Chapter Overtime #2
“He's freaking out,” Finn said without preamble. “In a good way, I think. But definitely freaking out.”
“He's going to be great,” Soren said.
“I know he is. But try telling my stomach that.”
We headed inside and found seats in the middle section, and I was moved by how many people had shown up.
The entire Wolves team had turned out — Jace and Cole and Dmitri and Tate, even Saint and Benny who'd driven in from the suburbs.
My parents settled in alongside Soren's siblings, Micah and Poppy already loud and animated beside them.
June and Luca had claimed seats near the back, June with her arms crossed and her eyes already scanning the stage.
The lights went down and the emcee — a teacher who looked like she'd lost a bet — took the stage with a microphone and a clipboard.
“Welcome to Lincoln Elementary's annual talent show!” she said with the kind of forced enthusiasm that suggested she'd done this too many times. “We have an amazing lineup tonight, so let's give all our performers a big round of applause!”
The show started, and it was exactly as chaotic as I'd expected.
A girl sang a Taylor Swift song slightly off-key but with absolute commitment.
Twin boys did a magic trick that went wrong halfway through and had to improvise.
A kid played violin beautifully until his sheet music fell off the stand and he had to finish from memory.
Soren was grinning through all of it, his hand warm in mine, and I realized this was one of those moments that looked nothing like what I'd imagined my life would be.
Professional hockey captain, publicly out, sitting in an elementary school auditorium waiting to watch my boyfriend's deaf student perform.
It was perfect in ways I couldn't have predicted.
Jamie was the eighth act. When his name was called, Finn went very still next to me.
Jamie walked onto the stage with his practice pad and sticks, looking tiny under the stage lights. He set up at the center, took a breath I could see from our seats, and then started playing.
The pattern was the one Soren had taught him, but Jamie had made it his own.
The rhythm was clean and confident, his hands moving with precision that seemed impossible for an eight-year-old.
He couldn't hear the sound he was making, but he didn't need to — he was feeling it through the vibrations, trusting his body to know what his ears couldn't tell him.
The audience started clapping along halfway through, picking up the beat, and Jamie's face lit up when he felt the vibration change in the floor and the stage beneath his feet.
The whole auditorium clapping with him, with the rhythm he was making, with the music he couldn't hear but was giving to every person in the room anyway.
He added the improvised flourish at the end — the one Soren had told him to keep — and finished with a final crash that made the whole auditorium erupt.
The standing ovation was immediate and loud. Finn was on his feet screaming, my dad was whistling so loud I worried about permanent hearing damage, and Soren had both hands pressed over his mouth and tears running down his face that he wasn't doing anything about.
I put my arm around him and he leaned into me and I felt him breathing in long, careful pulls.
Jamie took a bow that was equal parts shy and proud, and when he left the stage he was grinning so wide I thought his face might split.
The rest of the show continued, but I barely registered it. I was too busy watching Soren watch the stage, seeing the pride and emotion written all over his face, and feeling grateful that I got to be part of this moment.
When the final act finished and the lights came up, we all spilled out into the lobby where Jamie was waiting with his grandfather. The second Jamie saw Soren, he ran over and launched himself into a hug that nearly knocked Soren over.
Soren signed something to him that made Jamie laugh, and then Finn was there too, pulling his brother into another hug and ruffling his hair until Jamie batted him away with the weary dignity of an eight-year-old who was too good for this.
My parents descended next, my dad scooping Jamie up in a bear hug while my mom took about fifty pictures. Soren's siblings crowded around too, Poppy declaring loudly that Jamie was officially cooler than anyone else she knew.
The team offered congratulations with the easy warmth of guys who'd learned to care about the people their captain cared about. Cole taught Jamie a complicated handshake, Dmitri signed “good job” in what was probably terrible ASL, and Tate promised to get him free tickets to the next home game.
Standing there in the elementary school lobby surrounded by my team and my family and the people Soren loved, I felt the full weight of how far we'd all come.
“Everyone's coming back to the house, right?” I said, raising my voice over the noise.
“Absolutely,” my dad said. “I'll bring the beer.”
“I'll bring the noise,” Luca added, grinning.
We caravanned back to the house, and by the time everyone arrived the sun was starting to set and the light coming through the windows had gone golden and warm.
My kitchen filled up immediately — people grabbing drinks, raiding the fridge, Finn trying to figure out how to work the fancy espresso machine.
I was opening a second bottle of wine when the doorbell rang.
Soren was across the room, deep in conversation with June, and didn't hear it. I set the bottle down and went to the door.
Gavin was standing on the front step. He was holding his car keys in both hands and wearing the expression of a man who had rehearsed being here and was not finding it any easier in practice. He looked past my shoulder at the noise and light of the party inside and then back at me.
“I won't come in,” he said. “I just — I wanted to drop this off.” He held out an envelope.
Plain white, Soren's name written on the front.
“It's a letter. I've been trying to write it for months and I kept getting it wrong, and I think the only way I'm ever going to get it right is to just give it to him and let him decide what to do with it.”
I took the envelope.
“I know I haven't earned the right to walk in there,” he said quietly, and there was no self-pity in it, just plain fact. “And I'm not asking to. I just needed him to have this.”
He nodded once, turned, and walked back down the front path to his car without looking back.
I stood in the doorway and watched him go.
Then I closed the door and stood there for a moment with the envelope in my hand, weighing it. Whatever was in here had cost him something. That much was obvious.
I found Soren in the kitchen and touched his elbow. He turned, and his eyes dropped to the envelope, and something moved through his face that I didn't try to read.
“Your dad came,” I said quietly. “He didn't stay. He just wanted you to have this.”
Soren took the envelope. He stood looking at it for a long moment.
“Go read it,” I said. “Take as long as you need. I've got the room.”
He shook his head. “Come with me.”
We slipped out through the back of the kitchen and down the hall to the bedroom, and I closed the door behind us and the noise of the party muffled to a distant hum. Soren sat on the edge of the bed and I sat beside him and he opened the envelope with careful hands.
He unfolded the letter and I watched his eyes move across the first line. His jaw tightened. He kept reading.
I didn't read over his shoulder. I just stayed beside him and let him have it.
After a minute he held the letter out to me without speaking. His hand was steady. His face was not.
I took it and read.
Soren,
I've started this letter more times than I can count.
I've thrown away more versions of it than I want to admit.
Every time I tried to write it, I found myself trying to make myself sound better than I was, and I kept stopping because you deserve more than that.
You deserve the actual truth, even if I'm not sure you'll ever be able to forgive me for it.
I need to tell you why I drank.
I know what you saw growing up. You saw a man who checked out.
Who wasn't there when you needed him. Who let you take on things no seventeen-year-old should ever have had to carry.
I know that's what it looked like from where you were standing, and I'm not going to try to tell you that you were wrong to see it that way.
But I need you to know what was happening on the other side of that.
Your mother hurt me. She has been hurting me for most of our marriage.
I don't mean the kind of hurt that's easy to name or easy to explain.
I mean that she controlled everything — what I did, where I went, who I talked to, how I spent money that I'd earned, what I was allowed to say in my own house.
And when I stepped out of line, when I said the wrong thing or looked at her the wrong way or stayed at work too long, she made sure I understood the consequences.
I know what people think when they hear a man say something like that.
I thought it too, for a long time. I told myself I was exaggerating.
I told myself it wasn't that bad. I told myself men didn't end up in that situation, and if I was in it, it must be my fault somehow.
She was very good at helping me believe that.
The drinking started as a way to get through the evenings without saying something that would make things worse.
And then it became the only way I knew how to get through anything at all.
I'm not telling you this to excuse what I became.
There's no excuse for the father I failed to be.
I know that. I'll know it for the rest of my life.