Words didn’t have to pass between us for me to know he remembered the name. He just nodded slowly.
“Did you just move back?” I pressed. I got another slow nod in return. It looked like he was being tortured, but he wasn’t leaving.
I nervously reached up to fix my hair and he watched my hand.
“Your hair… it’s uh… it’s long again.” His voice sounded pained. “It’s nice…” he cut his eyes away from mine.
I took the opportunity to study his face. He looked the same, just older, and more tired. He left scruff on his face, but it was cleaner than when he was a kid. He was sporting a buzz cut again. He’d only had that once when we were dating and I’d been mad at him about it. It was laughable now, how I’d been upset about something so childish. With age he’d grown tougher looking. He had the same gap in his left eyebrow, from stitches he had acquired during a game in college and he still had a scar on the right side of his bottom lip from where he took a stick to the face in high school when he and Smitty were goofing off. But now he also had a jagged scar, gash really, on the left side of his face, that cut under his cheek bone. It looked like whatever it was that caused it had gotten him bad, and it bothered me that I didn’t know what it was from. It was just another reminder that life hadn’t stopped when we ended, even though it felt like it did.
“That scar- ” I started to ask but wondered if it was too personal.
“What about it?” He asked breathlessly. His dark eyes were staring at me intensely, making me feel uncomfortable.
“What’s it from?”
The silence seemed to stretch for a mile between us.
“What?” His face cracked with emotion when he said it. He looked at me like I lost my mind and like he’d just been punched in the gut at the same time. I didn’t understand what I’d said so wrong. I guess it was too personal and I started to apologize, but he cut me off.
“Tate?” He spat the name out angrily.
That one word felt like a brick wall being slammed between us.
“Uh-“ I stammered. “We, um… divorced.”
He opened his mouth like he wanted to say more, but someone chose that moment to walk out of the coffee shop door between us and distract him.
When I saw him again he looked stoic.
“I guess I’ll be seeing you and Canyon at the League then.”
Those who didn’t know him would say he looked calm. But he still had the same tell he did as a sixteen-year-old boy. His jaw throbbed angrily as he grinded his teeth.
“Yeah, he’s excited for it,” I said softly.
He gave me a nod pulling up his hood and he turned on his heel to jog away, leaving me feeling even more lonely than before.
Chapter Fifteen: Grey- Present
So many emotions whirled around in my head I couldn’t decide what to feel. But anger won out. I honestly didn’t think it could get worse. But I realized the only thing worse than her being with another guy, was her being with some guy who just threw her aside. Fucking hell. That’s where that guy belonged.
That also meant she’d traded me in for someone who didn’t even care about her... I was that unimportant to her? All of my memories of the League were wrapped up with memories of her. She shook my world. I was owned by her. She was a hell of an actress if she really never cared or loved me back.
And she didn’t remember how the side of my face was slit open? It was that unimportant? Just a tiny blip in her timeline of events that she hadn’t even felt the need to commit it to memory; yet every time I looked in the mirror, I was reminded of the night that halted my whole life.
I tried to clear my head as I ran, but every car that passed brought me back to that damn night when everything had gone so wrong.
Chapter Sixteen: Grey- 9 years ago
Max, Smitty, and I had been drinking all day, waiting for our girls to arrive. We’d been celebrating the end of college for the last week and we were going out with a bang today because it was Cinco de Mayo, and our last weekend before graduating.
It was probably not good that we had so much free time all week. Playing hockey through school we never had time to ourselves; every minute was dedicated to training or trying to pass a class, so we didn’t really know how to use the free time when we had it. This week was probably extremely counterproductive because we just worked out and then trashed our bodies by partying all night.
And then there was the tattoo incident. The three of us were shit faced and bored in the middle of the day on Monday, so we decided to go for it. I’d been wanting to start a sleeve for a while and decided I needed to start right at that second. I was happy with it: a depiction of outdoor skating at Tenny Park on my right upper arm. The image was etched in with just black ink and detailed trees surrounding the swirl of the ice-covered river and small figures playing pond hockey, and a tiny figure doing a layback as well.
Sleeves looked tough as shit. and I wanted to keep Minnesota with me wherever I went. Don’t get me wrong, college had been a great experience, but skating at the League with these boneheads and Jules, and pond skating every weekend of the winter out at Tenny Park had defined growing up for me. It had also been the place where I’d looked into Jule’s eyes for the first time and knew that she was it for me. She was my heart and my home. And now it was on my sleeve, literally. I was a fan.
Brecklin was probably my second favorite place to play. I would miss playing for the rowdy student section and playing on the same team as my buddies, but I was so relieved to be done with school.
