I leaned my head against his chest and turned my face into him. I did not want people here to see me cry, but I couldn’t stop my body from shuddering.
“Hey, don’t cry babe. Look on the brightside…”
I sniffed, wondering what he could possibly say that was bright about this.
He peeked down at me as he walked through the lobby and out to the ramp outside where Griff would be waiting with his truck.
“You won’t even have to know lefts and rights for a bit, you could just know your bad foot side and your good foot side. It might help youlearn!”
I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry at that, and I ended up making a weird sound that was somewhere in the middle.
“I think I saw a smile!” he smiled brightly down at me for my benefit.
Only he could make me laugh at a time like this.
“It’ll be okay, Smol,” he said with sincerity, and I believed him. I always believed him.
19. Griff
It just about broke my heart seeing her in pain. Sitting there alone, her red-tipped nose, those eyes brimming with tears… It was the first time I’d ever seen her cry… and it made me wish it had happened to me so I could take the pain away from her.
I dropped them off at the hospital entrance and waited in the car with Duke. It felt slightly unfair that I wasn’t able to go along with her and help… but I knew watching Duke was also helping her, so I pushed aside my own feelings. Besides, her parents were probably in there working right now anyway, so she’d have them too.
As soon as I parked, Duke unbuckled and moved forward. He held himself over the center counsel. “You think it’s bad?” His little face had worry etched all over it.
“Uh… I think she definitely broke it,” I said. I had a rule of never sugar coating with kids. It just led to hopefulness that they’d feel dumb about as they got older- like waiting for Santa to come down a chimney… or a mother to come backhome…
He shook his head and covered his eyes with his hand. For a ten-year-old, the kid had a lot ofsmarts.
“It’s not her landing foot at least,” I told him, thinking through what it would take for her to recover and get back out on the ice. “Breaking your landing foot would be much worse for a figure skater, because she’ll probably baby it for a while… and that would make her fall a lotmore.”
“Right,” he said slowly. “Not her landing foot. Good,” he repeated firmly.
“Hungry?” I asked, suddenly aware that it was way past lunchtime. “Wanna get some TBell?”
He turned his head back to the hospital doors and he looked caught inindecision.
“She’ll be in there a while, bud. And I don’t think we’d be much help if we went in, even though I’d like to go in too,” Iexplained.
“You wanna too?” He looked at me curiously.
“Yeah. Sav’s my best girl. Just like you’re my best bud, and Nick is my best bro. We’re afam.”
The kid smiled at that. “Yeah, weare.”
After some quesadillas and Baja blasts, we started playing pass across the open parking lot with some extra sticks and a ball from the bed of my truck.
When we needed a break, I read some NHL Player Tribune pieces aloud for him as we laid in the grass and looked up at the sky. It wouldn’t have been a bad way to spend a summer day, if it wasn’t for the fact that Sav’s heart was breaking just a couple hundred yards away. And… what I really didn’t want to acknowledge was that our summer would probably change for the worse now. I didn’t wanna think about workouts without her, or watching the figure skating side and missing her graceful presence, or lunches without the three of us making it rain Cheetos on her as she cackled and tried to throw them back.
I tried to pay attention to Duke as he talked to me, but my mind kept wandering to what Savannah was going through.
“She’s the same age as me but she looks like an eight-year-old,” he wassaying.
“Who? Oh, Claire, right,” I said distractedly.
“She also said her father drunk drives.”
That comment caught my attention, because I knew that Craig was almost five yearssober.
