Thursday, November 11, 2010
Just Want You To Know
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Aloneness
“Well, this is interesting.”
I groaned, lifting up my head and forcing my eyes open, a hand immediately flying to the back of my neck, which was so stiff from how awkwardly I had fallen asleep. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” I mumbled.
Sidney laughed, two cups of coffee in his hands as he stood a few feet away from me. “It’s just odd to see you two not fighting, that’s all,” he explained, handing me a cup of coffee. “Two creams and two sugars, right?”
I nodded, thanking him quietly as I accepted the cup, still trying to stretch out my neck. “Are his parents back?” I asked, yawning afterwards.
Sidney shook his head, looking down at Kris, who was still fast asleep, with a sympathetic glaze in his eyes. “No, they’re probably still asleep. It’s only six in the morning, there aren’t even supposed to be visitors now.”
“How did you get in, then?” I asked, taking a cautious sip of the coffee.
He shrugged, leaning against the wall behind him. “Katy, do you know who I am?” I laughed, nearly spilling the coffee all over myself as I did so.
Kris stirred for a second, briefly looking as though he was about to wake up, but soon let out a small groan and fell back into peaceful sleep.
My eyes studied his peaceful face for a few seconds before moving back over to where Sidney was leaning against the wall, only noticing then how tired Sidney looked. “Did you sleep?” I asked him, both of my hands wrapping around the Styrofoam cup of coffee to absorb its warmth.
He took a long drink from his own cup before letting out a sigh. “Not much,” he admitted. “It’s hard to sleep when of your best friends is in the hospital. Even harder when you were three feet away from the reason he’s in the hospital.”
I nodded, a small wave of pity soaking into my brain as I looked Sidney over. He was a quiet man, which was no secret, and his ability to open up to people and create new friendships had become almost non-existent thanks to the constant attention he was thrown. He and Kris had been drafter the same year, both for the Penguins. Sidney was immediately placed onto the Penguins roster, whispers of a Stanley Cup, the Calder and every other award he could win being exchanged all around him. Kris had been sent to the farm team, his talent not developed enough to play with the likes of Sergei Gonchar or Brooks Orpik quite yet. But, sometime between Sidney making the team and Kris not, the two had formed a friendship.
I remembered the night that Evan had told me about Sidney Crosby. I was filling out college applications, he was reading hockey stats. Evan wasn’t eligible for the draft in 2005, he had to wait until 2006, but he had been memorizing every team in the NHL’s stats since he was 13. I had heard Sidney’s name before, but knew nothing of him. When he went first overall, Evan told me that it wasn’t a surprise.
“People have been guessing about where he’ll end up since he was 15, Katy, not even kidding,” he told me, watching the TV as Sidney climbed up onto the stage to accept his jersey. “I heard that the Pens were interested in Kris, too. Could you imagine that?” He asked me, turning to grin at me. “If Kris and Sidney Crosby were just team-mates? God, that’d be awesome.”
“Why did they pick Crosby instead, then?” I had asked, blushing when Evan stared at me with his mouth hanging open. “I mean, Kris is really good, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, but Crosby,” Evan paused, shaking his head as he searched for the right words. “Crosby is on a whole ‘nother level from Kris, and most players. The guy’s getting called the next Gretzky, and he hasn’t even set foot in the NHL yet. He can carry the puck better then anyone else in this draft, I guarantee it.”
“So, we really want Kris to get picked by the Penguins then?” I asked.
Evan nodded, his eyes still on the TV. “We really do.”
“Katy?” Sidney asked, drawing me out of my daydream. “You okay?”
I nodded, smiling apologetically. “I was just thinking, that’s all.”
Sidney gave me a knowing look, licking his lips before he quietly asked, “Evan?”
The sound of his name still sent a searing pain into the depths of my ribcage, encasing my heart in it’s grip. I felt winded for a brief second, but nodded. “It’s weird, but now that I’m out of therapy, it seems like I keep having flashbacks. The smallest thing brings back to a memory.”
“They say it takes the first year before you come out of shock,” Sidney told me, finally grabbing a chair from the side of the room and quietly pulling it over to where I was, taking a seat. “It’s understandable.”
I looked back down at Kris, my eyes moving to the monitors he was hooked up to before drifting back to his face. “Travis told me that Kris is in love with me.”
Sidney didn’t react, causing me to turn and look at him. He was silent, seeming to debate the proper response. When he realized I was eyeing him he gave a casual shrug. “I think it should be Kris who tells you that, not someone else.”
“Did everyone know except me?” I asked, leaning back in my seat.
Sidney let out a small chuckle. “He didn’t say it, but we all knew, yeah,” he admitted, taking a small sip of his coffee. “He talked about you more than he talked about hockey when I first met him, you know?” He shared, smiling at the look of genuine shock hat cascaded down my face. “He talked about Evan a lot, too, but you,” he paused, having to yawn before continuing, “you were what he seemed to miss the most.” Sidney chewed on his lip for a moment before looking at me. “How did you and Kris meet?”
I sighed, “We had Social Studies together in grade nine. I had just moved there, so the teacher just sent me over to his table because there was an empty spot, and we ended up being partnered together for some project where he had to study one of the great tragedies that had happened in the last ten years and share it with the class,” I answered, thinking back to that time. I felt a smile tug at the corner of my lips. “We picked the Challenger, you know that space craft that exploded?” I asked, seeing Sidney nod from the corner of my eye. “We totally failed it. Kris was too shy to talk in front of the class, and I was too shy to talk to Kris because I barely spoke any French. We each studied the assignment on out own and brought our notes the day of, only to find out that we had both forgotten to look up who was on the space craft, and my entire assignment was in English.”
Sidney laughed. “And a friendship was born,” he muttered.
I smiled. “Yeah. He bought me French fries from the cafeteria to apologize for it, making a joke because he was French. I reminded him that the entire school was French, and then he told me that his best friend wasn’t from Quebec either.”
“And that’s how you met Evan,” Sidney finished, nodding. “Why the hell did your parents move you to Quebec if none of you spoke French?”
I laughed, “My dad was offered a teaching job at a University. He spoke French fluently, obviously, and my mom did whatever my dad told her to. My older sister was already engaged, so she could care less what happened since she’d be moving off to be with her husband and nobody asked me how I felt,” I concluded, a knot of bitterness forming inside of me. “Nobody ever asked how I felt.”
Sidney was silent, not wanting to touch on the subject of my parents, aware of how touchy the subject was. He cleared his throat before changing the subject. “Have you ever thought about being with someone else?”
I was completely shocked by the question, my head snapping to face him. “Sid, my boyfriend died.” I reminded him.
Sidney nodded, “I know, but, and I’m not trying to sound insensitive, but it’s been over a year now,” he reminded me, now facing me. “Do you just plan to be alone forever?”
“I planned to be with Evan forever,” I answered.
Sidney sighed, letting the air out through his nostrils. “Evan isn’t here, Katy,” he reminded me softly. “You’ve been pushing everyone away to hang out to the one person who isn’t here anymore.”
I was silent, my eyes moving away from Sidney and back to Kris, who was still asleep.
“You can’t have a life with a memory, Katy. I know you loved Evan, and I know he loved you, but you’re not actually going to give up a chance at having all those things you wanted just because it’s not with Evan, are you?” He asked.
“Why are you asking me this?” I asked him, surprised by how calm my voice was.
“Because I know how it feels to be alone,” he said, his eyes meeting mine. “I don’t know how it feels to lose someone the way you lost Evan, but I know how it feels to have a life that you can’t share with someone. I know how it feels to live a life where no one is there to live it with you. I know how hard it is to live with a mask on so no one can actually see who you are or what you’re feeling.” He paused, breaking the gaze he had on me to look down at the cup of coffee in his lap. “I know how it feels to be trapped inside of a life that you never meant to have, and I know that Evan wouldn’t have wanted that for you.”
The sincerity of his confession overwhelmed me, and I felt the sting of tears trying to force their way into my eyes as I looked at him. Sidney wasn’t an open book, by any means, but Kris had told Evan and I that Sidney wasn’t as happy as he seemed. It was easy to assume that someone who lived his life would find contentment despite the obstacles, but he was right; Sidney was trapped in his life, living all of these wonderful achievements away from his family and without love beside him. He had given up his comfort to chase his dreams, but the dreams had stolen him.
I had left my family to be closer to Evan, to chase my dreams of he and I. Now, I was without him, living in a shell of what I had imagined for myself, feeling empty for days and trying desperately to hide the pains. Sidney and I were both alone, in completely different ways. The difference, which he was trying to tell me, was that I didn’t have to be. Sidney’s life forced a loneliness that he had come to accept at some point. My life had the chance to be filled with comfort and friendships, and I had pushed it all away. Therapy had been the right step, but avoiding every reminder of what I used to have and leaving so much of my past behind, that was wrong.
Kris stirred again, causing both Sidney and I to stare at him, waiting to see if he’d awaken or not. Kris let out a soft groan, one of his hands lifting to feel the back of his head before his eyes opened and he stared up at the two of us. “I didn’t imagine it, did I?”
We both shook our heads. “No, you’re really in the hospital, dude,” Sidney said, smiling slightly.
Kris smirked. “I knew that. I meant them cutting my hair,” he forced himself to sit up. “I was hoping it was a nightmare.”
I couldn’t help but grin, relief washing over me as Kris appeared to be fine, the relief being swallowed by the surprise I felt at how happy I was to see him be perfectly fine. “Are you still on all that medicine?” I asked.
Kris looked at me, his eyes hovering on my face for a few long seconds before he smiled. “Maybe.” He glanced over at Sid, “Were you two talking about me?” He asked, eyeing the two of us.
Sidney grinned. “We sure were.”
Kris sighed, moving his pillow so he could rest his back against it. “I’m glad to see the two of you,” he admitted, nodding slightly. “I was sure I’d wake up alone.” He looked over at me, his eyes moving across my face, seeming to soak in every detail. “I thought you would be gone for sure, after all of the things I’ve done.”
I saw Sidney turn to look at me as I looked back at Kris. I let out a long sigh before I gave him a half smile. “No one should be alone when they don’t have to be,” I finally said.
Kris seemed confused by the response, but nodded. I felt Sidney reach out to place a hand on my knee, giving it a small pat of approval. It was an out of character gesture from him, but I understood why he had done it.
It was time to start moving forward and stop being alone. And even though we weren’t close, I was doing this for both Sidney and I.
“So,” I began, placing my coffee on the table by Kris’ bed. “What are going to do to try and hide the chunk of hair missing on the back of your head?” I asked Kris.
He groaned, covering his face with his hands as both Sidney and I laughed.
And it felt wonderful to laugh again.
I groaned, lifting up my head and forcing my eyes open, a hand immediately flying to the back of my neck, which was so stiff from how awkwardly I had fallen asleep. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” I mumbled.
Sidney laughed, two cups of coffee in his hands as he stood a few feet away from me. “It’s just odd to see you two not fighting, that’s all,” he explained, handing me a cup of coffee. “Two creams and two sugars, right?”
I nodded, thanking him quietly as I accepted the cup, still trying to stretch out my neck. “Are his parents back?” I asked, yawning afterwards.
Sidney shook his head, looking down at Kris, who was still fast asleep, with a sympathetic glaze in his eyes. “No, they’re probably still asleep. It’s only six in the morning, there aren’t even supposed to be visitors now.”
“How did you get in, then?” I asked, taking a cautious sip of the coffee.
He shrugged, leaning against the wall behind him. “Katy, do you know who I am?” I laughed, nearly spilling the coffee all over myself as I did so.
Kris stirred for a second, briefly looking as though he was about to wake up, but soon let out a small groan and fell back into peaceful sleep.
My eyes studied his peaceful face for a few seconds before moving back over to where Sidney was leaning against the wall, only noticing then how tired Sidney looked. “Did you sleep?” I asked him, both of my hands wrapping around the Styrofoam cup of coffee to absorb its warmth.
He took a long drink from his own cup before letting out a sigh. “Not much,” he admitted. “It’s hard to sleep when of your best friends is in the hospital. Even harder when you were three feet away from the reason he’s in the hospital.”
I nodded, a small wave of pity soaking into my brain as I looked Sidney over. He was a quiet man, which was no secret, and his ability to open up to people and create new friendships had become almost non-existent thanks to the constant attention he was thrown. He and Kris had been drafter the same year, both for the Penguins. Sidney was immediately placed onto the Penguins roster, whispers of a Stanley Cup, the Calder and every other award he could win being exchanged all around him. Kris had been sent to the farm team, his talent not developed enough to play with the likes of Sergei Gonchar or Brooks Orpik quite yet. But, sometime between Sidney making the team and Kris not, the two had formed a friendship.
I remembered the night that Evan had told me about Sidney Crosby. I was filling out college applications, he was reading hockey stats. Evan wasn’t eligible for the draft in 2005, he had to wait until 2006, but he had been memorizing every team in the NHL’s stats since he was 13. I had heard Sidney’s name before, but knew nothing of him. When he went first overall, Evan told me that it wasn’t a surprise.
“People have been guessing about where he’ll end up since he was 15, Katy, not even kidding,” he told me, watching the TV as Sidney climbed up onto the stage to accept his jersey. “I heard that the Pens were interested in Kris, too. Could you imagine that?” He asked me, turning to grin at me. “If Kris and Sidney Crosby were just team-mates? God, that’d be awesome.”
“Why did they pick Crosby instead, then?” I had asked, blushing when Evan stared at me with his mouth hanging open. “I mean, Kris is really good, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, but Crosby,” Evan paused, shaking his head as he searched for the right words. “Crosby is on a whole ‘nother level from Kris, and most players. The guy’s getting called the next Gretzky, and he hasn’t even set foot in the NHL yet. He can carry the puck better then anyone else in this draft, I guarantee it.”
“So, we really want Kris to get picked by the Penguins then?” I asked.
Evan nodded, his eyes still on the TV. “We really do.”
“Katy?” Sidney asked, drawing me out of my daydream. “You okay?”
I nodded, smiling apologetically. “I was just thinking, that’s all.”
Sidney gave me a knowing look, licking his lips before he quietly asked, “Evan?”
The sound of his name still sent a searing pain into the depths of my ribcage, encasing my heart in it’s grip. I felt winded for a brief second, but nodded. “It’s weird, but now that I’m out of therapy, it seems like I keep having flashbacks. The smallest thing brings back to a memory.”
“They say it takes the first year before you come out of shock,” Sidney told me, finally grabbing a chair from the side of the room and quietly pulling it over to where I was, taking a seat. “It’s understandable.”
I looked back down at Kris, my eyes moving to the monitors he was hooked up to before drifting back to his face. “Travis told me that Kris is in love with me.”
Sidney didn’t react, causing me to turn and look at him. He was silent, seeming to debate the proper response. When he realized I was eyeing him he gave a casual shrug. “I think it should be Kris who tells you that, not someone else.”
“Did everyone know except me?” I asked, leaning back in my seat.
Sidney let out a small chuckle. “He didn’t say it, but we all knew, yeah,” he admitted, taking a small sip of his coffee. “He talked about you more than he talked about hockey when I first met him, you know?” He shared, smiling at the look of genuine shock hat cascaded down my face. “He talked about Evan a lot, too, but you,” he paused, having to yawn before continuing, “you were what he seemed to miss the most.” Sidney chewed on his lip for a moment before looking at me. “How did you and Kris meet?”
I sighed, “We had Social Studies together in grade nine. I had just moved there, so the teacher just sent me over to his table because there was an empty spot, and we ended up being partnered together for some project where he had to study one of the great tragedies that had happened in the last ten years and share it with the class,” I answered, thinking back to that time. I felt a smile tug at the corner of my lips. “We picked the Challenger, you know that space craft that exploded?” I asked, seeing Sidney nod from the corner of my eye. “We totally failed it. Kris was too shy to talk in front of the class, and I was too shy to talk to Kris because I barely spoke any French. We each studied the assignment on out own and brought our notes the day of, only to find out that we had both forgotten to look up who was on the space craft, and my entire assignment was in English.”
Sidney laughed. “And a friendship was born,” he muttered.
I smiled. “Yeah. He bought me French fries from the cafeteria to apologize for it, making a joke because he was French. I reminded him that the entire school was French, and then he told me that his best friend wasn’t from Quebec either.”
“And that’s how you met Evan,” Sidney finished, nodding. “Why the hell did your parents move you to Quebec if none of you spoke French?”
I laughed, “My dad was offered a teaching job at a University. He spoke French fluently, obviously, and my mom did whatever my dad told her to. My older sister was already engaged, so she could care less what happened since she’d be moving off to be with her husband and nobody asked me how I felt,” I concluded, a knot of bitterness forming inside of me. “Nobody ever asked how I felt.”
Sidney was silent, not wanting to touch on the subject of my parents, aware of how touchy the subject was. He cleared his throat before changing the subject. “Have you ever thought about being with someone else?”
I was completely shocked by the question, my head snapping to face him. “Sid, my boyfriend died.” I reminded him.
Sidney nodded, “I know, but, and I’m not trying to sound insensitive, but it’s been over a year now,” he reminded me, now facing me. “Do you just plan to be alone forever?”
“I planned to be with Evan forever,” I answered.
Sidney sighed, letting the air out through his nostrils. “Evan isn’t here, Katy,” he reminded me softly. “You’ve been pushing everyone away to hang out to the one person who isn’t here anymore.”
I was silent, my eyes moving away from Sidney and back to Kris, who was still asleep.
“You can’t have a life with a memory, Katy. I know you loved Evan, and I know he loved you, but you’re not actually going to give up a chance at having all those things you wanted just because it’s not with Evan, are you?” He asked.
“Why are you asking me this?” I asked him, surprised by how calm my voice was.
“Because I know how it feels to be alone,” he said, his eyes meeting mine. “I don’t know how it feels to lose someone the way you lost Evan, but I know how it feels to have a life that you can’t share with someone. I know how it feels to live a life where no one is there to live it with you. I know how hard it is to live with a mask on so no one can actually see who you are or what you’re feeling.” He paused, breaking the gaze he had on me to look down at the cup of coffee in his lap. “I know how it feels to be trapped inside of a life that you never meant to have, and I know that Evan wouldn’t have wanted that for you.”
The sincerity of his confession overwhelmed me, and I felt the sting of tears trying to force their way into my eyes as I looked at him. Sidney wasn’t an open book, by any means, but Kris had told Evan and I that Sidney wasn’t as happy as he seemed. It was easy to assume that someone who lived his life would find contentment despite the obstacles, but he was right; Sidney was trapped in his life, living all of these wonderful achievements away from his family and without love beside him. He had given up his comfort to chase his dreams, but the dreams had stolen him.
I had left my family to be closer to Evan, to chase my dreams of he and I. Now, I was without him, living in a shell of what I had imagined for myself, feeling empty for days and trying desperately to hide the pains. Sidney and I were both alone, in completely different ways. The difference, which he was trying to tell me, was that I didn’t have to be. Sidney’s life forced a loneliness that he had come to accept at some point. My life had the chance to be filled with comfort and friendships, and I had pushed it all away. Therapy had been the right step, but avoiding every reminder of what I used to have and leaving so much of my past behind, that was wrong.
Kris stirred again, causing both Sidney and I to stare at him, waiting to see if he’d awaken or not. Kris let out a soft groan, one of his hands lifting to feel the back of his head before his eyes opened and he stared up at the two of us. “I didn’t imagine it, did I?”
We both shook our heads. “No, you’re really in the hospital, dude,” Sidney said, smiling slightly.
Kris smirked. “I knew that. I meant them cutting my hair,” he forced himself to sit up. “I was hoping it was a nightmare.”
I couldn’t help but grin, relief washing over me as Kris appeared to be fine, the relief being swallowed by the surprise I felt at how happy I was to see him be perfectly fine. “Are you still on all that medicine?” I asked.
Kris looked at me, his eyes hovering on my face for a few long seconds before he smiled. “Maybe.” He glanced over at Sid, “Were you two talking about me?” He asked, eyeing the two of us.
Sidney grinned. “We sure were.”
Kris sighed, moving his pillow so he could rest his back against it. “I’m glad to see the two of you,” he admitted, nodding slightly. “I was sure I’d wake up alone.” He looked over at me, his eyes moving across my face, seeming to soak in every detail. “I thought you would be gone for sure, after all of the things I’ve done.”
I saw Sidney turn to look at me as I looked back at Kris. I let out a long sigh before I gave him a half smile. “No one should be alone when they don’t have to be,” I finally said.
Kris seemed confused by the response, but nodded. I felt Sidney reach out to place a hand on my knee, giving it a small pat of approval. It was an out of character gesture from him, but I understood why he had done it.
It was time to start moving forward and stop being alone. And even though we weren’t close, I was doing this for both Sidney and I.
“So,” I began, placing my coffee on the table by Kris’ bed. “What are going to do to try and hide the chunk of hair missing on the back of your head?” I asked Kris.
He groaned, covering his face with his hands as both Sidney and I laughed.
And it felt wonderful to laugh again.
Laughter
Most of what followed the fight didn’t register in my mind.
I remember my breath getting caught in my throat. I remember the deafening silence of the arena, the stillness that surrounded us all as we stared down at Kris’ unconscious body laying on the ice. Even Chris Neil seemed completely shocked, clearly not having meant to knock Kris over that easily. Every person on the ice seemed still, a shock rippling through them as they stared down at Kris.
It was Crosby who moved first, the grip he had had on Evgeni Malkin dropping as he slid across the ice to give Kris a small shake. He yelled something towards the bench, where one of the medical staff were already making their way over. I remember watching them lift his head up and seeing the blood.
And then it’s all black.
---------------------------
“Katy?”
I snapped my head up, meeting Marc’s worried eyes and blinking a few times. “Where am I?” I asked, looking around me.
“At the hospital. You came with Sara, but she said you haven’t said a word since Kris went down.”
I rubbed my eyes, glancing around and realizing that I was indeed in a waiting room. I gave my head a small shake. “I don’t remember leaving the arena.”
Marc nodded. “I figured that. You’ve been in a daze since he went down, Sara said.”
The reminded of what had happened at the arena made me feel sick to my stomach, and my head filled itself up with a cloud of dizziness as soon as the image of Kris lying on the ice returned. “How is he?”
Marc finally sat down in the vacant seat beside me, scooting it a bit closer. “He’s okay. He has a concussion, and they had to put a few staples in the back of his head,” he paused, giving my hand a squeeze as I winced at the mention of staples, “but he was awake by the time they got here. He didn’t remember what happened, though.”
I looked around me to see f I could spot a clock somewhere. “What time is it?”
“It’s almost two in the morning,” Marc answered me.
I looked closely at him, noticing the way the skin beneath his eyes seemed weighed down with tiredness, and how his mouth seemed to be tightened with the strength of worry. He looked exhausted.
“I guess we should probably head home, huh?” I asked, realizing how tired I was as well. “Did I sleep?”
He laughed. “No. You’ve been sitting here for a couple of hours now. We asked if you wanted to see Kris once they were done with the staples, but you didn’t answer.”
I nodded, trying to stand up from the chair, struggling at fist as my legs had fallen asleep. “Is Sara still here?”
He shook his head. “No, she went home an hour ago. School starts for her tomorrow, so she needed to sleep a bit,” he reminded me.
“Are they sending Kris home?” I asked, stretching my arms up above me.
“They’re keeping him tonight and for part of tomorrow to run tests,” he answered, yawning. “Come on, I’ll drive you home.”
“Wait,” I said, frowning. “Is he alone?”
Marc shook his head again. “His parents are here. They just arrived, few minutes before I came to talk to you.” He reached up to scratch the back of his head before sighing. “Mr and Mrs Daniels are, too.”
I almost passed out at the mention of the Daniels, Evan’s parents, being in the hospital. I had barely seen them since Evan’s passing, mainly because it brought out all of the emotions in me that I was constantly fighting to keep a grasp on. It made sense, after Travis having just told me that Kris still saw the family on a weekly basis, that they would drive down to make sure he was okay.
I chewed on my lip for a moment, stopping when I had bit to hard and my mouth was filled with the taste of the copper, snapping me back into the present moment. “I should go see them. I can’t just leave.”
Marc nodded, looking as though he had expected that response from me. “I’ll be here. I need to call Vero, anyways.”
I had to ask Marc where everyone was before I headed off, stopping by the bathroom to try and fix my hair and smudged make-up first, then rounding the corner to where Kris’ room was. Both of his parents were outside, his mom looking frazzled, her face drained of its colour, and his father trying to compose himself, the weight of worry heavily placed upon him. They were talking to one of the doctors quietly, both of them doing a lot of head nodding.
Just to the side of them were the Daniels, both of them holding a cup of what I could only assume to be coffee. Paul spotted me first, his dark eyes seeming to light up in surprise as he recognized me, nudging his wife to point me out.
I approached with hesitant steps, the nerves cycling throughout my veins seeming to weight down and postpone each movement. I smiled, standing just over a foot away from them. “Hi,”
Analyse, Evan’s mother, looked me over, her face seeming void emotion for the moment it took to do so. Once she was done, she let out a long sigh, reaching out to pull me into an unexpected embrace, her one hand immediately running through my tousled hair in a comforting manner. “Katy, it’s so good to see you.”
I found myself returning the embrace without even thinking about it. “You too,” I said back, eventually being freed from the hug so I could move onto another hug from Paul. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much,” I apologized. “I was busy getting counselling and-”
“Oh, honey, don’t worry about that,” Analyse said immediately, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Your mother told us all about your therapy sessions, and about how hard it’s been for you.”
“Hard for me?” I repeated. “I can’t even imagine how you two are,” I said. There was a moment of silence that followed my statement before I glanced over at the room Kris was in. “How is he?”
“Lucky,” Paul answered, the smirk that I had gotten so used to seeing appearing across his face. “He got his own room.”
I laughed, shaking my head. “Is he still awake?”
Analyse nodded. “I’m so glad he’s okay. We were watching the game at home, and when he went down…” she trailed off, her eyes growing glossy at the thought of earlier events, causing her to take a moment and clear her throat. “Kris has just become a part of the family, you know? Ever since Evan’s passing, he’s been with us. He keeps us updated, he was there for all of our birthdays, he came over on the anniversary of Evan’s death. He’s just a part of our family now.”
I felt my chest tighten as she spoke, trying to absorb each word. Paul had moved over to talk to the Letang’s, asking about updates on when Kris would be released, if they had somewhere to stay, etc.
“I know he was hard on you, Katy,” Analyse began, “and I know that there’s no excuse for the things that he said to you. But that boy,” she pointed into the room, “lost so much in the last two years. I don’t know if you remember how 2008 was for him, but he’s been trying to sort himself out for a long time now.”
The reminder of Kris’ past tragedies was something I hadn’t even had cross my mind. Everyone had heard about the loss of Luc, an amazingly talented defenseman playing in Vancouver, and also one of Kris’ best friends. Evan had only met Luc a few times, and I don’t think I had ever seen him face to face, but the tragedy of Luc’s passing, followed by the Penguins losing to the Red Wings in the Cup finals, was enough to destroy the joy inside of Kris. Thinking back on it, he had just started to piece himself back together when Evan was killed.
I felt nauseous, so many realizations coming to surface before me. It explained so much about the drastic change in behaviour that Kris suffered. I knew he was a complete mess from Luc’s passing, but once I had lost Evan, that seemed to fall from my mind. Kris’ dislike for Evan constantly being with me instead of him even seemed more clear to me. The rush of guilt that was blasted into my body was enough to almost make my knees clash together in weakness.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to Analyse, turning and heading back over to where Marc was still waiting, his eyes closed as he leaned his head against the wall behind him. I gave him a small shake, awakening him before he was fully asleep. “Marc, I think I’m going to stay here.”
He seemed surprised, but didn’t press the issue, nodding his head tiredly. “Call me if you need a ride home tomorrow, okay? I think Sid is coming by in the morning, so he’ll probably offer, too, but if not, call me.”
I nodded, stopping him before he could leave. “Marc, wait. When you were at my place, and I told you that Kris….” I shrugged, choosing not to actually repeat the announcement, aware that Marc would know what I meant, “what was it that you wanted to tell me? You never told me what I needed to know about him.”
Marc looked like he had to think about for a moment before nodding. “Oh yeah, I guess I never did,” he realized, chuckling. “You remember how you said that soon enough Kris would be back in Sainte-Julie?” He waited for to nod. “Yeah, he’s not coming back to Montreal. He signed up for a years of worth of counselling out here, in Pittsburgh.” He grinned at me, the amusement on his face shining through the fatigue. “Looks like he’ll have lots of time to apologize to you.”
I reached out to smack his arm but was too slow, shaking my head as he ran away from me, as fast as his tired body would let him.
I headed back over to where the Daniels were, frowning when I saw that the Letangs weren’t there anymore.
“They headed over to our house to get some sleep,” Paul said, answering my unvoiced question. “They’ll be back in a few hours, I assume.” He yawned, looking over at Analyse who was doing the same thing and letting out a small laugh. “We’re probably going to head out, too. Do you need a ride?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m going to stay here,” I said, looking over at the room. “I think I owe that to Kris.” The two of them nodded as if they completely understood, hugging me goodbye before tiredly heading out of the hospital.
I made my way over to the doorway of the room, noticing that Kris was still awake, his tired eyes staring up at the ceiling. I had to urge my body to move into the room, surprised when he didn’t seem to notice my presence. I sat down in the chair net to his bed and cleared my throat, seeming to snap him out of a trance. “Hey.”
He looked completely confused, rubbing his eyes before leaning in to look at me closer. “Katy?”
I almost laughed at how genuine his shock was. “Yeah, it’s me. How’s your head?”
He shrugged. “They gave me a lot of medicine. I can’t feel anything.”
I let out a small laugh, nodding my head. “That was really scary, the way you went down on the ice.”
He let out a small sigh, almost seeming embarrassed by the reminder. “I shouldn’t have fought Neil. I don’t know what I was thinking,” he explained, muttering afterwards, “I guess I wasn’t.”
Neither one of us spoke for a minute, probably because of how exhausted both of us were. Kris lifted his head up once more and looked at me. “Kaitlin, I meant it when I said that I was sorry.”
I looked at him, again taking note of the genuineness of his voice. “I know.”
He studied me again for a moment, most likely confused by how easily I accepted the apology that time, before letting his head rest on the pillow again. “They ruined my hair.”
I nearly laughed. “I’m sorry?”
He sighed. “They ruined my hair,” he repeated. “When they put the staples in my head, they cut some of my hair.” He shook his head, still staring up at the ceiling. “You can’t just do that.”
I couldn’t help but laugh that time, the tiredness that I felt making the amount of hilarity in Kris’ statement even high then it actually was and causing me to be incapable of stopping. Kris began laughing as well, the contagiousness of laughter being intensified by the lack of sleep we both suffered from.
I don’t know how long both of us laughed, laughing so hard that we both ran out of breath and our pale faces had been tinted with the hues of comedy, but when I finally gained control of myself again, I sighed, wiping the tears that had been freed from my eyes away from my face. “I don’t remember the last time I laughed. Honestly, laughed,” I shared, glancing at Kris.
He didn’t reply for a moment before he moved his head enough to look at me, a hint of sadness returning to his face as he gave a small nod. “Me either.”
There was another pause of silence, both of becoming absorbed in our thoughts momentarily following the realization. The weight of my head seemed to be increasing, my neck beginning to throb from the weight of it. I glanced down at Kris, surprised to find his eyes closed and his chest moving slowly up and down, his breathing having slowed as he surrendered to sleep. The peace that seemed to accompany his slumber ignited a brief sense of jealousy in me until I let my head rest against the edge of the bed, falling asleep before I could even take in my next breath.
I remember my breath getting caught in my throat. I remember the deafening silence of the arena, the stillness that surrounded us all as we stared down at Kris’ unconscious body laying on the ice. Even Chris Neil seemed completely shocked, clearly not having meant to knock Kris over that easily. Every person on the ice seemed still, a shock rippling through them as they stared down at Kris.
It was Crosby who moved first, the grip he had had on Evgeni Malkin dropping as he slid across the ice to give Kris a small shake. He yelled something towards the bench, where one of the medical staff were already making their way over. I remember watching them lift his head up and seeing the blood.
And then it’s all black.
---------------------------
“Katy?”
I snapped my head up, meeting Marc’s worried eyes and blinking a few times. “Where am I?” I asked, looking around me.
“At the hospital. You came with Sara, but she said you haven’t said a word since Kris went down.”
I rubbed my eyes, glancing around and realizing that I was indeed in a waiting room. I gave my head a small shake. “I don’t remember leaving the arena.”
Marc nodded. “I figured that. You’ve been in a daze since he went down, Sara said.”
The reminded of what had happened at the arena made me feel sick to my stomach, and my head filled itself up with a cloud of dizziness as soon as the image of Kris lying on the ice returned. “How is he?”
Marc finally sat down in the vacant seat beside me, scooting it a bit closer. “He’s okay. He has a concussion, and they had to put a few staples in the back of his head,” he paused, giving my hand a squeeze as I winced at the mention of staples, “but he was awake by the time they got here. He didn’t remember what happened, though.”
I looked around me to see f I could spot a clock somewhere. “What time is it?”
“It’s almost two in the morning,” Marc answered me.
I looked closely at him, noticing the way the skin beneath his eyes seemed weighed down with tiredness, and how his mouth seemed to be tightened with the strength of worry. He looked exhausted.
“I guess we should probably head home, huh?” I asked, realizing how tired I was as well. “Did I sleep?”
He laughed. “No. You’ve been sitting here for a couple of hours now. We asked if you wanted to see Kris once they were done with the staples, but you didn’t answer.”
I nodded, trying to stand up from the chair, struggling at fist as my legs had fallen asleep. “Is Sara still here?”
He shook his head. “No, she went home an hour ago. School starts for her tomorrow, so she needed to sleep a bit,” he reminded me.
“Are they sending Kris home?” I asked, stretching my arms up above me.
“They’re keeping him tonight and for part of tomorrow to run tests,” he answered, yawning. “Come on, I’ll drive you home.”
“Wait,” I said, frowning. “Is he alone?”
Marc shook his head again. “His parents are here. They just arrived, few minutes before I came to talk to you.” He reached up to scratch the back of his head before sighing. “Mr and Mrs Daniels are, too.”
I almost passed out at the mention of the Daniels, Evan’s parents, being in the hospital. I had barely seen them since Evan’s passing, mainly because it brought out all of the emotions in me that I was constantly fighting to keep a grasp on. It made sense, after Travis having just told me that Kris still saw the family on a weekly basis, that they would drive down to make sure he was okay.
I chewed on my lip for a moment, stopping when I had bit to hard and my mouth was filled with the taste of the copper, snapping me back into the present moment. “I should go see them. I can’t just leave.”
Marc nodded, looking as though he had expected that response from me. “I’ll be here. I need to call Vero, anyways.”
I had to ask Marc where everyone was before I headed off, stopping by the bathroom to try and fix my hair and smudged make-up first, then rounding the corner to where Kris’ room was. Both of his parents were outside, his mom looking frazzled, her face drained of its colour, and his father trying to compose himself, the weight of worry heavily placed upon him. They were talking to one of the doctors quietly, both of them doing a lot of head nodding.
Just to the side of them were the Daniels, both of them holding a cup of what I could only assume to be coffee. Paul spotted me first, his dark eyes seeming to light up in surprise as he recognized me, nudging his wife to point me out.
I approached with hesitant steps, the nerves cycling throughout my veins seeming to weight down and postpone each movement. I smiled, standing just over a foot away from them. “Hi,”
Analyse, Evan’s mother, looked me over, her face seeming void emotion for the moment it took to do so. Once she was done, she let out a long sigh, reaching out to pull me into an unexpected embrace, her one hand immediately running through my tousled hair in a comforting manner. “Katy, it’s so good to see you.”
I found myself returning the embrace without even thinking about it. “You too,” I said back, eventually being freed from the hug so I could move onto another hug from Paul. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much,” I apologized. “I was busy getting counselling and-”
“Oh, honey, don’t worry about that,” Analyse said immediately, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Your mother told us all about your therapy sessions, and about how hard it’s been for you.”
“Hard for me?” I repeated. “I can’t even imagine how you two are,” I said. There was a moment of silence that followed my statement before I glanced over at the room Kris was in. “How is he?”
“Lucky,” Paul answered, the smirk that I had gotten so used to seeing appearing across his face. “He got his own room.”
I laughed, shaking my head. “Is he still awake?”
Analyse nodded. “I’m so glad he’s okay. We were watching the game at home, and when he went down…” she trailed off, her eyes growing glossy at the thought of earlier events, causing her to take a moment and clear her throat. “Kris has just become a part of the family, you know? Ever since Evan’s passing, he’s been with us. He keeps us updated, he was there for all of our birthdays, he came over on the anniversary of Evan’s death. He’s just a part of our family now.”
I felt my chest tighten as she spoke, trying to absorb each word. Paul had moved over to talk to the Letang’s, asking about updates on when Kris would be released, if they had somewhere to stay, etc.
“I know he was hard on you, Katy,” Analyse began, “and I know that there’s no excuse for the things that he said to you. But that boy,” she pointed into the room, “lost so much in the last two years. I don’t know if you remember how 2008 was for him, but he’s been trying to sort himself out for a long time now.”
The reminder of Kris’ past tragedies was something I hadn’t even had cross my mind. Everyone had heard about the loss of Luc, an amazingly talented defenseman playing in Vancouver, and also one of Kris’ best friends. Evan had only met Luc a few times, and I don’t think I had ever seen him face to face, but the tragedy of Luc’s passing, followed by the Penguins losing to the Red Wings in the Cup finals, was enough to destroy the joy inside of Kris. Thinking back on it, he had just started to piece himself back together when Evan was killed.
I felt nauseous, so many realizations coming to surface before me. It explained so much about the drastic change in behaviour that Kris suffered. I knew he was a complete mess from Luc’s passing, but once I had lost Evan, that seemed to fall from my mind. Kris’ dislike for Evan constantly being with me instead of him even seemed more clear to me. The rush of guilt that was blasted into my body was enough to almost make my knees clash together in weakness.
“I’ll be right back,” I said to Analyse, turning and heading back over to where Marc was still waiting, his eyes closed as he leaned his head against the wall behind him. I gave him a small shake, awakening him before he was fully asleep. “Marc, I think I’m going to stay here.”
He seemed surprised, but didn’t press the issue, nodding his head tiredly. “Call me if you need a ride home tomorrow, okay? I think Sid is coming by in the morning, so he’ll probably offer, too, but if not, call me.”
I nodded, stopping him before he could leave. “Marc, wait. When you were at my place, and I told you that Kris….” I shrugged, choosing not to actually repeat the announcement, aware that Marc would know what I meant, “what was it that you wanted to tell me? You never told me what I needed to know about him.”
Marc looked like he had to think about for a moment before nodding. “Oh yeah, I guess I never did,” he realized, chuckling. “You remember how you said that soon enough Kris would be back in Sainte-Julie?” He waited for to nod. “Yeah, he’s not coming back to Montreal. He signed up for a years of worth of counselling out here, in Pittsburgh.” He grinned at me, the amusement on his face shining through the fatigue. “Looks like he’ll have lots of time to apologize to you.”
I reached out to smack his arm but was too slow, shaking my head as he ran away from me, as fast as his tired body would let him.
I headed back over to where the Daniels were, frowning when I saw that the Letangs weren’t there anymore.
“They headed over to our house to get some sleep,” Paul said, answering my unvoiced question. “They’ll be back in a few hours, I assume.” He yawned, looking over at Analyse who was doing the same thing and letting out a small laugh. “We’re probably going to head out, too. Do you need a ride?”
I shook my head. “No, I’m going to stay here,” I said, looking over at the room. “I think I owe that to Kris.” The two of them nodded as if they completely understood, hugging me goodbye before tiredly heading out of the hospital.
I made my way over to the doorway of the room, noticing that Kris was still awake, his tired eyes staring up at the ceiling. I had to urge my body to move into the room, surprised when he didn’t seem to notice my presence. I sat down in the chair net to his bed and cleared my throat, seeming to snap him out of a trance. “Hey.”
He looked completely confused, rubbing his eyes before leaning in to look at me closer. “Katy?”
I almost laughed at how genuine his shock was. “Yeah, it’s me. How’s your head?”
He shrugged. “They gave me a lot of medicine. I can’t feel anything.”
I let out a small laugh, nodding my head. “That was really scary, the way you went down on the ice.”
He let out a small sigh, almost seeming embarrassed by the reminder. “I shouldn’t have fought Neil. I don’t know what I was thinking,” he explained, muttering afterwards, “I guess I wasn’t.”
Neither one of us spoke for a minute, probably because of how exhausted both of us were. Kris lifted his head up once more and looked at me. “Kaitlin, I meant it when I said that I was sorry.”
I looked at him, again taking note of the genuineness of his voice. “I know.”
He studied me again for a moment, most likely confused by how easily I accepted the apology that time, before letting his head rest on the pillow again. “They ruined my hair.”
I nearly laughed. “I’m sorry?”
He sighed. “They ruined my hair,” he repeated. “When they put the staples in my head, they cut some of my hair.” He shook his head, still staring up at the ceiling. “You can’t just do that.”
I couldn’t help but laugh that time, the tiredness that I felt making the amount of hilarity in Kris’ statement even high then it actually was and causing me to be incapable of stopping. Kris began laughing as well, the contagiousness of laughter being intensified by the lack of sleep we both suffered from.
I don’t know how long both of us laughed, laughing so hard that we both ran out of breath and our pale faces had been tinted with the hues of comedy, but when I finally gained control of myself again, I sighed, wiping the tears that had been freed from my eyes away from my face. “I don’t remember the last time I laughed. Honestly, laughed,” I shared, glancing at Kris.
He didn’t reply for a moment before he moved his head enough to look at me, a hint of sadness returning to his face as he gave a small nod. “Me either.”
There was another pause of silence, both of becoming absorbed in our thoughts momentarily following the realization. The weight of my head seemed to be increasing, my neck beginning to throb from the weight of it. I glanced down at Kris, surprised to find his eyes closed and his chest moving slowly up and down, his breathing having slowed as he surrendered to sleep. The peace that seemed to accompany his slumber ignited a brief sense of jealousy in me until I let my head rest against the edge of the bed, falling asleep before I could even take in my next breath.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Slow Motion
Marc-Andre Fleury could only be ignored for so long before he showed up at my apartment door, his trademark grin on his face. “Hi.”
I sighed, leaning against the doorway tiredly. “What are you doing here?”
He gave a small shrug, peering past me to see into the apartment. “I called you last night, but you didn’t answer, and you also did not answer my calls last week.” His eyes moved back to my face and he leaned in a bit, trying to seem intimidating. “I will not be ignored, Katy.”
I shook my head at him, allowing him to step into the apartment finally and shutting the door behind him. “So, what would you like to talk about?” I asked, taking a seat on the couch.
Marc sat across from me, running his hands along the couch cushion. “This is a nice couch,” he said aloud, grinning at me. “I just want to make sure that you are okay. You know, we used to be friends, a little. It’s not fair that you just have no one now.”
“I have Sara,” I reminded him, smiling slightly as he rolled his eyes. “Its just hard to see the people he played hockey with. I don’t know why, it just is. I guess because, when he wasn’t here with me, he was on the ice with you, and there’s a part of me that’s still jealous about it.”
“See, you’re opening up to me!” Marc exclaimed, raising his hands up. “This is wonderful!”
I had to let out a small laugh, watching him as he fist pumped a few times before stretching himself over to me so we could high-five.
Marc stretched himself out on the couch a little more, lifting up his legs to fill up the empty space and then turning on his side so he could still face me. “Kristopher talked to you, right?”
I raised an eyebrow up at him. “Wow, full name?”
Marc smirked at me. “Come on, Kaitlin. Did it go well?”
“Not really,” I admitted, my eyes investing themselves in the coffee stain on my leg. “He told me that he had pissed Evan off right before he got in his car, told me that a part of him has hated me for the last couple of years, and then apologized.”
“And you replied by…?”
I lifted my eyes up to look at him. “I left.”
Marc covered his face with his hands dramatically, letting out a loud groan. “Katy! How do you fix something when you leave?”
“There’s nothing to fix,” I replied. “Kris and I haven’t been friends for a long time now, and he’s hardly around anyways. Once the season is over, he’ll be back in Sainte-Julie and I’ll be here.” I sighed, leaning back a bit in the couch and looking over at Marc’s nervous face.
“Katy, there’s something you should know-”
“I already know he’s in love with me,” I interrupted. “And I don’t know what has made him believe that, but he doesn’t, so it doesn’t matter.”
Marc was silent for a moment before he twisted himself so that he was sitting on the couch once more, studying my face for a moment before he yelled, “He’s in love with you?!”
I let out a groan. “You didn’t know?”
“Oh my goodness, this explains so much!” He continued, still yelling.
“Flower, can you take it down a notch? I don’t want to get a noise complaint against me,” I said, covering my ears.
Marc grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, I was just excited to be in on a secret.” He took a few seconds to think before gasping, standing up and pointing at me. “You should come to our game tonight.”
“What?” I asked, almost laughing. “No way. Marc, I haven’t even able to watch a full game of hockey since Evan died, and after learning about Kris, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“It’s a great idea, and it‘s only a preseason game, so most of the familiar faces won‘t be there,” he insisted, already heading out towards the door. “I’ll have your tickets waiting at the box office. Bring Sara! Bring a sign that says something nice about me,” He pulled the door open, turning to grin at me again. “See you then.”
---------------------
“This is a bad idea.” I said to Sara, shivering in my seat.
“I told you to bring a heavier sweater,” she replied, taking a bite out of a mini-donut.
“I’m not talking about how cold I am, I mean being here. I can’t handle this,” I told her.
Sara sighed. “Katy, you can’t just ignore everything that reminds you of Evan. You’ll be living in an empty world then.”
I felt my eyebrows lift up in surprise. “That was a very meaningful point, Sara. Have you started reading?”
She laughed. “No, I’m just naturally intuitive.” She glanced back out the ice, where the players were lining up for the first face-off. “Shouldn’t you want to be around the things that remind you of Evan? I mean, not to sound morbid, but isn’t that all you have of him now?”
I was almost dumbfounded by the question, realizing that Sara had a point. Evan’s life had been dedicated to hockey, and even though he had never been able to set foot on the hockey world’s biggest stage, he lived and breathed for the game. On his free nights, he was at a game, whether it be a Penguins or just a local kids team, he wanted to watch. He would tell me about the standings in the NHL, giving me detailed explanations on how every goal that had been scored the night before happened, and had embedded the names of the greats in my head. I wanted to believe that Evan was most alive when he was with me, but I knew that that was not true; Evan was most alive when he was on the ice, or around the game.
By the time I had shaken myself from the reminders, the game had begun. The Penguins were taking on the Ottawa Senators, a team that I didn’t know an awful lot about, and there was already a stop in play. Jarko Ruutu and Brooks Orpik were tangled behind the net, both of them shoving at one another, but neither one willing to drop the gloves.
Both linesmen were trying to pry the two of them apart, only managing to do so when the threat of a penalty was uttered. Orpik swatted at the back of Ruttu’s helmet as he was being pulled away, a move that seemed to infuriate the rest of the Senators and send a spark of energy throughout the rest of the building.
“What started this?” I asked Sara, having to raise my voice to be heard over the yells of the crowd, almost everyone standing as a mob of shoving ensued, everyone determined to knock their opposition over.
“One of the Sens bumped Fleury. I’m not sure which one,” She yelled back.
I nodded, watching as Sidney Crosby grabbed the back of Evgeni Malkin’s jersey and pulled him away from Daniel Alfredsson, seeming incredibly unimpressed with the way the team was behaving. Marc was standing in the crease, his mask up and resting on his face as he watched the whole ordeal with a bemused smirk on his face, seeming more entertained by the events then worried.
Kris was away from all of the commotion, watching it at the blue line, just a few feet from the rest of the team on the bench, all of them hanging over the edge and screaming at the ref for not giving an interference call. He seemed stoic, watching the whole thing unfold without seeming to move a muscle in his body. I was beginning to worry that he wasn’t even breathing, when he suddenly snapped.
In a blur of black and white, Kris was in the middle of the pile, grabbing whichever one of the Senators he could and dragging him away from the pile.
I stood up, trying to see if I could catch a glimpse of which player it was. I managed to see 25 on the sleeve of his jersey, my mind racing back to the roster of the Sens, trying to remember what Evan had said about 25 on the Senators. It was so long ago, I could hardly even remember the conversation.
”He’s a dick.”
I glanced up at the TV, frowning. “Which one?”
Evan laughed, “Really? There’s two people in the shot right now. One is bleeding and one is laughing.”
I almost blushed, only then realizing that it was true. “So, the red guy is a dick?”
“He’s a decent player, I’ll give him that, but he plays the agitator role more then the scoring role.” He sighed, scratching the top of his head. “He’s a damn good fighter though, I’ll give him that.”
I leaned in closer to the TV, squinting a bit. “Who is he? I can only see the number.”
“25,” Evan muttered, lifting up his cup of coffee to take a sip before muttering, “Chri fucking Neil.”
“Oh dear God, tell me he’s not trying to fight Chris Neil,” I yelled, standing up on my tip-toes so I could see over the head of the guy in front of me.
Sara looked as worried as I did. By this time, the rest of the players on the ice had grown tired, and the whole fight was almost over when Kris lunged at all of them and snagged Neil, grabbing him by the front of the jersey and shoving him at the net, causing Marc to move off to the side.
There was a blur of motions. First, Kris’ gloves went flying, followed by Neil’s. Then, both of their helmets were ripped off, and then, the fists started flying. Both were faking left and then throwing rights. Neil grabbed a hold of Kris’ jersey and landed a punch on the side of his face, knocking Kris off of his balance for a moment. He gained it back and threw an upper left cut at Neil, catching him by surprise, and managing to land another punch with his right hand. Neil’s head flew to the side, and he collapsed against the net, his arms managing to stop him from falling over completely.
I assumed the fight was over, as did the rest of the crowd. Neil looked dazed, his body seeming lifeless for a few seconds. Kris seemed to take in a deep breath of air, the rage still evident in his face as he lifted a hand to push his hair out of his face.
Chris Neil wasn’t out of the fight, though. He was surprised by the second hit from Kris, but he was in no way beaten. He had pushed himself off of the net, regained his balance, and in slow-motion I watched as he brought his fist back, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth as did so, and brought it back as fast as he could.
Kris seemed to realize that Neil was back up too late, even though I could see Marc screaming at him. He tried to get his hand up to block the hit in time, but the sudden motion somehow propelled him forward, causing him to meet Neil’s fist sooner then he would have.
The entire crowd was silenced as Kris was knocked backwards. The only sound heard was his helmet-less head making contact with the ice.
I sighed, leaning against the doorway tiredly. “What are you doing here?”
He gave a small shrug, peering past me to see into the apartment. “I called you last night, but you didn’t answer, and you also did not answer my calls last week.” His eyes moved back to my face and he leaned in a bit, trying to seem intimidating. “I will not be ignored, Katy.”
I shook my head at him, allowing him to step into the apartment finally and shutting the door behind him. “So, what would you like to talk about?” I asked, taking a seat on the couch.
Marc sat across from me, running his hands along the couch cushion. “This is a nice couch,” he said aloud, grinning at me. “I just want to make sure that you are okay. You know, we used to be friends, a little. It’s not fair that you just have no one now.”
“I have Sara,” I reminded him, smiling slightly as he rolled his eyes. “Its just hard to see the people he played hockey with. I don’t know why, it just is. I guess because, when he wasn’t here with me, he was on the ice with you, and there’s a part of me that’s still jealous about it.”
“See, you’re opening up to me!” Marc exclaimed, raising his hands up. “This is wonderful!”
I had to let out a small laugh, watching him as he fist pumped a few times before stretching himself over to me so we could high-five.
Marc stretched himself out on the couch a little more, lifting up his legs to fill up the empty space and then turning on his side so he could still face me. “Kristopher talked to you, right?”
I raised an eyebrow up at him. “Wow, full name?”
Marc smirked at me. “Come on, Kaitlin. Did it go well?”
“Not really,” I admitted, my eyes investing themselves in the coffee stain on my leg. “He told me that he had pissed Evan off right before he got in his car, told me that a part of him has hated me for the last couple of years, and then apologized.”
“And you replied by…?”
I lifted my eyes up to look at him. “I left.”
Marc covered his face with his hands dramatically, letting out a loud groan. “Katy! How do you fix something when you leave?”
“There’s nothing to fix,” I replied. “Kris and I haven’t been friends for a long time now, and he’s hardly around anyways. Once the season is over, he’ll be back in Sainte-Julie and I’ll be here.” I sighed, leaning back a bit in the couch and looking over at Marc’s nervous face.
“Katy, there’s something you should know-”
“I already know he’s in love with me,” I interrupted. “And I don’t know what has made him believe that, but he doesn’t, so it doesn’t matter.”
Marc was silent for a moment before he twisted himself so that he was sitting on the couch once more, studying my face for a moment before he yelled, “He’s in love with you?!”
I let out a groan. “You didn’t know?”
“Oh my goodness, this explains so much!” He continued, still yelling.
“Flower, can you take it down a notch? I don’t want to get a noise complaint against me,” I said, covering my ears.
Marc grinned sheepishly. “Sorry, I was just excited to be in on a secret.” He took a few seconds to think before gasping, standing up and pointing at me. “You should come to our game tonight.”
“What?” I asked, almost laughing. “No way. Marc, I haven’t even able to watch a full game of hockey since Evan died, and after learning about Kris, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“It’s a great idea, and it‘s only a preseason game, so most of the familiar faces won‘t be there,” he insisted, already heading out towards the door. “I’ll have your tickets waiting at the box office. Bring Sara! Bring a sign that says something nice about me,” He pulled the door open, turning to grin at me again. “See you then.”
---------------------
“This is a bad idea.” I said to Sara, shivering in my seat.
“I told you to bring a heavier sweater,” she replied, taking a bite out of a mini-donut.
“I’m not talking about how cold I am, I mean being here. I can’t handle this,” I told her.
Sara sighed. “Katy, you can’t just ignore everything that reminds you of Evan. You’ll be living in an empty world then.”
I felt my eyebrows lift up in surprise. “That was a very meaningful point, Sara. Have you started reading?”
She laughed. “No, I’m just naturally intuitive.” She glanced back out the ice, where the players were lining up for the first face-off. “Shouldn’t you want to be around the things that remind you of Evan? I mean, not to sound morbid, but isn’t that all you have of him now?”
I was almost dumbfounded by the question, realizing that Sara had a point. Evan’s life had been dedicated to hockey, and even though he had never been able to set foot on the hockey world’s biggest stage, he lived and breathed for the game. On his free nights, he was at a game, whether it be a Penguins or just a local kids team, he wanted to watch. He would tell me about the standings in the NHL, giving me detailed explanations on how every goal that had been scored the night before happened, and had embedded the names of the greats in my head. I wanted to believe that Evan was most alive when he was with me, but I knew that that was not true; Evan was most alive when he was on the ice, or around the game.
By the time I had shaken myself from the reminders, the game had begun. The Penguins were taking on the Ottawa Senators, a team that I didn’t know an awful lot about, and there was already a stop in play. Jarko Ruutu and Brooks Orpik were tangled behind the net, both of them shoving at one another, but neither one willing to drop the gloves.
Both linesmen were trying to pry the two of them apart, only managing to do so when the threat of a penalty was uttered. Orpik swatted at the back of Ruttu’s helmet as he was being pulled away, a move that seemed to infuriate the rest of the Senators and send a spark of energy throughout the rest of the building.
“What started this?” I asked Sara, having to raise my voice to be heard over the yells of the crowd, almost everyone standing as a mob of shoving ensued, everyone determined to knock their opposition over.
“One of the Sens bumped Fleury. I’m not sure which one,” She yelled back.
I nodded, watching as Sidney Crosby grabbed the back of Evgeni Malkin’s jersey and pulled him away from Daniel Alfredsson, seeming incredibly unimpressed with the way the team was behaving. Marc was standing in the crease, his mask up and resting on his face as he watched the whole ordeal with a bemused smirk on his face, seeming more entertained by the events then worried.
Kris was away from all of the commotion, watching it at the blue line, just a few feet from the rest of the team on the bench, all of them hanging over the edge and screaming at the ref for not giving an interference call. He seemed stoic, watching the whole thing unfold without seeming to move a muscle in his body. I was beginning to worry that he wasn’t even breathing, when he suddenly snapped.
In a blur of black and white, Kris was in the middle of the pile, grabbing whichever one of the Senators he could and dragging him away from the pile.
I stood up, trying to see if I could catch a glimpse of which player it was. I managed to see 25 on the sleeve of his jersey, my mind racing back to the roster of the Sens, trying to remember what Evan had said about 25 on the Senators. It was so long ago, I could hardly even remember the conversation.
”He’s a dick.”
I glanced up at the TV, frowning. “Which one?”
Evan laughed, “Really? There’s two people in the shot right now. One is bleeding and one is laughing.”
I almost blushed, only then realizing that it was true. “So, the red guy is a dick?”
“He’s a decent player, I’ll give him that, but he plays the agitator role more then the scoring role.” He sighed, scratching the top of his head. “He’s a damn good fighter though, I’ll give him that.”
I leaned in closer to the TV, squinting a bit. “Who is he? I can only see the number.”
“25,” Evan muttered, lifting up his cup of coffee to take a sip before muttering, “Chri fucking Neil.”
“Oh dear God, tell me he’s not trying to fight Chris Neil,” I yelled, standing up on my tip-toes so I could see over the head of the guy in front of me.
Sara looked as worried as I did. By this time, the rest of the players on the ice had grown tired, and the whole fight was almost over when Kris lunged at all of them and snagged Neil, grabbing him by the front of the jersey and shoving him at the net, causing Marc to move off to the side.
There was a blur of motions. First, Kris’ gloves went flying, followed by Neil’s. Then, both of their helmets were ripped off, and then, the fists started flying. Both were faking left and then throwing rights. Neil grabbed a hold of Kris’ jersey and landed a punch on the side of his face, knocking Kris off of his balance for a moment. He gained it back and threw an upper left cut at Neil, catching him by surprise, and managing to land another punch with his right hand. Neil’s head flew to the side, and he collapsed against the net, his arms managing to stop him from falling over completely.
I assumed the fight was over, as did the rest of the crowd. Neil looked dazed, his body seeming lifeless for a few seconds. Kris seemed to take in a deep breath of air, the rage still evident in his face as he lifted a hand to push his hair out of his face.
Chris Neil wasn’t out of the fight, though. He was surprised by the second hit from Kris, but he was in no way beaten. He had pushed himself off of the net, regained his balance, and in slow-motion I watched as he brought his fist back, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth as did so, and brought it back as fast as he could.
Kris seemed to realize that Neil was back up too late, even though I could see Marc screaming at him. He tried to get his hand up to block the hit in time, but the sudden motion somehow propelled him forward, causing him to meet Neil’s fist sooner then he would have.
The entire crowd was silenced as Kris was knocked backwards. The only sound heard was his helmet-less head making contact with the ice.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Bombs Dropping
I had no response. There was no form of a reply in my mind as I sat there, almost numb with rage as I repeated the confession over and over in my mind. Eventually I managed to ask, “What?”
Kris was still staring at me, the tears back in his eyes, but he didn’t acknowledge them. “I was just so angry, and the only thing that would ever hurt Evan was bringing you up. I just wanted him to feel as unwanted as I did.”
“Unwanted?” I nearly spat the words out at him, feeling my face heat up with the anger pumping through me. “You felt unwanted? I hadn’t seen my boyfriend in two weeks, and he was with you, but [b]you[/b] felt unwanted? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I hadn’t seen my best friend in months, and as soon as you call and say you miss him, he leaves,” Kris answered, his voice soft. “Of course I felt unwanted.”
“Oh, well then that makes up for telling my boyfriend that he didn’t deserve me and I was probably going to break up with him,” I shot back, standing up from the couch. “I can’t believe you’ve been blaming me for his death this whole time, when you were so selfish that you told him that!”
The comment seemed to awaken the side of Kris that I had encountered at the counselling centre, as he shot up from the couch, the fatigue and weariness that had been sinking into his face seem to melt away as his eyes lit up with an anger that made me feel as if I were only a foot tall. “I play on a team where I am unnoticed,” he began, the softness of his voice gone. “It doesn’t matter how well I play, or how hard I work, the cameras will always been on Sid, or Staal, or Geno. I live by myself, in a house too big for one person, where all of my friends can’t visit because they live in Quebec, or they’re in school. The only person who was still around was Evan, and he didn’t even have time to talk to me anymore. You girls,” he stopped, letting out a humourless laugh before continuing, “you girls always complain when a friend has a boyfriend that she picks over you. Men feel the same way. I have nothing, Katy. I only had one true friend, and he didn’t care. He only cared about you.”
“Evan was a good person,” I reminded him, surprised when I heard the waver in my voice. “You were his best friend, too. You seem to just overlook that fact.”
Kris ran a hand through his hair, giving his head a soft shake. “No I wasn’t. You were his best friend. You were his everything, and I can understand that, because you’re beautiful, and you’re smart, and you were so good to him. But I hated you,” he confessed, no longer meeting my eyes. “I hated you because I was losing the only piece of home I had to you.”
I shook my head. “I can’t be here anymore,” I decided, turning and trying to make my way back towards the front door, pausing just as I was about to leave so I could glance back at him with a sigh. “It’s not your fault that he’s dead, Kris,” I said, seeming to catch him off guard, “but that doesn’t make any of this better.”
“Katy-” he began, taking a step forward but stopping when I shook my head at him. He obliged, watching with a mix of confusion and sadness as I left.
------------------------------
“You don’t seem surprised,” I commented as I looked over at Sara after re-telling the days events to her.
Sara gave a small shrug, “Well, I mean, I kind of figured something like that must have happened. Kris was always pretty hot or cold when it came to you. He was either all for you tagging along, or losing his mind that you were there.”
“I didn’t know guys got like that,” I admitted.
“Are you kidding? Katy, guys will whine to each other about some mutual friend is always bringing his girlfriend, or ditching their plans to be with their girlfriend. Kris is in the NHL and hardly saw Evan anyways, and Evan was always away on road trips with the AHL. They never saw each other, and when they were both back in town, Evan was with you. Of course Kris sort of hated you.” She paused, frowning a bit, “Or still hates you. Whatever.”
I groaned, sitting down next to her on the couch. “Things were starting to get better, you know? I felt like, maybe I could start to move forward again, start waking up without crying. Then Kris just has to waltz into my clinic and yell at me.”
“How selfish of him, trying to get help for his own emotional issues at the same place as you,” Sara scolded, earning an unimpressed glance from me. “Come on, Katy. You chose to stay in Pittsburgh, and you picked the best counselling centre out here. Where else was he supposed to go? Besides, he didn’t know you were going there, anyways.”
“Why can’t you ever let me be melodramatic?” I whined, fake pushing her.
“Because you can’t get better if you’re melodramatic,” she reminded me, smirking as I sighed. “You’re welcome.”
I leaned my head back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “I should be on TV.”
“You should. They could just take your life, as is, and get people to rein-act it. Prime time TV right there, girl!” She grinned at me, rubbing her face tiredly as she glanced back at the microwave clock. “I have to be up for class at six tomorrow, so, I bid you goodnight, miss Kaitlin.” I smiled, waving at her as she made her way to her room.
I was lost in my thoughts, the silence of the apartment encouraging the trance, when there was a knock at the door. I almost ignored it, part of me worried that Kris had driven over to try and talk again, but I forced myself off of the couch, walking over to the door and peering through the peephole, tugging the door open as soon as I saw that it was Travis.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, letting him into the apartment.
He grinned, wiping his feet off so he could keep his shoes on, a habit Evan had also had. “I wanted to see how everything with Letang went today. Did he make you cry?”
I almost laughed, leading him into the living room. “No. Well, I cried a little, but more so because we were talking about Evan,” I admitted, sitting down on the couch. “I don’t do that very often. It’s still too hard.”
Travis nodded, sitting at the other end of the couch. “Mom can’t handle it either. My dad, I don’t know how he survives. She can’t even handle hearing his name, and my dad just wants to talk about it all. I’m kind of the only person he has to talk to, and I’m not even sure that I can handle it.” He let out a big sigh, ruffling his hair a bit before shooting me a crooked smile. “But, he told you everything?”
“You already knew all of this?” I asked, genuinely surprised.
“Of course I did. Kris talks to me all the time, and the rest of the family. No matter what their friendship was towards the very end, he and Evan were buds for a long time. It got hard when Kris got called up into the NHL and Ev was still on the farm team, but they were best friends. I think talking to all of us is how he copes, you know?” He asked, letting out a long sigh before smiling again. “I’m glad you know, though. I think it explains a lot about why Kris was so hostile towards you for awhile, and why he and Kris were at odds off and on for the last couple of years.”
I grabbed a chunk of my hair, smoothing out the tangles in it. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know why he waited over a year after Evan’s death to tell me. I’d rather have known right off the bat, or at least within the first few months.”
Travis laughed, “Like you could have handled that. Your boyfriend had just been killed, the last thing you’d want to hear is everything he told you today.”
I frowned. “I don’t think that’s true at all. I think I would have had some peace and not blamed myself so much. Plus, he couldn’t have blamed me for the whole thing like he did up until two weeks ago.”
Travis looked utterly confused, scratching the back of his head. “How would him telling you he was in love with you make you more at peace?”
I felt the colour drain from my face, shaking my head and assuming that I had misheard him. “What?”
Travis opened his mouth, then seemed to realize his mistake and gasped, covering his mouth. “Oh my God, he didn’t tell you that.”
“He’s…what? But he’s been horrible to me for the last couple of years,” I almost yelled. “Ever since Evan and I-” I stopped, realization surfacing at the front of my brain.
“Ever since you and Evan started dating,” Travis finished, nodding his head. “I’m so sorry, Katy. He told me he was going to tell you all of this today, I thought you knew.”
I felt light-headed, falling back into the couch and sitting limply as the words ran through my head a few more times.
Travis cleared his throat. “Maybe I should go and let you absorb the bomb that I just dropped on you,” he said, getting up and walking over to pat my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Katy. I thought you knew.”
I couldn’t respond, the shock seeming to disable my ability to think. I watched Travis let himself out of the apartment, sitting there for who knows how long before I sat up and yelled “What the fuck!” and threw myself back onto the couch.
Kris was still staring at me, the tears back in his eyes, but he didn’t acknowledge them. “I was just so angry, and the only thing that would ever hurt Evan was bringing you up. I just wanted him to feel as unwanted as I did.”
“Unwanted?” I nearly spat the words out at him, feeling my face heat up with the anger pumping through me. “You felt unwanted? I hadn’t seen my boyfriend in two weeks, and he was with you, but [b]you[/b] felt unwanted? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I hadn’t seen my best friend in months, and as soon as you call and say you miss him, he leaves,” Kris answered, his voice soft. “Of course I felt unwanted.”
“Oh, well then that makes up for telling my boyfriend that he didn’t deserve me and I was probably going to break up with him,” I shot back, standing up from the couch. “I can’t believe you’ve been blaming me for his death this whole time, when you were so selfish that you told him that!”
The comment seemed to awaken the side of Kris that I had encountered at the counselling centre, as he shot up from the couch, the fatigue and weariness that had been sinking into his face seem to melt away as his eyes lit up with an anger that made me feel as if I were only a foot tall. “I play on a team where I am unnoticed,” he began, the softness of his voice gone. “It doesn’t matter how well I play, or how hard I work, the cameras will always been on Sid, or Staal, or Geno. I live by myself, in a house too big for one person, where all of my friends can’t visit because they live in Quebec, or they’re in school. The only person who was still around was Evan, and he didn’t even have time to talk to me anymore. You girls,” he stopped, letting out a humourless laugh before continuing, “you girls always complain when a friend has a boyfriend that she picks over you. Men feel the same way. I have nothing, Katy. I only had one true friend, and he didn’t care. He only cared about you.”
“Evan was a good person,” I reminded him, surprised when I heard the waver in my voice. “You were his best friend, too. You seem to just overlook that fact.”
Kris ran a hand through his hair, giving his head a soft shake. “No I wasn’t. You were his best friend. You were his everything, and I can understand that, because you’re beautiful, and you’re smart, and you were so good to him. But I hated you,” he confessed, no longer meeting my eyes. “I hated you because I was losing the only piece of home I had to you.”
I shook my head. “I can’t be here anymore,” I decided, turning and trying to make my way back towards the front door, pausing just as I was about to leave so I could glance back at him with a sigh. “It’s not your fault that he’s dead, Kris,” I said, seeming to catch him off guard, “but that doesn’t make any of this better.”
“Katy-” he began, taking a step forward but stopping when I shook my head at him. He obliged, watching with a mix of confusion and sadness as I left.
------------------------------
“You don’t seem surprised,” I commented as I looked over at Sara after re-telling the days events to her.
Sara gave a small shrug, “Well, I mean, I kind of figured something like that must have happened. Kris was always pretty hot or cold when it came to you. He was either all for you tagging along, or losing his mind that you were there.”
“I didn’t know guys got like that,” I admitted.
“Are you kidding? Katy, guys will whine to each other about some mutual friend is always bringing his girlfriend, or ditching their plans to be with their girlfriend. Kris is in the NHL and hardly saw Evan anyways, and Evan was always away on road trips with the AHL. They never saw each other, and when they were both back in town, Evan was with you. Of course Kris sort of hated you.” She paused, frowning a bit, “Or still hates you. Whatever.”
I groaned, sitting down next to her on the couch. “Things were starting to get better, you know? I felt like, maybe I could start to move forward again, start waking up without crying. Then Kris just has to waltz into my clinic and yell at me.”
“How selfish of him, trying to get help for his own emotional issues at the same place as you,” Sara scolded, earning an unimpressed glance from me. “Come on, Katy. You chose to stay in Pittsburgh, and you picked the best counselling centre out here. Where else was he supposed to go? Besides, he didn’t know you were going there, anyways.”
“Why can’t you ever let me be melodramatic?” I whined, fake pushing her.
“Because you can’t get better if you’re melodramatic,” she reminded me, smirking as I sighed. “You’re welcome.”
I leaned my head back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “I should be on TV.”
“You should. They could just take your life, as is, and get people to rein-act it. Prime time TV right there, girl!” She grinned at me, rubbing her face tiredly as she glanced back at the microwave clock. “I have to be up for class at six tomorrow, so, I bid you goodnight, miss Kaitlin.” I smiled, waving at her as she made her way to her room.
I was lost in my thoughts, the silence of the apartment encouraging the trance, when there was a knock at the door. I almost ignored it, part of me worried that Kris had driven over to try and talk again, but I forced myself off of the couch, walking over to the door and peering through the peephole, tugging the door open as soon as I saw that it was Travis.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, letting him into the apartment.
He grinned, wiping his feet off so he could keep his shoes on, a habit Evan had also had. “I wanted to see how everything with Letang went today. Did he make you cry?”
I almost laughed, leading him into the living room. “No. Well, I cried a little, but more so because we were talking about Evan,” I admitted, sitting down on the couch. “I don’t do that very often. It’s still too hard.”
Travis nodded, sitting at the other end of the couch. “Mom can’t handle it either. My dad, I don’t know how he survives. She can’t even handle hearing his name, and my dad just wants to talk about it all. I’m kind of the only person he has to talk to, and I’m not even sure that I can handle it.” He let out a big sigh, ruffling his hair a bit before shooting me a crooked smile. “But, he told you everything?”
“You already knew all of this?” I asked, genuinely surprised.
“Of course I did. Kris talks to me all the time, and the rest of the family. No matter what their friendship was towards the very end, he and Evan were buds for a long time. It got hard when Kris got called up into the NHL and Ev was still on the farm team, but they were best friends. I think talking to all of us is how he copes, you know?” He asked, letting out a long sigh before smiling again. “I’m glad you know, though. I think it explains a lot about why Kris was so hostile towards you for awhile, and why he and Kris were at odds off and on for the last couple of years.”
I grabbed a chunk of my hair, smoothing out the tangles in it. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know why he waited over a year after Evan’s death to tell me. I’d rather have known right off the bat, or at least within the first few months.”
Travis laughed, “Like you could have handled that. Your boyfriend had just been killed, the last thing you’d want to hear is everything he told you today.”
I frowned. “I don’t think that’s true at all. I think I would have had some peace and not blamed myself so much. Plus, he couldn’t have blamed me for the whole thing like he did up until two weeks ago.”
Travis looked utterly confused, scratching the back of his head. “How would him telling you he was in love with you make you more at peace?”
I felt the colour drain from my face, shaking my head and assuming that I had misheard him. “What?”
Travis opened his mouth, then seemed to realize his mistake and gasped, covering his mouth. “Oh my God, he didn’t tell you that.”
“He’s…what? But he’s been horrible to me for the last couple of years,” I almost yelled. “Ever since Evan and I-” I stopped, realization surfacing at the front of my brain.
“Ever since you and Evan started dating,” Travis finished, nodding his head. “I’m so sorry, Katy. He told me he was going to tell you all of this today, I thought you knew.”
I felt light-headed, falling back into the couch and sitting limply as the words ran through my head a few more times.
Travis cleared his throat. “Maybe I should go and let you absorb the bomb that I just dropped on you,” he said, getting up and walking over to pat my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Katy. I thought you knew.”
I couldn’t respond, the shock seeming to disable my ability to think. I watched Travis let himself out of the apartment, sitting there for who knows how long before I sat up and yelled “What the fuck!” and threw myself back onto the couch.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Confessions
I hardly spoke as the three of us sat around the table. Kris and Travis fell into conversation immediately, discussing the Penguins training camp starting soon, Travis’ upcoming graduation from University, and what they were planning to do for the rest of the week.
“I’m surprised you haven’t headed back to visit your folks yet, Katy,” Travis said, causing me to look up from my sandwich and blink at him, surprised to suddenly be a aprt of the conversation.
I could see Kris glance at me from the corner of my eye as he lifted up the last bit of his own sandwich and stuffed it into his mouth. I forced a small smile at Travis, my eyes falling back down to the hardly touched turkey sandwich in front of me. “I just didn’t feel like heading back, is all,” I lied.
Travis nodded, knowing not to push the subject of my parents, and turned back to Kris. “How’s counselling?”
The question peaked my interest more then I wanted to admit, and I found myself turning in my seat to face Kris as he thought up an answer, glancing nervously at me when he realized I was actually listening. He cleared his throat, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his chin as he began. “It’s been good. At first, it was hard. She made me talk about a lot of things that I was not ready to speak on, yet, but now I feel much better. I didn’t see how angry I was until just a few sessions ago,” he admitted, glancing quickly at me. “She thinks that I’m blaming myself too much.”
The last comment caught me completely off guard, and it was evident in my face judging by the way Travis sent me a semi-confused glance as soon as I reacted to it. It was a confusing thing to hear Kris say, especially after he had been so adamant in telling me that Evan’s death was my fault.
Kris took a long drink from the bottle of water he had ordered before setting it back onto the table and sending a tentative glance in my direction, inhaling deeply before he asked, “Do you still play piano, Kaitlin?”
Travis turned his attention to me also, seeming interested in the answer. He leaned his elbows against the table and waited for me to reply, exchanging a look with Kris that was so subtle and quick, I almost wondered if I had imagined it.
I scratched the side of my face for a moment before nodding, looking between the two of them before diverting my eyes to the surface of the table. “I actually teach piano now. I don’t play my own songs anymore, though. I guess I’ve just been lacking passion, lately.”
I saw Kris give a small nod from beside me, hearing him sigh to himself. “I’m glad you did not stop,” he said quietly. “Evan wouldn’t have liked that.”
Travis nodded as well, a hint of a grin forming on his face. “He loved listening to you play, Katy. He had a recording of one of your recitals and he’d fall asleep to it when the team was on the road. I don’t know if you knew that.”
I couldn’t find my voice for a second, torn between the outrage at Kris mentioning Evan to me, and the pain of Travis sharing that fact with me. I shook my head, clearing my throat. “I didn’t know that, actually.”
There was a pause, and I could see the two of them exchange another look before Travis reached across the table to place a hand on top of mine, catching me off guard. “Katy, I know you just finished counselling, and I’m glad that went so well for you, but if you want to talk about Evan, even just exchange stories, I’m always here.”
I nodded, unable to voice a response in that moment as my emotions were beginning to take over. Kris had turned himself so he was facing me once more, peeking my interest enough that I turned my face to look at him, aware of the fact that he was searching for something to say to me, or maybe the right way to bring something up. He studied my face for a moment, something I had found him doing a few times throughout the lunch, and finally frowned, pursing his lips together for a brief moment before speaking. “I think we should talk. You can hate me afterwards, still, but we should talk.”
I felt my eyebrows twitch a bit, looking over at Travis who was busy checking his phone before back up at Kris. “I don’t know if-”
“Please, Katy,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that happened that night that you are not aware of.”
The comment scared me, my mind immediately racing to conclusion on what Evan could have been doing that night that I was not informed of. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know, or if I should know. I wasn’t sure that I trusted Kris again, which was another problem.
“Please, Katy,” he repeated, the intensity in his eyes glowing into my own.
I found myself nodding in agreement without meaning too, telling him that I’d swing by his place the next afternoon.
---------------------------
The house that Kris lived in was alarmingly intimidating when you hadn’t’ been to in over a year. In fact, thinking back, it had probably been two years since I had actually been there.
It wasn’t a mansion by any means, but it was certainly too large for only one person. It had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen the size of Sara and I’s apartment, two living rooms and a basement that Kris had transformed into a home gym. Evan had probably spent more time in that house then he ever did at my apartment, and standing outside of it without him was intense enough that I debated running back to my car before Kris could even know I was there.
I must have stood outside of the door, trying to coax myself into knocking for at least five minutes. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath of air, trying to mentally prepare myself to sit down and talk to Kris. There was a part of me that was terrified, that truly believed that if no one we knew was around, the same angry man he had been at the counselling office would return. I tried to shake the fears out of my head, deciding that it was time to suck it up and knock.
“Katy?”
I cracked an eye open, slightly startled to find Kris standing at the now open door with a confused frown on his face. “Are you okay?”
I let out a nervous laugh. “Uhm, yeah. I just… I needed to-”
“You’re not sure that you should talk to me?” He guessed, nodding with a bit of a sad glow emitting from him when I admitted that he was right in his guess. “I think we just need to talk. That’s all.”
I twisted my mouth to the side, nodding curtly and stepping past him into the house. I heard Kris pull the door shut behind him, watching as he moved past me and into the kitchen, waiting for me to follow.
I stood at the edge of the kitchen, noting the changes in the house since the last time I had been there. The counters in the kitchen had been changed from a white oak into a granite, and there was a new fridge. There were a few pictures on the fridge, mainly of nieces and nephews he had, but other than that, the house was bare of decorations.
“Did you want a cup of tea, or coffee?” He asked, holding up a coffee pot.
I declined, still standing at the very edge of the kitchen, my arms crossed.
Kris’s shoulder seemed to sag a bit, but he nodded, pouring himself a cup, mixing in his cream and sugar and then leading me into the main living room. I took a seat on the love seat, a giant, dark red couch that I sunk into as I soon as I sat down, my body being absorbed by the comfort of the cushions. I nodded, running a hand down the arm rest beside me. “Nice couch.”
“Thank you. My mom bought it,” he admitted, smiling slightly as he took a seat across from me on the larger couch, lifting his feet up to rest on it.
I glanced beside me, taking in the room, my eyes landing on the picture frame resting on the table next to me. It was of Kris and Evan, the two of them in their Val-d'Or Foreurs
jersey’s, grinning into the camera with their goofy, 16 year old smiles, Kris holding his Emile Bouchard trophy proudly.
“It’s my favourite picture,” Kris said, causing me to turn my attention back to him. “I don’t know why, we both have bad hair there,” he joked, his crooked smile taking over his face, “but I love it.”
I glanced back at the picture, smiling at it as well. “You look happy, both of you.” I turned back to look at him once more. “That’s why you love it.”
Kris nodded, looking down at his cup. “The night that of the accident,” he began, his voice so soft I could hardly hear it, “Evan and I had a disagreement. I uhm…” he paused, glancing up at me quickly, but long enough that I caught sight of the tears glistening in his eyes. “I said some things that he didn’t deserve to hear. I told him-” he stopped, clearing his throat and struggling to keep his composure, “I told him that he was a bad friend, and that I was better off without having him as one, and then he left and, few hours later, I get that call and-”
He didn’t finish the sentence, his eyes being covered by his free hand as he his shoulder shook a few times, releasing the emotions that he had been struggling to keep hidden for who knows how long. I wasn’t sure what to do or how to react to this unexpected display of regret coming from Kris, and I watched helplessly as he took a couple of minutes to compose himself before he finally lifted his head back up at me, allowing me to see his now pink eyes and the red colouring in his cheeks. I almost wanted to walk over and hug him, try to heal some of the pain and guilt he had been harbouring for the last 15 months, but something in my mind told me to stay put.
Kris ran a hand through his shaggy hair, having to take in a big, shaky breath. “I tried to blame you, because we started fighting after you called and he wanted to go see you. I almost believed it, too. I mean, after a year of telling myself that it was all your fault, that Evan would have never died if he had left here, it just becomes easy to agree with, you know?” He asked, not actually expecting a reply. “I’ve been so angry, Katy. And I still am, but it’s not at you, It’s at me, and I’m so sorry, because I lost my best friend, but you lost your best friend, and your soul mate, and your joy, and I was just blaming you and I-”
“Kris, stop,” I said, cutting him off, my voice wavering a bit. “I understand. I was angry too, for a long, long time. I still am, I guess. There’s days where I hate everyone around me because they’re not him, and there’s days where I hate myself because I know that if I didn’t call him he wouldn’t have been in the car. I get that you were mad, and I was mad at you, too. But you can’t blame yourself.”
He wiped his nose, flipping his hair out of his face again. “The things I said, Katy,” he stopped, swallowing hard. “The things I said were so terrible.”
“You know that you were his best friend,” I said, trying to calm him.
He shook his head, “No, Katy, he hated me when he left. The things I said to him-”
“Kris, he could have never hated you. You knew him longer than I did, you were his best friend for years. He would never hate you.”
Kris only shook his head. “You don’t understand, Kaitlin. You don’t know what was said.”
I wasn’t beginning to grow frustrated, almost feeling guilty about it since I knew that he wasn’t intentionally bothering me. He was trying to smooth things over, trying to make some sort of peace between us, and I was sitting across from him, pissed off that he truly believed his best friend died hating him. I let out a loud sigh, almost a groan. “Then why don’t you tell me? Tell me what you said that was so horrible that Evan would have died hating you.”
He stared at me for a long time, seeming to debate the idea in his head. He placed his cup down on the table in front of him, resting his elbows on his knees and resting his chin on his hands. “There were a lot of words that I said,” he began, not meeting my eyes. “But the one that made him leave, that made him tell me I wasn’t a part of his life anymore,” he stopped, licking his lips and lifting his head up a bit to look at me, a mix of fear and guilt clouding over his eyes as he looked at me. “I told him that he didn’t deserve you. And I told him that it wouldn’t be long until you realized that for yourself.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t headed back to visit your folks yet, Katy,” Travis said, causing me to look up from my sandwich and blink at him, surprised to suddenly be a aprt of the conversation.
I could see Kris glance at me from the corner of my eye as he lifted up the last bit of his own sandwich and stuffed it into his mouth. I forced a small smile at Travis, my eyes falling back down to the hardly touched turkey sandwich in front of me. “I just didn’t feel like heading back, is all,” I lied.
Travis nodded, knowing not to push the subject of my parents, and turned back to Kris. “How’s counselling?”
The question peaked my interest more then I wanted to admit, and I found myself turning in my seat to face Kris as he thought up an answer, glancing nervously at me when he realized I was actually listening. He cleared his throat, rubbing a hand over the stubble on his chin as he began. “It’s been good. At first, it was hard. She made me talk about a lot of things that I was not ready to speak on, yet, but now I feel much better. I didn’t see how angry I was until just a few sessions ago,” he admitted, glancing quickly at me. “She thinks that I’m blaming myself too much.”
The last comment caught me completely off guard, and it was evident in my face judging by the way Travis sent me a semi-confused glance as soon as I reacted to it. It was a confusing thing to hear Kris say, especially after he had been so adamant in telling me that Evan’s death was my fault.
Kris took a long drink from the bottle of water he had ordered before setting it back onto the table and sending a tentative glance in my direction, inhaling deeply before he asked, “Do you still play piano, Kaitlin?”
Travis turned his attention to me also, seeming interested in the answer. He leaned his elbows against the table and waited for me to reply, exchanging a look with Kris that was so subtle and quick, I almost wondered if I had imagined it.
I scratched the side of my face for a moment before nodding, looking between the two of them before diverting my eyes to the surface of the table. “I actually teach piano now. I don’t play my own songs anymore, though. I guess I’ve just been lacking passion, lately.”
I saw Kris give a small nod from beside me, hearing him sigh to himself. “I’m glad you did not stop,” he said quietly. “Evan wouldn’t have liked that.”
Travis nodded as well, a hint of a grin forming on his face. “He loved listening to you play, Katy. He had a recording of one of your recitals and he’d fall asleep to it when the team was on the road. I don’t know if you knew that.”
I couldn’t find my voice for a second, torn between the outrage at Kris mentioning Evan to me, and the pain of Travis sharing that fact with me. I shook my head, clearing my throat. “I didn’t know that, actually.”
There was a pause, and I could see the two of them exchange another look before Travis reached across the table to place a hand on top of mine, catching me off guard. “Katy, I know you just finished counselling, and I’m glad that went so well for you, but if you want to talk about Evan, even just exchange stories, I’m always here.”
I nodded, unable to voice a response in that moment as my emotions were beginning to take over. Kris had turned himself so he was facing me once more, peeking my interest enough that I turned my face to look at him, aware of the fact that he was searching for something to say to me, or maybe the right way to bring something up. He studied my face for a moment, something I had found him doing a few times throughout the lunch, and finally frowned, pursing his lips together for a brief moment before speaking. “I think we should talk. You can hate me afterwards, still, but we should talk.”
I felt my eyebrows twitch a bit, looking over at Travis who was busy checking his phone before back up at Kris. “I don’t know if-”
“Please, Katy,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that happened that night that you are not aware of.”
The comment scared me, my mind immediately racing to conclusion on what Evan could have been doing that night that I was not informed of. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know, or if I should know. I wasn’t sure that I trusted Kris again, which was another problem.
“Please, Katy,” he repeated, the intensity in his eyes glowing into my own.
I found myself nodding in agreement without meaning too, telling him that I’d swing by his place the next afternoon.
---------------------------
The house that Kris lived in was alarmingly intimidating when you hadn’t’ been to in over a year. In fact, thinking back, it had probably been two years since I had actually been there.
It wasn’t a mansion by any means, but it was certainly too large for only one person. It had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen the size of Sara and I’s apartment, two living rooms and a basement that Kris had transformed into a home gym. Evan had probably spent more time in that house then he ever did at my apartment, and standing outside of it without him was intense enough that I debated running back to my car before Kris could even know I was there.
I must have stood outside of the door, trying to coax myself into knocking for at least five minutes. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath of air, trying to mentally prepare myself to sit down and talk to Kris. There was a part of me that was terrified, that truly believed that if no one we knew was around, the same angry man he had been at the counselling office would return. I tried to shake the fears out of my head, deciding that it was time to suck it up and knock.
“Katy?”
I cracked an eye open, slightly startled to find Kris standing at the now open door with a confused frown on his face. “Are you okay?”
I let out a nervous laugh. “Uhm, yeah. I just… I needed to-”
“You’re not sure that you should talk to me?” He guessed, nodding with a bit of a sad glow emitting from him when I admitted that he was right in his guess. “I think we just need to talk. That’s all.”
I twisted my mouth to the side, nodding curtly and stepping past him into the house. I heard Kris pull the door shut behind him, watching as he moved past me and into the kitchen, waiting for me to follow.
I stood at the edge of the kitchen, noting the changes in the house since the last time I had been there. The counters in the kitchen had been changed from a white oak into a granite, and there was a new fridge. There were a few pictures on the fridge, mainly of nieces and nephews he had, but other than that, the house was bare of decorations.
“Did you want a cup of tea, or coffee?” He asked, holding up a coffee pot.
I declined, still standing at the very edge of the kitchen, my arms crossed.
Kris’s shoulder seemed to sag a bit, but he nodded, pouring himself a cup, mixing in his cream and sugar and then leading me into the main living room. I took a seat on the love seat, a giant, dark red couch that I sunk into as I soon as I sat down, my body being absorbed by the comfort of the cushions. I nodded, running a hand down the arm rest beside me. “Nice couch.”
“Thank you. My mom bought it,” he admitted, smiling slightly as he took a seat across from me on the larger couch, lifting his feet up to rest on it.
I glanced beside me, taking in the room, my eyes landing on the picture frame resting on the table next to me. It was of Kris and Evan, the two of them in their Val-d'Or Foreurs
jersey’s, grinning into the camera with their goofy, 16 year old smiles, Kris holding his Emile Bouchard trophy proudly.
“It’s my favourite picture,” Kris said, causing me to turn my attention back to him. “I don’t know why, we both have bad hair there,” he joked, his crooked smile taking over his face, “but I love it.”
I glanced back at the picture, smiling at it as well. “You look happy, both of you.” I turned back to look at him once more. “That’s why you love it.”
Kris nodded, looking down at his cup. “The night that of the accident,” he began, his voice so soft I could hardly hear it, “Evan and I had a disagreement. I uhm…” he paused, glancing up at me quickly, but long enough that I caught sight of the tears glistening in his eyes. “I said some things that he didn’t deserve to hear. I told him-” he stopped, clearing his throat and struggling to keep his composure, “I told him that he was a bad friend, and that I was better off without having him as one, and then he left and, few hours later, I get that call and-”
He didn’t finish the sentence, his eyes being covered by his free hand as he his shoulder shook a few times, releasing the emotions that he had been struggling to keep hidden for who knows how long. I wasn’t sure what to do or how to react to this unexpected display of regret coming from Kris, and I watched helplessly as he took a couple of minutes to compose himself before he finally lifted his head back up at me, allowing me to see his now pink eyes and the red colouring in his cheeks. I almost wanted to walk over and hug him, try to heal some of the pain and guilt he had been harbouring for the last 15 months, but something in my mind told me to stay put.
Kris ran a hand through his shaggy hair, having to take in a big, shaky breath. “I tried to blame you, because we started fighting after you called and he wanted to go see you. I almost believed it, too. I mean, after a year of telling myself that it was all your fault, that Evan would have never died if he had left here, it just becomes easy to agree with, you know?” He asked, not actually expecting a reply. “I’ve been so angry, Katy. And I still am, but it’s not at you, It’s at me, and I’m so sorry, because I lost my best friend, but you lost your best friend, and your soul mate, and your joy, and I was just blaming you and I-”
“Kris, stop,” I said, cutting him off, my voice wavering a bit. “I understand. I was angry too, for a long, long time. I still am, I guess. There’s days where I hate everyone around me because they’re not him, and there’s days where I hate myself because I know that if I didn’t call him he wouldn’t have been in the car. I get that you were mad, and I was mad at you, too. But you can’t blame yourself.”
He wiped his nose, flipping his hair out of his face again. “The things I said, Katy,” he stopped, swallowing hard. “The things I said were so terrible.”
“You know that you were his best friend,” I said, trying to calm him.
He shook his head, “No, Katy, he hated me when he left. The things I said to him-”
“Kris, he could have never hated you. You knew him longer than I did, you were his best friend for years. He would never hate you.”
Kris only shook his head. “You don’t understand, Kaitlin. You don’t know what was said.”
I wasn’t beginning to grow frustrated, almost feeling guilty about it since I knew that he wasn’t intentionally bothering me. He was trying to smooth things over, trying to make some sort of peace between us, and I was sitting across from him, pissed off that he truly believed his best friend died hating him. I let out a loud sigh, almost a groan. “Then why don’t you tell me? Tell me what you said that was so horrible that Evan would have died hating you.”
He stared at me for a long time, seeming to debate the idea in his head. He placed his cup down on the table in front of him, resting his elbows on his knees and resting his chin on his hands. “There were a lot of words that I said,” he began, not meeting my eyes. “But the one that made him leave, that made him tell me I wasn’t a part of his life anymore,” he stopped, licking his lips and lifting his head up a bit to look at me, a mix of fear and guilt clouding over his eyes as he looked at me. “I told him that he didn’t deserve you. And I told him that it wouldn’t be long until you realized that for yourself.”
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Familiarity
I groaned, my forehead resting against the kitchen table, my bare feet pressed against the linoleum floor as my one hand held a loose grip on the coffee cup resting on the table. “I barely even drank, why does my head hurt so much?” I moaned.
Sara let out a laugh from somewhere in front of me. “Well, let’s think about this one, Katy. You hadn’t touched alcohol in over a year, you barely ate anything yesterday and you downed your first drink within two minutes of getting it. That might be why your head is unimpressed with you.”
I sighed, lifting my head off of the table. “I did have fun, at least.”
“I’m glad,” she said, taking a bite of her bagel. “I’m not gonna lie, when I saw Kris and the guys there, I was worried he’d head over and make a scene.”
I took a sip of my coffee, shrugging my shoulders. “I’m still surprised he didn’t. Maybe him being in counselling is actually a good thing.” I joked, taking another sip of coffee.
Sara stood up from the table, carrying the last piece of bagel in her hand. “Maybe. Anyways, I better head off to work. You know, so I don’t lose my job.”
I nodded, saying bye to her before sighing, rubbing my forehead as I stood up and headed over to grab some Advil in an attempt to dull down this massive headache. My goal for the day was to find a real job. Although teaching piano did pay an absurd amount, I only taught twice a week, leaving far too much free time in the rest of the week. It had been Dr. Bailey who made the suggestion of setting at least one goal for myself each day. It had been hard at first, trying to find something to focus my mind on other than Evan’s death, but now it seemed as if I couldn’t make it through a day without picking something to do.
I tried my best to ignore the headache as I changed into some clothes, puling my wavy hair up into a ponytail before I put a bit of make-up on and headed over to print off my resumes. Glancing down at the copies once they were made, I was surprised to see that I hadn’t worked in a legitimate job in almost a year. My boss had made the suggestion of me taking some time off as soon as he heard the news about Evan. I was determined to come back to the job, but after three mental breakdowns, my parents suggested leaving the job and throwing myself into counselling. I knew that any interviewer would understand if I explained the situation, but I still felt as if I had spent the last year doing absolutely nothing. I sighed, setting the papers down so I slip my feet into a pair of flats, glancing out the window and wondering if it too hot to be wearing jeans in this late August heat before deciding that I didn’t care enough either way to go change, grabbing my keys and the resumes off of the table before I snatched my purse from where it hung on the back of the door, and headed out.
---------------------
My headache was still there, although not nearly as strong, when I was done handing out resumes. The rumbling of hunger in my stomach was probably not helping my desire to fight off the dull ache behind my eyes, so I pulled into the parking lot of a small sandwich shop and hopped out to eat something.
I caught a glimpse of my reflection as I pulled open the big glass door and frowned, seeing how many wisps of hair had escaped from my ponytail and were now floating around my face, dancing in the light breeze that was flowing through Pittsburgh. I tried to smooth down as many strands as I could before finally stepping into the small shop, inhaling the scent of freshly baked bread and sighing.
“Smells good, huh?”
I jumped, looking around for a moment before my eyes fell upon Travis, causing a mix of excitement and sadness to wash over me as I took in his face, seeing how he looked so different, but still so much like I had remembered. He was sitting alone, prompting me to take the few steps towards his table and sit down across from him, smiling softly. “It does. I haven’t been in here for so long,” I admitted, my eyes moving past him and up to the menu board, staying there for a moment before I looked back at Travis.
He looked so much like Evan, a similarity I hadn’t noticed when I was around him more often. He had the same green eyes, with the flecks of gold in them that had driven me so crazy when I stared into them. His hair was a lighter shade of brown, but it had the same tousled effect that Evan’s had, the shaggy curls framing his face in such a familiar way.
“I come here once a week,” He said, shaking me from my thoughts. “I don’t really know why. I just woke up one morning, probably a month after the accident, and ended up here. I don’t remember leaving the house or anything. I just sort of woke up from a trance and was sitting here, with that damn beef sandwich staring back at me.”
I laughed, only then noticing the sandwich.
Evan and Kris had started this tradition of eating the same roast beef sandwich before every game Kris played. When they were younger, Kris’ mom would make them one before their tournaments as kids. Evan eventually gave up hockey, but he and Kris stuck to the tradition eating the same sandwich before every game.
It was a disgusting sandwich, too. It was layered with so many slices of roast beef that you could barely fit the sandwich in your mouth. It was covered with melted mozzarella cheese, smothered in horseradish and gravy, so much that it dripped off of the sides. The whole thing was packed into two slices of toasted sour-dough bread, and served with a side of coleslaw that neither one of them either ate. Just the smell of the thing was enough to make me feel sick. If I ever came with the two of them to the shop, I had to sit on the other side of the table and breathe only through my mouth. It took months before I could even look at the thing without feeling sick. I had never managed to watch either one of them eat it. The sight of the goopy gravy and horseradish falling from the sandwich when the took a bite was just too much for me.
Looking down at it now, I didn’t feel any of that. It made me miss those days, if anything. The days when Evan would purposely leave gravy on his lips and kiss my cheek, no matter how hard I fought against him or told him I hated it. Kris and I got along back then, too. He would sit across from us and laugh while I tried to squirm out of Evan’s grip, licking his plate clean as he did so. It seems like it’s always the small things you end up missing when it’s all taken away.
“You come here alone?” I asked, hearing the sound of the bell above the door jingle, signalling another customer.
Travis’s eyes flickered from my face to the door, then back to me. “Not exactly.”
I didn’t even have to turn around, closing my eyes so I could let out another sigh before I opened them again. “He’s right behind me, isn’t he?”
Travis let out a small laugh, nodding his head.
I turned in my seat to face Kris, almost laughing at the shock on his face, so intense that it seemed to drain all the colour from his skin. “I’m leaving, don’t worry,” I said, standing up from the seat. “It was nice to see you, Travis.”
“Wait,” Kris said, stepping in front of me so that I was forced to stop. “You shouldn’t have to leave just because I am here.”
I eyed him for a moment before I gave my head a shake. “What is your game, Kris? One day you’re telling me that I’m ruining your life and everything is my fault, and then you’re apologizing to me, and now you want me to stay? What do you want?”
He didn’t respond for a second, chewing on his lip as he seemed to scan over my face. “I have a lot of issues, Katy. I have a lot to sort through, and that’s why my agent suggested counselling to me. I know that this is only a small step, but I’m trying.”
I was still studying his face, looking for the flashes of rage that had appeared before, waiting for the mask to fall and the bitter man he had become to show through. “What are you trying to do? I don’t understand.”
“I am trying to fix things. Everything,” he said. “I know that we weren’t best friends, but we were friends. And we’re both hurting from this loss. I just…” he paused, letting out a loud sigh as he reached up to take his hat off and scratch his head. “I can’t hate you anymore. I just can’t.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, that’s so sweet of you. You know what-”
“Katy,” Travis said, interrupting me and causing me to turn around and face him. “Give him a chance.”
I stared at Travis for a moment, caught between feeling infuriated that he would even say that, and feeling embarrassed that he had to suggest it at the same time. I turned back to Kris, looking up at him and noticing the sadness flashing in his eyes in such a way that it seemed to dull out the life in him. It sent a pang through me that caught me by surprise, the realization that he was trying to fix things, to get rid of the emotions that had clearly haunted the inside of his mind since Evan’s passing.
“I’ll buy,” Kris said quietly, a tiny smile tugging up at one corner of his mouth. “You want your usual?”
It was clear that I had no real say in this situation, and with a slight hesitation I nodded, returning to my seat and ignoring the triumphant smirk on Travis’s face.
Sara let out a laugh from somewhere in front of me. “Well, let’s think about this one, Katy. You hadn’t touched alcohol in over a year, you barely ate anything yesterday and you downed your first drink within two minutes of getting it. That might be why your head is unimpressed with you.”
I sighed, lifting my head off of the table. “I did have fun, at least.”
“I’m glad,” she said, taking a bite of her bagel. “I’m not gonna lie, when I saw Kris and the guys there, I was worried he’d head over and make a scene.”
I took a sip of my coffee, shrugging my shoulders. “I’m still surprised he didn’t. Maybe him being in counselling is actually a good thing.” I joked, taking another sip of coffee.
Sara stood up from the table, carrying the last piece of bagel in her hand. “Maybe. Anyways, I better head off to work. You know, so I don’t lose my job.”
I nodded, saying bye to her before sighing, rubbing my forehead as I stood up and headed over to grab some Advil in an attempt to dull down this massive headache. My goal for the day was to find a real job. Although teaching piano did pay an absurd amount, I only taught twice a week, leaving far too much free time in the rest of the week. It had been Dr. Bailey who made the suggestion of setting at least one goal for myself each day. It had been hard at first, trying to find something to focus my mind on other than Evan’s death, but now it seemed as if I couldn’t make it through a day without picking something to do.
I tried my best to ignore the headache as I changed into some clothes, puling my wavy hair up into a ponytail before I put a bit of make-up on and headed over to print off my resumes. Glancing down at the copies once they were made, I was surprised to see that I hadn’t worked in a legitimate job in almost a year. My boss had made the suggestion of me taking some time off as soon as he heard the news about Evan. I was determined to come back to the job, but after three mental breakdowns, my parents suggested leaving the job and throwing myself into counselling. I knew that any interviewer would understand if I explained the situation, but I still felt as if I had spent the last year doing absolutely nothing. I sighed, setting the papers down so I slip my feet into a pair of flats, glancing out the window and wondering if it too hot to be wearing jeans in this late August heat before deciding that I didn’t care enough either way to go change, grabbing my keys and the resumes off of the table before I snatched my purse from where it hung on the back of the door, and headed out.
---------------------
My headache was still there, although not nearly as strong, when I was done handing out resumes. The rumbling of hunger in my stomach was probably not helping my desire to fight off the dull ache behind my eyes, so I pulled into the parking lot of a small sandwich shop and hopped out to eat something.
I caught a glimpse of my reflection as I pulled open the big glass door and frowned, seeing how many wisps of hair had escaped from my ponytail and were now floating around my face, dancing in the light breeze that was flowing through Pittsburgh. I tried to smooth down as many strands as I could before finally stepping into the small shop, inhaling the scent of freshly baked bread and sighing.
“Smells good, huh?”
I jumped, looking around for a moment before my eyes fell upon Travis, causing a mix of excitement and sadness to wash over me as I took in his face, seeing how he looked so different, but still so much like I had remembered. He was sitting alone, prompting me to take the few steps towards his table and sit down across from him, smiling softly. “It does. I haven’t been in here for so long,” I admitted, my eyes moving past him and up to the menu board, staying there for a moment before I looked back at Travis.
He looked so much like Evan, a similarity I hadn’t noticed when I was around him more often. He had the same green eyes, with the flecks of gold in them that had driven me so crazy when I stared into them. His hair was a lighter shade of brown, but it had the same tousled effect that Evan’s had, the shaggy curls framing his face in such a familiar way.
“I come here once a week,” He said, shaking me from my thoughts. “I don’t really know why. I just woke up one morning, probably a month after the accident, and ended up here. I don’t remember leaving the house or anything. I just sort of woke up from a trance and was sitting here, with that damn beef sandwich staring back at me.”
I laughed, only then noticing the sandwich.
Evan and Kris had started this tradition of eating the same roast beef sandwich before every game Kris played. When they were younger, Kris’ mom would make them one before their tournaments as kids. Evan eventually gave up hockey, but he and Kris stuck to the tradition eating the same sandwich before every game.
It was a disgusting sandwich, too. It was layered with so many slices of roast beef that you could barely fit the sandwich in your mouth. It was covered with melted mozzarella cheese, smothered in horseradish and gravy, so much that it dripped off of the sides. The whole thing was packed into two slices of toasted sour-dough bread, and served with a side of coleslaw that neither one of them either ate. Just the smell of the thing was enough to make me feel sick. If I ever came with the two of them to the shop, I had to sit on the other side of the table and breathe only through my mouth. It took months before I could even look at the thing without feeling sick. I had never managed to watch either one of them eat it. The sight of the goopy gravy and horseradish falling from the sandwich when the took a bite was just too much for me.
Looking down at it now, I didn’t feel any of that. It made me miss those days, if anything. The days when Evan would purposely leave gravy on his lips and kiss my cheek, no matter how hard I fought against him or told him I hated it. Kris and I got along back then, too. He would sit across from us and laugh while I tried to squirm out of Evan’s grip, licking his plate clean as he did so. It seems like it’s always the small things you end up missing when it’s all taken away.
“You come here alone?” I asked, hearing the sound of the bell above the door jingle, signalling another customer.
Travis’s eyes flickered from my face to the door, then back to me. “Not exactly.”
I didn’t even have to turn around, closing my eyes so I could let out another sigh before I opened them again. “He’s right behind me, isn’t he?”
Travis let out a small laugh, nodding his head.
I turned in my seat to face Kris, almost laughing at the shock on his face, so intense that it seemed to drain all the colour from his skin. “I’m leaving, don’t worry,” I said, standing up from the seat. “It was nice to see you, Travis.”
“Wait,” Kris said, stepping in front of me so that I was forced to stop. “You shouldn’t have to leave just because I am here.”
I eyed him for a moment before I gave my head a shake. “What is your game, Kris? One day you’re telling me that I’m ruining your life and everything is my fault, and then you’re apologizing to me, and now you want me to stay? What do you want?”
He didn’t respond for a second, chewing on his lip as he seemed to scan over my face. “I have a lot of issues, Katy. I have a lot to sort through, and that’s why my agent suggested counselling to me. I know that this is only a small step, but I’m trying.”
I was still studying his face, looking for the flashes of rage that had appeared before, waiting for the mask to fall and the bitter man he had become to show through. “What are you trying to do? I don’t understand.”
“I am trying to fix things. Everything,” he said. “I know that we weren’t best friends, but we were friends. And we’re both hurting from this loss. I just…” he paused, letting out a loud sigh as he reached up to take his hat off and scratch his head. “I can’t hate you anymore. I just can’t.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, that’s so sweet of you. You know what-”
“Katy,” Travis said, interrupting me and causing me to turn around and face him. “Give him a chance.”
I stared at Travis for a moment, caught between feeling infuriated that he would even say that, and feeling embarrassed that he had to suggest it at the same time. I turned back to Kris, looking up at him and noticing the sadness flashing in his eyes in such a way that it seemed to dull out the life in him. It sent a pang through me that caught me by surprise, the realization that he was trying to fix things, to get rid of the emotions that had clearly haunted the inside of his mind since Evan’s passing.
“I’ll buy,” Kris said quietly, a tiny smile tugging up at one corner of his mouth. “You want your usual?”
It was clear that I had no real say in this situation, and with a slight hesitation I nodded, returning to my seat and ignoring the triumphant smirk on Travis’s face.
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