by Avery Flynn
He didn’t want to think about it anymore. Didn’t want to be Ollie. Maybe he could lose himself in the flavor of her? In the feel of her alive and breathing hard against him. With just that in mind, he rolled to cover her with his body. The kisses between them were edged in desperation, but only because he was desperate. Desperate to forget. Desperate to feel alive again.
He could lose it all in her. In the flavor of her, ripe on his tongue like a spice. In the feel of her, breathing hard and matching him kiss for kiss. In her body, where he could drive himself until either sanity returned or exhaustion overtook him.
It wasn’t until his hand dragged up her shirt and he filled his palm with her soft breast that he came to himself again. Remembered who he was, and who she was, and why he couldn’t use her like that. He rolled away from her and was on his feet in one smooth motion. Before she could say anything, he was running. He needed to get away from her before she said something that would shatter the bowl. Would shatter him.
Although he wanted to feel again, he realized that if he managed it, he’d have to feel it all. He’d have the good and the bad, and if the weight was unbearable with the bowl in place, imagine how it would crush him if it shattered?
If he shattered.
He ran as hard as his legs could carry him, and so fast that his breath came out in gasps, even though he’d been working out so hard to be the very best.
None of it mattered. Nothing mattered. It seemed the farther his pounding feet took him from Maisie, the emptier the blue bowl above him became. The heavier the weight of it all.
He didn’t see the girl on the edge of the playground, not until he hit her full force, tumbling them both in an awkward rolling tackle to the ground.
“Hey!” she said, out of breath because he’d hit her so hard. “What the hell, Ollie?”
She asked the question and he recognized her. Elle Farrell, senior, and a cheerleader. One of the more popular girls in school, actually. And he’d just hit her hard enough to take down a linebacker.
But he didn’t have words. Couldn’t find them with the weight of the sky pushing down on him so hard. He simply stared at her.
“Your parents…” she whispered, remembering something besides being hit by a running underclassman.
He didn’t want to talk about it, but he wanted to feel something. Anything. Maybe if she slapped him, he’d remember who he was and why that mattered. Why anything mattered anymore. So, he dragged her face close, just as he’d done to Maisie about a hundred times lately. He kissed her with all that he felt for Maisie and wished like hell someone would tell him to stop.
That someone would tell the world to stop, to rewind to any time before yesterday. When the world made sense. When things mattered.
But she didn’t slap him. Instead, she melted into his arms. After a few moments, she stood and took his hand. He followed her, because if nothing mattered, where she was taking him didn’t matter either. He’d go wherever. Maybe if he walked far enough away, he could outrun the memories.
She led him to her house, right through the front door. He continued to follow her up the stairs into her bedroom. When she stripped for him, he just watched, even though he didn’t see it. All he could see was the giant pit of nothing, slowly swallowing him whole.
But when she pressed that body up against his, he could feel her. His body responded, even if his mind still stayed blissfully disconnected from the whole matter. He tried to shove all of it inside her, all the emptiness and things he couldn’t let himself feel. With each thrust, he became a bit more mindless, a bit emptier. When it was over, the tears came. A flood of them that seemed so disjointed and separate from him that he touched them with his hands to be sure they were real.
Elle was still kissing him. Stroking him as if her touch could erase the damage inside, while he knew nothing would save him from it.
The world ended, but the birds still chirped. He could feel the warmth of Elle’s body, but it didn’t touch him, not really. Because nothing could touch him. He was trapped in a blue hell, completely alone. And no one else seemed to realize that the world had ended.
6
Present
Maisie climbed out of his truck and looked up at the hotel. “How is this going to fix my car?” she asked.
Ollie shrugged. “You’re sticky,” he said simply. “Figured you’d want to wash up, since we might be tied up for a while getting your car towed and fixed.”
It was a considerate move, one the old Ollie would’ve made. She smiled to herself, hope blossoming in her chest. If she could just remind him who he was Before, maybe she could exorcise who he’d become After.
If not, that was okay, too. It didn’t change anything. She’d wait.
She’d been waiting for ever so long already.
She followed him to his hotel room and tried not to think too hard about how many people had been in there under romantic purpose before her. She tried not to think of the kiss, but it was hard when faced with her smudged makeup and plain face. It was no wonder that he’d left her so many years before, the real wonder was how she’d attracted him in the first place.
Shoving her insecurities deep, she exited the bathroom to see him standing near the bed. Even after all this time, just the sight of him sent her pulse racing. Not just because he was sexy as hell and now a champion, but because of who he’d been and how much he meant to her. Did any of his fans see the lonely little boy under all that shine? Or were they blinded by his potential and skill on the ice?
“Thanks for this. And for being willing to help with the car.”
His suitcase lay open on the floor, and she glanced at it. Nothing in there looked personal, but that was normal for what she’d seen of Ollie After. It was about a week and a half after the most horrible day, as she tended to think of it, that his grandfather had his first heart attack.
The second one, the next day, had killed him.
His grandmother retreated into a bottle, but Maisie had never been sure what sent her there—whether it was grief over all the deaths or the unexpected reminder of what she lost that she faced in Ollie—but she never crawled back out. She’d passed away a few years later, once Ollie was in college, eliminating any need for him to come home to visit.
Especially since Jay had shipped out with the military—he’d signed up the day he graduated high school—and was gone a few short years later. He’d died in the sandbox, and now, out of all of them, only she and Ollie survived in the After.
And he surely wasn’t carrying around mementos of her.
“No problem. The Cup won’t be here until tomorrow. I’m taking it to see my parents, or rather the plaque they put up in the cemetery for them,” he added. They both knew his parents weren’t there, not beneath that plaque. They vanished, literally wiped off the earth entirely on the most horrible day.
She wasn’t sure if it was because he wanted to talk to her or because of politeness, but just hearing his voice touched her. Knowing he didn’t tell anyone else any of it, because no one outside of them would understand, not really, what all of it meant.
“You kissed me in the truck,” she said, changing the topic abruptly before her thoughts slid into a darker place.
The moment the words slipped free of her lips, she wanted to swallow them back. To bunch them in her fist like crumpled paper and throw them away. But once said, words can’t be deleted with the stroke of a key. Instead, she had to live with the possible ramifications of her actions.
Life sucked like that.
“Sorry about that,” he began.
“You don’t get to apologize to me. If you get to decide whether or not I can forgive you, then you don’t get to apologize to me.” She wasn’t sure where the words came from, but they were wrenched from her chest. They cut on their way from her body, leaving her bleeding on some soul deep emotional level.
But she didn’t regret them. No, Maisie Annabeth Miller didn’t regret. It was one of her rules, the things she set up
in her life to protect her from pain.
His brow arched. “So we’re back to that conversation?”
“How can we be back to it when it is a conversation we never actually had?”
7
September 15th, 2001
Usually, Saturday morning meant that she’d work on one of her crafts or read a book. Her brother would be playing video games on the television, and her parents would be off doing whatever they did during the day.
Later in the day, Ollie usually showed up to play video games with Jay, and they both ignored her until early evening. Then they’d all order a pizza or something, until Ollie’s parents called him home.
It was weekend tradition.
But Jay wasn’t playing video games, and she wasn’t crafting. Instead, they both sat in the living room while their parents talked in hushed voices in the kitchen. She knew it was about Ollie. Most things were, these days.
“He’s not coming over today, if you were thinking he might.”
Jay didn’t usually bother to speak to her, unless it was to complain she was breathing too loud, so she blinked twice before her brain caught up and turned his words into something she could understand. “What?”
“You brushed your hair and you’re wearing lip gloss. And you’ve got that thing around your neck…” He gestured at his own neck, and she touched her throat in response.
“A choker,” she answered. Her fingertips were cold, and she sensed something wrong. That breathless feeling, like repressed tears, clogged her throat. But what worse thing could happen, really? Both of Ollie’s parents were gone, probably dead. He was an actual orphan.
And she hadn’t seen him for days. Not since she found him lying on his back under their tree house. Not since she tried to talk to him, and he ignored her. Not since he kissed her like he needed her and then ran from her as if she was what went wrong.
“Whatever, he’s not coming. And I know you have some weird crush on him… yuck. Anyway, he’s probably at his girlfriend’s house. I don’t expect him to come over today.” Jay didn’t seem to realize what his words would mean to her, or how they would suck the air from the room. Instead, he crept to his video game console. Once he had it powered on, and glanced back to be sure his parents didn’t see, Jay turned on the TV. He frantically muted it, still watching to be sure the parents weren’t looking.
They’d told him no video games. Apparently, he was ignoring them.
But she couldn’t ignore what he’d said. Why would he say girlfriend? Ollie didn’t have a girlfriend, unless she counted as that. The way he kissed her, the way he’d talked about someday, when they were grown up… the way he all but said he loved her. Clearly, that meant something.
Didn’t it?
“Girlfriend?” she finally managed to ask. She didn’t want to ask. She wanted her brother to ignore her and play his game. Surely, he was messing with her. Some sick prank that would be revealed when Ollie showed up.
Ollie always came over on Saturdays.
Always.
“Yeah, I guess he hooked up with Elle Farrell. I didn’t see that coming, especially not with the whole thing that happened in the City. But whatever, they seem happy enough.” Jay shrugged, more focused on shooting things on the screen than he was his annoying little sister.
Which was good. Because it meant he couldn’t see her tears. She jogged up the stairs to her room then closed the door behind her. Under her mattress, she kept her journal of dreams. It had all her plans, her hopes, and she’d been using it to write down her feelings about Ollie. For years, she’d been writing about him, dreaming of him.
Jay was wrong, that was all. Ollie didn’t have a girlfriend.
But she’d asked about his parents and then he turned away from her. And after kissing her like that—so passionately and not like anything she’d ever read about—he’d ran.
She shook her head. Tearing out a page from her book, she then folded the page into a neat square. Small enough to pass like a note at school, but more important.
It only took her a few minutes to run to his grandparents’ house. To stand outside, breathing hard, torn between whether or not she should face him.
But she was Maisie Annabeth Miller. She found the bright spots in life, nurtured them. She could make a difference in the world, and would one day. She wasn’t afraid of anything.
Certainly not afraid of a boy she’d known since, like, birth.
Poking her chin out in what she hoped was a stubborn expression, she walked up the sidewalk. When his grandmother opened the front door, Maisie noticed that the woman looked about twenty years older than she had only days ago.
She looked like a woman who lost all hope and was only going through the motions. But Maisie didn’t remark on it, giving her a swift hug. “Hi, Nana Tremblay. Is Ollie home?”
“He’s in the living room, playing one of those games.” His grandmother shrugged, looking past Maisie but not seeming to see a thing. “You kids have a nice visit.”
With that, the woman left her alone in the mudroom, gripping the letter in a sweaty hand while her breath still raced like she’d run a mile or something. She wasn’t backing down now, even if their whole house felt like a tomb. Even if it felt like she was actually standing in a grave, just nobody had filled it up with dirt yet.
Swallowing hard, she headed for the living room. He wasn’t playing a game, though. Sure, he held a controller and a game was on the screen, but even she recognized a start menu. He sat there, elbows resting on his knees, holding that controller like it could save the world, but not touching a button.
“Ollie,” she said softly. He didn’t turn, didn’t move. Didn’t anything.
No sense putting it off. “So, Jay said something really ridiculous. You know how he likes to mess with me,” she said. Her laugh came out high and strained. It didn’t sound anything like her laugh, so she reminded herself she made people happy. She could make him happy, she knew it. “He said you hooked up with Elle Farrell. Crazy, right? So I guess we really don’t have to worry about anyone thinking anything about us, since rumor has you dating someone else entirely.”
He still didn’t look at her. Didn’t move. Hardly seemed to be breathing. Maybe it was because he was trapped in this grave—er, house. If she got him outside, maybe he’d act normal again. Like her Ollie, not this quiet stranger who also seemed to have aged in the past few days. Gone was the playful boy, the one who listened to all she said. In his place was a man, still and controlled and completely unreadable.
Her Ollie was still in there. He had to be.
“Ollie,” she said again.
When he faced her, that mask of uncaring still covered his face, but she saw something more in his eyes. While his expression might be unyielding and immovable, his eyes were so, so, so desperately sad. She choked back a sob for him, willing to cry the tears he seemed unable to shed, if that was what he needed from her.
But his eyes shuttered, leaving only the cold man in their place. “Yeah, I hooked up with Elle, but I wouldn’t call it dating. I’d call it fucking. I fucked her, Maisie.”
She swallowed again, but the lump in her throat didn’t budge. She couldn’t speak past it, silenced by her utter faith in the fact he was lying. He had to be.
But why?
“Look, if you did,” she began.
“Not if. I did. It happened.”
She half shrugged, half twitched on the end of the blade he seemed to determine to carve her soul with. Whatever, she understood the why. He was grieving. She’d read that people did crazy things in times of sadness.
“I get it, Ollie. I’m still here. I forgive you—”
He jerked to his feet, coming closer to her. She’d backed up a step before she realized it. Seeing her giving up ground seemed to please the emotionless man in the Ollie suit. His lips curled in a slow, empty smile that said nothing of happiness. “You don’t get to forgive me. I don’t deserve it. Go home, little girl. You can’t fix me.”
He turned away from her, striding out of the living room and vanishing into the attached dining room. Left alone, she walked slowly to his controller. Lifting it, she then placed the folded piece of paper under the plastic device before fleeing his home.
He needed to know. For when he got better, and started being Ollie again. He needed to know how she felt.
And for just a little while, she allowed herself to forget she was Maisie Annabeth Miller. For just a little while, she allowed herself to cry, because dammit life wasn’t fair.
8
Present
Ollie wasn’t used to facing his inner demons. He did a damn fine job of shoving them behind a wall, usually, skillfully controlling them like he controlled the puck. But in this case, he wanted to face his past.
It was part of why he’d come home, wasn’t it? To bring the hometown pride, to fulfil his obligations to them, once and for all, so he could move on with his life elsewhere.
Far from all this, and the memories just being in a room with her wakened.
“I should’ve told you more back then, but it was all too new. Too much. Too something. Which was selfish, but…And you always did most of the talking, so maybe I felt like there wasn’t anything I could add to the conversation and keep it together. I’m older now, and I think we should have the conversation.” Ollie sat on the bed, facing her. Even sitting, he wasn’t shorter than her. They were eye level, and he wondered if he ever noticed before how petite she was.
How tiny and fragile and important.
“Or we could just start over. I’m Maisie Miller, and I live around here… you come here often?” She batted her eyelashes at him, trying for a levity he just wasn’t feeling quite yet.
“I don’t want to start over,” he confessed.
She dropped to the bed, sitting too near him for her own good. At this distance, how hard would it be to steal another of her drugging kisses? How easy would it be to say to hell with it all and seduce her into his arms?
