Page 13 of Grief & Glitter

“Hmm, maybe so, but it was over the top. Anyway, I went back to find him. Dad, I told him about me being gender fluid. And he was totally cool. Like, he didn’t even blink. He just said that if it made me happy then he was happy.”

Dad smiled. “See, I said he was a good guy.”

“He is, nice, really nice. I helped him find a suit for the charity event. We had a really nice time. I think he could be a friend if he wanted to be, but then tonight I did this weird thing. I was… I was returning his skates to his stall when I… I sort of picked up an old hoodie of his in the stall and… I sort of smelled it.”

“Oh.” Dad looked befuddled. “Was there a foul stink coming off it? I know lots of those guys have shit in their lockers that smells like roadkill.”

“No, it smelled good. Like pine. Like him. I… think about him a lot now.” Using my fingernail, I scraped some cinnamon off the top of the roll and stared at it under my nail. “I think of him in a romantic way, and that’s… I know it was wrong to do what I did. Total loser sicko stuff. I felt shitty about myself, down on myself for being such a stalker weirdo. Then it was just there.” I glanced from my nail to my father. “The need to get high. It came out of nowhere. Just BLAM! There it was. I’ve been doing so good. It freaked me out, so I called Lyle and had coffee with him. He talked me down.”

“Good, oh good. I’m so proud of you,” he roughly whispered.

“Don’t be. I was sniffing some guy’s hoodie. That’s sick.”

“No, it’s not. You know what that says to me?” I shook my head as my gaze lifted from my nail to my father. “It says that you like Taft, and that you’re lonely, and that you wanted a moment of touch that made you feel close to him.”

“Sure, you can dress it up pretty, but it was uncool. I need to tell him what I did.”

“Did Lyle advise you to do that?”

“Yeah, sort of. I mean he didn’t come right out and say those exact words. He advised me to think about confessing to Gideon about it so that I could ease the weight of my guilt for stepping over bounds. He says the guilt leads to depression and that leads to bitterness about me and that leads to wanting to dull that pain.”

“Makes sense. Lyle is a smart cookie. Whatever you do, Ryan, just know that I’m here for you. Always.”

“I know.” My throat felt thick. I stretched out a hand, and Dad took it, giving it a squeeze.

“Did you and Lyle have anything to eat with your coffee?”

“Yeah, but I could eat a roll.” It was a lie, yeah, and recovering addicts shouldn’t lie as it starts a chain of events that could lead to more lies and blah, blah, blah. I’d heard all that psychology stuff in rehab, and in group every week. But one white lie to the man who had plucked me out of the gutter and was still dusting me off wasn’t going to lead me astray. The tiny untruth was the least I could do to make Dad happy.

Chapter 6

Gideon

I sat halfway up the lower bowl with my elbows resting on my knees, staring out across the untouched sheet of ice. The lights reflected off the surface so perfectly it almost looked like a frozen lake, and that thought came every year the same way. Ice. Water. Then Ethan.

Ten years today since my little brother died. He would’ve been twenty-three, and every year it got harder to imagine him older—my memory refused to let him grow up. He was still thirteen in every version I had. Skinny, gangly, too smart for his own good, hair sticking up because he never believed in brushes, missing his front tooth after taking a puck to the mouth and proudly refusing to smile with his lips closed. He stayed thirteen. The rest of us got older around him.

I got older.

I tried to picture him now. Maybe he’d have played college hockey, maybe even made the NHL—he’d had the talent, probably would’ve been better than me. Or maybe hockey would’ve become something he did for fun once he went off to college because Ethan had always been the clever one. Math came naturally to him, science too, and he used to explain things to me that I pretended to understand because I didn’t want my kid brother knowing he was smarter than I was. Maybe he could have been training to become an engineer, or a teacher, or one of those doctors who made impossible things possible. Maybe he’d have met someone early. He’d had a little girlfriend, Amy, back then, some kid from two streets over who he was completely besotted with. I used to tease him about her until his ears went red. Maybe they’d have stuck. Maybe she’d have grown up alongside him instead of just existing in a handful of thirteen-year-old memories, and maybe there’d have been a wedding, kids, Dad a grandfather by now, Noah an Uncle Noah, Sundays noisy instead of quiet. Maybe our family would’ve remembered how to laugh.

Instead, there was a granite headstone in Maple Grove Cemetery outside Lansing. Ethan Michael Taftwell. Beloved Son. Beloved Brother. The dates underneath never changed. Neither had we.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. Dad’s name sat above Noah’s in my favorites, and my thumb hovered over it while I typed and deleted three different versions of the same message—thinking about Ethan today, hope you’re doing okay, love you—none of them right, all of them gone before I could send them. Dad would answer if I did. He always answered with something simple like thinking about him too, maybe a picture of the flowers he’d already taken to the cemetery before work. We’d trade half a dozen messages that carefully stepped around the conversation we’d spent ten years avoiding. Noah wouldn’t answer. He never did. I couldn’t remember the last text I’d sent him and gotten anything back. I didn’t know why today would be any different. I locked the phone and put it away. Some days the silence felt easier than finding out how much distance still sat between us.

Dr. Ellison called it depression—clinical, treatable, manageable. I called it the black dog. It never really left; most days it padded a few steps behind me, quiet enough that hockey kept it there. Today it had climbed onto the seat beside me, heavy and patient, breathing against my shoulder.

“You planning on sitting here all morning?”

Chip. I hadn’t heard him come in. He stood a few rows up, dressed in jeans and a Copperheads hoodie, a travel mug in one hand, and Sable beside him in her bright blue harness with her amber eyes already on me.

“Morning.”

“Morning.” He came down the steps but stopped a row behind me instead of sitting. He didn’t crowd me, didn’t ask if I was okay. Chip knew what today was. Of course he did. “I’ve got a meeting with Coach before everyone else gets here.” He looked down at Sable. “Mind doing me a favor? Keep an eye on her for ten minutes?”

“Sure.” I blinked.

Chip unclipped the lead from his wrist and handed it over. “You need her more than me today.” Sable stood immediately, crossed the gap between us without waiting for permission, climbed onto the bench beside me, and rested her chin on my thigh.