Chapter 28 Luca
Light through the curtains. Not morning light, not yet. The gray before it, the sky deciding. I am on my side facing the window and Wes is behind me, his arm heavy across my ribs, his breathing slow and even against my neck.
Mouse is at the foot of the bed. I can feel her weight on my ankle. Her purring is a low steady engine that has been running since I fell asleep and has not stopped.
The dishes, the mail, the heap of clothes are all visible in the gray light and none of them are different from last night except that I slept. I slept and woke up and the arm is still here and the cat is still here and the apartment is the same apartment.
I don't move. His breathing stays steady. I watch the light change through the curtains for a while, the gray warming toward white, and then his arm shifts and tightens and his mouth is against my shoulder.
"Hey." His voice is rough.
"Hey."
"You sleep?"
"Some."
"Some is good." He pulls me closer. His hand finds mine against my chest. "Some is better than none."
I don't say anything. Mouse adjusts at my feet, her weight redistributing, her purring uninterrupted.
The room smells like Wes now. Not just the pillow, not just the shirt he left here in October that I have not washed.
The actual man. His skin, his soap, the morning version of him before the day starts.
"I made coffee last night," he says. "Before we went to bed. It's in the pot. It'll be cold but it's there."
"You made coffee at midnight."
"I made coffee at midnight." He presses his face into my hair. "Figured one of us would want it."
I close my eyes. The sentence from last night is still in my head. I can't do this anymore. It is quieter than it was yesterday. Not gone. Quieter.
"Wes?"
"Yeah."
"The name Ash left. The therapist."
His hand tightens on mine. "Yeah?"
"I'll call."
He doesn't say anything for a few seconds. Just his breathing against my neck, his thumb moving across my knuckles.
"Okay." He kisses the back of my neck. "You want me to be here for that?"
"Yeah."
"Then I'm here."
Mouse yawns at the foot of the bed, the sound enormous and theatrical, and I almost laugh. Almost. The almost is more than I've had in weeks.
I call the number on the piece of paper Avi left and she is able to fit me in the next day. Which is how I find myself sitting in my car in a lot on Juniper Street.
The drive took me through Midtown. At Tenth and Piedmont the crosswalk is painted in rainbow stripes, the colors faded from traffic and weather but still visible, still the full spectrum laid flat across the asphalt.
The office is on the second floor of a brick building between a yoga studio and an immigration lawyer.
I sit in my car for three minutes before I go inside.
The waiting room is small. Two chairs, a side table, a stack of magazines that nobody has touched.
A print on the wall of a mountain landscape that I would say is below average.
The door opens. A woman with purple hair pulled back in a tight bun, bright glasses with rainbow frames that sit on a face that is already looking at me like I am a person and not a file.
"Luca? Come on in."
The office is warmer than the waiting room.
Two deep green chairs and a gray couch, positioned toward the window.
A painting above the desk, warm colors in a shape I cannot name.
A box of tissues on the side table between the seats.
A small plant in a ceramic pot on the windowsill, and I can tell from here that it is real because the soil is damp and one leaf has a brown edge where the sun has been too much for it.
I take the couch. She takes a chair. She settles, notebook on her knee, pen in her hand but not writing.
"Thank you for coming in. I know this is your first time here."
"Yeah. Thanks for fitting me in so quickly."
She waits. I don't give her anything else.
"So what brings you in today, Luca?"
"My teammates think I should be here."
"Okay. What do they think is going on?"
"They think I'm depressed."
"What do you think?"
"I think they're worried. They might not be wrong.
They showed up at my place to talk with me.
" I look at the plant on the windowsill.
The brown-edged leaf. "Your plant is overwatered, by the way.
The leaf curl is from too much direct sun, but the soil is way too damp for that pot size.
You want to let it dry out between waterings. "
"I appreciate that." Her face is steady. She does not smile. She does not not smile. "You mentioned on the phone you moved here last summer from Miami for the Firebirds. Tell me about the transition to Atlanta."
"It's been fine. I was traded in the expansion draft last summer. New city, new team. Standard adjustment." I gesture at the office. "Your waiting room is a five-four. The mountain print is dragging it down. But the office is better. Six-one. The plant saves it, assuming it survives."
"You rate everything?"
"It's a system. Restaurants, hotels, coffee. Keeps things organized."
"How's the hockey side?"
"Good. I feel good on the ice. Getting minutes. The coaching staff has clear expectations."
"And off the ice?"
"Fine. Found some good restaurants. The barbecue is excellent. Cuban food, not close to Miami, but you can't have everything."
She writes nothing. The pen has not moved since I sat down. The silence between her last question and my answer was half a second. The silence after my answer stretches longer.
"Your teammates showed up at your apartment," she says. Not a question.
"They brought soup."
"That's a significant gesture."
"They're good guys. Avi and Ash. My captains."
"Why do you think they were worried enough to come to your apartment?"
"I missed a practice. An optional practice." I shift in the chair. The gray fabric is softer than it looks. "Look, I don't want to waste your time. I know you're busy. I'm here because they asked me to be here and I said I'd come. I came."
"You did. You're here." She lets that sit. "Is there anyone else in your life who's been worried about you? Outside of your captains?"
The question is asking about a person. The question is asking about a relationship. The question is asking me to open up about something I haven’t whispered in three years.
There is a small pride flag on the bookshelf behind her. The rainbow glasses. The purple hair. The building on Juniper Street. None of these things mean I have to answer the question.
"There's someone," I say.
"Someone close to you?"
"Yeah."
She waits.
"He's." I stop. Start again. "There's a person. Yes. He's been worried."
"He?"
"Yeah." I look at the pride flag on the bookshelf. It is the size of a playing card, propped against a row of books. "He."
The word is in my head. Gay. I am a gay man sitting on a grey couch in an office on Juniper Street and I have said "he" and I have not said the rest. The rainbow glasses and the flag and the building itself are telling me I could say it. But this office doesn’t get the rest today.
Today the office gets "he" and that is what I have.
"Does he live in Atlanta?"
"No. He's in Miami. He's been here the last few days, though. He came because things got bad."
"Bad how?"
"I don't know. I stopped answering the phone. I stopped doing a lot of things. So he came."
She nods. "That's a big step for someone to take."
"It was."
The silence again. It is not the silence I am used to filling.
In Dr. Pryce's office in October, the silence was a space I could pour ratings and anecdotes into until the forty-five minutes were up.
This silence has a different weight. This silence is waiting for me to put the real thing in it, and I am not going to do that.
"Tell me about your family," she says.
"My parents are in Switzerland. I grew up outside Zürich. My sister is there."
"Are you close with them?"
"My mother calls. She worries."
"What does she worry about?"
"If I'm eating. If I'm injured. Standard stuff."
"Anything she doesn't ask about?"
"No." The word comes out too fast. I can feel the speed of it and I know she can hear the speed of it. "I mean. She doesn't ask about my personal life. She never has. We don't go there."
"Is that something you'd want to explore at some point?"
"Not today."
"That's fine. For today, I want you to notice how much your life changed in a very short period of time. You changed jobs unexpectedly, which caused you to move to Atlanta, which caused a shift in your relationship. Each of those are major life changes and stressors. You went through all of those at the same time. That’s a lot to carry. "
I nod while she’s saying this. I hadn’t thought about it the way she’s saying it, but it’s true.
She shifts on the couch. Her pen still has not touched the notebook. "I want to ask you one practical question. Has anyone talked to you about medication?"
"Any medication I start has to go through the team doctor. And I don't think I want to start anything right now. We're in a playoff push and I can't be adjusting to side effects in the middle of a season."
"That's fair. We can revisit that in the summer if you feel it would help.
" She sets the pen down on the notebook, the first time she has moved it at all.
"In the meantime, there are some things we can work with that don't involve medication.
Breathing techniques. Structured ones, not just 'take a deep breath.
' Patterns you can use when things escalate. "
"Okay."
"There's also a grounding method. Five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can touch, two you can smell, one you can taste. It pulls you back into the room when your mind is somewhere else."
"A countdown."
"More or less. It works because it forces the senses to do something specific. Your brain can't spiral and count at the same time." She pauses. "I'd also recommend getting outside. Not training. Not the rink. Sunlight, movement, no performance attached to it. A walk. Twenty minutes."
"I can do a walk."
"And thought records. When you notice a thought that's doing damage, you write it down. What the thought is, what triggered it, and then you challenge it. Not to replace it with something positive. Just to see if it holds up."
I look at her. The phrase doing damage sits in the air between us like she placed it there on purpose and is waiting to see if I pick it up.
"That's a lot of homework for a first session," I say.
"You don't have to use all of them. Try one. See what fits." She picks the pen back up. "I'd like to set up a regular time if you're open to continuing. I have Thursdays."
"Can we do video for some of them? I travel with the team."
"Of course. We'll work around your schedule. And I'm available between sessions if something comes up."
She stands. I stand. Her handshake is warm and unhurried. I am at the door when she speaks again.
"Luca."
I turn and look at her.
"You said your teammates might not be wrong. That took courage to say."
I said it. I don't remember deciding to say it but I realize it came out with everything I was trying not to say.
"Yeah," I say. "I'll see you Thursday."
I sit in my car for two minutes and I don't turn it on. Through the windshield, the sky is white. My phone is in my pocket. I pull it out. The wallpaper. Blue water, white railing, palms. I look at it for a long time and drive back to my apartment.
Wes is on the couch with Mouse in his lap. She has her paw on his hand and her eyes are half-closed. He looks up when I come in.
"Hi," he says. "How was it?"
I stand in the doorway of my own living room and look at the man on the couch with my cat in his lap. His hazel eyes. The question on his face that he is trying to ask without pushing.
"I went," I say.
He nods. He opens his arm. I cross the room and sit down beside him and his arm comes around my shoulders and Mouse adjusts between us with a sound that is either a complaint or a welcome. I press my face into his neck and close my eyes and he holds me and neither of us says anything else.
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