I approach the low wall near the home team bench just as Doug Ellis skates up. “Allie. Hi.” He peers at the entrance. “Dean with you?”
I shake my head, and he looks disappointed. So do the boys, who clearly recognize me from the handful of times I met Dean here so we could go for dinner. I think they associate my face with the assistant coach they’d idolized.
Ellis tells the kids they have five minutes of free skate, then turns to me and listens without comment as I apologize for Dean’s absence and assure him that Dean will be coming back soon. “He’s going through a rough patch right now,” I say quietly.
Ellis nods. “He told me about his buddy. It was all over the local papers too. The football quarterback, huh?”
I nod back. “Beau Maxwell. He…” I picture Beau’s sparkling blue eyes and rogue grin, and my heart clenches. “He was a really great guy.” I swallow a lump of sadness. “He and Dean were close, and…yeah…it’s been hard. But Dean wanted me to tell you he’ll be back to work with the kids very soon.”
“No, he didn’t,” Ellis says.
I avoid his shrewd gaze.
“He didn’t send you here to talk to me, honey. And he didn’t say he was coming back.” Ellis shrugs. “But you want him to.”
My throat closes up. “Yes, I want him to.” I gulp again. “I wanted to make sure you’ll still have him if—when the time comes.”
“Of course I will.” He nods toward the ice. “Question is, will they? Kids don’t take well to being abandoned.”
“But they’re also quicker to forgive,” I point out.
Although maybe not all of them. When I join Dakota on the bleachers a few minutes later, it’s evident that forgiveness is the last thing on her mind.
“Dean doesn’t like me anymore,” she tells me in a flat voice. “And I don’t like him.”
I stifle a sigh. “That’s not true, sweetie. You both like each other just fine.”
“We do not. If he likes me, then why isn’t he teaching me skating anymore? And he doesn’t help Robbie anymore too! He hasn’t been here in years.”
Three weeks. But I guess to a ten-year-old that might feel like an eternity.
“Is he mad because I didn’t want to wear the boy skates?” Her bottom lip quivers. “My mom said it was rude for me to make him buy me girl skates. Is that why he hates me? Because he paid money for girl skates?”
And then she starts to cry.
Oh God. I don’t know what to do in this situation. I’m not related to her and I’m not one of her teachers—am I allowed to hug her? Will I get in trouble if I do?
Fuck it. I don’t care if it’s inappropriate. Dakota is bawling in earnest now, and she needs comfort.
I wrap one arm around her and hug her tightly. And then, as my heart throbs uncontrollably, I spend the next twenty minutes reassuring a sad little girl that my boyfriend doesn’t hate her.
*
My father’s gruff voice plays on a loop in my head during the drive back to Dean’s house.
I know men like him. They aren’t equipped to handle the big stuff. The life-changing setbacks. The game-changers.
He’d fall apart like a cheap tent.
I’m terrified that my dad is right. But he can’t be. Dean is just in pain. He’s mourning the loss of a friend.
He lives a perfect life.
He pays other people to clean up his messes.
A chill flies up my spine as something occurs to me. Fuck. Is that what I’m doing right now? Cleaning up Dean’s mess by trying to ensure that his position at the middle school is secure? By begging a ten-year-old to forgive him for deserting her?
God, I’m so tired. These past three weeks, I’ve been focused solely on Dean. Trying to make him feel better, trying to get him through this. I’m slacking on my schoolwork. I show up to rehearsals bleary-eyed and exhausted because I spend all my time tending to my drunken boyfriend. Dress rehearsals start tomorrow, damn it. Opening night is in five days. I should be concentrating on the performance, but I can barely remember what this goddamn play is about.
My frustration only intensifies when I walk through the door fifteen minutes later and am greeted by a blast of deafening music—Nirvana’s “Drain You” is blaring through the house. Wonderful.
I find Dean on the living room couch, holding a beer bottle in one hand and air-drumming with the other. He’s shirtless, but not even the sight of his spectacular chest can soothe my jagged nerves.
“Dean!” I shout over the music.
He pays me no attention.
I grab the remote from the coffee table and stop the music. Silence falls over the room, and his blond head jerks over in surprise. “Hey, babe. I didn’t see you there.”
“Hey.”
I sit on the edge of the couch and gently pry the bottle out of his hand. To my surprise, he doesn’t protest. And I think he’s more buzzed than drunk right now, because he doesn’t slur his words when he says, “You got rehearsal tonight?”
I shake my head. “No, but dress rehearsals start tomorrow.”
“Shit. Already?”
“Opening night is on Friday,” I remind him.