Page 33 of He Has It All (Boston Brawlers Hockey)
Chapter 9
Ryan
If there was a way to dial up the perfect day, this would be it. That’s what I’m thinking as I step outside my bedroom onto the back deck overlooking the ocean. About the only thing that could make it better is if I woke up with Chelsea in bed next to me. That was a lost cause. Seagulls squawk overhead as they swoop over the waves about fifty yards in the distance across the expanse of grass and sand. The breeze braces me as I stand shirtless, trying to force myself to move on, get some coffee, start the day. Shove aside that wistful note tugging at me.
My problem is solved when my phone buzzes and I see it’s Levi.
“I can see you out on your deck,” he says. I look left and see him out on the patio of his parents’ home almost a hundred yards in the distance across the grass separating the properties.
“Good. Then come on over—and bring some coffee.”
He snorts. “You wantmeto bringyoucoffee? Isn’t that what the best man is supposed to do for the groom?”
“Sure. Except I know for a fact your grandma makes the best coffee in the world and there’s a pot ready made by now waiting.”
“Okay, okay. You have a point. I figure we have about thirty, forty-five minutes tops before the world wakes up.”
He shows up and hands me the mug of coffee, black and steaming, and I take a healthy dose before putting it down on the small table.
“I don’t deserve a friend like you.” I’m standing, my eyes riveted on the ocean as he takes a seat. Because I can’t quite look at him when I talk about anything meaningful, coming from a long line of macho men with pent-up emotions.
He snorts. His usual response. That makes me turn to him because I’m dead serious. He stops mid-sip and sets his mug down.
“You can’t be serious?”
“You know I am. You’re the best, Levi. And I’m—”
“The best friend I ever had. You’ve had my back from the first minute I met you and never let me down once. And I know sometimes it wasn’t easy to stand up for me.”
I know he’s talking about some of the shit he took for being a black guy in a white guy’s sport when he played at B.C., but he’s wrong.
“It was never hard to stand up for you. In fact, it was always the easiest thing in the world to do. And that’s the fucking honest-to-God truth.”
He’s silent a beat. “Maybe. Because you always had that hometown hero thing going for you. But you didn’t have to—”
I wave at him. “Quit making something out of nothing.” He’s starting to make me mad. Because I never felt I did quite enough to smooth his experience, to make things go as fun and easy for him as it had for me, because between us, I always thought he deserved it more.
“Don’t give me that martyr shit. Don’t tell me you don’t deserve—”
“I don’t deserve a tenth of what I have, of what I’ve been given. I’ve been the luckiest son-of-a-bitch on the planet and I’ve done nothing for it. Everything’s been handed to me.”
“Bullshit. Fucking bullshit, Ryan. I’ve seen how hard you work.”
“We’ve all worked hard, Levi. There’s not one guy from that BC team that didn’t work as hard as I did all their life to get there, or one person on the Brawlers that didn’t work as hard or harder than I have.”
“So you all deserve it then,” he says. “Quit the fuckingI don’t deserve thisshit. Especially shut the fuck up about not deserving me as your best damn friend.” He pauses. I’m listening, letting it sink in, seeing if it has any effect on my uneasiness, on the sense of dissatisfaction, restlessness I feel. It doesn’t. Except I do feel his friendship, deserved or not, and I’m fucking grateful he sees it his way and not mine.
“I know I deserve your friendship. I know I can count on you. Same as you can count on me,” he says.
“You’re right about that.”
“So what the fuck is this all about? You having regrets? You do something horrific I don’t know about?”
The night four years ago that I spent with Chelsea flashes in my head, but I’m not brave enough or stupid enough or disloyal enough to her to share that. Not that it would do any good. Not that it has anything to do with where my head’s at today. My messed-up relationship with Chelsea is just one more symptom of how messed up I am.
“I don’t know,” I finally say. “I’m restless.” I shrug. That’s as much as I’ve figured out about where I’m at.
“Life’s too easy for you, that it?” He snorts in a predictably unsympathetic way and I smile at him.
