Breaking The Ice [bxb]

Chapter Twenty [Eli]

I wake up before my alarm.

That happens a lot lately. There was a time when I could sleep like a rock. I would go to bed and be knocked out in a second, then sleep through the whole night and still be able to nap between classes. 

When I slept, I slept. But when I was awake, I was energized and ready and alive. I could carry a conversation and take control of a locker room full of teenage hockey players high on adrenaline, or smile at people I never met and make them like me.

Now, I never feel fully awake. When I am up, I am tired. The rink feels familiar enough that I forget that; I have a mission and well-known tasks and I can focus my body on something it could never truly unlearn. But every time I am off the ice, I am half-ready to go to bed.

Except, when I'm in bed, I never immediately fall asleep. Sometimes it feels like I just lie down, dormant and exhausted, all night until the alarm rings. I know I fall asleep eventually, sometimes I can even remember pieces and little shards of dreams, but I can never hold sleep for any longer than I can hold the rare spikes of energy during my day.

I sit up in bed at the first shrill beep of my alarm, turning it off. I grab my phone, rejecting the birthday notification without looking at it, with the mechanical readiness of someone who has mentally prepared for this same move all throughout the past week.

I can hear shuffling in the room across from mine as I get dressed.

Years ago, Elliott slept in this room with me. Back when the other bedroom was occupied. But when I moved back home, after spending a year with Owen's parents, Elliott had taken my parents' room so I could have this one to myself. The twin bed he slept in is still here, pushed up against the opposite wall, with a small naked desk in between, like Owen and Olivia's room just next door.

Except their desk is larger, equipped with drawers filled to the brim with notes and books and binders. Mine used to have Elliott's computer, which was really dad's computer, and I never actually used it. I still haven't used it since I moved back in. Before, I just did all my homework on the bed, if I had any. Now, I probably do it at Owen's or Dean's.

I wait to hear Elliott's footsteps in the direction of the kitchen before I leave to go into the bathroom, to brush my teeth. Then I wait to hear him go back into his bedroom before I leave to grab my backpack from the bedroom. I don't move fast enough though, and we meet as we both leave our rooms.

"Hey."

"Hey," I murmur back.

Elliott scratches his beard, staring at me. "Thought you slept at Owen's tonight," he says.

"Nope."

He nods slowly, and I'm not sure what he's nodding to. "Did you have dinner yesterday?"

"Found a yogurt in the fridge." And before he can say anything, "I wasn't that hungry."

He nods again, looking like he's thinking. "You should probably eat better," he eventually says. "Especially during hockey season."

It's my turn to nod. "I'll eat at Owen's tonight."

I want to walk away after saying that, but his lips part before I do. I hover around, waiting for him to say what he wants to say, but it takes him too long. I'm about to walk away again, when he finally speaks.

"I was actually planning on coming home for dinner tonight," he muses, sounding like something in between a request for permission and an invitation.

I can't decide which one it sounds like the most, so I just say, "Okay."

Then I leave.

Owen's standing by his doorstep when I leave, backpack and hockey bag flung over the same shoulder and a textbook in his hands. We meet on the sidewalk.