But how could I possibly start over with someone new? I had to face it that I didn’t start this with him in the first place. He did. And there was no other guy with the patience and willpower to plow into my life like TJhad.
There was no other TJ.
I laid down in my bed, missing his large presence hugging me from behind. I closed my eyes against the disappointment. Because I could still feel him… like he was right here with me, and that broke my heart.
45. TJ
After the tough close game last night, my sisters pretty much ambushed me as soon as I walked out of the locker room. I had no clue how they figured out how to bypass security and the family room where they were supposed to be, but the two of them could probably break into a bank if they wanted to. They were a force of nature when they wanted to figure something out. Growing up with them had been scary attimes.
“A ponytail, Teej?!” Stella questioned in a high-pitched, accusing voice and pushed me hard against the cinderblock wall.
“A girlfriend?! That you didn’t feel the need to enlighten us on?!” Victoria glowered at me by her side. “We had to find out on the jumbotron during the second period with the whole world like some chumps?”
“Hey, hey, hey,” I said, looking down at them bullying me. “You guys never directly asked,” I defendedmyself.
“So that’s who you’ve been texting non-stop then?” Victoria interrogated further, pointing her finger up at me accusingly.
“What’s her name?!” Stella asked. “You have to tell us everything now!”
“No ‘Great goal, bro! Good hustle, man! You did amazing, my wonderful brother!’” I asked with an incredulous laugh.
“Well, yeah, that’s standard.” Victoria rolled her eyes. “You played solid. You just need to work on your back-checking so your plus-minus doesn’t get anyworse.”
That was true. These girls probably had higher hockey IQ’s than I did from playing themselves and then reliving it through watching all my games. As annoying as they were sometimes, they were damn supportive.
“Okay, let’s hit the town and you can tell us everything!” Stella pushed. She looked around then. “And how bout you bring some of these hotties with us.” She wagged her eyebrows as Duke walked by.
I caught him winking at her, and I gave him an aggressive negative head shake. Absolutely not. That was a giant no in every bro code there ever was, but of course, Stella scampered after him.
The last thing I felt like doing tonight was going out. What sounded good to me was taking a long shower and then calling Ellie and asking her about the wedding she worked tonight. But I knew I couldn’t get out of taking them around. I was just the baby brother after all, and they’d guilt trip the shit out of me if I was a boring host. Force of nature for sure, thesegirls.
______
Once I got to the bar, my phone died, so I couldn’t even tell Ellie I’d have to skip out on our late-night phonecall…
My whole night was kind of thrown off after that. The whole time I sat at The Blitz, I kept asking people if they had a phone charger and wishing for time to fast-forward. I thought about running back to my place but was torn about leaving my sisters in the bar, so I just sat there hopelessly in a grumpy mood.
As soon as we got back to my apartment, I quickly charged up my phone and sent a text to her explaining what happened, but I still hadn’t heard a word from her, which made me feel uneasy.
We’d been texting on and off all week, only ever going about an hour without texting back- yes, I kept track of that- it was hard to not notice that kind of thing in my book, especially when it made me so damn happy that we were actually communicating. So, now that it was nighttime once again and I’d gone an entire day without hearing from her, I was left feeling... off…
Almost as off as I felt when I stumbled upon something about her earlier today.
I finally called her up and left another message pleading with her to call me back, and that’s all I could do fornow.
I sat down on my couch and poured myself some cereal for dinner. I probably should have been eating a steak and salad like the trainers advised, but I loved chocolatey kids’ cereals with cold milk at nighttime, it was my guilty pleasure. And what the trainers didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.
I reasoned that I needed a bit of comfort today after the ground pretty much fell through on me- figuratively of course. I shoved spoonfuls in my mouth while I continued to leaf through Wixom High School’s 2015yearbook…
It just so happened that Stella and Victoria had a friend that graduated from Wixom in 2015, the same year Ellie supposedly had.
My sisters left early this morning to visit this friend, who attended the University of Michigan, and apparently the girl said there was no one named Ellie Brampton from Wixom. She even had her yearbook to prove it…
My sisters dropped off said yearbook at my doorstep a couple hours ago.
Flipping through the glossy pages just about broke myheart.
Because there was a girl who looked exactly like Ellie, except with blonde hair. She stared back with those same green eyes, but they were far more playful than I’d ever seen them; there was no hesitation in them.
