“Master of your own destiny? Dude, isn’t that just a slightly less macho way of saying you’re the king of the freaking universe?”
I paused, knowing I needed to explain this in a way that even Erik De Ruiter could understand.
“You know what I hate more than anything else?” I asked.
“What’s that?”
“Excuses. People make them for everything that goes wrong in their lives. They make them for failing to achieve the things that should’ve gone right for them. You have a lot more control over your life than you think.”
“Gee, Kayden, if you had that much control, maybe you wouldn’t have been thrown in jail after your fun night at Mister Goodbar.”
I would’ve snapped at him before. No, I would’ve drilled him right in the face for bringing that up. But because I could control myself better than my teammate thought, I did neither. I knew I had a scholarship to think about. Coach Hardison’s reactionmattered too. Erik De Ruiter could put that in his pipe and smoke it.
“You’re a real comedian, De Ruiter,” I said. “Don’t quit your day job.”
“I’m not trying to be funny.”
“Thank God.”
“I just want to hear about all this stuff you think you can control. Your urges are definitely out.”
“Oh, you’re talking about my hard-on again?” I glanced around to make sure nobody heard me. No one seemed to, thankfully.
“Yeah.”
He nodded, wearing this dumbass smile, like he considered it the funniest thing on earth.
“Maybe I can’t control the fact that I had a huge boner thanks to you, but I can control everything else, thanks.”
“Which means?”
“It means I can’t control my dick, but I won’t act on it. Plain and simple.”
Erik didn’t answer that, but I knew what he was thinking. “You’re going to act on it sooner or laterorguys always think with their dicks.” Maybe he would say, “You can’t pretend like it meant nothing forever.” If he really thought that, then he didn’t know me very well.
“I know you want to talk yourself into believing it was nothing,” he said, “but remember what I said about six or seven people out of ten.”
“Oh, right, the numbers. You know, I would tell you what you can do with your statistics, but I’m worried that’ll get you all hot too.”
He scoffed at me. Seriously. You should’ve seen it. The kid could be delicate for a hockey player, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I wanted him to fall in love with me.
“Okay, fine,” he said. “Why don’t you go ahead and tell me all about this great destiny you’ve got mapped out.”
“I already told you. I’m going to win a championship for Larkin and be drafted into the NHL. I’m gonna play for the Buffalo Sabres.”
“Kayden, you know that?—”
“Shut up, would you? This is my fantasy—I mean, my destiny.”
For once, he did as he was told.
“I can’t do that with distractions,” I said. “And I definitely can’t do it with complications.”
We kept walking. I knew I could never get rid of this kid, so I wouldn’t let my blood boil.
“You can’t control any of those things,” he said.
His silence was nice while it lasted.
