Breakaway: A Hockey Romance

by Christiana Watson

  My muscles were tense, and I could feel the beginnings of a massive headache building behind my eyes as I stepped into the shower. Hot water poured over my body, but it couldn’t quite wash away the guilt that seemed to have fused with my skin. I couldn’t believe how quickly I’d lost control of my emotions the night before, both with the unnamed man and Sean Tremblay.

  It was easy to assign the blame to Tremblay when I was reeling from the pain of a broken nose. The thumping music of the bar scrambled my brain, and I’d been so damn angry. In the haze of the bar, punching him felt like the right thing to do. In the quiet of the next day, I knew the anger—and assault—was misplaced.

  The foot that tripped me was far too small to belong to the hulking assistant captain. Most likely, it was the brunette that was hanging around him all night that tripped me, the same one that I blearily saw slinking away from the scene before I decked the hockey player. In the hazy bar, with the music thumping in the background and my shirt sticking to my skin from the cold beer that’d been dumped on me, it was so much easier to blame the tall man.

  A sob wracked my body, and I collapsed against the wall of my shower, quivering arms gripping the cold tiles for balance. Blood swirled around the drain of the bathtub as I fought to catch my breath, and I was momentarily taken back to another time in my life where I felt equally as anxious, angry, and confused as I did in that particular moment.

  “Young men will treat you the way you deserve to be treated, Charlotte,” Enid said as she paced the length of my room before making an abrupt about-face and marching in the opposite direction. “If you present yourself as a slut,” she continued as she indicated to my outfit, “you should expect to be treated like a slut.”

  The heat of a flush blossoming across my chest and moving up my neck burned hotly as I stared at a spot on the wall above my door. I wore a pair of shorts that stopped at mid-thigh and a thin, airy racerback tank top. My choice of clothing was racy compared to what I normally might wear, but it wasn’t nearly as indecent as some of the things that my friends left their homes in. My jaw was clenched tightly, so I wouldn’t say something to Enid that would get me grounded for the remainder of my senior year.

  “Now, Charlotte, remind me again why you’re dressed like a common whore.”

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes, knowing that I would never make it out of the house if Enid detected a single ounce of contempt or rebellion in my behavior. In an attempt to calm down, I exhaled slowly before saying, “It’s the last concert of the summer music festival. Halie and I wanted to go to see one of the bands because we know them from school. I’m only wearing these shorts because it’s still so hot outside.”

  “Yes, we must talk about the shorts. I don’t recall purchasing them for you.”

  The coppery taste of blood exploded across my tastebuds as I bit hard into my cheek. I sat on my hands, a nervous habit I’d developed as a kid due to the number of times Enid rapped my fingers with a wooden spoon. I knew crescent-shaped impressions would be found on the skin of my thighs when I stood.

  “I got them last week at the mall when I went to Dayton with Halie and her mom for school shopping.”

  “And Mrs. Easton allowed you to purchase them?”

  My eyes shifted downward, and I stared at the worn, cream-colored carpet.“Yes, ma’am.”

  “Mrs. Easton didn’t think it appropriate to tell you that a girl as large as you shouldn’t wear shorts at all; let alone a pair as short as those?”

  A hard lump formed in my throat that made it difficult to swallow. Tears formed behind my eyes, and I fought to keep the quiver from my voice as I said, “No, ma’am.”

  In fact, Mrs. Easton encouraged me to purchase the shorts after I tried them on. I’d already decided that my thighs looked huge in them and was turning to hand them to the changing room attendant when Mrs. Easton stilled my hand and asked, “What’s wrong with those shorts, kiddo?”

  A blush crept across my cheeks, and I found myself staring at my feet demurely. “I didn’t like the way they looked.”

  “Why? I thought they looked really good on you. They’re very flattering to your form.”

  My voice barely rose above a whisper when I said, “I’m too fat for stuff like that.”

  The gentle feeling of her fingers lifting my chin to make eye contact with me surprised me. The compassion reflecting in her eyes surprised me even more. “Charlotte, I don’t know who’s been beating you down, but you have to know that you’re absolutely gorgeous. You’re tall and curvy, and I promise you that there are girls that wish they looked like you. Don’t you dare let people that don’t love you tell you how you should feel about yourself.”

  “T-thank you,” I stuttered as she pressed the shorts into my hands and turned me away from the changing room attendant.

  “The woman is clearly an imbecile,” Enid said, pulling me from the memory of a gentler woman. “Anyone that cares about you wouldn’t allow you to purchase something that would make you look that ridiculous.”

  My fingernails dug deeper into the skin of my thighs. I fought the continued urge to roll my eyes but couldn’t stop myself from spitting, “I don’t look ridiculous!”

  Silence filled the space between us as Enid stopped dead in her tracks. Her ancient, sagging frame turned toward me, and her glasses flashed in the late afternoon sunlight streaming through my window. “Excuse me?” She snapped.

  I bit my lip. The anger boiling behind the surface of her rheumy blue eyes was off-putting, but the moment she asked where the shorts came from was the moment I was no longer allowed to leave the house for the evening, so what the hell? She’d always been restrictive, what was another seven months of being stuck in the house with her? It had already been eleven years, I was sure I could handle a little more of her scorn.

  “I said that I don’t look ridiculous! I know you seem to think I’m fat and ugly and worthless, but you’re dead wrong, Enid!”

  A sneer stretched across her face, momentarily transforming her sagging and wrinkled skin into a taut expanse across her cheeks. “I don’t know who has been filling your head with garbage, but they have certainly done you a disservice. Men do not want fat women.”

  “I. Am. Not. Fat!”

  “Men also aren’t interested in women that can’t keep their opinions to themselves and their mouths shut when they ought to.”

  “So is that why you were never married? Because God knows you are full of opinions and never know when to shut the hell up!”

  The sting of the slap she laid out across my cheek lasted well into the evening, but I found it hard to regret my words to her. Enid’s punishment sounded almost like a victory to my ears.

  “You are not to leave the house unless you are going to school. You may not participate in any extra-curricular activities. You are to stay in your room unless it is a meal period or you are doing your chores. You are to work full time on your college preparations, as you will be expected to leave this house as soon as you have finished this school year.

  “I would send you on your way now if not for the arrangement I made with your grandparents when I agreed to allow you to stay with me all those years ago. I expect to see your ungrateful face as little as possible.”

  Judging by the sour look on Enid’s face, the venom in my voice was not lost upon her ears when I said, “Oh, you really know how to hurt me, don’t know? I don’t have to spend time with you, and I get to leave this house as soon as I graduate? Woe is me.”

  She huffed as she turned to leave my room. “One day you’ll appreciate all I’ve done for you, Charlotte.”

  “Fat chance!” I yelled after her as the door to my room slammed shut. My fingers drifted to my sore cheek, and a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth.

  Chapter 3

  — C —

  My afternoon with Nate was calming. We walked leisurely through the downtown market, chatting amicably about everything from my injury to his latest hook up with a tourist that was in
and out of his bar, his bed, and his city within the matter of a few short days. Conversation flowed easily, and it was only with a little pushing that I convinced Nate to take me to grab drinks at a rooftop bar downtown.

  We were just stepping off of the elevator when my phone began to ring. An easy smile spread across my face as Lindsey’s face popped up on my display. “‘Lo?” I asked lazily.

  Her voice was soft when she spoke. “Hey, sorry. Did I wake you up?”

  Nate led me across the rooftop bar and toward a table under one of the lamp style patio heaters. The temperature was in the mid-fifties, and I almost suggested to him that we move to a table near the edge of the building, one with a better view of the sun setting over the ocean. Knowing that he would complain of the cold stilled the suggestion on my lips.

  I was struggling to slip into the seat at the high top table when I slowly responded. “No, I’m out with Nate right now. We’re grabbing a drink on the rooftop at Vendue before heading home.”

  Her screech was nearly earsplitting in volume. I jerked the phone away from my ear but could still hear her shouts. I was fairly certain that people three stories below on the street could hear her shouts. “He has you out of bed?” She yelled, and I found myself bobbing my head and rolling my eyes even though she couldn’t see me. “Oh my God, and he’s letting you drink while you’re on pain meds? Let me talk to that motherfucker now!” Nate’s eyebrows quirked in question. I covered the microphone as Lindsey continued to shriek. “Lindsey is astutely concerned for my well-being and would very much like the opportunity to yell at you over your care of me.”

  Eyebrows knitted together and a cross look darkened his face. He held his hand out, palm up. “No,” I laughed at the frown that replaced his scowl when I wouldn’t hand my phone over. “Will you please just go get me a Maker’s sour?”

  The scowl deepened over his face, and there was a brief moment that I thought he might argue with me. He heaved a deep sigh and shook his head before trudging his way toward the bar on the opposite side of the roof. I gazed over the heads of the teeming crowd and stared at the ocean reflecting the sunset in the distance, shimmering and sparkling as the currents undulated beneath the surface of the blue-gray water.

  Ignoring Lindsey’s chatter was easy as I sank into the memory of the hands that gripped my hips tightly the last time I was at this particular bar. I stood at the lip of the building with Mason’s body pressed tightly against my back. Goosebumps erupted over my skin at the memory of his lips pressed against the skin below my ear as he whispered future plans into my hopeful ears.

  A little over a year had passed since our breakup, but time didn’t lessen the sting of the memories. He was the one man in my life that tried to teach me to be confident in my body and truly love myself. He told me that the way he made love to my body should have been proof enough of how desirable he found the expanse of my curves, the softness of my body. Call it the naivety of being in college and in love for the first time, but I truly thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with the man.

  Heat boiled in my bloodstream at the memory of our last conversation rushing through my mind. He’d come to my dorm room and told me that I hadn’t worked on myself hard enough—that I wasn’t confident enough despite his constant urging for me to be so. He insisted that he loved me and that he was sorry for his actions before telling me that he’d been seeing another girl for a while. I asked what she looked like, and his silence answered the question clearly: size two with a nice rack. I’d gripped my desk, desperately trying to keep from slipping to the floor, and watched as he waltzed from my life without further ado.

  The slight tug of my phone being pulled from my hand snapped me back to reality. I was acutely aware of Nate standing before me with a peevish look on his face. My phone was tucked to his ear almost as tightly as his arms were tucked across his chest.

  “Cool your tits, hag,” he said. In my mind, I could see Lindsey’s face screw up in anger, and I could definitely hear the huff that escaped her lips. “She’s fine. She’s only had ibuprofen today, you insufferable twat. We’re here for one drink, and then we’re headed home.”

  The bourbon in my cocktail burned down my throat as I regarded Nate over the rim of my glass. A simple shake of my head indicated that we would not, in fact, be headed home after just one drink. I didn’t care how my face looked or how much pain I was in; I deserved to drink after all of the shit I’d been through in the past eighteen hours. If he truly wanted me home after just one drink, he’d have to drag my ass there.

  “No, I absolutely will not give the phone back to her,” he said as I finished my drink and reached for his. The taste of gin on my tongue made me wince, but it didn’t stop me drinking the Tom Collins. Getting drunk and washing away the feeling of shame sitting in my belly was my number one objective for the evening, and I didn’t tend to fail when I set my mind to a task.

  “Listen, she’ll call you later,” Nate said simply, surely cutting Lindsey off mid-rant. He hung up the phone and powered it down before sliding it across the table to me.

  “I think the two of you secretly get off from being assholes to each other,” I surmised while allowing him to pull his half-finished cocktail from my grasp.

  He scowled before taking a long pull from the monstrous gin and lemon drink. He slammed the empty cocktail glass on the table. “Don’t be disgusting, Charlie. Even if I wasn’t gay, I would never try to nail Lindsey. You’re more my style: thick ass, gorgeous face, and not a raging bitch.”

  The gentle heat of two back to back cocktails seeped down my throat, and I was torn between the urge to scowl at Nate and to grin at him. He’d made similar comments to me over the course of our friendship, and I brushed them aside each time. I might have taken him more seriously if the memory of running into Mason and his teeny tiny fiancé six months after our graduation didn’t haunt me each time someone alluded to my “thick ass” and “pretty face.”

  “Okay, sure,” were the words that slipped past the thin line of my lips. I regarded my companion with suddenly tired eyes. He was tapping his fingers against the table and staring at me with an irritated glance. I blew him a kiss as I slid out of my chair and stretched my arms above my head.

  Fatigue was setting in, and I knew my plan of getting drunk enough to forget the past eighteen hours would fall by the wayside. Despite the weariness settling in over my body, I wanted to get one more drink down before leaving; it would push me over the edge to tipsy, and I would sleep like a baby.

  “C’mon, let’s head up to the bar and grab another round.”

  “You really should take it slow, girlie,” Nate said while wrapping an arm around my shoulders. I tried to shrug off the weight of his arm. When I failed to alleviate the weight from my shoulders, I glared up at him with the fiercest look I could muster.

  “I’ll take it slow when I’m dead,” I said as we approached the bar. He “tsked,” and his eyebrows snaked toward his hairline. “Seriously, don’t baby me. I know what my body can handle; and right now, it’s asking for two shots of Maker’s.”

  — D —

  The sky darkened over the rooftop bar I stood on, and I stared over the flickering lights of downtown Charleston. The city was breathtaking, and I regretted not visiting before my stint with the Valors. I’d heard of it from my ex-teammate Big D, but his dumbass could never describe the city it in all its glory.

  I thought having someone that played with the Valors before would be useful for helping me fit in. Mostly Big D just hated my current roommates and wanted to reminisce on the days before he had a kid. The sound of his daughter Marnie screaming in the background pulled my attention back to my phone conversation with my irritable friend. “Hey, man, is she okay?”

  I could practically hear him rolling his eyes. Big D played in the Charleston for a few years before joining the team in Peoria that I played on. He loved his daughter, but he never missed an opportunity to bash the woman he accused of single-handedly ruini
ng his life. I tried to explain to him that Marissa didn’t knock herself up, but I think he’d taken too many checks to the head to really understand.

  “Yeah, she’s good,” he grunted, and I could hear him shuffling on the other side of the line. “Marissa dropped her off a day early. I’m sure she’s out with some dude she just met. Fucking idiot couldn’t figure out why I was upset, but I’ve got practice tonight and now I’m trying to find a babysitter. Marnie doesn’t get it—thinks I don’t want to spend time with her.”

  I hummed in reply as I focused on the crowd around me. It was a warm night, somewhere around 50 degrees, and the roof of the bar was crowded. Many of the bar goers were wrapped in jackets and scarves, and I rolled my eyes at the southerners. I flexed my arms in my heather gray t-shirt and winked at the two nearby women that’d been not-so-subtly checking me out. They started to giggle, and I turned my attention back to the rest of the crowd. Big D ranted on, apparently not caring that I wasn’t responding to his current tirade about his baby momma.

  A flash of honey blonde hair caught my attention as a couple passed near me on their way to the bar. My eyes tracked their movement as I overheard the man telling her to take it easy. I glanced at her ass as a warm and familiar voice floated toward my ears over the low hum of the crowd. “Seriously, don’t baby me. I know what my body can handle.”

  “Hey man, I gotta go,” I said hastily before ending the call and sliding the phone into my pocket. What were the odds that Sexy Librarian would be at the same downtown bar as me?

  I started forward as the man she was standing with glanced over his shoulder at me. He tracked my movements before leaning down to whisper something to the woman her. My stomach clenched when I considered whether or not he was the same asshole that stood her up the night before at Big Game. If he’d shown up then, Sexy Librarian definitely wouldn’t have been hurt. I was going to snap his fucking neck.