Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 87771 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87771 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 439(@200wpm)___ 351(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
“Sounds good, man.”
“Glad to have you, bud.” Chris gave me a squeeze on the shoulder before leaving the locker room.
I sat on the bench and let go of a breath I felt like I’d been holding since I stepped on the plane and left behind my disastrous life in Florida.
All I wanted to do was grab my phone, pull up my texts, and send a message to the first person on the list, telling him how good a day I’d just had. How fucked was that? He’d broken up with me almost a month ago, and I still couldn’t get him out of my head. It was as if the four years we’d been together had formed invisible manacles around my wrists and ankles, attached to a heavy weight I’d been dragging around ever since I heard those five fucked-up words: “I’ve fallen for someone else.”
I hadn’t even known he was talking to anyone else. Our relationship had been a strictly closed one since the start, so to say I was fucking blindsided was an understatement.
And my dumb ass was still thinking about him. Wishing things were different. Wondering what the hell I had done wrong this time. What could I have done better? Was there a way to have prevented this? Did I even want to prevent it? Looking back on those last couple of years, there were bright spots that made me hopeful, but they were surrounded by stressful fights and arguments that would last for weeks, leaving me in a constant state of anxiety.
It fucking sucked.
But at least for me, so did being alone.
I’d been lucky throughout my life. Tragedy seemed to avoid me. I still had three of my grandparents, both my mom and dad, who loved me and supported me—even when I came out to them during a particularly unhinged family Christmas gathering, which also happened to be my fifteenth birthday—and I’d managed to create a career for myself playing a sport I truly loved. I had good friends I could call on, though they were scattered around the globe by now. Broken a couple of bones, fucked up a few teeth, dealt with a shitty case of depression in my early twenties, but none of that had been excruciating or traumatic. None of it made me question if the universe had it out for me or not.
The universe had felt like my best friend for a long-ass time.
Yeah. Shit had been going great for me.
Then I met and fell in love with Ben, his dimples always on display from a toothy and handsome smile, even when he was holding a knife behind his back the entire time. Even when he would lash out at me with his words. Even when he’d cut down my confidence, when our arguments turned so toxic that the shit he’d tell me continued to ring through my skull like the hollow clanging of a distant bell. A haunting sound that drowned out everything else. All the praise and the positivity couldn’t make it past the shit he’d shout at me.
Fuck.
The trade couldn’t have come at a better time. I was ready to start fresh, in a city I’d never been to, surrounded by a completely new cast of strangers I could lose myself in. I had friends and family I was leaving behind, but they all understood my need for the move. My mood and motivation had taken a dive into the deep end after the breakup. They supported this, like they had supported every other decision I’d made in my life.
I sucked in a deep breath. The silence of an empty locker room was almost meditative for me. A stark contrast to the brotherly chaos and shit-talking that echoed up and down the black and light blue lockers a little less than an hour ago.
“I’ve got this,” I said to myself, a simple mantra that had carried me through quite a few life changes recently.
I didn’t need a relationship to be happy. I didn’t need someone to hold my hand, or to cuddle with me in bed, or to talk game with after a difficult practice. I had to be okay being independent because all men were fucking dogs, and I didn’t need to be chasing after one. It didn’t matter that I had genuinely thought I was going to be married and live that white-picket-fence-type life that had called to me since I was a kid. I was so obsessed with that idea that I ignored all the blatant red flags. I continued to fall into a cycle that would only serve to hurt me.
That stupid-ass fantasy was exactly that: a fantasy. A farce. Maybe some people were able to find and keep that kind of life, and that was good for them, but I had to be okay with a different reality.