Breakaway, p.18
Breakaway, page 18
“I keep trying to get him to host a team dinner here,” I say as I jiggle the doorknob. This is an old house, like most of the ones in this part of town; the front door always sticks because it’s not quite centered in the frame anymore. I don’t mind this house, but I still miss the one we had in Tempe, even if it felt a lot smaller and sadder after Mom wasn’t around anymore.
“Yeah, we always have the winter banquet at Vesuvio’s.” Cooper follows me to the kitchen in the back. On the table, which as usual is covered in binders and stat sheets and the big sketch pad Dad uses to plan out his playbook, I find the data collection sheet I filled out in the lab earlier this week. Somewhere in between shoving around all the crap on the table so we could eat our takeout and grabbing my stuff so I could head to Cooper’s, I totally missed it.
“Okay, let’s go,” I say. I wheel around, practically smacking into Cooper; he’s looking down at the sketchbook.
“That would never work,” he says, frowning as he traces Dad’s messy handwriting. “Jean’s not good at feinting.”
I hold up the sheet. “We’re good. Let’s go.”
“And deny me the pleasure of seeing your bedroom, Red?”
“Trust me, it’s nothing to write home about.”
“What if I told you it came with a make-out session?”
I bite back my smile. “Fine. But you’re not allowed to make fun of my Robert Pattinson poster.”
“Like that’s news, sweetheart. I’ve seen the way you look at Edward.”
I reach over to pinch him, but he steps out of the way in time. I sigh, leading the way upstairs.
We moved to Moorbridge before my senior year of high school, so I spent an entire year living here full time before starting at McKee. Cooper was a freshman during my dad’s first year of coaching at McKee. For whatever reason, it’s weirder to think about me going to Moorbridge High School while Cooper was only ten minutes away than to think of last year, when we were both on campus and didn’t cross paths. If we had, though, I doubt we’d be doing what we’re doing now.
I flick the switch for the overhead light. Cooper has a thoughtful expression on his face. It’s one thing, seeing my dorm room, and something else entirely to see a version of my teenage bedroom. Yellow paint on the walls, a blue area rug on the floor. A tiny twin bed settled against the wall and books everywhere. My Twilight poster, which I pinned over my bed and never took down, and of course an entire shelf full of trophies and medals, relics of a time in my life that’s long gone. I reach down, rubbing at my knee. Phantom pain always crops up whenever I ponder the cost of those awards.
“You made first place a lot,” Cooper says.
I smile wryly. “I had a good coach.”
“Was it your mom?”
“Yeah. Someone else took over when she got sick, but before that, she was my coach.” I sit on the bed, swallowing down the wave of emotion that always accompanies talking about her. I know I could stop, and Cooper wouldn’t push, but something about seeing him here makes me want to continue. He sits down next to me on the bed, taking my hand in both of his. “I know that the stereotype is like, the mean mom forcing her daughter to do the same thing she did, reclaim her glory, whatever, but she wasn’t like that.”
“What was she like?” he asks softly.
I trace over his palm. “She was wonderful. She made it fun. I did all my routines to upbeat songs. At my ballet lessons, she danced alongside me. We kept scrapbooks of all my competitions, the program notes and ribbons. She always kept gummy bears and sour worms in her purse in case I needed cheering up. I know her career ended because she got pregnant with me, but she never made it seem like I ruined her life. I was a surprise, but my parents wanted me.”
I smile, remembering a time she told off another mom for yelling at her daughter after a disastrous program. “She never yelled. When I made mistakes, we went over them in a way that somehow made me feel better, even though I messed up, you know? She made me feel grateful that I had the opportunity to make the mistake in the first place and learn from it.”
My voice sounds thick, the way it always does when I talk about her. It’s almost been a decade, and yet I can’t reminisce without crying. I wonder sometimes if that’s how it’ll be for the rest of my life; if I’ll tell my kid about her one day and sob the whole time. It’s like the pain becomes fresh all over again, like I’m experiencing every moment in that hospital all at once.
Cooper pulls me into a hug, and I melt against his chest gratefully. “I’m sorry,” he says. He winces. “And I’m sorry for saying that. I know those words aren’t helpful.”
I shake my head. “It’s fine.”
“What happened? If you want to share.”
“She had ovarian cancer. It was really aggressive.” I wipe at my eyes, looking at him. “She had the same hair as me, you know. This pretty ginger color. It all fell out the moment she started chemo. I was thirteen. Fourteen when she passed.”
He hugs me so tightly it knocks the breath from my chest. “I remember from the picture on your nightstand in the dorm. Should I stop calling you Red? Does it bring up bad memories?”
“No.” I sit up, sniffling as I try to manage a smile. “I really like it. Don’t stop.”
He brushes his lips over my forehead. “Thank you for telling me.”
“I don’t talk about her often enough.” My smile goes wobbly again. “Dad doesn’t like to. I think it still hurts too much.”
“You know, it would feel weird to make out under the gaze of Edward Cullen,” he quips.
I laugh wetly. Three times in a row now, his thoughtfulness has taken me aback. Asking about my mom. Checking that I still want to be called “Red.” And now this—knowing exactly when I need humor to keep from spiraling.
“We go way back,” I say. “I started reading Twilight in the hospital. It was the series that made me fall in love with reading.”
“Well, that settles it,” he says. “We need to do a book swap. I’ll read Twilight, and you can check out Lord of the Rings.”
I reach over to the bookshelf next to my bed; my well-worn copies sit right in the middle of the top shelf. I take out the first one and flip through it. If he reads it, he’ll see all the passages I highlighted. I’ve read hundreds of books since, and I know the series isn’t perfect, but I still adore every single word. “You probably won’t like them. The books are nothing like what you usually read.”
“I like the movies,” he says. “And you’ll like The Fellowship of the Ring.”
“Fine,” I say. “But if I bail because there isn’t enough romance, don’t—”
“Bug?” Dad calls. “Are you home?”
My heart drops straight through to the floor.
“Closet,” I mutter, shoving at Cooper. “Go.”
He shuts himself in my closet at the exact moment Dad knocks on my door.
Chapter 35
Cooper
Since I started hooking up, I’ve been shoved unceremoniously into closets twice—once because the girl I was hooking up with had a boyfriend she neglected to tell me about, and once because her strict parents would have flipped if they saw she had a boy in her room. I’ve hidden underneath the bed, underneath the covers, and on one memorable occasion, clung to the terrace like Romeo fucking Montague. And those are just the times I didn’t get caught. I still wince whenever I remember getting hit on the ass with a well-aimed slipper while I ran out of a house in nothing but my underwear. That grandmother had some arm.
But until now, I’ve never taken hiding so seriously. I’m barely even breathing in case Coach hears it. I’m not that worried about what will happen to me if I get caught—I just want to save Penny the embarrassment, especially after she was so honest with me about her mother.
“Penelope,” he’s saying, “I thought you went back to the dorms.”
“I did,” she says. I watch through the slats in the door—it’s a shutter-style wooden door, which means I have a sliver of a view, but that makes it even more likely Coach will notice that something is up—as she holds up the lab report data sheet. “I forgot this, I had to come back for it.”
“I hope you didn’t walk all the way from campus,” he says. “Mia still picked you up, right?”
“Yeah.” I watch as she runs her hand through her hair. “I took a cab here. I need this for something due tomorrow and I didn’t want to cut your date short. How did it go, by the way?”
As if in reply, a woman calls, “Larry? Is everything okay?”
“Be down in a moment, Nikki,” Coach says. He’s blushing, which I’ve never seen him do. I didn’t realize he was even capable of it.
“Oh,” Penny says. She’s also blushing furiously. “That’s, um, great, Dad. I’ll grab an Uber back to campus.”
“I can drive you,” he says.
“No, it’s cool,” she says quickly. “You should enjoy yourself.”
“I hope you’re still focusing on school,” Coach says, gesturing down to the book in her hands. “I don’t want you reading too much of that stuff, Pen.”
Indignation erupts through me. Penny crosses her arms over her chest, hugging the book. “I’m still doing everything I need to do for school.”
“You won’t become a physical therapist unless you buckle down. You know that.”
A physical therapist? I didn’t even know that was Penny’s plan; she’s never mentioned it. I’ve been wondering why she’s putting herself through a biology degree when her passions so obviously lie elsewhere. Now I see why, and unfortunately, I get it. She wants to make her dad happy, even if that means studying something she’s not interested in. Wanting to make my dad happy is why I’m at McKee right now instead of possibly in the league already.
“I know,” she says. “I’m working on it, I promise. I’m going to office hours all the time.”
“You’ve seemed distracted recently,” he says. He takes a step closer, concern written all over his face. “You’d tell me if something’s going on, right? It’s not something like Preston?”
“No,” she snaps. She grabs the rest of the books from the shelf and tucks her data sheet into one of them. “It’s nothing like that.”
“Because you could always go back to weekly visits with Dr. Faber. You’re still taking your pills, right?”
If possible, the blush on her face gets darker. She glances back at the closet. I wince, wishing I could put my hands over my ears, because this has stumbled into territory that is obviously not my business, but I don’t want to risk making noise and ruining things even worse.
“Dad,” she says. “Seriously, I’m fine. I’m taking my meds. And rereading a series I like doesn’t mean I’m about to go off the deep end again. It’s not like that was even why I . . . whatever. I’ll talk to you later.”
She flees the room. Coach Ryder stays there for a moment, arms crossed over his chest. I don’t realize it until he takes in a broken breath, but he’s tearing up. He pulls a tissue out of his pocket and carefully wipes his eyes, then clears his throat.
“Sorry about that, honey,” he says to Nikki as he leaves the room. “Can I get you that nightcap now?”
* * *
By the time I wriggle out the window, brave the jump to the ground, and sneak around the house, Penny is halfway down the block. I run to catch up to her. She’s crying, big gulping sobs that hurt my heart to hear. When I put my arm around her shoulders, she shrugs it away.
“Red.”
“When we get to your house, can you drive me home?”
I swallow back the protests I want to make. “Sure.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m sorry,” I blurt.
She looks over. “For what? For hearing all that? It’s not your fault you were there.”
I latch on to the safest topic to bring up, even though I can’t stop wondering who Preston is and why she sees a psychiatrist. “You don’t want to become a physical therapist.”
She sniffles. “No,” she says thickly. “But you know how sometimes you latch on to something and can’t let it go? After my injury, I got kind of interested in my physical therapy, and he suggested I should do that as a career. It’s not like I have any better ideas, so whatever. It’s whatever.”
“It’s not whatever. It’s your life. What about your writing?”
“You don’t know the whole story.”
“So tell me.”
She stops on the sidewalk, looking up at me with tears on her cheeks; her breath crystalizes in the air as she sighs. “I can’t,” she says, her voice cracking. “Don’t worry about it.”
I can’t stop worrying about it, though. I can’t stop when we get to the house and she gathers up her things. I can’t stop when she takes my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring off my shelf and cradles it to her chest like she’s holding a prize. I can’t stop when she hugs Tangy goodbye, or when we drive to campus in silence, or when she dodges my kiss on the way out of the truck. I worry about it in bed, Tangerine tucked against my side and snoring daintily as I read the first couple chapters of Twilight. My worry is taking on a shape I know it’s not supposed to, but it’s not like I can just make it go away. I told her last week we’re not dating, and I’m going to hold on to that as long as I can, but with every second that passes, my feelings march into territory I’ve never felt before.
She told me about her mother, and I’ve got her favorite book in my hands, and I can see her thirteen-year-old handwriting in the margins, and doesn’t it mean something that she offered it up to me? When she reads The Fellowship of the Ring, she’ll see where I dog-eared the pages, where I broke the spine, where I penciled in thoughts during rereads where things felt particularly magical. I know I’m not supposed to feel this way for her, and maybe I’m reading this whole situation wrong, but she can’t be feeling nothing.
It’s in my chest like a breathing, palpable thing. Not friendship. Something deeper. Eventually, I won’t be able to contain it, and I’m terrified that the moment that happens, I’ll lose Penny for good.
Chapter 36
Cooper
“Isn’t it wonderful that James’s bye week lined up with this?” Mom says the moment she hugs me.
I’ve been at Markley Center for hours, preparing for the game, but I snuck out once I heard that my family arrived. I’m not in my gear yet, just workout clothes, but after I say hello, I need to get into uniform.
“Definitely.” I squeeze her tightly; I haven’t seen my parents since the semester began, and I’ve missed her especially. When Mom lets go of me, Dad steps forward and pulls me into a hug of his own. I relax for the tiniest of moments, because even though I’m taller than he is now, it doesn’t feel like it, and it’s rare that I wrangle a hug out of Richard Callahan. Hopefully, I’ll get another one after the game. I told my siblings to keep the news about making captain a secret so I can share it with him in person.
“It’s too bad we can’t stay the whole weekend,” James says as we clap each other on the back. “Coach wants us to get to Texas ahead of time.”
“And I still can’t believe you won’t be here for Thanksgiving,” Mom says with a sigh.
“Someone has to play Dallas,” Dad says. “And it’s a divisional game.”
“Yes, yes,” Mom says, waving her hand. “At least we’ll have Bex. And the cat, right? I can’t wait to meet the cat.”
“The cat is so cute,” Izzy says. “Mom, you’re going to flip.”
Bex smiles as she steps forward to hug me too. “I broke out my McKee hat for this,” she says, kissing me on the cheek. “It’s weird, going back to purple.”
“I got you seats in the front row,” I say as I lead the way across the parking lot. It’s a midafternoon game, the one McKee hockey fans have been waiting for all season—the first home game against UMass. Someone started calling it the Turkey Freeze ages ago, and the name stuck, since it takes place right before Thanksgiving break. There’s even a trophy, a bronze turkey in full hockey gear that we pass back and forth based on who wins. It’s one of the biggest regular season games we play in Hockey East. CBS is broadcasting, and Coach already told me that I’m likely to get an interview at some point, so I need to think about how I want to present myself. My stats have been strong all season, but excellent play during this game will help show that I can buckle down even in big moments. It’s going to be my first time seeing Nikolai on home ice since last season, but I’m not worried about him anymore. I’m locked in, and that means not paying him any mind, no matter what he chirps at me or what cheap shots he tries to get away with. “It’s right across from the benches.”
“Fantastic,” says Mom. “We’re so excited to see you play, sweetie.”
“Wait until you see him in all his gear,” Izzy says slyly. I poke her in the ribs. She squeals, dancing away from me. “Cooper!”
“Not a word,” I warn.
“What?” Dad asks.
“Nothing,” I blurt. “I need to head into the locker room, but I left the tickets at the box office. Evan’s dad and little sister are going to be near you guys, and my friend Penny.”
James gives me a look, which I studiously ignore. Ill-timed realizations aside, it’s not like anything has changed since the day we had lunch with him and Bex. Penny is still just my friend, and if anything, things have been tense between us since the night her father nearly caught me in her room. When I tried to bring up what happened the other day, she looked at me like I’d just stepped on Tangy’s tail. I haven’t tried since.
In the locker room, the energy is high. I’ve always tried to hype up the guys before games—part of the reason I wanted to be captain in the first place, it comes naturally—but now, with the “C” on my chest, I feel the pressure more keenly. Coach Ryder, looking extra-crisp today in a light purple shirt and navy suit, nods at me as I put fresh tape on my stick.
Does he know how much pressure he’s putting on his daughter? Does he know how much she’s still hurting? Something tells me he doesn’t even know she’s writing a book.
