“This again?”
“Yeah, this again.”
“I thought this was just about me eating like a pig.”
He stuffed a chicken ball in his mouth and purposely chewed with his mouth open. Then he grabbed a napkin, wiped his lips, and tossed the wad onto his plate like he was done eating—and equally finished with this conversation.
“This is stupid,” he said.
“What’s stupid?”
“Erik, you’re about to start an argument over nothing.”
“It’s not over nothing. And shut up.”
He gave me another look, a more sensible kind that said trying to reason with me was a colossal waste of time. He was the one who knew best, right?
“We’ve been over this,” he said. “Anytime I’ve mentioned hockey to you, it was because you had areas for improvement. You don’t have to take it personally.”
“You don’t have to talk down to me.”
He threw his hands up.
“Look,” he said, “we’ve both had all the hockey we can possibly handle. We’ve been under a lot of stress and we’re tired. We’re both on edge. Can we just agree to chill out?”
I shook my head. Yeah, I’m the type of guy that loves compromise, but I couldn’t let him dictate the terms of an argument too.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I said.
“Erik, what the hell has gotten into you?”
I shook my head again, not wanting to say another word to him. If I spoke, I didn’t know what would happen. I might get angry. I might get sad. If things really got out of hand, I could…
I didn’t want to think about that last possibility, the one I’m too ashamed to even think about.
Something definitely was wrong with me. Kayden was right about that even if I’d never tell him that. I wanted a championship, but I also wanted Kayden. But not the Kayden Preston I’d seen lately. I wanted things between us to be the way they’d always been—only my boyfriend would come with a mute button for those moments when it really became necessary—but he didn’t seem to care about that.
“Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t have to act so goddamn superior,” I said.
“It’s because I might be getting drafted.”
He said it not as a question, but as a fact. He wasn’t trying to trick me either. This time, it wasn’t the typical Kayden Preston bullshit either. Now, when he spoke, he seemed to know it…and I had no way to deny it.
Like, he was within a hair of grounding that idea in reality—and I had to act fast.
But what the hell would I say?
“I thought so,” he said, “and I’ve got to say, it’s really shitty that you can’t be more supportive of me.”
“Give it a rest, would you, Kayden?”
“No, dude. I won’t give it a rest. You started this argument, and now I’m going to finish it.”
I turned my head, hoping I’d managed to flash the angriest look. If I did, then my boyfriend seemed completely unfazed by it.
“Nice,” I said.
No matter what, this conversation wasn’t going to end well. All because he couldn’t eat like a normal human being. Okay, maybe I’d gotten myself going and it made no sense to him, but an argument wouldn’t have happened if Kayden dealt with problems when they started instead of dismissing them outright.
