Monroe
I am simply not drunk enough for the conversation this guy—Justin? Jacob?—is single-handedly having at me.
My eyes glaze over as I zone out. The story he’s telling is probably supposed to be funny. It isn’t. I laugh anyway.
I take another sip of the jungle juice some girl handed me twenty minutes ago, leaning against the kitchen counter in a house I’ve never been in before. The drink burns in all the wrong ways, but I barely flinch. Fake it till you make it, right? Or, in my case, fake it till you forget it.
The music is too loud in here and the New Year’s Eve atmosphere is in full swing. The ball is ready to drop on the TV in another room and the bass beats through every wall.
My auburn hair is tied up in a tight ponytail on the crown of my head. My white tank top rides up on my midriff and jeans sit low on my hips, letting a sliver of skin show. Whatever his J-name is stares at me hungrily, raking his eyes up and down my body, and my fingers tighten around the red Solo cup in my hand.
I’ve been to dozens of these parties in the last year, attempting to consume enough alcohol and pills to make my disastrous exit from the U.S. Nationals—and loss of my spot on the Olympic figure skating team—nothing more than a hazy memory.
My gaze flickers across the room at sweaty bodies moving in time to the thump of the music.
A group of girls are standing near the makeshift dance floor, giggling to each other. They’re familiar. Really fucking familiar. U.S. Nationals team familiar.
Shit.
I know every single one of them. At least, I used to know them. I narrow my eyes in a more-than-tipsy-but-not-quite-drunk way, blatantly staring. The tall blonde notices and whispers to a tiny brunette on her left, and they all look away, pretending they have no idea who I am. Like they didn’t secretly rejoice when I was pulled out of the running. I gave them a shot at the Olympics that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
The blonde, Natalie Dorier, and her pairs partner—who used to be my pairs partner—actually made it.
Won bronze for good ol’ Team USA.
It should have been Aaron and me. An eviscerated ankle tends to ruin dreams like that, though. Can’t land a quad axel when your bones aren’t connected to anything.
I force a smirk and wiggle my fingers in their direction with drunk confidence. They can pretend I don’t exist, and that’s fine. The second I hit that ice they were figuring out how they could move past me in the rankings. No texts to see how I was. No visits to the hospital. Nothing.
Not even Aaron.
That’s the part I still can’t swallow.
I had always known that Natalie was lurking. It was never a question that the second she had an opening, she’d take it. I’d seen it happen to plenty of other girls. Someone gets injured and the next girl in line moves up. It just never occurred to me that girl would be standing in my spot when the Olympic roster was announced.
That’s the thing about ambition—it doesn’t give a fuck about friendships. And listen. I get it. I understood that friendships born on the ice weren’t built to last. Ice melts, after all.
But Aaron wasn’t just my partner. We had seven years of pairs skating and friendship—and it was gone as soon as the Olympics were yanked from my grasp.
He picked up Natalie, and it was bye-bye, Monroe.
No texts. No calls. No visits.
My body was being held together with metal screws and stitches, and he and Natalie were skating to my choreography. I’d thrown a takeout container at the TV when they skated during the Olympics. It was very Elle-Woods-in-her-breakup-era of me, though Aaron and I were never a romantic couple. Aside from personality quirks that never would have worked together like that, Aaron and I both preferred to date men. He had an on-again-off-again boyfriend who came in and out of the picture every few months.
They’d had to take out the quad axel. There was only one skater who could pull that trick, and her name wasn’t Natalie. Bumped their difficulty level right down into the rest of the crowd.
I feel my fingers curl tightly around the plastic cup in my hand, because if I don’t hold onto something, I might break something. I might shove through the crowd, plant myself in front of Natalie and her pretty little bronze medal, and ask her how it feels to be standing on top of my grave and still not be good enough to beat my scores.
But I don’t. Fuck them. I tilt my cup back, draining the rest of my drink in one go.
“What’s your deal, anyway?” Justin-Jacob asks, leaning too close to me. I turn to him, realizing he’s still talking to me. I’d been so lost in my own head I forgot he was there. He smells like alcohol, and there’s a little bit of beer foam on his upper lip.
I grin, my lips curling, hoping I look dangerous instead of drunk. “Depends,” I reply. “Which deal?” The therapist I haven’t spoken to in months would say there are many.
He laughs, but it sounds more nervous than charmed. Oh, well. I’m not going home with him tonight.
“Neither,” he recovers quickly, swigging his own drink. He’s tall—six-two, six-three, easy. I bet he plays some kind of sport for the university. “But weren’t you going to the Olympics or something? Monroe Abrams, right?”
And there it is, the or something. The question that never fails to ruin my night.
My grip tightens harder on the cup, but my smile doesn’t falter. I’ve been here before.
“Ah,” I drawl, tilting my head, counting off my list of deals on my fingers for him. “Shattered my ankle, ditched by my skating partner, developed a drinking problem. A drug problem? A lot of problems, honestly. That’ll kick you right off the Olympic track.”
Justin-Jacob blinks. “Uh—” He stumbles over his words.
I interrupt him, putting him out of his misery. “All in all, lots of character-building happening over here.”
Before he can fumble his way through an apology, I pat his chest twice and walk away. I wasn’t planning on kissing anyone at midnight anyways. That’s enough for tonight. Enough small talk and dirty looks. Enough forced laughter at men who aren’t funny. Not enough drinks, though, if I haven’t blacked out yet. I find the jungle juice concoction sitting in a tub on the floor, and I fill another cup for the road.
My dad’s house is a few blocks away and I didn’t drive. I’m stupid, but not stupid enough to get behind the wheel wasted. The walk in the cold will probably sober me up, which sucks.
God. Dad is going to be so proud of me when I stumble into the house tonight. The lecture inevitably waiting for me when I wake from this night will be hell. He’s been getting increasingly frustrated with my lack of motivation to do anything in my life. I dropped out of school my last semester after the accident. I don’t have a job, probably couldn’t hold one if I wanted to. I don’t blame him, but I can’t bring myself to care about it.
Despite the alcohol in my hand, the cold does, unfortunately, help to sober me up. The clearer I start thinking, the worse my mood gets. My entire life was ripped out from underneath me, and I am still so fucking angry. I numb the emotion with drinks and drugs and men, and it still doesn’t dull it enough.
How many more parties, blackouts, and hookups will it take before I forget my unfortunate fall from grace?
I stop in front of my dad’s house. It’s sprawling, huge. Which makes sense, of course. Carter Abrams has been the head coach of the Connecticut Wolverines, one of the best NHL teams in the entire country, for the last twelve years, more than half of my entire life. He put me in skates the second I could stand.
My mom insisted on figure skating. Dad would have preferred women’s ice hockey. In the end, Mom won out. That was the start of many arguments over me, especially when it came to my career. When they stopped talking because of their bitter divorce, it was actually preferable to their constant bickering. Despite my mom managing my figure skating career, I ended up much closer to my dad. She was always more manager than mother.
I’m not even sure where she is at the moment. I’m guessing some spa in Arizona. Guess she has to do something to take the edge off the loss of her big moneymaker—me.
Are mommy problems preferable to daddy problems? Maybe I should call that therapist back.
The door is locked when I wiggle the handle. I’m still a little bit drunk, so finding my house key is hard. I plunge my hand into my pocket and dig around, shoving the sharp key at the lock once I find it. I finally get the key into the grooves when the door swings open before I turn it.
Dad.
“Hi, Daddy,” I slur slightly. “Mind if I crash on your couch?”
I’m still holding a half-empty cup of jungle juice, and I’m sure I reek of alcohol. This isn’t new for us. The last year really did a number on me—on both of us.
I wasn’t always like this. Once, I had discipline, structure, a future mapped out in gold medals and world championships. I wasn’t a great student, but I did well enough to keep my scholarship. That’s what was important to me. Cs get degrees and all that. And I was always going to be successful at skating.
There were magazine articles written about me. I had shiny sports brand endorsements. Nobody could touch my quad axel. I was an Olympic shoo-in. I was on track to make the team and win gold from the time I was a teenager. I was figure skating U.S. National Team’s sweetheart, Monroe Abrams.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
“Get in the house, Mo.” His voice is gruff with sleep. I peek a look at the time on the clock in the foyer. Two-thirty-six a.m. He looks tired—older than I sometimes remember he is. The disappointment is etched in every single line of his face. “Sleep it off. We’ll talk tomorrow. Don’t throw up on my carpet.”
He shuts the door behind me, locking it back up, and I stumble to the couch in his living room. I have a room upstairs, but I know I’m not going to make it all the way up there. The cushions of the couch fold around me, and I wiggle into the soft fabric. It smells like my dad, and for a brief second I’m eight years old again and nothing is wrong.
Guilt tugs at me. This man wrangles twenty-three cocky, insufferable NHL players every single season—and now he has to deal with me, too.
Sleep drags me under fast, but not before I feel the weight of a soft blanket settling over my shoulders. A soft kiss pressed to my temple. A heavy sigh and a mumbled, “Love you, Mo.”
I don’t deserve him. Even in my alcohol-induced haze, I know that much.
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