfast table. “It’s only too late if you give up. You gonna do that, or are you gonna get back up, like always?”
The sound I make is not a laugh, but it’s not a sob, either. “You sound like Dad.”
She laughs, and for a second, the world doesn’t feel like it’s ending. “That’s gross, but thanks.”
I sit there, breathing, letting the moment settle. “Thanks, Maya.”
“You need anything, you call me. I don’t care if it’s three in the morning or if I’m at work or if you’re in jail for punching a reporter, okay?”
“Okay.”
She lets another silence linger, then, almost offhand: “For what it’s worth, Mom already knows. Moms always know. She just didn’t want to push.”
That’s it. I’m done. The dam breaks and I let myself cry, really cry, snot and all, because if Maya says it’s okay, then maybe it is.
When I can talk again, I say, “He sounds like a person, not a performance,” and the words are raw and true in my mouth. “Don’t lose that,” she says.
We hang up after that, but I leave the phone on the bed, screen up, just to feel less alone in the room. There’s a lightness in my chest, a space I didn’t know I was still saving. It’s scary as hell, but it’s mine.
I sit there for a long time, replaying the conversation, the way her voice steadied me, the way she just took it in stride.
Then I stand, walk to the window, and look out at the night. It’s cold, but not empty. The world’s still spinning. The city’s still moving. My story isn’t over, not yet.
I know what I have to do.
And for the first time in a long time, I’m not afraid to do it.
———
The kitchen table is a museum of bad habits.
There’s a half-eaten Pop-Tart next to my water bottle, a pile of unopened mail, and a Sharpie-doodled playbook page that starts with “don’t fuck this up” and ends with a stick figure decapitating another stick figure, both wearing my number.
In the center, my laptop, glowing like a dare.
It’s almost midnight, but my head is wide awake, nerves sparking with every flash of the cursor.
I’ve spent an hour staring at the empty text box, every word I try out in my head bouncing back with a loud, ugly ring of “you sure about this?” I type, I delete, I type again.
I hear Maya’s voice, steady as an outboard motor, “No one gets to tell your story but you.” I hear Darius, too, the way he said “let me handle it” like it was a shield he wanted to hold for me, even as I insisted on grabbing it myself.
I crack my knuckles, close my eyes, and start to type.
It comes out in a rush, a straight bleed from my brain onto the page. “Last week, a journalist I trusted decided to make my life into a story. He told me it was about courage and survival, but what he really wanted was to sell the aftermath. He took my words and twisted them, made it sound like I was a liar, like I was in on the worst thing that ever happened to my team.”
I keep going, barely breathing. “It’s true I knew Caleb Holt. We were friends. We grieved together. That’s all. But the rest? It’s a lie. The only thing I ever wanted was to belong.”
I delete “to belong.” It sounds too needy. I write, “to be seen.” That’s worse. I delete again.
My fingers hover over the keyboard. I think about how many people will see this, how fast it will move, how there’s no way to call it back once I let it go.
I type, “He made me feel like I mattered. That was the whole trick, wasn’t it?”
I leave it in.
