Into the Light

It’s summer, and she’s made her decision. She’s leaving her home behind, hell, she’s leaving her country behind. She’s leaving me behind.

“You wouldn’t let me hold you back from hockey,” she counters. “The only reason we’re having this conversation is because you’re playing here.”

She’s right, but he won’t admit it. He just looks at her. America. The thought of her being in another country already makes him feel so alone.

“Mike, it’s such a good school. A good opportunity for me. I can’t just let it go.”

He nods. Swallows down the nausea. The moments tick by. They don’t move any closer to each other or further away from the conversation.

“I don’t expect you to wait for me,” she says, abruptly. Giving a fierce look and grimace down at her feet. “I love you, I really do. But it’s not fair for either of us to be holding onto this too tightly. We might just kill it.”

He nods again. He pictures a role-reversal in his mind: him telling her he’s leaving to play in America next year. He imagines what she’d say. She’d be ecstatic. She’d know it’s one step closer to his dream. It kills him that she would understand because he’s looking for any reason not to. He can’t. He knows it’s not fair.

“I love you.” It’s about all he can manage. He means for it to be a blessing but says it like a curse.



HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!
-K

He smiles. Scrolls through his phone as he steps out of the room to call her. When she picks up, all he can hear is static-y bass and the sound of many people around her.

“Hello? Hello? Mike, you there?”

He clears his throat. “Hey. Hi. Uh. Is this a bad time?”

“No, it’s a fine time! Happy birthday! Shouldn’t you be out celebrating?”

He wants to say that it seems like she’s doing enough for the both of them, but instead starts to explain how he’s actually over at a friend’s house right then. He’s not halfway through his story before he hears a male voice close to the receiver and her soft laughter.

“Actually, I should go. Early start tomorrow.”

“Oh. Okay then. Well, good night. Sleep well, birthday boy.”

His thumb is already on the end button and he barely catches her good bye.



Her American school let them out for a week. Some American holiday. She goes home for three nights and finds herself in front of his new place with her bags on the fourth. She hopes he’s home. She tries to mentally recount a month’s worth of text messages and conversation that might indicate otherwise, but she just can’t remember. Rings the doorbell. Taps foot impatiently and then he’s there, in the doorway

She could be at home, with her family, but she’s there, with him, and for the moment, he’s content. They start frantic, unlike they’ve ever been before, but then they slow to their usual rhythm, just like they always used to be. When they were two parts to one functioning whole. He never noticed his handicap until she fit right back with him.

He traces shapes onto her skin, letters, words. Things he’s been dying to tell her for the last three months. Everything is so still and silent and in harmony. He’s sure a moment like this could bring world peace.

“I have something to tell you,” she begins. It’s all over. He knows. “I’ve got something going on with someone else.”

His hands still. Her eyes open. The moment shatters.

“Oh.” He’s not sure of the reaction she’s expecting. “Huh. Okay. Is it serious?”

“I don’t know.” Pause. “Actually, he came home with me for the holiday.”

“Oh.” He says it again. He’s never been the most articulate but right now he feels stupid. His face feels hot and he doesn’t understand why and then he does. He’s mad. He almost wants to push her away, right off his bed.

“But he left last night to actually go be with his family, so he wasn’t here for that long. He wasn’t here to like meet my parents you know? He just thought he’d come see where I’m from. My parents think he’s just a friend. You know, checking out quaint Canadian scenery.” She’s rambling. She’s lost her composure too.

“Did you come here just to tell me that?” What he really wants to know is why she thought of him. Why she thought this was okay. To have her cake and eat it too. She moves herself closer to him, molding herself perfectly against his side, fitting herself so her lips are at the crook of his neck. She presses a gentle kiss, and it kills him even more.

“I don’t know why I’m here. I didn’t plan this. I think I was just missing you.”

Her eyes glisten with extra moisture but he doesn’t know it as she speaks into his skin. He thinks about her promise a year ago and turns his head away but holds her tighter.



Someday, maybe, when all the stars align, they could truly be together.

It’s what gets him by most nights. Dreaming about the future, about her, about them. He even has the floor plan of their first home in his head. He holds onto this hope even though he knows he’s letting her slip through his fingers. He decides not to call. If it’s right, she’ll call him. If she doesn’t, he’ll spend another night in bed softly moaning her name, either from ecstasy or pain. Those are always the only two options for him when it came to her.

Sometimes she does, but mostly she doesn’t. He’ll look back later and still claim that he never, ever, expected her to disappear.



It’s Christmas time, but he barely notices. It’s getting to be that time of the season where there are no more excuses, but that doesn’t stop the mistakes. He’s tired. He’s still got months left but he’s already showing wear, already ragged. There are months left and he’s already going straight home after wins. He’s 18, he reminds himself, but he mostly prefers to nurse his wounds alone and stare at his phone. He convinces himself that it’s a busy time. He wonders if she’s home. He contemplates going over there. His phone buzzes.

thinking of u
-K

His first instinct is to hop onto a plane immediately to hear her say it in person. He’s able to reign himself in. Any other girl and he’d follow it up with a remark about how he does the same, alone, in his room, late at night, and it’s the truth, but he could never be that honest with her. She’s a sanctity that he would never cross.

r u home?
-M

not yet, few days
-K

see u soon?
-M

The silence that follows resounds through the airwaves.



He’s counting down the days. He knows it’s weird and stalkerish, but he called her mom and found out when she’s done with classes. In his mind, he set the date with a fat red marker. With his season already over, this is his new salvation. If he could see her one more time, he’d have her forever. He doesn’t know how this connection formed in his brain, but it did, and it festered, until it’s a full-blown delusion. He thinks she’ll let him know when she’ll be home. She at least did last time. He’s willing to overlook past mistakes. God knows he’s made them too.

The day she’s supposed to be home, he paces around his room in his parents house, looking over all the painful mementos she left behind. Notes, pictures, gifts. A week later and he finally breaks and calls her.

“Mike?”

“Yeah. Hey.”

“Hey...is something wrong?”

So wrong. So, so wrong. She’s not here. He clears his throat.

“No, no. Just wanted to catch up. Hey, aren’t you supposed to be coming home soon?”

She sucks in a breath like this is the exact topic which she hoped to avoid.

“I don’t actually think I’ll be coming back this summer...at all. I want to take some extra classes, you know? Get ahead a little.”

Pause stretches to silence. He’s slow to form his words. His desperation hinders them. But when he does, they’re soft.

“Why, Kris? Why are you doing this?”

She keeps her tone business-like and persuasive. “I told you. It’s really competitive, Mike. If I want to stand any chance at all of getting into a medical school here, then this is what I need to do.”

And that’s where he snaps.

“Do you have some sort of fucking boyfriend there or something? Is this what this is about? Traded me up for someone better? Smarter? Someone whose family’s got more money? You knew that’s what you’d get when you went away, didn’t you. That’s why you broke it all off!”

He hears her screaming at him from an arms-length away. “It’s none of your fucking business what I do here! And as you pointed out, we’re not together anymore, so I can have a fucking boyfriend if I fucking please and you don’t have any right to even ask me that anymore!”

He thinks of screaming back, but all he feels after the initial rush is exhaustion. She sighs. Her voice takes on a hushed new tone, like a mother soothing an impetuous child.

“This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen. I didn’t want us to put our lives on the back burner, and I didn’t want us to get ugly at each other. I love you, Mike, but this just isn’t the time for it. This isn’t our time to love each other. Maybe it already passed.”

He clenched the phone to his ear long after she hung up, as if hoping he’d hear her voice all over again and she’d rewind and take back what she said. Something broke in him that day, but he never managed to pinpoint it to his heart.



Hockey is everything now. There are no more excuses, no more contingency plans. There is only one goal, one purpose, and it has nothing to do with her. Nothing has anything to do with her anymore, because she won’t have anything to do with me.

He uses this as fuel. What he really wants to make her want to eat her words. He wants to become everything he told her he would be. He wants to be famous; famous enough for his name to haunt her wherever she goes. He wants to be as clearly burned into her mind as he pretends she isn’t in his.

When he’s picked first round, he knows he’s done it. Or at least in the process of doing it. He’s ecstatic and giddy and all those other emotions that would make him cringe in any other situation. He wonders if he’s watching him, on TV, right then. Half of him thinks she must be, the other half thinks she can’t. She would have called, texted, emailed, something. He knows she hasn’t. He can feel the buzzes of his phone against his thigh, each with a well-wish and a congratulations. Whenever he can, he takes a glance. Not her number. He feels annoyed that he’s thinking of her at all.

He’s wanted this forever. And it’s the step up he needs, he thinks, that night, in the hotel room by himself. The step up over her. The sudden thought of her again feels like a sharp pinch in his brain, and he wants her to just go away. Get out of his mind and memory. His phone buzzes one last time. It’s from a number he doesn’t know with an area code he can’t identify.

congrats

But, as much as he pretends he doesn’t, what he really, really wants is for her to become everything she wanted to be.



When he makes it to the World Championships, he’s able to forget her. If only for a moment. He plays hard, he contributes, he’s winning. He’s on top of the fucking world. He’s happy, he realizes as he laces up for the finals. He smiles. He feels weightless.
But when he sees gold taken away, no, more felt like ripped away from his grasps, it all comes rushing back. Back right on top of his shoulders, and he’s carrying that chip on his shoulder like never before. He’s glad right then that he left his country to play, that he doesn’t have to face his loss for the rest of the season.

Just like her, he thinks.

He’s sick of his failures. He’s glad when he’s able to go home again. He almost doesn’t notice that she’s not there, again. She hasn’t for a while. He hasn’t seen her since that summer. Five years ago. He feels so much older. With a start, he realizes that he is. He’s not that 18 year old boy who loved only two things in life. He’s a 23 year old man who’s left with only one thing.