Page 137 of Heartbreak Hockey

“It’s not our best trait,” Ari admits. “But no one’s perfect. Abandonment trauma runs deep.”

“Meyers should come with a damn instruction manual, you know that?” I say to all of them. “What do I do?”

Bea exhales, but her frustration isn’t for me or Mercy. It’s for someone else. “The damage has been done. He’s not gonna jump back into anything readily.”

Not gonna jump back in? What the actual fuck? I hadn’t been thinking about us as broken up, but now I am, and it hurts like a ton of bricks being dumped on my head one at a time. I’d still been planning on moving in with him during the off-season. I even told my parents that I was moving in with him. I didn’t give them a date because I was still hoping to settle my thoughts and feelings a bit more before I sent boxes to his place, but with all the progress I’d already made, I figured it wouldn’t be long.

He's been thinking of us as … not a thing? That fills me with rage. I have half a mind to march upstairs.

“I didn’t think you knew,” Bea adds. “Looks like I was right. We Meyers do need a flipping instruction manual.”

“Want my advice?” Rachel chimes in.

“Rach. He doesn’t need advice from a prepubescentgirl,” Dawson says. I doubt he actually thinks women are weak with the kind of strong and independent women that his family produces. He’s being a shithead brother. Man. Those two must be a handful.

“I bleed from my vagina every month while feeling like someone’s been scraping the inside of my cervix with a serrated spoon, Dawse. Doubt you’d last an hour under those conditions so you can go fuck yourself.”

“Jesus Christ, you two,” Ari scolds. “Bethany, cover your ears.”

She laughs. “It’s funny that you think they only talk like this when you’re around.”

“I want to hear Rachel’s advice. I need all the advice I can get,” I say.

I don’t earn a smile from her—I’m gonna have to work hard for that—but I suspect that her talking to me at all is something special. “Do something that’ll make him feel the most secure he can feel.”

“Yeah,” Bethany agrees. “And don’t be afraid to fight with him real hard next time.”

“Why’s that?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “Dunno. That’s what I’d want. Someone I knew I could fight with and they’d still wanna stick around.”

Dawson twists his lips. “Merc and Beth are two peas in a pod. I’d listen to her even if she doesn’t make any sense. Merc doesn’t make sense half the time either.”

“We do too,” Beth says.

“The only one who doesn’t make sense around here is you,” Rachel adds, speaking to Dawson.

Ari begins rounding up Meyers like kittens, gripping Dawson and Rachel by the scruffs of their necks. “Okay, let’s go. Enough Dr. Phil hour. I’m sure you’ll figure something out, Jack. He loves you,” he adds as he frog marches the teens out the door. Bethany, Bryce and Cody follow behind.

Trish takes Bea’s hand, and they head toward the door, stopping, each putting a hand on a shoulder of mine. “Wow he’s beefy,” Trish says.

Bea shoots me a fond smile. How can she be fond of me already? Guess we do text now and then, but it’s not big-time stuff. Just shooting the shit. I know how much she loves her hydrangeas and she’s clear—in case it wasn’t obvious—that hockey is my whole world.

Well, hockey and Merc.

Least, it was.

“My brother will be a stubborn sonuvabitch, but I think we both know you were made to handle him.”

Once all of Hurricane Meyer has departed, I’m left with my hockey family who all point and laugh at me. “Holy shit, dude,” Dirk says. “That’s what Coach comes with? No wonder he never dated anyone before you.” I regret telling him that. “They would have headed for the hills.”

Oh dammit. Something else clicks for me about Merc. He’s never said it, but I don’t doubt that he thinkshechased off his mom. It’s probably why he’s never let anyone close to him or his family.

Until me. He trusted me and I fucked it all up.

This might have begun with me asking for space, otherwise known as leaving to Mercy’s brain, but it’s morphed into so much more. So much worse. I’ve got to fucking fix this.

“I love them all, Dirk. Every last one of them. Even the new one on the way. I’m going to get my man back, but first, we crush Boston like the water bugs they are.”