Page 188 of Saving Forever with the Hockey Captain

The word won't come because I don't have an answer.

Keisha sighs quietly.

"I wish I could tell you what to do."

"So do I."

"But I can't."

"No."

"I can only tell you one thing."

I wait.

"Whatever happens, ...don't make the decision without giving him the chance to make one too."

We say goodbye a few minutes later and I slip the phone back into my pocket.

Somehow...

I feel even less certain than I did before I called.

Of course, I should drive. Instead...

I leave my car in the lot and start walking. The February air bites pleasantly at my cheeks as I leave the hospital behind.

Without really deciding to, I take the longer route. Past the coffee shop. The owner waves through the front window, and I wave back automatically.

Jamie had insisted they served the best cinnamon rolls in Frostholm. He was wrong. The coffee is better than the pastries.

I smile despite myself.

Halfway down the block I pass the little bookstore where we'd hidden from the rain one afternoon after therapy. He'd spent twenty minutes pretending not to buy a children's hockey book because he thought Noah at the foundation might like it.

He bought two. One for Noah. One because "the illustrations were surprisingly educational."

Liar.

He simply liked the story.

A gust of wind sends loose snow skittering across the sidewalk. I pull my scarf a little tighter and keep walking.

Every corner seems to hold another memory. The corner café where we'd sat drinking coffee. The bench where he'd folded a paper airplane from a napkin just because he thought hospitals needed more flying objects. The sporting goods store where he'd somehow talked me into trying on hockey gloves. I had looked ridiculous.

He'd laughed until tears filled his eyes. The memory makes me laugh now.

Then my laughter fades. Because in ten days, all of this becomes memory…

The realization stops me in the middle of the sidewalk.

Not the coffee.

Not the park.

Not even the city.

Him.