Pucked: Pucked Over Part 36

I try to grab my phone, but Miller shoves me out of the way. I slam into the night table, and the lamp falls over.

"About banging some other chick?" he yells.

"I didn't f.u.c.k another chick. That's the point!"

Miller nabs the phone and puts it to his ear. I tackle him to the floor, and we wrestle, me trying to get the phone while he tries to punch b.u.t.tons. He puts a hand on my face. "Stop being an idiot, b.a.l.l.s. I'm trying to delete the message."

"I'll delete it." I elbow him in the ribs and finally get my phone, but I must hit the wrong b.u.t.ton because I don't get the option to delete or send. "s.h.i.+t."

"Don't tell me you sent that." Miller pushes me off of him.

I lie on the floor, panting. "I think I sent that. Should I message her and tell her to delete it without listening to it?"

Miller shakes his head. "You know, I thought I was hopeless with relations.h.i.+ps, but you make me look like G.o.dd.a.m.n Einstein. I'mma call Sunny."

"What good is calling Sunny gonna do?"

"She can at least talk to Lily." Miller punches away at his phone, brows furrowed in concentration. "I'm getting voice mail." He waits a few more seconds. "Hey, sweets. I'm guessing you're asleep. If you get a chance, can you call me? Randy left a stupid message for Lily, and it'd be better if she didn't listen to it. Love you. Can't wait to come home..." He lowers his voice so I can't hear the rest.

I decide it's probably best if I message Lily since Miller can't get a hold of Sunny.

If u get a msg from me can u delete it? It didn't come out the right way.

I don't hear back from her.

Sleep sucks. In the morning I have a message.

You're not mine, so u can f.u.c.k whoever u want.

This isn't a conversation I want to have over text. I try to call again, but it goes to voice mail. I don't leave another message since the last one sucked my b.a.l.l.s.

Once I'm back home, I drop my s.h.i.+t at the door and head for my bedroom. All I want is to lie down and smell Lily. It's weird, and maybe a little messed up. But the housekeeper's been by, and the sheets are fresh. The clothes Lily left behind are folded in a neat pile on her side of the bed.

The d.a.m.n chest ache is back. I rub the spot, hating the phantom pain.

That's when I realize what I'm feeling is heartbreak. I'm always worried about hurting someone else; I never thought about myself. And it's my own d.a.m.n fault.

But trying for more with Lily will only end up causing her pain in the end.

"Why don't you go see her while we're in Toronto if she won't answer calls?" Lance is currently kicking my a.s.s at NHL Hockey on Xbox. Granted, I'm not trying very hard.

"There's no point." It's been two weeks, and I've heard nothing from her.

He beats me for the third time, so I toss the controller to Miller. "You're up." I must throw it with more force than I intended because it hits him in the throat.

"Seriously, dude." Miller rubs his neck.

"Sorry."

"You're worse than a PMSing teenage girl right now."

"I'm not that bad."

"Uh, yeah, you are. You've had penalties every game for the past two weeks. You're almost as bad as me," Lance says.

He's right about that. I've been way more aggressive than usual. I almost got ejected from the last game for fighting. "Seeing Lily isn't going to change that."

"You can't know until you try," Miller says. He's been on me to work s.h.i.+t out, but there's nothing to work. Lily hasn't messaged me again since I left that voice mail, and I don't have the b.a.l.l.s to try again. I don't know what I was thinking doing that in the first place. She'll be moving to Chicago soon, but it's not like I'm going to run into her all the time. Unless she's at games. Then I'll want to talk to her when I should really just leave her alone.

According to Sunny, Lily's flying to Chicago next week. Alex didn't want her driving in a U-Haul in the middle of January, so he's having her stuff s.h.i.+pped to the house. I hate that I'm jealous of a guy with a fiancee.

"It's not like talking about it is gonna change anything."

"How do you know that?" Miller asks.

I run a frustrated hand through my hair. "Because it was supposed to be just fun and now it isn't for her."

"Can you explain that?" Miller asks.

"It was getting too serious," I summarize.

"For who?" Miller scratches his week-old beard.

We've been over this before. I don't see why we're having the same conversation again. "For her."

"So all she wanted was d.i.c.k?" Miller asks.

"Well, yeah. We had a conversation right at the beginning about it being just fun and keeping things light."

"Can we back up a second, because I'm still confused. Sunny says Lily's a f.u.c.king mess over this. I don't get why she'd be so upset if she was only in it for the d.i.c.k."

"I'm her rebound. I didn't think it was going to turn into a case of the feelings."

"Am I the only one here who's acknowledging that you've been talking about Lily like you two were in a relations.h.i.+p?" Lance asks.

"No, we were-"

"Just having fun. We know." Lance rolls his eyes.

"Well, what else could it reasonably be with her all the way in Canada and me traveling half the year? Besides, she just got out of a seven-year relations.h.i.+p-"

"From the sound of it, that relations.h.i.+p was over long before that," Miller says.

"It's not like it matters. It's better this way. Ending s.h.i.+t was smart before I could ruin it by doing something stupid." s.h.i.+t. I am teen-girl PMS-y.

"What are you even talking about?" Miller asks.

"She's moving here, and I'm gonna want this to be something it can't be." I think it should be clear by now who I am.

"You mean a relations.h.i.+p?" Miller presses. Lance is staring at his Xbox controller.

"Yeah."

"I don't get why it can't be exactly that, especially with her moving to Chicago. That's way easier to manage than her living in Canada. I would know. It seems like that's what you want."

"Yeah, but I'm gonna f.u.c.k her over eventually."

"How can you know? They replace your b.a.l.l.s with crystal ones? Can you see into the future?" Miller looks extremely unimpressed.

"That's what my dad did. He f.u.c.ked my mom over. Repeatedly. I don't ever want to do that to another person. I don't wanna hurt someone like that."

"You're not your dad," Miller argues.

"I'm exactly like him."

"No, you're not."

"Yes. I am."

"Uh, dude, I grew up with you. I know what your dad's like, and while you might look like him and you might play hockey like he did-except better-that's where the similarities end. You've spent your entire life trying not to be like him. You'd never do to another person what he did to your mom. You're a better person than he is."

"I almost screwed another girl the last time I was in Toronto. The only reason I didn't was because Lily showed up."

"You wouldn't have f.u.c.ked her," Lance says quietly.

"You don't know that. If you hadn't said something, I wouldn't have checked my messages, and I would've taken that chick up to my room."

"Doesn't mean you would've f.u.c.ked her. I wouldn't have let that happen," Lance replies.

"I don't see how you would've been able to stop me. And that's the point, isn't it? I don't have the ability to be with one person."

"You've never even tried to know," Miller fires back. "You always cut out when it starts getting real-except you didn't do that with Lily."

"Look how well that's worked out! And when she told me how she felt, I told her I'd f.u.c.k her over. Why the h.e.l.l would she want anything to do with me after I said something like that?"

Lance is shaking his head now, but still looking at the floor.

Miller runs his palms over his thighs. "Look how much I screwed up with Sunny at the beginning, when I was still going to parties and there were all those pictures and s.h.i.+t. We had fights, and we talked it out. We got over it and made it work. You can't know what the deal is with Lily unless you see her and talk. And if she's not on the same page anymore, well, at least you tried rather than sitting here on your couch, making everyone around you deal with your f.u.c.king misery."

He's not wrong. And that sucks.

"We've all seen you with Lily," Lance chimes in, the hint of Scot gets thicker as he continues. "There are feelings there. On both sides. Don't let someone else's bad choices be the reason you give up something that could be good."

"He's got a point," Miller says.

I can't believe I'm about to take relations.h.i.+p advice from Lance.

Chapter 26.

Pining: Not Just for Trees LILY.

I'm not a piner. I don't sit around and wallow. Well, I never used to sit around and wallow. But that's what I've been doing between packing and training a new coach. She's fantastic, and she'll do an amazing job. But leaving my girls is hard. I've worked with some of them for a long time, watched them become beautiful skaters. The change should be good, though. Will be good. When I stop pining.

I keep having moments of sheer panic in which I envision myself driving over to Randy's, knocking on his door, and begging him to hold me/f.u.c.k me/love me. The middle scenario isn't the most prevalent. Shocking, I know.

I keep going over my decision to move and reminding myself I'm actually doing it for the right reasons now. The whole point of ending things with Randy was so I'd have some perspective, and to ensure I didn't make a huge life choice based on wanting something I can't have. I still want it, but at least I'm not pretending and holding on to something that wasn't even real any more.

In the end I can't say I'm moving for all the right reasons, but I do know I never want to get back together with Benji, and living in a big city will definitely be an experience. Besides, my mom's moving in with Tim-Tom, so I'd have to find a new place to live, one way or another.

I lay my suitcase on my bed and flip it open. It's new. I bought it two days ago on a shopping expedition with my mom. She's okay with the move. She's not even getting on my case about the whole Randy situation-although that may be due in part to my epic fits of snot-sobbing since the end of having fun.

Things I've learned about myself in the past six months: I'm not cut out for casual s.e.x. My sometimes b.i.t.c.hy exterior is my Lego armor against how sensitive I am. If I'd been this insightful prior to falling for Randy, I might have come out of this with a little less angst. Or maybe not. There were a lot of mixed signals, I'm coming to realize. He was the one who insisted it be "fun," but that week with him in Chicago... I can't help feeling it wasn't just me. Regardless, it's over, and I'm sad about that.

I neatly pack my suitcase, starting with my socks. I discover I have a lot of socks, and half of them are missing their partners. It seems rather karmic, considering. f.u.c.king karma. Such a b.i.t.c.h sometimes.

I put on some music-emo, of course, to match my constantly fluctuating mood-and move on to my underwear drawer. Half my panties need to be replaced because they're old or falling apart. I still have the ones Randy bought for me over the holidays.

We didn't so much exchange Christmas presents as we exchanged underwear. I'm missing the pretty blue pair with the lace, but I have the pair of his pink boxers I vandalized-a parting gift to remember him by.

It's a little creepy-stalker, but I'm okay with that. I'm also guilty of creeping his social media accounts and trolling the puck bunny/hockey hooker groups. So far there are no reports of Randy going ballistic (ha) on any new bunnies. It's a terrible form of torture, waiting for it to happen and break me all over again.

At the knock on my door, I stuff Randy's underwear under a pile of socks. "Come in."

My mom pokes her head in. "How's it going?"

"Good. I'll be done with this in a bit, and then I can help you with the kitchen." I close the empty drawer. I feel something wet on my face and realize I'm crying. Again. Emotions blow d.i.c.k. Randy's bada.s.s scarred d.i.c.k. Thinking about that definitely doesn't stop the tears.

My mom folds me in her bony embrace. We're both lean, so it's nothing like hugging say, Randy, who's all hard lines and muscle and man, and-s.h.i.+t I really need to stop thinking about him.

My mom strokes my hair, like she used to do when I was little. It's soothing. "Is this because you're moving away from me, or because you're still sad about your hockey boy?"

"I don't know. Both I guess." I sniffle. It's rather pathetic.

She lets go and takes my face between her hands. Her smile is sad. "He's an idiot not to want you."

"He wants me, just not the way I want him." I try to stifle one of those horrible snot-sobs. I'm unsuccessful.

"You're sure about that?" she asks softly.