We Can Try

Bor·ing [adjective] — Not interesting; tedious.
Amelia Carter was boring.

She was. All throughout her childhood she hadn’t taken her long, wild curls out of the tight bun her mother put them in every morning. As soon as she got home from school she went straight to the dining room table to start her homework. By the time she finished elementary school, she’d already read more books than all of her classmates combined. She only wrote in cursive and had memorized her times tables by the middle of the second grade. Her mother never let her outside to play in the snow. In all of Buffalo, only one person wanted to be her friend.

Not that it mattered. Amelia Carter didn’t have time for friends when she was busy trying to be the first woman president of the United States.

Still, it wasn’t easy to navigate middle school alone. Kids were cruel, making up names and laughing at her when the adults weren’t listening. They’d throw things at her during lunch, bump into her in the hallway and giggle when her books tumbled to the ground. They’d even snicker when she’d walk into class late, her cheeks stained with the tears they knew they’d caused. No, Amelia Carter didn’t have time for friends when she was busy being bullied.

High school was going to be a death wish—she knew this. She also knew that she was sick and tired of being the laughing stock of her entire class. Kate, her sister, was home from college for the summer. Having just left the city, she knew a thing or two about fashion. Amelia couldn’t have picked a better time for a transformation.

Things happened all at once. Suddenly she had friends, boys were paying attention to her, she was getting invited to homecoming parties and getting asked on dates. Her list of contacts in her phone quadrupled, as did the number of texts she sent monthly. Kate had anticipated this happening—it was about time her baby sister grew out of her awkward ways and started acting like a normal teenager, if there was such a thing. Still, she spent her breaks between classes assuring Amelia that the sudden attention was to be expected. Her new friends weren’t fake, Kate told her, they’d just…had standards before.

Amelia may have been a different person on the outside, but no amount of make-up or hair product could change who she was on the inside. She turned down the invitations to the parties and dates, still went straight home after school to finish her homework, and spent her weekends in her room with a book rather than out with whoever claimed her as her best friend that particular week. She avoided the mirror as much as she could, only bothering to look at herself to fix her face the way Kate had taught her. Even if she didn’t like it, she had to admit it did worked wonders.

December 22nd was the day everything had changed. For the worse.

By then, Buffalo was already under a few feet of snow. The weather had never bothered Amelia before since she’d always dressed appropriately, but because Kate’s makeover included wearing heels at least once a week, that was the morning she slipped on a patch of ice and landed in a heap on the sidewalk a few feet from her house.

December 22nd was also the day Patrick Kane’s life changed. The first time.

He was home for Christmas after playing junior hockey in Detroit. His mother had asked him to get the mail and there she was, sitting in a puddle of melted slush, rocking back and forth as she held her ankle. From what Patrick could tell, she wasn’t crying, but it was obvious she was in pain. After dealing with countless hockey injuries, he couldn’t let her sit there.

Still, just because he’d been in Amelia’s position before didn’t mean he was any good at dealing with girls who weren’t related to him.

“Are—are you okay?”

It was a stupid question and Amelia reacted exactly the way Patrick expected her to: she rolled her eyes, called him a jackass, and screamed that no, she wasn’t okay because her ankle was most likely broken. They were both only fifteen. Patrick had hormones and hockey and Amelia had college applications to worry about but it made sense. They made sense.

Amelia was Patrick’s girlfriend by the time he left to go back to Detroit.

No one in school knew who Patrick Kane was—or didn’t remember, at least. All his time had been spent playing hockey. There were practices to go to, tournaments to spend weekends playing, drills to work on in the basement. He’d been home-schooled since he joined his first travel team back at the beginning of middle school. The only thing that mattered to Amelia’s classmates was that she had a boyfriend. Some didn’t believe her, accused her of making Patrick up, but at the end of the day she was still unavailable and stayed that way until graduation rolled around three and a half years later, when no one really cared who was dating who now that college was on the horizon.

It hadn’t been easy. Patrick was rarely home except for holidays and most of the time he was too busy to call. He moved all over, played for so many different teams and in so many systems that it was hard for Amelia to keep track. Patrick’s parents explained it to her the best they could and did their best to keep her mind off his absence. They knew how hard it was for them; they couldn’t imagine how hard it was for her.

Amelia’s parents were natural cynics, accusing Patrick of holding Amelia back from living a normal life. She didn’t go to school dances, quit the softball team, and refused to spend her weekends anywhere other than the Kane residence. They would’ve driven to whichever city Patrick was currently playing in and demand he never go within a ten-mile radius of their daughter if their relationship had caused her grades to drop but Amelia was still sporting a perfect GPA so they turned the other cheek. Besides, she was happy and that counted for something—even if they didn’t like it.

Patrick got drafted by the Chicago Blackhawks the year after Amelia graduated. He was still playing in Ontario then and couldn’t make it, but his parents and his sisters sat with her parents and Kate and watched with tears in their eyes as Amelia gave her valedictorian speech. In three months she’d be off to the University of Rochester, gone all the time and only home at the holidays just like Kate and Patrick.

Amelia was taking a summer course and couldn’t risk missing class when Patrick got drafted. By then she had two semesters under her belt and had decided before the spring semester began that she’d take whatever classes couldn’t fit into her schedule then during the summer. Of course neither of them knew seven months earlier that her decision would cause her to miss the biggest moment in Patrick’s life.

It would also be the beginning of the end.

Hockey meant everything to Patrick. At eighteen, his life was about to begin. For real. Entering his name into the draft was an easy decision; playing in the NHL had been his dream since he was a kid. Amelia missing something like that didn’t sit well with him. He understood why, even toyed with the idea that it was payback for him missing her graduation, but getting drafted first overall by the Blackhawks was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. There would be more graduations—undergrad and probably grad school—but there was only one draft.

He was a kid. They both were. In a moment of selflessness, Patrick realized that Amelia deserved better than him. She deserved someone to love her right, to always be there for her, to understand and accept her for who she was. She deserved time to herself. It was obvious that school was just as important to Amelia as hockey was to him but he’d always put things that were important to her on the back burner. He hadn’t done it on purpose; they’d never been mature enough for a relationship, especially so young. Being selfish and not taking your partner into consideration was a side-effect of immature love. Still, he put off their inevitable breakup for months.

While he reported to Chicago for training camp and practice with his new team, Amelia returned to Buffalo after the summer semester wrapped up. She spent time with his family but not as much as she used to. Just like when she was a girl, before her classmates and Patrick noticed her, she spent the rest of her summer with her nose in a book, the kind that distracted her from the real world—the world in which her relationship was falling apart and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Patrick played in his first NHL game on October 4th, 2007. The entire Kane clan made the trip to Minnesota to watch him; Amelia’s ticket went unused. Erica, the oldest of his sisters, merely gave him a sympathetic smile when he met up with them after the game and asked where his girlfriend was. His face fell, his heart broke, and he knew then that it was the final straw. He called her as soon as he landed in Chicago and ended their relationship.

Amelia hadn’t gone back to Buffalo once since then. She got out of Thanksgivings by telling her parents she was too busying studying for midterms, invited them to her apartment in Rochester for Christmas (to which they agreed because it was better than not spending it with her at all), and she filled her summers with more courses. Every now and then she’d remember something her and Patrick had done together or something funny he’d said but she didn’t let herself miss him.

It wasn’t until two years after their breakup that she allowed herself to think about him. Her parents refused to let her miss another Thanksgiving dinner and insisted on her finally coming home. They weren’t dumb, her parents—they knew her reluctance to return to Buffalo had everything to do with her ex-boyfriend. They hoped all she needed was to see that nothing had changed, that life went on without him, but that plan had been soiled the August before when Patrick Kane was front-page news and it wasn’t because he won the Stanley Cup.

Katherine Carter wasn’t book smart—not like Amelia was, anyway—but she had common sense. She knew from the get-go that Patrick Kane was no good for her baby sister. Back when the pair first started dating her only excuse for not liking him had been that she’d dated a hockey player in high school and he’d cheated on her with any girl with two legs and a heartbeat. Now he’d broken her sister’s heart and had a criminal record.

“You don’t understand, Katie.”

Kate rolled her eyes as she scraped the leftover stuffing into a Tupperware container. “What’s there to understand? He’s a loser, Ame. Honestly, who gets arrested—”

“Katherine,” their mother warned from the dining room. “Leave your sister alone. It’s not her fault Patrick got in trouble.”

As thankful as she was for her mother’s interruption, Amelia knew there was an underlying meaning to her words. What she’d really meant to say was while it wasn’t her fault Patrick got in trouble, it didn’t matter because they hadn’t been together for two years and he wasn’t Amelia’s problem anymore.

“I love him, okay?”

“Still?” Amelia nodded, earning a scoff from her sister. “Why can’t you be normal?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just…You’ve known him since you were fifteen, Ame. You have no idea what else is out there.”

“I don’t need to know what else is out there.”

“You’ve never dated anyone else? Seriously?”

“Why is that so hard to believe?”

Kate shrugged and started loading the dishwasher. Amelia was secretly hoping for another interruption from her mother but she knew she wasn’t going to get one. In no way did she want her daughter to think she was in Patrick’s corner.

“Because. Do you know how rare it is that you meet your soulmate before you even get your first period? You’ve never even been outside of New York. Your perfect guy could be out there waiting for you to pull your head out of your ass—”

“Shut up, Katie!” Amelia stunned her sister into silence. “Just shut up, okay? I love him. I know you can’t understand that because he isn’t perfect but I’ve loved him since I was fifteen and that’s not going to change just because you think he’s an idiot!”

“Ame—”

“I don’t care what you or Mom or Dad or anyone thinks about him because you don’t know him. Not like I do.”

Kate sighed. “Amelia, listen to me. He’s never been anything but trouble. Is he really the kind of guy you want? One that gets arrested and breaks your heart?”

“I’m not going to try to change your mind,” Amelia replied. “It’d be pointless because if it’s not perfect you don’t bother trying to fix it, right? You can’t accept it.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I love Patrick even though he isn’t perfect. I love him exactly how he is and I don’t need to scour the world to know there isn’t anyone else for me. I’ve known that since the day I met him.”

Kate didn’t bother trying to stop her sister as she slammed the front door behind her. There was no point. She wanted to blame it on Amelia’s stubbornness but, just like Amelia trying to convince her that Patrick was good enough for her, it was pointless. Amelia had been blindsided by love and Kate knew she wasn’t strong enough to be the one to open her eyes.

Just like the day she broke her ankle, Buffalo was once again under snow. Amelia didn’t know where she was going, only that she needed to get far enough away to clear her mind before she even thought about going home.

Until, just like the day she broke her ankle, she slipped on another patch of ice and wound up in a heap on the sidewalk outside Patrick’s house.

“I’m beginning to think you do this on purpose.”

Amelia scoffed. “I didn’t even know you were home, Patrick. Now stop being a dick and help me up.”

Patrick jutted a hand in her direction. “Wow, little Amelia went off to college and learned big girl words.”

“And Patrick went to the NHL and is still an insufferable dick.”

A slow grin made its way onto Patrick’s face as he pulled Amelia to her feet. “Is it broken this time?”

Amelia shifted her weight between each foot. “No, I don’t think so.”

“That’s good.” Awkward silence. “It’s, uh…been a while, eh?”

“Two years.”

Patrick nodded. “You look good.”

Amelia wanted to tell him he didn’t, that his black eye was ruining an otherwise perfect face, but she couldn’t. She barely got out a simple ‘thank you.' Being around Patrick was bringing back everything she’d forced out of her mind after he broke off their relationship—all the feelings, memories, everything that’d made Amelia fall in love with him to begin with.

“I…I should go.”

She spun on her heel too quickly and nearly toppled to the ground again, only Patrick grabbed her right before she hit rock bottom.

“You sure about that?”

Amelia shook him off and began walking back to her house. “I can’t be around you, Patrick.”

“Ame…”

That was all the invitation she needed. “Why’d you do it?”

“Can we at least go inside? It’s fucking freez—”

“I know I wasn’t the best girlfriend in the world but I loved you!”

“Oh my god,” Patrick muttered under his breath. “Ame, come on, don’t do this. Christ, are you crying? Seriously, Ame, please—”

“I wasn’t good enough, was I? I bet the girls in Chicago are so much prettier than me. I bet they have all the time in the world for you and show up to every one of your games in your jersey and would do absolutely anything to be with you.”

Patrick stayed silent; Amelia was right. He was surrounded by women who didn’t want anything from him the morning after. He didn’t have to worry about commitment or breaking hearts. The only person he had to remember to call after a game was his mother. It was nice…for a while. His teammates didn’t see any reason for him to settle down so young but after his recent run-in with the law he knew someone like Amelia was exactly what he needed. He knew deep down that he’d always take hockey for granted; it wasn’t enough to keep him out of bars or away from a good party. But Amelia was. He’d broken her heart once and would throw his life away before he did it twice.

“There’s thousands of those girls, Ame. But there’s only one you.”