Penalty Kill

Harper

I'm sitting in the quiet of my studio apartment staring at a wall, a warm mug of coffee clutched between my hands as I try desperately to make sense of what has occurred in my life in the past twenty-four hours. All I've managed to do so far this morning is roll out of bed just before sunrise, giving up on a fitful night of restless sleep and instead choosing to succumb to my racing mind.

Clover, in all of his fluffy tortoiseshell cuteness, is laying on the rug in front of me, his legs curled up to his body as he stretches out on his back. He gives off a series of mews at various volumes, looking for pets and my attention, but I'm glued to where I sit cross-legged on my couch, trapped in a never ending cycle of thoughts about how I've acted so wildly out of character in the course of a day and two nights.

I'm near sick about it, barely able to sip my coffee as my stomach churns from not only drinking last night but flashbacks from the touching, the dancing and the near kissing of Jake Bryers. It's been years since I've gone out drinking, and trying to figure out what compelled me to meet the challenge of a professional hockey player's goading was impossible.

I haven't drank like that since my freshman year of college. It was a one and done, get it out of my system, move on type situation then. Now? Fuck if I know what the hell I thought I was accomplishing last night. I was well aware that I felt like I'd been in several year rut. The desperate urge to do something drastic was always lurking around everywhere I went. Behind stacks at the library, down the train car on the subway, ahead of me on a crowded sidewalk.

My life wasn't dissatisfying, but it wasn't completely satisfying, either. It was a god-awful void to live in, somewhere constantly between happiness and sadness. I had always been fine living on my own—it hadn't been a problem in college, and it certainly hadn't been an issue in the five years since then. I'd been lucky enough to nab this apartment at a decent rent from my mentor at the library just before I graduated, and it meant not having to navigate the hell-scape of finding a roommate.

I was naturally independent, and I thrived on it. Ever since I'd proven to myself by moving from the small hometown charm of the midwest that I could survive on my own, I'd fallen in love with it, and subsequently thrown myself into it with abandon. It was made easier by the fact I'd survived, and somehow managed to escape a relationship with who I thought was my high school sweetheart. In the throes of it, it was impossible for me to see how controlling and abusive he'd been—both emotionally and physically.

It wasn't easy to come around to the fact that he was an evil piece of spineless shit. My friends were the first to catch on, and they were the easiest to dismiss. They were jealous, they didn't understand, they'd never been in love. It was far harder to ignore my mom's concerns when she'd raised them with me after catching a glimpse of deep purple bruises around my wrist. They were marks on my skin left by none other than my asshole boyfriend, who in the middle of a heated argument about why I'd been late to meet him decided to try and stop me from leaving by hurting me.

We'd broken up in the winter of my senior year, and I'd applied to my dream schools out in New York after finally splitting from his oppressive deadweight. He'd spent the entirety of our three-year relationship convincing me that my dreams were futile, and that moving to the east coast was the stupidest idea I'd ever had. I'd believed what he spoon fed me for all those years, listening to him tell me that I wasn't good enough, wasn't smart enough, and that I was a hopeless excuse for a person who should just stay in the midwest and do what all other good women do—get married and procreate.

My mom was the one to finally convince me to break up with him, on her own personal threat of driving to his house and doing it for me. Worried that she might do something far worse than simply give him a piece of her mind, I gathered the courage to end it with him myself, in front of a good portion of the student body at that, so he wouldn't have the opportunity to cause me any more harm with so many eyes on him.