The Hockey King I Hated

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO ME

"You're going to love this," I whispered to myself, shifting the paper bag in my arms as the elevator hummed upward. "Three years, and she still thinks I forget dates."

I smiled at my own reflection in the steel doors. The roses were red, not pink, because Mia hated pink roses. The chocolate was dark, not milk, because she thought milk chocolate was too sweet. 

The necklace sitting in the velvet box in my jacket pocket had her birthstone set in gold, not silver, because silver turned her skin green. Three years of paying attention to every small thing she ever mentioned, and tonight I was going to prove it to her, oh my sweet love I'm coming, I said to myself.

The elevator opened on the fourth floor and I stepped out, my sneakers squeaking softly against the hallway tiles. My heart was doing something embarrassing in my chest, beating fast the way it did before a big game. I had even rehearsed what to say. Not a speech, just a few honest words. Something like, "I know I'm always on the ice, but you're the reason I always come home."

I had practiced it in the car on the way over. 

The door to apartment 4B was slightly open. I stopped walking immediately..

Mia never left her door open. She was borderline obsessive about locking it. She had once made me drive back from two blocks away just to double check the deadbolt. I stood there for a second, tilting my head, listening. The building was quiet except for a low sound coming from inside the apartment. It was muffled, rhythmic.

Something cold moved through me.

I pushed the door open with my foot and stepped inside. The lights in the living room were dimmed low. Her perfume was in the air, the expensive one I had bought her for Christmas. Her heels were on the floor by the couch, tossed to the side. A man's jacket was draped over the armchair by the window, her panties over the board..

I recognized the jacket. The cold feeling spread from my chest to the back of my throat.

I set the bag of roses down on the counter without making a sound. I did not think about what I was doing. My legs just carried me forward, down the short hallway toward the bedroom, where the sound was coming from. I stopped outside the door. I pressed my hand flat against it. I pushed it open.

The two of them were in bed, furking each other skin deep..

Mia and Marcus.

My best friend Marcus, who I had known since we were sixteen. Marcus, who had slept on my couch for a month after his last breakup. Marcus, who was standing beside me in the photo on Mia's nightstand, all three of us at a game last winter, arms around each other, grinning.

They both froze when they saw me. Nobody said anything for a long moment.

I felt the necklace box pressing against my ribs through my jacket pocket. I became very aware of it suddenly, the small square shape of it, the weight of it, what it had cost me, not just in money but in the three weeks I had spent driving to different jewelers before I found exactly the right one.

"Liam." Mia sat up, pulling the sheet around her. Her voice was flat, not panicked, not guilty, just flat like I had walked in on something mildly inconvenient.

I looked at Marcus.

He let out a short laugh. An actual laugh. He covered it with his hand but I heard it, and more than that, I saw his shoulders shake with it.

"Marcus." My voice came out quieter than I expected. "How long?"

He shrugged, one shoulder. Like I had asked him something casual, like which restaurant he wanted to eat at.

I turned back to Mia. "How long has this been going on?"

She sighed and pushed her hair back from her face. "Liam, I have been unhappy for months. I tried to tell you but you were always at practice, always at games, always so focused on hockey that there was no room for anything else."

"I was working," I said. "I was working for us."

"There is no us," she said. "There has not been an us for a long time. You just did not notice because you never notice anything that is not on the ice."

Something in my chest cracked open, quiet and deep, like ice splitting under weight in the middle of the night.

"You're boring, Liam." She said it gently, which somehow made it worse than if she had screamed it. "You have always been boring. Nice, yes. Reliable, yes. But boring. And I needed something more than boring."

I looked at Marcus again. I do not know what I was expecting, an apology, maybe shame or something.

He was looking at the ceiling.

"You were never a real man anyway," he said, like he was just thinking out loud. "Real men fight for what they want. You just let everything happen to you."

"You were my best friend."

He looked at me then, and there was nothing in his face. No guilt, no sorrow, nothing. "Things change," he said.

I stood there another second. I thought about the necklace. I thought about the roses on the counter. I thought about what I had rehearsed in the car. I thought about three years of learning how she took her coffee and what movies made her cry and what her laugh sounded like when something actually surprised her.

I turned around and I walked out.

I picked up the bag of roses from the counter on my way through the living room without stopping, and I walked out into the hallway, and I let the apartment door swing shut behind me. In the elevator, I stared at the bag. The roses were still fresh. They smelled good. I dropped them in the trash can near the building exit without breaking stride.

Outside, the night air hit my face and I kept walking. My phone buzzed in my pocket. Marcus's name on the screen. I let it ring. It buzzed again. Two teammates, back to back. I did not pick up.

I sat down on a bench three blocks away and put my head in my hands. The velvet box was still in my jacket pocket. I pressed my palm against it and held it there and I stayed very still.

My phone lit up again and an unknown number this time. I almost ignored it. But something made me look.

If you're thinking about doing something stupid tonight, don't.

I read it twice, then a third time. I looked up at the empty street around me. The bench, the lamplight, the quiet. Nobody there.

My hands were not entirely steady when I typed back: Who is this?

Three dots appeared immediately, like whoever it was had been waiting.

Then nothing, the dots disappeared and the screen went dark..