passionfruit • jack hughes

CINQUANTE HUIT

jack had just gotten out of the shower and was picking out a suit so that he could get ready to go to the arena for his game today against the washington capitals. i had ultimately decided on telling him before he left to make sure he knew why.

"hey can we talk before you leave?" i asked, sitting in his bed wrapped in a blanket.

"yeah of course, what's up?" he said, zipping up his dress pants.

"i think i should tell you why i didn't tell you about my brother and just the full story behind his death. but i don't want to take up a ton of time, so it can wait until after you play if you want."

"no. it's fine, just tell me. you know what. i'll call in sick with food poisoning or something." he responded.

"what? no! you can't do that. it's not like a regular job where you can just call in sick because you don't want to go."

he didn't listen to me and instead picked up his phone.

"well guess what, i just did. i texted my performance manager saying i have the worst case of food poisoning known to man."

"no, you can't. it'll hurt your record or something!" i said.

"missing one game won't hurt my record babe. your feelings are far more important than a game against the stupid capitals."

"no! get dressed. if not i will drag you into your own car by your ear and drive you there myself. you can't just miss a game like that, we can talk later."

he got up and opened his dresser drawer, and instead of changing into a dress shirt he grabbed a pair of sweats and put those on, throwing his dress pants on the floor somewhere.

"god i hate you." i responded, rolling my eyes in defeat.

"but now that you're here, i have an idea." i continued.

"and that is?" he responded.

"let's go on a drive."

•••

we grabbed starbucks and decided on driving more in-state to find random viewpoints while singing to random songs that came up on shuffle from my playlist.

at one point i made him pull-over so i could take a picture of the sunset since it was just too pretty for me not to document. but eventually we made it to this one viewpoint that showed off a valley full of greenery and was on the side of the mountain.

"i think it's time i told you," i said.

"i'm all ears."

"i was fourteen, no, fifteen. or i'll just say fourteen going on fifteen. i was in 9th grade. by the way, carter has a different dad than me. so that explains why we have different last names. but as you know he played for boston university, he was a sophomore, he had turned 19 in september the year before he passed."

"ohh, that explains why you know so much about hockey." he chimed in.

"yeah, exactly. i was surrounded with hockey my whole childhood, i even played for a couple years. nothing too serious though."