Page 3 of Against The Boards

He pulled out of the parking lot and sped off. “Is this because of your break-up?”

I scowled at him. “She broke my heart.”

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. He squinted at me, assessing my appearance for the first time since I got into his car. “Hey! You changed your hair. You look better with dark hair. Blonde was gross on you.”

“Thank you?”

I had been a little lost after my break-up, so Nat convinced me a change in my look would make me feel better. It had, and as much as I hated to admit it, I did look better with darker hair.

Tristan smirked. “It was a compliment.”

I punched him in the arm. “Don’t be a jerk.”

“You want to talk about it?” he asked.

Tristan didn’t like to talk about feelings. The fact he asked meant he knew how much I was hurting. I sometimes wondered if my brother had any feelings at all. Like, maybe I had absorbed them all in the womb. It would explain why I was such an emotional wreck for most of my life.

“I needed to get out of St. Catharines,” I admitted.

“But all the way to the States?”

“I have no one in Canada.”

“You still have—”

“No. They made it very clear they want nothing to do with me.”

“Roxie, that’s not true. They’ll come around,” he reassured me. He parked his car in the garage of his condo building. “Mom just doesn’t understand bisexuality.”

“Yeah, well, what about Dad?”

Tristan sighed. “I don’t know.”

“It hurts,” I muttered.

When I came out to my family, Tristan had the best reaction. He shrugged and asked if I wanted another beer. Mom said, “Bisexuality isn’t real,” and that I needed to “choose a side.” What hurt more than her biphobia, though, was my dad’s silence. That was four years ago. I came out to them during my third year at university, and when they didn’t accept me, I never went home again. Occasionally they called me, but I had nothing to say to them, and I let their calls go unanswered.

Tristan squeezed my hand. “I know.”

I sighed and tried not to think about it. “So you never answered my question. Where’s a good area to move to?”

“Okay, here’s the plan. You stay in my room while I’m overseas, and we can look together when I get back, or Kat can help you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Who’s Kat?”

He barked out a laugh. “The GM’s assistant. Also my goaltender’s mom, so she’s off-limits.”

“Really?”

He suddenly looked very solemn. “I’d never break the code.”

I rolled my eyes. Hockey boys and their codes; it all seemed rather archaic to me. I’d never been interested in hockey players, mostly because they got mad I could outshoot them. Sorry, my dudes! When you grew up with a Stanley Cup winner for a father, not playing hockey wasn’t an option.

“Noah won’t mind me staying at your place?”

“No, because he already moved in with his girl.”

“He moved in with Dinah already?”