Page 57 of Poetry On Ice
“No.”
He leans in and growls in my ear. The sound trickles down the side of my neck and raises a rash of goosebumps on my sides. “Say it.”
“Noooo!”
Fuck me sideways.The schoolgirl is back.
“Fine,” he says, leaning back innocently and giving me just enough space to leave me gulping for air. “Guess I’ll just have to make you scream it later.”
Silence and sounds converge. They spin in a circle and ring in my ears. I hear the words he just said over and over. Only, I don’t just hear them. I feel them.
I’m not sure I mean to do it. In fact, I’m pretty sure I don’t. Regardless, I find myself dropping my hand under the table all the same. I touch his knee first, running my hand down his thigh and holding on to his kneecap like it’s the rough edge of a cliff. Something to cling to. The last port between me and a big fall. I hold it forever. He watches my face as I do it. His expressionis peaceful. Passive. Serene. His legs are parted slightly and his hand still lies outstretched in his lap. A gift, an offering.
At last, I can’t hold on anymore. My grip loosens. My fingers slip. I accept my fate and let go.
I don’t fall though.
I can’t.
I can’t because he has me. He catches me without hesitation. His hand is in my hand. My hand is in his. His grip is firm and certain as he laces his fingers between mine. My grip isn’t certain. It’s tentative and loose.
Then it isn’t.
From there, things take on a dreamy quality. A lazy, hazy blur of chocolate and sweet things. Hot, runny things. Things that make us both laugh and turn inward for no reason.
A floodgate is opened.
We talk about everything and nothing. We talk about hockey and sofas. People we know and people we’ve never met. He talks about Bodie. How they met and became friends. He tells me Bodie has had a crush on his sister since they were kids.
“He has no idea I know,” he says. “It’s kind of hilarious because it’s the most obvious thing ever. You’d love it, Ant. You’d get a huge kick out of it. He makes a complete ass of himself every time he sees her.”
In fairness, it does sound like something I’d enjoy.
“You should come home with me for Christmas,” he says after we’ve jumped around from middle school embarrassments to college days back to Bodie’s crush on his Beth. “Bodie’s coming, and Beth will be there. They haven’t seen each other for a few years because she’s been traveling, and he’s been asking about her a lot. I’m willing to bet it will be a total cringe-fest.”
Like always, our schedule is packed, and with the way Christmas falls this year, we only have a few days off for the holidays. I wasn’t planning on going home. It’s a mission to get there for such a short time and we aren’t really big holiday people to begin with. I was planning on chilling at home like I did last year. And the year before that.
I catch myself thinking it would be kind of nice to see Bodie making an ass of himself.
It shocks me. It goes against every fiber of my being. Everything I stand for. Who I am as a person.
“Definitely not,” I say firmly. His mouth forms a small, tight line and he draws his chin down. I know that look. I recognize it instantly. I’ve seen it before. More than once. Every time I’ve seen it and tried to ignore it, things haven’t gone my way. It’s not that it strikes terror into my heart as such. It’s just that I’m a practicalguy. I know that sometimes in life, you have to choose your battles. The main thing is not to provoke Robbie McGuire when he’s like this. I’ll have plenty of time to deal with it later. “I mean, uh, yeah, no…maybe…you know what, let’s wait and see what happens.”
He smiles and hooks his ankle around mine, and for some reason—most likely abject relief that he hasn’t made me commit to Christmas with his family by signing a legal and binding contract—I find myself telling him about Stacey. I start off blabbering and talking too fast.
It takes a while, but I slow down eventually and start telling him the real stuff. That we were close growing up, best friends, and Stacey was moody and difficult, but she made sense to me. She wasn’t demanding of my time or attention. I found it easy to be around her and that’s not something I’ve experienced very often. I tell him about the good times we’ve had together.
When I try to move the hand he’s holding, he holds on to it harder, and I find myself telling him how much I miss her. I tell him how sorry I am that I haven’t done a better job of staying in touch since my career took off.
“All the travel isn’t easy,” he says. “Living out of a bag, never being sure where you are when you open youreyes… It’s hard and makes it difficult to stay connected with people who don’t live the way we do.”
It’s exactly that. That’s exactly what happened. We didn’t fall out or have some major friendship breakup. Time passed. A lot of time. I was tired, and my body was battered and bruised. A week here turned into two weeks there. I tried for a long time. She did too. It’s just that we’re both major introverts. Neither of us is comfortable making an effort.
We both have our walls up way high.
Basically, we let a really great friendship slip away from us because we were both too dumb to realize that some things are worth fighting for.
“I should have tried harder,” I say.