Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 136296 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 681(@200wpm)___ 545(@250wpm)___ 454(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136296 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 681(@200wpm)___ 545(@250wpm)___ 454(@300wpm)
BJ leans back in his chair. “You’re not a black cloud. You’re the threat of lightning that can blow it all to pieces. The gatekeeper. And he needed you to be that. Lavender needed you to be her quiet shield. You never openly stood in their way, but you were there to keep watch. It’s what you do, Maverick. Unconsciously, consciously, you protect everyone around you. Which begs the question, who protects you?”
I stare at him for a few long seconds, processing. He’s more right than I want him to be. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Just a dude who keeps my eyes open even when they’re closed.”
“I don’t think I’d ever want to spend a day in your head. I’d drown it’s so deep.”
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’re trying to change the subject.” He pops another piece of cereal into his mouth and chews twice. “How many close friends does Kody have?”
“Is that a trick question?”
“It’s not supposed to be. Who does Kody willingly spend time with? Lavender aside, obviously.”
“Me, you, Quinn, uh . . .” I stall, thinking about who Kody gets messages from, who he makes plans with, which is limited to the guys he lives with, one of whom is BJ, and me. Sure, he’ll interact with all the Buttersons, and our teammates when we’re at practice or in the locker room, but he doesn’t go out of his way to talk to any of them. “That can’t be it.”
“Can’t it?”
“He has more friends than you and me.” But now as I sit here, I have to ask myself if I have any friends besides him and Kody either. Because as much as I might go for beers with those guys, I wouldn’t really call them friends. Acquaintances, maybe.
“Does he ever talk about the people he spent time with when he lived in Philly?”
I think about that for a moment. “Not really.”
“Not at all,” BJ corrects. “But when he moved, he stayed in contact with you, and me to some extent, but not to the same degree. And when you guys were applying to colleges, he’s the one who started the group chat, making sure you were both applying here. You’ve never been his default friend, Mav. He doesn’t operate that way. He either is or he isn’t. He doesn’t have an in-between. I know it has to be awkward as fuck for you to figure out where the new lines are in your friendship, but consider how it’s been for him—never wanting to let you down and afraid he’s going to fuck this up and lose not only his soul mate, but possibly his best friend too.”
“He’s never around anymore, and when he is, he’s with Lavender,” I argue. “I’ve tried to make plans with him, but it’s like I’m an afterthought now. I feel like I’ve lost my best friend. Like outside of hockey, I’m irrelevant.”
BJ leans back in his chair and laces his hands behind his head with a nod. “This is not me saying you don’t have a right to feel the way you do. But I think you’ve also taken a big step back, consciously or not. Maybe to give them room to do their thing, or maybe to protect yourself because subconsciously you expect him to pick her over your friendship.”
I scrub my hands over my face—carefully. It still kind of hurts. “Yeah, maybe you have a point. But the make-out sessions on the living room couch are more than I can deal with, regardless.”
“That’s fair. But also infrequent. And I bet Kody is struggling as much as you are with how this all should work. Just talk to him about it, man. You’ve been friends since before you were born. There’s a balance here. You just need to find it.”
“Have you ever considered becoming a therapist?”
BJ pops another piece of cereal in his mouth and chews before answering. “That’s not my path right now. That’s not to say it won’t be eventually, but I have other things I need to do first.”
“Such as?”
“Do what my mom wasn’t able to.”
Aunt Lily, BJ’s mom, taught figure skating for as long as I could remember, but now she helps organize the schedules and takes her teams to competitions. “You want to be a professional figure skater?”
“I want to make it to the Olympics, like she almost did.”
“Whoa, shit. Aunt Lily almost made it to the Olympics? Why didn’t I know this?” My aunt Lily and my mom are half-sisters. They found that piece of information out when my Gigi drunk-blabbed about her one-night stand with a hockey player, who also happened to have a one-night stand with Aunt Lily’s mom. It’s a whole lot of six degrees of separation.
He taps his fingers on the table. “Most people don’t talk about the dreams they don’t achieve. She should have gone, but you know how expensive that shit is. The dream was right there, at her fingertips, and our loser, deadbeat grandfather wouldn’t help out, so it slipped through her fingers. If she can’t live the dream, I can do my damnedest to do it for her.”