Page 65 of Breakaway
I reach for the door. His hand closes on my forearm. His fingers press into the muscle and hold. I close my eyes. I wait for him to say the thing. He doesn't say the thing. He holds on for five seconds and then lets go and his hand goes back to the wheel.
I pick up my bag. I close the door. I walk toward the terminal and I do not turn around.
The flight is three hours. Window seat. The Gulf underneath and then the green of northern Florida and then Georgia, wide and flat, spreading out below me in a hundred miles of trees and highway. The city appears through the clouds. Atlanta. A skyline I do not recognize surrounded by green I have never seen from above.
The hotel room is cold. The air conditioning is running and the bed is made and the dresser is empty and the curtains are closed. I sit on the edge of the bed with my phone in my hand. The wallpaper is the balcony. The ocean, the railing, the palms. The view from the place I used to live.
I look at it for a long time. The room is quiet. Atlanta is outside the window. Everything I need to become is waiting for me in a locker room that was just built, on a team that has never played a game, in a city where nobody knows my name.
I put the phone on the nightstand. Screen down.
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Chapter 23: Luca
Iwalk into the Firebirds locker room. The first day after All Star break. The first day after Aruba.
And I can’t.
I am exhausted but vibrating with a tension that feels like I’m going to snap. It took everything in me to get out of bed. To put on clothes. To eat a protein bar that tasted like chalk.
It took energy I didn’t have to get in my car with my gear bag. To drive to the arena. To simply walk into the building.
And now I am in the locker room, the clang of a door echoing too loudly in my head. Everyone is giving their updates on how great their breaks were.
Makinen in Finland. Thompson fishing.
And I can’t.
I drop my bag on the floor. Open it up to get my skates out. Davis asks how I am.
Fonty starts going on about some fried shrimp he had.
My throat is tight. Someone is going to ask about Aruba.
And.
I.
Just.
Can’t.
I stand up and leave. Leave my bag. Leave my phone. Leave my keys.
Leave everything in that room.
I don’t have a plan. I just walk. And find myself down a deserted hall in front of a door to a storage room.
I go in and close the door.
I sink down onto a dirty floor that smells like floor cleaner and old rubber.
And I break.
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Chapter 24: Wes
