Page 121 of End Game

“Good, you’re here,” Coach says as I hang my coat up on the rack behind the door. “We can get started.”

I check my watch. Did I forget a team meeting? I don’t think so. It’s only my roommates here; we’re missing Emma and the rest of the defensive core.

“I’ve been hearing a lot of negativity from this group,” Coach says. “Frankly, the situation is becoming toxic. This has gone on long enough. It’s well past time to move past whatever bullshit is standing in our way. We are all adults here. We’re all on the same team. It’s time to act like it.”

Chancing a glance at Rosie, I see she’s just as confused as I am. She shrugs and settles into the armchair, crossing her legs. I perch on the edge of the other chair.

“We get along great,” Johanna lies. She’s sitting in the center of the couch with Rachel and Robin on one side and Rebekah on the other.

“I don’t have any issues with Johanna or the—the rest of the girls,” I say honestly. I have to stop myself before I call them her minions to their face.

For a blip of a second, I nearly lost my shit when I saw her and Barrett having coffee together. Once she left and he confessed his feelings… I’m still not sure why they were together, but I trust him when he says he doesn’t have feelings for her.

Because he has feelings for me. What the actual fuck?

Coach Larsen doesn’t look impressed. “You need to trust one another. You need to be a team.”

I look to Johanna now. I thought we were a team. In real life, I trust them about as far as I can throw them, but on the field, I trust that they can do their job and I can do mine. Our goaltending needs work and our forwards are mediocre at best; our defense has been generating most of our offense, working overtime and pulling double shifts in order to cover the back half of the field.

Off the field… yeah, things could be better. They are hardly my favorite people in the world. I wouldn’t choose to put them on my team. But they’re on my team, like it or not, so I have to live with them for now.

Coach Larsen launches into a lecture, two months too late, and I sit there and let the words wash over me. I’m doing my best. I’m putting in the effort. The team didn’t fall apart because I transferred here; they were already splintering. Right? Or am I the problem?

Chapter 37

Diana

I’m not okay.

I’m numb the entire weekend of Thanksgiving. I don’t know what to think, how to process this. I can’t even celebrate my dad coming home from the rehab facility.

All I can think about is Barrett.

My best friend.

The person who makes my world make sense.

The man who is in love with me.

Nothing makes sense anymore.

Why am I so cut off from my feelings? Why does none of this make sense? It shouldn’t be this difficult.

Wednesday night, my dad comes home from the rehab facility. With the help of his crutches, he can slowly navigate through the house, and the banister on the stairs means he can get up to his bedroom on the second floor, so there’s no reason he has to be away from home for the holiday.

My mom cooks the turkey on Thursday, and we have dinner, just the three of us. In high school, we used to travel back to Wisconsin to see her family for the weekend, and once I got to college, they would come out to visit me in LA at USC or wherever my team was playing.

I kind of like that it’s just the three of us. I don’t know how many more of these holidays we’re going to have. None of us know, not for certain. It could be six months. It could be six years.

On Friday afternoon, we watch the Newton game as a family. My school is only a quick two hour drive away. We could go in person. Except right after my dad’s surgery, when he’s still learning how to navigate the stairs in our house with his walker, is probably not the best time to go sit in the snow for four hours and watch a football game. So we watch on TV and cheer for the home team.

It’s humbling seeing my strong, capable father hobble around on a walker. He’s regaining strength every day, relearning how to walk and sit and stand, but it will be a slow recovery. We don’t know how much time he has. We have to enjoy the limited time we have left.

At halftime, Newton is down one score. Dad puts the talking heads on the intermission show on mute and turns to me.

“What’s wrong, baby girl?”

“Nothing’s wrong.”