Her voice gentles, enough to slip past my defenses. “We’re also going to talk about Vivian and where your head is. We won’t fix anything, but we’ll unravel some of these knots so you can breathe.”
As if following her instructions, I let out a slow breath, scrubbing a hand over the back of my neck. There’s a rhythm to this that harks back to our childhood. Me, trying to regulate, and Emma, making sure I was balanced. “I guess that’ll be okay.”
Emma leans against the doorway, arms loosely folded, giving me space like she knows I’ll bolt if she comes in too hard.
“Start anywhere,” she says. “There’s no wrong entry point here.”
“Feels like there are about fifty.”
“Great,” she says lightly. “Pick one. Dealer’s choice.”
I stare at the floor for a second, tracking a scuff mark on the hardwood like it might give me an answer.
“I met her,” I say finally, because that’s the part that feels the loudest. The clearest. “Vivian. And it was—” I shake my head, searching for the right word and coming up short. “It was good. Easy. For once, I didn’t have to work so hard to be…okay or perfect.”
Emma’s expression eases, but she doesn’t interrupt.
“And the other day, everything…” I make a vague motion with my hand, like I can physically show the pileup. “Hit. All at once.”
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “Sounds like it did.”
I glance up at her and exhale, frustrated. “I finally feel like I’m doing something right. Hockey’s good. Really good. I’ve got my own place. I have friends, support. I’m not scrambling all the time. And then…”
“The diagnosis,” she fills in gently.
I nod once, tight.
“And then Vivian,” she adds.
“And then you leaving,” I mutter.
She winces a little at that, but takes it on the chin. “Yeah. That, too.”
“It’s like the worst timing,” I say. “Or the best, I don’t even know anymore. It’s just—everything happened at once. And I don’t know how to…” I gesture uselessly between us, the room, my own chest. “Sort it. To be what I’m supposed to be in all of it.”
Emma pushes away from the doorframe, closing some of the distance between us, but not all of it.
“You’ve had this huge realization about who you are,” she continues, tapping a finger lightly against her arm like she’sorganizing it as she goes. “Not a small thing. Not a casual, ‘oh, cool, learned something new’ moment. A ‘this changes how I understand myself’ kind of thing.”
My throat tightens. “Yeah.”
“And it’s happening at the same time as everything else in your life is on an upswing.” Her brows lift slightly. “I mean, did you ever think when we were kids that you’d end up in the NHL?”
A quiet, disbelieving huff leaves me. “No.”
“Exactly,” she says, pointing at me like that proves her point. “You’re playing at the top of your game. You bought your own place. You’ve got attention on you, expectations, pressure—all of it. And you’re handling that.”
I shift, uncomfortable under the weight of it. “Barely.”
“Handling it,” she repeats, firmer. “And then, on top of that, there’s this diagnosis. And then you meet someone who matters. Then I leave town.” She grimaces. “Bad sister timing. I’ll own that.”
I shake my head, but don’t argue.
“It’s not the worst mashup of bad things,” she goes on, softer now. “It’s a massive pileup oflifethings. Big, important, complicated things.”
I swallow, because this is so on point.
“And that doesn’t mean any of it is wrong,” she says. “It just means your system is overloaded.”
