Page 15 of Finding Her

bear

While I liked to think that I had independence at boarding school, I knew that it wasn’t exactly true.

When I started at Hartwell, my dad made a big deal about how he was letting me spread my wings and fly, but then the monthly check-in’s started.

And then they quickly became more frequent than once a month.

Of course, he didn’t call them a check-in. He would talk about how he missed me, how he needed to make sure I was doing okay, how kids needed to see their parents. But I knew what it really was: he was making sure that I wasn’t straying too far from what he wanted me to be.

And of course, about half the time that he came to see me, he wanted to see Claire too.

This time, it turned out that he and the Thompsons’ had planned a trip together.

So now, I was at restaurant that was nice enough for me to have to wear a suit, with Claire pressed so close into my side that she might as well have been sharing my chair.

Our dads were each at the heads of the table, so I was directly across from Mrs. Thompson and Claire was across from Mia, who looked like she was hating every moment of this dinner as much as I was.

“Oh, don’t you two just make a handsome couple,” Mrs. Thompson cooed at Claire and I. She swirled her wine around in her glass before taking a sip, then sighed.

“Now, now, Eden,” Mr. Thompson said, patting her hand. “You know that they’re not actually a couple yet.”

Then he looked at us and winked. A wave of disgust went through my body.

I’m not sure what exactly he meant by that, but I never want him to look at me like that again.

I’d known the Thompsons all my life since Mr. Thompson and my father had played in the NHL together, while Mrs. Thompson and my mom, before she died, were best friend.

But I’d never been especially comfortable around them, especially once they began pushing me and Claire together the way they were.

Apparently, they thought it was just too perfect that their kids ended up together and merged the family lines, as they so often put it.

“That’s right,” my dad chimed in. He stared right at me as he spoke. “Bear’s not going to date in high school. Not until he is well-established in his hockey career.”

I sat up straight and nodded, even though I felt like I was burning up on the inside.

It wasn’t that I had anything against hockey or even against playing professionally.

I just hated the way he made it sound like such a done deal, like it was that or nothing.

I knew he just wanted me to follow in his footsteps, to be as great as he was, but I wasn’t sure that I wanted it as much as he wanted it for me.

Sometimes, after a bad game, I would lie in bed and wonder: would this have been the path that I chose for myself, if I was the one who had gotten to choose?

“Why does Claire get to have a boyfriend when I don’t?

” Mia asked, looking at her mom. Like Claire, Mia’s voice was generally pretty whiny, though it was a different tactic for her.

Claire tried to use the whiny voice to get whatever she wanted from me.

Mia, I was pretty sure, just didn’t have any other tone, other than screeching.

Mia had been around for my whole life, and though I didn’t have any sisters of my own, I tended to view her as one. And not in the good “you’re like the sister I never had” way. More in the “you’re a pain in my butt and I wish I didn’t have to see you all the time” kind of way.

I didn’t like her. Hated her, in fact. But she was always around, trailing behind us, getting mad if we didn’t include her. Not that I particularly wanted time alone with Claire, but I would have taken that over having to deal with Mia’s incessant tantrums.

“You’re too young for that, honey,” Mom said, patting her hand.

“But Claire and Levi have been together for, like, years,” she said, pointing at us. “Since way before high school.”

“No, no, no,” her mom said. She wrapped an arm around Mia’s shoulders and pulled her into a side hug. Mia looked so disgusted that it made me want to laugh. “Claire and Levi aren’t dating. They’re just… Well, think of it like they’re courting.”

My lip curled. Somehow, that was even worse.

“You know, they know that they’re planning to get together eventually,” Mrs. Thompson continued, “but they’re not moving too fast.”

“That’s right,” Mr. Thompson agreed. “High school is a time to be serious about your studies. There’s plenty of time for romance later.”

The two of them were incredibly naive about what their daughter got up to at school.

They didn’t want her dating because they thought she was still so young and innocent.

They wanted her to be their little girl forever, even though she was going to college next year.

But on top of harassing me constantly, she made out with a new boy every weekend.

She seemed to believe that she could do whatever she wanted, while also keeping me in her back pocket.

Like she wanted to have fun before she locked it down with me.

But heaven forbid I ever look at another girl.

I’d made that mistake once in ninth grade and she put bleach in my shampoo.

She wasn’t the only reason I avoided dating, but she sure was a big part of it.

I had to wonder what would happen once she finally got me—if I ever gave in, that was, which wasn’t the plan.

I figured she would be bored of me within a week.

Even if she remained in a relationship with me, I wasn’t harbouring any fantasies that she would be faithful.

If she was going around and making out with every other boy on the hockey team, what was so special about me that she wanted me, besides the fact that her parents approved of me?

That made me feel less guilty about stringing her along the way I was, knowing that I had no interest in her.

I was sure that when I could finally reject her, probably sometime in college, that she would happily go off and find some other hockey player who checked all her boxes.

She would tell her parents that I rejected her, conveniently leaving out that we both knew I’d never been interested, and her parents would get in a fight with dad over it.

They would probably stop speaking and my dad would get mad at me, but once I was in college on an athletic scholarship, he wouldn’t have the same control over me that he had now.

And ultimately, the world wouldn’t end. She would be okay, I would be okay—and I would not need to be married to Claire Thompson for the rest of my life.

When our waitress appeared at the table to ask if we wanted any dessert, I immediately said no, hoping that everybody else would take my cue.

We’d already been here for two hours and I was hitting my limit on how much of these people I could take.

But everybody else ordered something, guaranteeing we’d be here for at least another half an hour. I was never getting out of here.

After everyone else ordered, the waitress looked at me and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want anything? You don’t want to be the only one left out.”

Dad chuckled. “Oh, Levi is a star athlete at his school. He doesn’t eat any artificial sugar.”

Not exactly true, but what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

The waitress’s eyes lit up and she pointed her pen at me. “I know you! You’re on the hockey team at Hartwell, right?”

Well, that question just guaranteed her a good tip, if the adults’ reactions were anything to go off.

Mrs. Thompson pressed a napkin to her mouth and looked like she was holding back happy tears as she mumbled something about what a wonderful athlete I was.

Mr. Thompson chuckled and clapped me on the shoulder like I’d just had some major accomplishment.

And Dad leaned forward and asked, “You a Hartwell alum?”

If there was one thing to know about Dad, it was that he immediately liked anyone who had gone to Hartwell, since he’d gone as a teenager as well.

“Yes, sir,” the waitress said, bobbing her head. “I just graduated last year, actually.” She glanced at me again. “Don’t tell me… Barrett, right?”

Dad was so happy that he smacked the table and said, “That’s right!”

I hated the way everyone turned to look at me right then, so I grabbed my glass of water and started chugging, hoping they’d all catch the hint and leave me alone.

But then Claire wrapped her arms around my shoulders and said, “That’s our Levi!

” in a sickly sweet tone. I thought it would be completely within my rights to strangle her for it.

“Your first game of the season is coming up soon, right?” The waitress asked. “I was thinking of coming by.”

Dad immediately started rattling off the date and time, while I tried not to choke my water or elbow Claire to get off me.

She didn’t let go until the waitress had returned to the kitchen to put in our dessert orders and everyone went back to chatting, though the topic of conversation remained on all my accomplishments, how great of a hockey player I was, and how it wasn’t any surprise I was getting recognized in public. Personally, I just wanted to disappear.

“I need the bathroom,” I choked out after five more minutes. I threw my napkin down on the table and walked off before any of them could even begin to protest.

I stopped in the back hallway that led to the washrooms and emergency exit, far enough around the wall that they wouldn’t be able to see me.

I dropped my head in my hands and groaned.

How was this my life? I didn’t want to be Hartwell’s star player or be paraded around by my father and my future girlfriend’s family.

But I also didn’t do anything to stop it.

I didn’t fight back or tell my dad I didn’t want it.

I just sat there and let everyone make every decision for me, pretending to be happy about it all.

What would it be like to live as someone completely unknown?

The first name that came into my head at the thought was Poppy and it took me a second to realize why.

She’d told me, one of those times when she was rambling to fill the silence, that her family moved around constantly so she always felt like the new girl at school.

What must it have been like for her to show up as a completely new person every couple of years?

To be able to re-invent herself and shed her past every time?

Had she always been this happy-go-lucky girl?

Or was that just a persona she had brought into Hartwell?

My fingers itched to grab my phone and text her, until I remembered that I didn’t have her number. And then I wondered why I even wanted to text her in the first place. Of course, I didn’t have her number, because I’d had no reason to talk to her outside of school. And, until now, no desire to.

“There you are, baby.” I barely held back my groan as Claire appeared at the end of the hall and started walking toward me.

The hallway was darker than the rest of the restaurant, making it hard to see her face except when she walked under the lamps.

The green-ish light emanating from each one made her look sickly as she came up and pouted at me, as she so often did.

“Were you finding it a little crowded back there?”

I stayed silent for a minute, playing out the possible answers in my head.

If I said yes, then she would probably make some comment about how she had to leave and that she was so glad to be back here with me, and then she would probably try to stick her tongue down my throat.

If I said no, she would assume that I slunk off so that we could meet over here, and then she would try to stick her tongue down my throat.

Essentially, there was no way of this ending without her kissing me, which was the last thing I wanted.

I had no interest in kissing her at the best of times, but especially not when we could so easily be caught.

“Nope, just needed the bathroom. There, uh… there was a line. Figured I should wait in the hall.” I nodded sharply as I said it, as if that would make anything I just said seem more plausible.

She glanced at the closed bathroom door and then at me, clearly not believing a word I was saying.

“And you know what, I think I’ll go check again, because uh…

” I didn’t even finish the sentence as I dove for the bathroom door before she could follow me.

At least this was the one place she couldn’t come in after me.

I splashed some water on my face and stared at myself in the mirror, not even recognizing my own reflection. I waited a good few minutes before I walked out, trying to look calm and composed as I sat back down. Nobody commented on how long I had been gone.

When the waitress came back with the desserts, she put a fruit cup and coffee in front of me, then winked and said, “On the house for the hockey player.”

And then, to make everything that much more embarrassing, everybody had lifted their glasses and said, “To Levi!”

And I had to sit there, acting like I wanted any of it.