Page 60 of Walk the Line

“And I’m asking you nicely to leave.”

“No.”

“You don’t even have a single friend on the team. The fact that you’re Captain is laughable.”

I knew that this was what it boiled down to from the very beginning. And I can understand that it would be frustrating to want the role of Captain, and watch that get handed to someone who has just joined.

But this is a new team, and I work just as hard as they do to be the best I can be at Hockey. I never want to apologise for being me, I’ve done enough of that in my life already.

“If Coach wanted you to be Captain, he would have made you Captain. Don’t take that out on me,” I say.

“Maybe I should get expelled and then that will make me suitable for the role.”

Her words stun me into silence.

First Julius, and now her. But in all the memories I can conjure up, I don’t remember revealing anything about me being expelled from my last university.

It’s the one thing I try my hardest not to reveal.

And there’s no way that fact is available online to anyone. Not only do I check it regularly in case I’m forced to speak about it, but the whole point of the way things have ended up is for this shit to remain hidden, like the dirty secret I’ve been led to believe it is.

So how could they possibly know that?

I’m still reeling from the conversation I had with Julius the other day. It was supposed to be a nice post sex session, but I couldn’t have imagined that he would catch me completely off guard, which then turned into me dodging questions about being expelled.

He found me by the team bus early the next morning, instantly starting the conversation with, “I’m sorry.”

My first thought was that he sounded genuine, and we could have made plans to meet up in someone’s room later to pick up where we left off.

But there’s something about last night that stopped me from saying anything other than, “Thank you,” to him.

The question he asked me, it wasn’t a piece of my life I thought he would be interested in, and I didn’t know whether my mind was taking me to strange places by wondering whether any of it was linked to my anonymous texted thinking Julius is trying to get me off the team.

I didn’t believe it when they first said it to me, but reviewing how things have gone down between us made me see things from a different perspective.

Treating me like I’m invisible on the ice. Letting the others feel comfortable not pass the puck to me on the ice. Fighting for his right to be the only team Captain. And now, trying to get information from me that could make me look bad. I go on a journey replaying all these moments back as best as I can remember them.

But then the argument gets heavier on the other side when I remind myself that he apologised for all these things. Julius is not a man who speaks for no reason. If he’s saying something, it’s because he cares enough to say it. And his first apology is what got us here in the first place.

Maybe it’s just easier for me to think the worst so we can end this thing that we’re doing for good. It gets more intense the more we do it, and despite knowing that sex doesn’t always need a direction, it can just be casual, so much of our lives are intertwined together that the same rules don’t apply for us.

I can convince myself these worries are why questioning his intentions, but the truth is simple enough. He might be lack self awareness sometimes, but he’s not a cruel person. And to conspire to get me off the team would be cruel. I meant it when I told him I trust him with my body, and that’s not an easy thing to do.

Maybe it was the contrast between how talking about how uneasy experience at my old University would make me feel and how relaxed I felt with Julius then. Maybe it was the prospect of that being the start of him knowing me, and the start of him not wanting to know any more. A whole heap of possibilities cross my mind, leaving me in a state of restlessness ever since it happened all those days ago.

It’s part of the reason for my poor mood right now, and clearly it’s the whole reason for me watching Tamarah walk away from me right now. I can imagine she was probably waiting for a response after the line she was so proud to throw out, but I thank my thoughts for keeping me busy, because I didn’t have one.

Before I can make my way to the exit myself, Coach shouts, “We’re done! Get out! Kaylah, outside. Now.”

I get done quickly in the locker room, noticing the eyes on me as I head out and find coach outside.

I pace up and down for a bit, until the sight of him in front of me reminds me where I am.

“What the fuck was all of that?” he says.

“Nothing, it was just a conversation.”

“It didn’t look like just a conversation.”