“I know he’s your friend. We’re all worried, Garrison, but we can’t afford to be down a goalie,” Coach tells me what I already know.
“He’s not my friend. Not just my friend.” Oh my God, am I actually doing this? I can’t do this. I can’t. And then… “It’s more than friendship, and I would be of no use to you tonight because of that. If it was Abbott’s husband in the hospital or Dobrev’s girlfriend, you’d let them take the night off. This is… the same thing. I’m sorry. I know this is… completely unexpected.”
“I… oh. I…” Coach stops talking for so long, I wonder if we’ve been disconnected or if he’s hung up. “I had no idea.”
“I know. No one knows, and I would really prefer to keep it that way. Especially because I haven’t told my family anything.” I swallow. “But Coach, this might be serious, and I can’t not be there for him.”
“Well, fuck,” Coach says. “I’ll let Kendra know that the flu has taken out two players, and I’ll figure out an EBUG.”
An EBUG is an emergency goalie, since teams only carry two, and both have to be present at the games. I thank Coach Larue, and then he says, very solemnly, “I’m going to need you to have a sit-down conversation with me when all this is cleared up.”
“I understand. Thank you.”
“Give him all our best.”
“Will do.”
The call ends, and I finally take a breath. For the first time in my life, I’ve told someone who I really am. And the world didn’t implode. Not yet.
Chapter 36
Landon
“You didn’t have to come.” I should just tattoo the words on my forehead, I’ve said them so many times now.
“I don’t have to do anything,” Callan says with a smirk as he leans back in the chair near the foot of my bed and knits his fingers behind his head. “But this is a hell of an excuse to skip my history class. I fucking hate history.”
“Glad to be of service,” I snark back and then pull myself up a little on the hospital bed. It’s ridiculously uncomfortable, and the blanket is scratchy because, like all hospital linen, it’s been washed and bleached within an inch of its life. “But you can just tell them you were here, get the doctor to write a note or whatever, and take off. Do something fun in Portland. Take Lola.”
Lola turns her head to glare at me. “Why are you like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like a selfish prick.”
I sit straighter. “How is wanting you guys to do something interesting selfish? I know it’s a pain in your ass. That’s why I want you two to go. Mom and Dad will be here eventually anyway.”
“You think we’re pissed you’re sick?”
“We don’t know I’m sick again.”
“Landon, you puked into my potato chips and tipped over like a lawn chair in a hurricane.” Lola folds her arms over the front of her overalls. “You are sick. That doesn’t mean you have cancer again, and for the record, this time, if you do, I’m not staying away. I don’t give a shit what you want.”
“What I want?” I balk. “What I want is to let you guys have a life that doesn’t revolve around me being sick. You guys had started college and deserved to have a carefree time, not spend it flying home on weekends to see your bald barfing brother. I was trying to help by telling Mom and Dad not to bring you when I was sick.”
Callan’s smirk disappears. He leans forward. “You told us not to come visit you when you were in the hospital. When summer break would have brought us back to San Fran, where you were getting treatment, you bought us that fucking trip to New York and a trip to Italy because you… You were trying to keep us from being bored by your cancerous ass?”
“My ass was not cancerous.”
“You know what I mean, oh, and also, fuck you.” Callan kicks the bottom of my gurney. His eyes are serious and soft at the same time. “You had us thinking you didn’t want us around because we annoyed you. Because you didn’t like us.”
“What? No! I was…” I swallow and stare at my fingers as I knit them together in my lap. “You guys spent your childhoods being dragged all over the place for my games. Even when you started playing, Callan, Mom and Dad weren’t always there for you.”
“So they sent Uncle Levi and Aunt Tessa to some of my tournaments.” Callan shrugs. “But sometimes they switched, and you got them. Who cares? When you’re on the ice, do you really even think about who is in the stands?”
I shake my head and finally look up at them.
“Landon, in case we never said it, which it appears we did not,” Lola says, “we are proud of you and we love you and when you got sick, we were devastated and we wanted to be there for you.”
