Meet Your Match (Kings of the Ice)

Four days before Christmas, the Ospreys had their last home game before the holiday. It was going to be my last game with full access, my last assignment before everything wrapped up. Reya and Camilla were ready for me to tackle what came next, and the Osprey’s GM didn’t want any distractions for the team as they headed into the second half of the season and, hopefully, toward playoffs.

This was it. We’d had our fun, and now, it was time for life to go back to normal.

I should have been with Vince, but instead, I was curled up in the fetal position on my couch with my head in my best friend’s lap.

It had been all I could do to show up for the morning skate, to post a few clips of content and then duck out before I broke down in front of the entire team. When Coach McCabe had asked if I was okay, I’d nearly lost it.

The worst part was that Vince looked just as miserable as I did.

And that was my fault.

I hadn’t just left his condo after that night we spent with his family. I’d left the building, too. I’d packed my belongings and moved back home.

And I’d barely seen Vince since then.

The only content I posted was of him at the rink, where I felt like I could take some photos and videos and then quickly get away.

And any time I did see him, I lost the ability to breathe.

I was so sick, my stomach in dreadful knots, lungs operating at low capacity as if I had a box of bricks on my chest. From the outside in, it all seemed so simple — Vince had caught feelings, and I knew I had, too. All I had to do was tell him that I felt the same and we could be together.

But I couldn’t do it.

It was like trying to convince myself to jump out of an airplane when I had a gut feeling my parachute wouldn’t work. It was like someone else telling me it’s fine to take a step, but I’m blindfolded, and when I hover my foot, I’m just certain there’s a cliff there, and that I’ll tumble off it and to my death.

I was frozen in place, fright-stricken, trying to survive by just staying still.

“I hate seeing you this way,” Livia said softly, but I jerked as if she’d screamed. We’d been silent for so long, her playing with my hair while I cried quietly.

“I know.”

“You love him, too.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, and how more tears found their way out, I’d never know. I couldn’t believe how much I’d cried. It had to be a Guinness World Record by now. My eyes were so swollen I was surprised I could even see at all.

“You do,” Livia repeated, smoothing a hand over my hair. “Babe, why are you torturing yourself?”

“You know why.”

She sighed. “Okay, yes, I do, but…” She paused like she was gathering her thoughts. “If there was ever a time to move forward, or a person to move forward with — is this not it?”

“Livia, James broke me,” I said, pushing up so I could look her in the eyes. I hated how my voice trembled. “But Vince? He… he could kill me.”

“Or he could bring you back to life.”

I rolled my lips together, tasting the salty tears there.

“You’re scared of being hurt again,” she said, my face warping as she did. “And that’s okay, that’s normal,” she assured me, covering my hand with hers. “And truthfully, I cannot promise you that it won’t happen. No one can, not even Vince. That’s what’s so fucked up about relationships, about love. We give ourselves, we trust, and then we get hurt. We wonder why we ever did that, we hate everyone for a while, until… we don’t. Until we meet someone, and we laugh again, and we feel again, and we start to wonder if we can fall in love again. So we do.” She laughed a little. “And then, they fuck us over or we fuck them over and we’re right back to square one.”

“So you do get it.”

She squeezed my hand. “I do. But listen, you want to know the difference between the people who end up alone and the ones who end up with the love of their life?” She leaned in on a smile. “The former never open themselves up to love again because they’re too afraid of the pain that might come with it. And the latter understand that love is worth it, and that they’re strong enough to survive whatever comes before they find it.”

I nodded, eyes bubbling over again. “You do realize how stupid that sounds coming from someone who has told me dozens of times that love is a construct, right?”

“Yeah, well, I’m not you,” she said, quickly waving me off. “I get my kicks in different ways. But baby girl, you are in love. And if I was ever in your shoes, I’d want you to smack me and shake me until I saw it and listened to you, too.”

“You haven’t smacked me yet.”

“I’m close.”

I chuckled, leaning my head on her shoulder and thinking about the night I spent with Vince and his family. They were so lovely, so different from James’s that it had knocked me for a loop. With James, he made me feel like we were invincible, but his family only made me feel like a bug that needed to be squashed. Vince’s family only spent a few hours with me — one night — and somehow, they made me feel like I’d been in the family for years, like I belonged there with them.

The words his dad had said to me before they left made more tears pool in my eyes as I recalled them.

“I wondered when my boy would give his heart to someone. I’m glad he waited for you.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, the tears were released, my bottom lip quivering.

“I want to, you know,” I whispered. “Trust him. Jump in. Try. I just… I feel frozen. I feel… scared. I’m so fucking scared, Livia. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, and the sickest part of me keeps saying it’s better to feel this now than later, that losing him today will be easier than a year down the line.”

“Probably true. But what if you didn’t have to lose him at all?” She nudged her shoulder up until I lifted my head and looked at her. “What if he stayed? What if you made it?”

I covered my heart where it fluttered at the thought. “I felt this way once before, you know. I thought I was getting married, I thought we would be together forever.” I shook my head. “I think that part of me is broken now. I don’t know how to access it.”

Livia frowned, and we were both quiet for a long moment before her eyes widened and she lit up. “Oh, my God. I’m a genius.”

She jumped up from the couch before I could ask what the hell she meant, and then she ran back to my bedroom. I heard her rummaging through something, and then a curse before a loud thump rang out.

“Liv?” I called, dragging my ass off the couch to go get her. But she swept through the living room before I had the chance, a familiar box tucked under her arm as she grabbed my wrist and tugged me toward the sliding glass door that led to my back yard.

“Come on.”

“Livia, what are you doing with that?” My chest was even tighter now in the presence of the box.

“I’m not doing anything,” she said, plopping it on my outdoor table. She tore the lid open. “You are.”

“Wha—”

“Here,” she said before I could ask anything, taking out the first item she found and shoving it into my hand.

I froze the moment it touched my skin.

It was a golf ball, neon orange, from one of my first dates with James. We’d gone putt-putting, him showing off and me letting him because I liked that he wanted to show off for me. At the end of the night, he’d drawn a black heart on the ball he’d won with, and I’d kept it in my purse for longer than I’d ever admit.

“Okay…” I said, staring at it.

“Throw it.” Livia said, pointing across my yard toward where my compost bin was. “Or stomp on it or light it on fire or get a sledgehammer and destroy it.”

“A sledgehammer?”

“Listen to me,” she said, grabbing my shoulders in her hands. “You’ve cried over this fucker. You’ve gone to therapy. You’ve picked yourself up and you’ve started building a career and you’ve moved on. But you can’t let go of him, of what he did to you, until he’s no longer taking up any space. Not in your head, your heart, or this stupid box you keep shoved in the top corner of your closet.” She pulled out a picture frame of me and James next, pressing it into my chest. “It’s time to break shit, bitch.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she pulled out her phone and thumbed through it until Limp Bizkit was playing that exact song she’d just referenced, and she gave me a nod of encouragement, bopping her head to the beat.

“Livia, this is—”

“BREAK SHIT, BITCH.”

I let out a long sigh, because I did not see how this was going to fix anything at all. But I took the frame from her anyway, and when I looked down at it, I paused.

It was a photo of me and James at the beach, my head on his shoulder, his arms wrapped around me, both of us smiling. That was the night he’d asked me my ring size. We’d spent the weekend with friends, and it was one of those perfect kind of weekends when the weather is gorgeous, and the days are long and lazy, and the nights are hot and wild. It felt like a turning point in my life. The man I loved had asked for my ring size, and we were joking about how many kids we wanted.

For so long, I looked at that photo and felt my stomach ache with how happy I’d been in that moment, with how scared I was I’d never be that happy again.

But looking at it now, I only thought one thing.

He’s not Vince.

It felt wrong, to see me in another man’s arms. I thought about the picture Vince took of us on the boat, and I compared my smile in that one with the one I stared at now.

I didn’t even recognize her anymore, the girl on the beach.

But I knew the girl on the boat.

I shivered.

The longer I stared at the photograph in my hands, the more upset I became. I didn’t want his arms around me, because they weren’t Vince’s. It was… gross. It was disturbed. It was not okay. It was wrong in every possible way.

And that made me laugh.

It was a short laugh at first, one that bubbled out of my chest. But then I was cackling, shaking my head as tears from laughing filled my eyes this time.

“Oh, God,” Livia said, blinking as she stepped away from me with her hands raised. The song played out, the lyrics calling to me while my best friend stared at me like a psycho. “Did I officially push you over the insanity line?”

“No,” I managed through another fit of laughter, wiping tears from my eyes. “I… I think you just saved me.”

I ran a hand over the photograph, shaking my head. How did I ever think that was joy? How did I ever see him as forever?

What James and I had was love, yes — it was important in its own way. He did make me smile, and I did feel safe with him until the very moment I didn’t.

But God, comparing him to Vince, comparing how I felt with James with how I feel now?

It was laughable.

Literally.

Vince pushed me. He challenged me and made me want to be spontaneous, to be free, to be more. I felt alive with him — not just when we were tangled in the sheets, but any time we were together. He was quick to tease me, and I loved that he did. He never shut me out. He’d been open from the first moment I’d walked through his door with my camera in tow.

I wanted to walk a hundred riverwalks with him. I wanted to be at every game. I wanted to watch him create at his pottery wheel and watch him destroy on the ice. I wanted to laugh and dance and play, and know that no matter where we went or what we did, he would be there, protecting me, taking care of me, loving me.

I tossed the golf ball up in my hand, taking one last look, and then, I heaved it with all my might just as Fred Durst screamed motherfucker.

I didn’t even watch where it went, because in the next breath, I threw the frame down on the concrete and watched it splinter, the glass shattering with the most satisfying sound.

“Fuck YES!” Livia said, and then she handed me the next victim — a ticket stub from when we went to the zoo.

I tore it in half.

“AGAIN!” She cheered, wiggling her hips with a fist pump before another memento was tossed my way. It was a snow globe with a beach inside it. He’d bought it for me as a birthday gift.

I didn’t even like snow globes.

I smashed it with so much joy I laughed like a mad woman.

“FINISH HIM!” Livia bellowed in a deep voice trying to mimic the old Mortal Kombat video game, and then I had another frame in my hand only long enough to heave it up and throw it to the ground.

Piece after piece, object after object, picture after picture, we destroyed every item in that box while “Break Stuff” played on repeat. Love notes, photographs, Christmas ornaments, books, jewelry, old dried flowers — none of it was safe. And each time I touched something new, I felt what little of James I was holding onto tear away more and more, until the last shred of him was eradicated with the satisfying breaking of a necklace, the beads on it flying everywhere and skittering across the concrete.

When we were done, I was panting, smiling, and Livia high-fived me like a proud mother.

“Good job, bitch,” she said, smacking my butt. “Now, get your shit together, get your pretty ass dressed, and go. Get. Your. Man.”