Page 77 of Breakaway
They are all talking over me and I am done with this. I point at Avi. "Fuck you." I point at Ash. "And fuck you." I point at Wes. "And fuck you too."
I pick up Mouse and storm to the bedroom and slam the door.
I get in bed with Mouse and curl up on my side facing the wall. She squirms free and resettles against me, her purring loud enough to fill the room but not loud enough to cover the murmur of voices from the living room. Not loud enough to cover the front door opening and closing.
I close my eyes and let the dark come back. The same dark that had me on the couch four hours ago. The same sentence. I can't do this anymore. None of it. Not hockey. Not Wes. Not anything. The sentence was there before they showed up. It has been there since the plane home. They didn't put it there. I had it already.
The bed shifts behind me. A long pause. Then his hand on my arm, carefully.
"I don't know if you want me in here," he says.
I don't say anything but I don't push his hand off.
He lies down behind me. Slowly. His arm comes around me but there is space between us that was not there before. I did that. The fuck you is still in the room.
"Baby, I don't know what to do. I don't like seeing you like this." His voice is quiet and it is not the steady Wes voice. It is the voice underneath that one. "I'm sorry I didn't see this sooner."
"Yeah, but you got to stay. You didn't have to change your entire life, did you?" The tears are coming again. I want to stop them.
"I did, and I want to talk about that." He pauses. His breath against my neck. "But I don't know what to do, Luca. I don't know how to help you. And that scares me."
I can't do this anymore.
But there is a thing underneath the sentence. The thing that got me out of bed this morning and drove me to the rink. The thing that feeds Mouse every day even when the rest of the apartment is falling apart. I don't know what to call it. It is smaller than hope and bigger than nothing.
"Ash knows of someone," he says. Quiet. "A therapist. Independent, not associated with the team. Her name is Gwen Tilson. She works with athletes. You don't have to call her. But he left the name."
Mouse pushes her head into my hand. Her purring fills the silence.
The three of them asked me to do this. I told all three of them to go fuck themselves.
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep doing what I’m doing either. Because nothing is working.
"Okay," I say after a few minutes.
It is the smallest word I have. It is not yes and it is not belief that a name on a piece of paper can fix what is happening inside me.
"Okay," he says back.
He holds me. Mouse purrs. The apartment is dark and the word I said is sitting in the room the way the mail sits on the counter. Present. Small. Not nothing.
?
Chapter 28: Luca
Light through the curtains. Not morning light, not yet. The gray before it, the sky deciding. I am on my side facing the window and Wes is behind me, his arm heavy across my ribs, his breathing slow and even against my neck.
Mouse is at the foot of the bed. I can feel her weight on my ankle. Her purring is a low steady engine that has been running since I fell asleep and has not stopped.
The dishes, the mail, the heap of clothes are all visible in the gray light and none of them are different from last night except that I slept. I slept and woke up and the arm is still here and the cat is still here and the apartment is the same apartment.
I don't move. His breathing stays steady. I watch the light change through the curtains for a while, the gray warming toward white, and then his arm shifts and tightens and his mouth is against my shoulder.
"Hey." His voice is rough.
"Hey."
"You sleep?"
