“You’re not the only one whose mother died. Our situations might not have been the same, but I understand what it feels like to lose someone you love to something you can’t control.”
His glassy eyes track my movements. “She would be ashamed of me.”
I rear back. “What? Why do you say that?”
“Because look at me.” He grabs a trophy and launches it in the opposite direction. It slams into a tower of boxes before clattering against the floor.
“Stop it!”
“Why? It’s not like any of them mean anything.” He repeats the same thing with another trophy, but this time, it smashes into a wall before snapping in half.
“Enough!” I shove the other two trophies away before he destroys those too. “Get angry. Get loud, but don’t get violent. You’re better than that.”
He throws his hands in the air. “Am I? Or am I just biding my time until I turn into him?”
He doesn’t need to clarify whichhimhe is speaking about because I already know. It’s written all over his face.
My chest pinches, the tight sensation making each breath I draw painful. “The only thing you two have in common is an addiction issue.”
“You’re right. Because unlike me, my father is successful. He has a legacy. What do I have?”
“For starters, a heart.”
He frowns. “Who cares? What has that gotten me in the long run? Pain? Misery? Disappointment?” He looks up at the ceiling with a sigh. “I can’t get a single thing right. My whole entire life has been one failure after another, and I’m so fucking tired of pretending it doesn’t bother me.”
Cal steals a fragmented piece of my heart in that moment as a single tear slides down his cheek. A tear that wrecks whatever last bit of anger I have toward him today.
Tomorrow, I’ll be angry about him being drunk in the house.
But today…
Today he needs a friend.
I pull him into my arms and wipe away the tear, banishing it from existence like it never happened. “You haven’t failed at everything.”
“Name one thing.”
I don’t miss a beat. “You made it into the NHL.”
He scoffs. “Only to lose my spot a few years later.”
“So what? Not many people can say they even got that far in the first place.”
“I didn’t even win a championship.” His voice sounds so small. So unsure.So broken.
It tears me up inside, knowing someone as vibrant and lively as him can be riddled with this many insecurities.
Sometimes it is those with the loudest voices who struggle the hardest.
“Life is about perspective. Until you change yours, you’ll always be tied to this.” I hand him the vodka bottle.
He clutches the bottle with a death grip.
I lock the image away in my head, reminding myself that no good can come of Cal and me being around each other. Even after all these years apart, he still hasn’t put in the work to change himself.
No matter how much I love him, it was and never will be enough so long as he doesn’t love himself.
That much I know to be true.