Chapter 27 Luca
Hazel eyes above me. Hands on my shoulders. The light from the kitchen behind him.
He can't be here. He has a game tonight. In Washington.
But the hand on my shoulder is real. The weight of it is real. The face above me is Wes.
I throw myself at him. Off the couch, against his chest, my arms around him.
The sound that comes out of me is not a word.
I have never made this sound in front of another person.
He holds me. His hand is on the back of my head and I am sobbing against his shirt and I don't know how people survive this. Any of it.
I pull back. My face is wet. His shirt is wet. His bag is by the door. He is here. In Atlanta. In my apartment with the dishes in the sink and the mail on the counter and whatever I smell like right now.
"What are you doing here?"
He holds my face in his hands, wiping away the tears. "I was worried about you after our last call and you didn’t return any of my calls the last few days. I wanted to come make sure you were okay."
My hands are still gripping the front of his shirt. I let go. I step back. The couch is behind me and I sit on it because sitting is what my legs are doing.
"I'm fine.” He keeps watching me, expecting more. “Can we just not do this right now?"
"Luca, baby. I think we do, though. Eventually." His thumbs trace under my eyes. "When was the last time you ate?"
I wave my hand.
He pulls his phone out and taps through a few things and then sets it down and sits beside me, pulling me into his side. "Food will be here in about forty-five minutes. Do you want to go back to sleep? Or take a shower?"
He has been here ten minutes and he has seen everything. The mess. The dishes. The trash.
Mouse walks along the back of the couch toward him.
She sniffs his shoulder once, twice, her whiskers twitching.
She has never met him. She has never been in a room with him.
She is an Atlanta cat and he is a Miami man and the only thing connecting them is me.
She sniffs the sleeve of his jacket with the focus of a cat deciding whether someone is allowed in her apartment.
She settles on the cushion beside him.
"That's Mouse," I say.
"Volume indicates leadership?"
"You remember."
"You sent me fourteen texts about her the day you brought her home. I remember."
Mouse pushes her head against his hand. His fingers move behind her ears and her purring starts, steady and enormous.
A knock at the front door. We both look up because it is not the food he ordered minutes ago.
I stand. Wes stands with me.
"It's my apartment," I say. I go to the door. I look through the peephole.
Avi and Ash. Standing in my hallway with a container. Ash holding it with both hands. Avi beside him.
I open the door. Wes is behind me in the hallway and I can feel the moment their eyes find him over my shoulder.
Their faces go through about twenty different expressions. Both of them, eyes bouncing between the two of us. Between Wes and me. Between the man they know as my old teammate and the fact of him being here, in my apartment, when he should be with his team in Washington right now.
"Hi, guys. Did you need something?"
Ash gets there first, glancing past me at Wes, then back. "Yeah. We made you some soup. You seemed a bit out of sorts earlier and we wanted to come check on you."
I step aside. "Come in. Kitchen's on the left."
Avi's eyes haven't left Wes. They follow us in. Ash heading toward the kitchen. Avi behind me to the living room. Ash comes back and sits in the chair next to Avi. I sit on the couch. Wes follows me and sits close enough that his knee touches mine.
"So why did you bring me soup?"
Avi and Ash exchange a look. Then Avi speaks. "I suspect we're here for the same reason Mercer is."
"We're worried about you, Luca. You haven't been yourself since the all-star break. Maybe before that."
Wes's words next are not what I expect.
"Luca, I think we're all worried about you. And Ash is right. You aren't yourself, and it definitely started before the break. Before we went to Aruba."
I glare at him. We went to Aruba. We. Out loud. In front of Avi and Ash.
"Luca." His hand is on my thigh. "I am here with you, in your apartment, when my team is on the road tonight. I walked out on a game to be here." He turns to them. "I don't think there's any question about what our relationship is at this point. Though I'd ask you not to say anything to anyone."
"So no one knows about your relationship." Ash. Not asking.
"No. We kept this quiet on the team for two years. We didn't know how the organization and the locker room would handle it."
"And then Luca got traded," Avi says.
"And then Luca got traded."
The sentence lands twice. The same words from two different men who have never been in a room together before tonight.
"Luca." Ash leans forward. He opens his mouth and then closes it and tries again. "Look. You haven't been okay. And I don't think it's just a rough stretch."
"You missed a practice last week," Avi says. "You don't miss practice."
"It was fucking optional." I look away from all of them. Out the window. The skyline going dark. My skin is itching. They are all older than me. They are all sitting in my apartment and my apartment is a mess and the dishes are in the sink and I am not living up to what I should be doing.
"Hey, Luca. Look at me." Wes waits until I do. "You love getting on the ice. How many times in Miami did you drag my ass to optional skates?"
"So I miss one practice and now everybody is here? That's unfair."
I am standing. I am pacing and they are all watching me. My skin is on fire and I want everyone to go away. I want to go back to bed with Mouse and be done. Be done with them. The team. Maybe with Wes because I don’t think I can do this anymore.
"Luca, we think you should talk to someone." Ash is looking at his hands. "A professional. I don't know if it's the team doctor or someone else, but you should talk to someone."
"So now I'm a mental case?"
"No. Come on. That's not what I'm saying." He looks at Avi, then back at me. "What I'm saying is that this is more than being sad about being in Atlanta while your boyfriend is in Miami and nobody here even knows he exists. This is something else, Luca."
"We care about you," Wes says. "All of us. I just don't think any of us know how to help." His voice catches on the last word. He stops. Tries again. "I think you should talk to someone. Someone who knows what they're doing. Because I don't."
"So I'm just the fucked up, broken, crazy person?"
"That is not what we are saying."
Avi talks. "Luca, we want you to go on your own. But if you don't, I'm going to have to go to Coach."
"You're threatening me now? To see a shrink?"
"Avi." Wes draws his attention. "Don't."
"I'm his captain, Mercer. If one of my guys is going through something like this and I don't say anything, that's on me."
"I know. But not like that."
They are all talking over me and I am done with this. I point at Avi. "Fuck you." I point at Ash. "And fuck you." I point at Wes. "And fuck you too."
I pick up Mouse and storm to the bedroom and slam the door.
I get in bed with Mouse and curl up on my side facing the wall. She squirms free and resettles against me, her purring loud enough to fill the room but not loud enough to cover the murmur of voices from the living room. Not loud enough to cover the front door opening and closing.
I close my eyes and let the dark come back.
The same dark that had me on the couch four hours ago.
The same sentence. I can't do this anymore.
None of it. Not hockey. Not Wes. Not anything.
The sentence was there before they showed up.
It has been there since the plane home. They didn't put it there. I had it already.
The bed shifts behind me. A long pause. Then his hand on my arm, carefully.
"I don't know if you want me in here," he says.
I don't say anything but I don't push his hand off.
He lies down behind me. Slowly. His arm comes around me but there is space between us that was not there before. I did that. The fuck you is still in the room.
"Baby, I don't know what to do. I don't like seeing you like this." His voice is quiet and it is not the steady Wes voice. It is the voice underneath that one. "I'm sorry I didn't see this sooner."
"Yeah, but you got to stay. You didn't have to change your entire life, did you?" The tears are coming again. I want to stop them.
"I did, and I want to talk about that." He pauses. His breath against my neck. "But I don't know what to do, Luca. I don't know how to help you. And that scares me."
I can't do this anymore.
But there is a thing underneath the sentence. The thing that got me out of bed this morning and drove me to the rink. The thing that feeds Mouse every day even when the rest of the apartment is falling apart. I don't know what to call it. It is smaller than hope and bigger than nothing.
"Ash knows of someone," he says. Quiet. "A therapist. Independent, not associated with the team. Her name is Gwen Tilson. She works with athletes. You don't have to call her. But he left the name."
Mouse pushes her head into my hand. Her purring fills the silence.
The three of them asked me to do this. I told all three of them to go fuck themselves.
I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep doing what I’m doing either. Because nothing is working.
"Okay," I say after a few minutes.
It is the smallest word I have. It is not yes and it is not belief that a name on a piece of paper can fix what is happening inside me.
"Okay," he says back.
He holds me. Mouse purrs. The apartment is dark and the word I said is sitting in the room the way the mail sits on the counter. Present. Small. Not nothing.
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