Page 66 of The Attack Zone
He pauses to listen to whoever called and I look down at my phone. I have missed calls from both Cassie and Hazel, and a text from Caleb. What is going on?
“Shit. Shit. Shit.” He pauses. “Okay, bye.” My eyes fly back up to him to see him standing up and putting his jacketon. “I’m so sorry,” he says to me. “That was Thomas. I have to go home.”
He pulls out his wallet and throws two hundred-dollar bills on the table. As he does, I click the Instagram link in Caleb’s text. It’s a post from a local anonymous gossip blog. The photo shows Mitch walking out of a pharmacy with a pill bottle in one hand and the packaging for it in the other. I swipe to reveal the next photo of him clearly swallowing one of the pills. When I swipe to see the third, my vision goes red almost immediately. It’s a close-up of the bottle, showing the prescription name and dosage, as well as Mitch’s name on the bottle. Then I scroll down to read the caption.
Mitchell Greggs is ... psychotic? These newly surfaced photos of him downing antipsychotics just moments after buying them tell us he isn’t just crazy on the ice, but off it, too. It’s still unclear who in the Blizzards organization knows about their very own psychopath, but we’ll keep digging until we know the truth. This guy does regularly spend time with kids and fans, after all. It’s basically our duty.
What. The. Fuck.
I want to reassure Mitch that this is all bullshit. To tell him that they have no idea what they’re talking about. To tell him that he’s perfect just the way he is. But when I look up from my phone, he’s gone.
CHAPTER 32
MITCH
Irun up to the entrance to my condo building to find Thomas and Caleb standing in the doorway. I full-on ran the three blocks from the restaurant, and all I want is to get inside so no one sees me. The last thing I need right now is another post about how I’m having a breakdown.
I shove my way between the two of them and walk towards the elevators.
“You can come up, but do it now,” I say.
They file in behind me and we ride the elevator in silence up to my floor. We walk down the hallway, neither of them saying a word until we’re safely inside my condo.
As soon as the door slams behind us, I find myself collapsing against the wall. It’s the same wall I fell against when I lost it with Stacey. The same one Thomas has had to peel me off of before. It’s where I always end up, because no matter how much I try, this is what I’ll always be. Just amentally ill loser with an inability to take care of himself. And now they know. Now everyone knows.
“Mitch,” Thomas starts.
“Not yet,” I say. My head hangs into my hands. How could this be happening to me? I’ve been so careful. I was trying to do the right thing. I wanted to be the kind of person Stacey would be proud to be with. And now I’m getting punished.
“Mitch,” Caleb chimes in with hesitation. “Where’s Stacey?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Thomas asks. “Please tell me you didn’t just leave her sitting at the restaurant, Mitch.”
“She’s a big girl,” I say. “She’ll be fine.”
“Mitch ...” Caleb warns.
“Can we focus on the larger problem here?” I ask, eager to not think about Stacey and the fact that I’m pretty sure she was about to break up with me. If you can even call it that. Besides, I have to deal with this PR nightmare.
“Fine,” Thomas says.
The relief of not having to talk about Stacey washes over me at the same time that dread over having to talk about my mental health publicly fills me up. I’ve kept it private for this exact reason; people don’t understand. And now I have to explain myself to the entire world. There’s no way the team and the league will let me not respond to this. And I can’t exactly have people assuming that what that post said was right or okay.
The problem is, deep down, I believe the post. I almost completely lost it just a week or so ago. How am I supposed to turn around and defend myself and my mental health when I hurt the woman I love? When I pushed her away to the point of her maybe wanting to end things? I don’t deserveher. And I don’t deserve to defend myself. They’re right. The post was right.
“Mitch,” Thomas says, snapping me out of my own brain.
I don’t reply. I just sit on the floor, my head still hanging in my hands. I can’t believe this is happening. My parents were right. I can’t have my dream of hockey and have bipolar. And I’ll sure as hell never have a normal relationship. I can’t even handle a fucking dog. I can feel it all being ripped out of my hands just when I was finally about to get it. I’m going to lose everything, I can just feel it. And all it took was me wanting to take my meds quickly so they’d be in my system as fast as possible. I was trying to do the right thing. I was trying to be the man that Stacey deserves. But I’ll never be that man. I’ll never be able to be who she needs.
I seem to jump from emotion to emotion from second to second—anger, confusion, shame ... But I can’t get myself to speak. Because talking about it means acknowledging that any of this is real, and I’m not ready to do that yet.
When I finally lift my head up from my hands, what I see is not what I expected. Thomas and Caleb aren’t standing over me, they aren’t sitting at my table or on the couch. They’re sitting on the floor, inches from where I’ve been in my own little world.
“I ...” I start, but I can’t seem to find words.
Caleb reaches out and places a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay,” he says. “Talk when you’re ready.”