Tomboy

“Yeah, it’s what they do.”

She gripped the strap of her backpack slung over one shoulder tighter, needing to feel it bite into her clammy palms and ground her in this moment. Warning sirens were screaming in her head, and the sick dread of having fucked up was making her eyes burn.

“No,” she said, her voice shaking. “They were going to tell people you punched your dad out, left him with medical bills. That you ignored your mom when she begged for financial help from her rich son. They were intimating that you hit me.”

“Your point?”

“I couldn’t let that stand,” she said, her voice breaking as realization set in. She hadn’t just fucked this up. She may have ruined it. “I had to fight for you.”

“Why? Am I just another charity case for you? Like your clinic?”

“That clinic changes people’s lives.”

“Good.” The single word blasted out of the speaker. “But my life was perfectly fine.”

A wave of angry heat slammed into her at that obvious lie. Okay, he could be mad. He could be wrong about how this whole thing should have been handled. He did not get to play it off, though, with some crap about his life as the most-hated man in Harbor City being the one he wanted. All that toxic bullshit needed to end. He was more than that if he’d give h

imself half the credit he deserved.

“Really?” She put her hands on her hips and glared up at the camera, oh so much more comfortable in this space where there was yelling instead of a panicked desperation to make things right. “You expect everyone to screw you over, and you don’t trust anyone.”

“I wonder why. It’s not like I didn’t get screwed over by anyone new lately.”

“Is that what you think I did?” Was he joking? She may have messed up royally, but she hadn’t screwed him over. She’d defended him. “Are your ego and your pride more important than fighting for yourself, because it sure as hell seems that’s what this is really about.” She wanted to smack her own head at the realization. “You didn’t want the truth out there because you are embarrassed, when you have absolutely no reason to be. This isn’t about what you let happen to you, it’s about what awful thing was done to you.”

Her chest was heaving and her cheeks burning by the time she got the last word out because they’d fallen over an edge. She could see that now. She’d tried to fight for a man who didn’t think there was anything worth fighting for, not even himself.

After a few beats of silence, Zach’s carefully neutral voice came through over the speaker. “Go home, Fallon.”

The light above the security system blinked off, and no matter how many times she pressed the call button, she knew he wouldn’t answer again.

Her chest ached from the power of the invisible hands squeezing her lungs tight and not letting go. Her head throbbed from the effort to hold back the tears threatening to fall. A whole ball of emotion had taken up residence in her throat, making it nearly impossible to swallow. Even her skin was too sensitive. It was all too much, and she couldn’t take any more, so she did the one thing she wanted least in the world. She walked away.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Blackburn Back to Being A Bust?

Settle in, hockey fans, we have a lot to unpack when it comes to Zach Blackburn and the faltering Ice Knights. After weeks of playoff-worthy games, it seems we have back the early season team unable to put the puck between the pipes. Then, there’s Blackburn. It seems not even Lady Luck could help after the defenseman’s parents came out with one of the ugliest stories I’ve seen in decades. The accusations of cruelty against Blackburn made by his parents did a one-eighty on his approval ratings.

It was kinda hard for them not to when his mom told TMQ, “He was always a selfish boy, but I thought he’d grow out of it. And then when he signed that first contact, I thought it was our duty as his parents to help guide him however we could. If he wanted us to do that for free while collecting early on our retirement funds? I’m his mother, I’ll sacrifice everything to make his life better. And now we just make do. I mean, it’s not easy to make ends meet when you’ve run through all your savings, but I wouldn’t dream of asking Zach again to help us out even if he does earn millions. I mean, we’d asked before, and he made his feelings known. Now we just watch his game on the library internet because we can’t afford it at home or a cell phone.”

Ouch.

Lady Luck gave a rousing defense of him, but Blackburn has refused to comment on TMQ’s story, and hasn’t said a peep about it beyond “no comment” and an extended middle finger when a reporter asked during a post-game press conference. Yeah, that was just the beginning of Harbor City realizing that the most-hated man in town was back again.

And since then, he’s returned to start-of-the-year form on the ice, too happy taking crappy penalties and skating like he was gliding through molasses as fans chant “Blackburn sucks.”

So the question, hockey fans, is, has Blackburn returned to form or is this just a temporary glitch?

Comments:

TypeAB+: He’s a bust. I coulda told you from the beginning that he’d fizzle out. Don’t trust a guy who fucks over his mom.

Kris K.: It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He sucks. Trade him. And Lady Luck was never all that wow, either. Maybe if she got a makeover, but yeah, she’s a six on a good day.

GregDaGoat: Wow. Amazing how people love to build people up and then watch them fall.

TypeAB+: We’re just telling it like it is, ya homer. He sucks now. His chick is some kind of tomboy man hater, and she’s sucked the hockey skills right out of him.