Page 1 of Lovesick (The Minnesota Mustangs #1)
KNEE-DEEP IN ENEMY TERRITORY
MERIT
I f I have to listen to another brainless zombie waste their breath talking about hockey, I’m going to rip my hair out.
I’m not an avid bar-goer. In fact, recreational socializing isn’t even on my endless to-do list. But my best friend since childhood, Irelyn St. Clair—self-proclaimed risk-taker and Miss Minnesota three years in the running—wasn’t going to let me spiral alone the night before my first day of junior year at my new college.
I was perfectly content with having an existential crisis while eating a whole sleeve of raw cookie dough, but if there’s anything I’ve learned about being friends with Irelyn, it’s that she rarely takes no for an answer, and she’s suspiciously adept at getting whatever she wants.
Plus, sharing an apartment with her means that I get roped into pretty much anything she does.
I stare at the amber liquid in my condensation-frosted glass, gauging the likelihood of a regretful hangover the next morning.
School already has me stressed enough. If Irelyn expects me to last until ten p.m. tonight—which is at least two hours past my bedtime—then I’m going to need my fair share of liquid courage.
And having to listen to one of those I-could’ve- gone-pro-if-it-wasn’t-for-my-ACL-injury guys trying to mansplain hockey to me is already a death sentence of the cruelest variety.
Irelyn sips daintily on her cosmopolitan, the alcohol flush on her cheeks shimmering in the low light of the bar’s blood-orange sconces. “I’m surprised your parents didn’t chaperone us,” she quips.
Talking about my parents is a surefire way to kill the mood. I take a much-needed swig of my brandy, cringing when it burns an unforgiving path down my throat and mixes with the ever-present and semi-permanent anxiety churning in my stomach.
“They’ve gotten a lot better about it,” I counter, though my half-bitten conviction is laughable.
Irelyn’s always been able to see right through me. But unlike Supergirl, she uses her powers for evil.
She arches a perfectly plucked eyebrow, and the unspoken truth tears through me like an eighteen-wheeler splitting asphalt.
“Are you kidding me? They forced you to move back here.”
“Well, it’s more complicated than that.”
Irelyn’s right, of course, but her ego doesn’t need any more inflating.
My parents are, um, very involved in my life…
even when I don’t want them to be. It’s like they don’t think I’m capable of looking after myself.
And I know there are worse things in the world than having parents who care too much, but living under constant surveillance wasn’t on my post-high school vision board.
My best friend devolves into a flurry of inebriated giggles, and then she lowers her voice in a not-at-all-realistic imitation of me. “No, I think your exact words were, ‘Yes, Mom. Yes, Dad. I’ll be home tomorrow.’”
“You make me sound like a pushover.”
That’s because you are a pushover, Merit. In every sense of the word. You fold like a house of cards just to appease those around you. What is it going to take for you to realize that you’re responsible for your own self-sabotage?
God, internal monologue me is unbearable. I forgot that drinking makes me existential.
“Name the last thing you did for yourself,” Irelyn says, swirling the miniature umbrella around in her drink with flawless, manicured nails.
When was the last time I did something for myself? Does flicking my bean to an audiobook narrator with a heavy Irish accent count? Ooh, or maybe that time I splurged and got a family-sized bag of Doritos instead of regular-sized? That was a big decision for me.
I guess the last time I actually did something for myself was when I went against my parents’ wishes and accepted a scholarship to the performing arts program at the school of my dreams, Rutgers University.
I’ve wanted to be a dancer ever since I was little.
Dancing has always helped me escape from the overcomplexity of my life.
There’s something freeing in being able to separate yourself from your obligations, your anxiety, your hardships, your fears—something transformative about processing your pain through movement and storytelling.
The only time I don’t feel like my life is a total shitshow is when I’m dancing.
I was on track to make my dreams of becoming a professional dancer come true, but as with everything that happens to me on this godforsaken planet, whenever things are going too well, something bad is bound to happen.
And it did.
The CliffsNotes version consists of a chronic illness, a make-it-or-break-it performance, and a ten-thousand-dollar trip to the ER after my reputation was pulverized into little pieces.
I’m grateful that I can still pursue a degree in dance, but the rest of my four-year plan is nothing but a fantasy.
Now I’m forced to live a life of safety and mundaneness where my emotions cost me two hundred a week in therapy bills.
Ever since the incident of January eighteenth when I collapsed in front of the entire dance community, my parents have been barnacled to my side with their hovering helicopter hellishness.
They dictate what I can and cannot do, and I constantly want to Hulk-rip out of the metaphorical bubble wrap they’ve swaddled me in.
I get that they’re worried about me, but I feel like I’m a back seat driver in my own life.
If I hadn’t faced such a life-threatening scare, I would’ve put my foot down.
Though, honestly, I was just as scared as my parents.
Resentment is a silent killer , my therapist says. Don’t feed it.
So, assuming Doctor Marjorie has my best interests in mind, I heed her warning. Sort of.
“Being a people pleaser isn’t a bad thing.”
Irelyn nods in faux understanding, those fiery curls of hers bouncing against her small-framed shoulders. “In other words, you’d rather leave your dreams behind than face conflict,” she summarizes in her hoity-toity, know-it-all tone, feline eyes narrowed at me from behind thick lashes.
I forfeit an exasperated sigh, opting to kill the rest of my drink instead of, ironically, facing conflict.
Helplessness wiggles under my skin, burrows into my bone marrow, and sows an invasive seed of unresolved anger that can’t be uprooted. “It wasn’t just my choice. It was my doctor’s recommendation.”
“Have you had another episode since you’ve been home?” Irelyn asks, sobering on the spot and shedding her flippancy.
Calling it an “episode” is putting it lightly. Ever since I came into this world—covered in blood and screaming my lungs out—life has used me as its own personal punching bag. I don’t know whose bright idea it was to saddle me with a hole in my heart, but I’m flipping you off, asshole.
I was born with a congenital condition called atrial septal defect, which pretty much means that the wall between the top two chambers of my heart didn’t form correctly. According to my parents, the hole was about the size of a nickel when I was an infant.
My cardiologist informed my parents that I’d need open-heart surgery to close the hole. If they chose not to go through with the operation, irreversible damage would be done to my heart and lungs, and I’d most likely need a heart transplant by early adulthood.
So, before my seventh birthday, I underwent a sternotomy. Ironic, seeing as I wasn’t even old enough to know how to spell it. I was terrified. When I was sitting in that waiting room, surrounded by my teary-eyed mother and father, I thought I was going to die on that operating table.
But I’m still here.
One of my parents’ stipulations with the move was that I had to listen to my body above all else.
That meant no more competitive dance (recreational was fine), limited alcohol intake, no drugs, etcetera.
I always have to tell them where I am and who I’m with, and if that doesn’t sound depressing enough, they monitor my heart rate with a smart ring I have to wear twenty-four-seven.
It’s a way for them to ensure my safety, and if something were to happen to me and I couldn’t get in touch with them, the ring could save my life.
Long story short, now I’m a prisoner of Minnesota University—the one school I was adamant about never attending as long as my whack-ass heart kept beating.
For one, my father’s the hockey coach for the Minnesota Mustangs.
Luckily for me— please note the sarcasm —MU has one of the most renowned hockey programs in the country and acts as a direct pipeline to the NHL.
It isn’t enough that hockey consumed my dad’s life when I was young, but now I have to share him during my college years with the one sport that boils my blood? No, thanks .
There’s a strange fluttering in my heart, but it’s not alcohol induced. This is the second time this week it feels like the overworked muscle has been thrown around in a washing machine and wrung out on the spin cycle.
“No,” I lie, now hyperaware of my breathlessness and the complementary squeeze in my chest.
I have no idea what’s going on with me, but I don’t need another person worrying about my health—especially if that person is Irelyn. She’s the only one in my life who doesn’t treat me like I’m fine china about to break.
Suddenly, she claps her hands together, pulling me from my spiral of self-doom with a giddy, high-pitched squeal. “Good, because you’re gonna live a little.”
I snort. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m helping you be spontaneous.”
Irelyn not so discreetly tips her head in the direction of a man across the bar from us, and like the unfortunate idiot I am, I lock eyes with him for an awkward two point five seconds before averting my gaze.