Prologue #3
It’s not that I don’t have any sympathy for Mom, I do, but we’re always taking it easy on her. We have to adjust for her moods and her lack of patience. When’s it our turn? I promise him that I will, but not for her.
For him.
There’s a lot of yelling that night. Because of me. I’m in my room, but I can hear everything.
“I know you didn’t like it, but he makes a good point. You’re not here enough, so let me handle him.”
“Then don’t whine to me when you can’t get him to do what you want.”
“That’s not what happened. I wanted advice. I won’t make the same mistake of coming to you for advice again.”
He’d said that to me, too, but now that he’s saying it to her and finality rings in his voice, like he’s making a brand-new affirmation for himself.
They finally settle down, and I race for my bed, hopping into it with the lights off in case Hunter checks on me. Footsteps stop at my door, but then they carry on.
I’m a problem for everyone. I wish I wasn’t fucking here. The only thing I’m good at, that has any hope of getting me out of here, is hockey. I’ve got to make that happen.
Something shakes me. I open my eyes, at least I think they’re open, but it’s hard to tell when everything’s pitch black. The sun’s not up yet.
“C’mon. Up you get,” Hunter croaks, sleep still in his voice.
“What the fuck, dude?”
“Hey, language. Up.”
Fuck him, but I drag myself from the cozy nook my sheets became in the night. Someone needs to turn the heat up in this place. Summer had an abrupt end, and we’re straight into Fall.
Hunter’s in the kitchen, dressed for work in loose blue jeans and a blue flannel with a t-shirt underneath. The coffee machine gurgles, and cereal ping-pings as a cascade of Cheerios fills the bowls. He slices a banana and tops each serving in dim lighting.
“There a reason you’ve dragged me from my bed before dawn?”
“Yep.” He gives nothing away. “Eat.”
There’s only one reason I can think of for getting up at four am on a school day. Did he…? But how…? I let him keep his surprise till we get out to the truck, my hockey gear’s all ready to go.
“I know you’re probably gonna need new stuff pretty quickly,” he says, “because you’re growing like a weed. We’ll go on the weekend. It’ll have to be secondhand, though.”
“Dude, I don’t care. I just wanna play. How…?” I slide into the passenger side, and the engine groans to a start, unhappy about being woken up at this hour.
Hunter’s lips spread into a wide smile, but his eyes get a little of that cocky “gotcha” he’s known for.
“I got a promotion, a big one. You’re lookin’ at the newest foreman for Moretti Construction.”
“Wow, that’s … that’s great. It’s more money, then?” He pulls out of the drive and it sinks in. We’re headed to the rink. I get to play hockey!
“A lot more, and a whole bunch of benefits come with my position. I’m gonna try to get Mom to go for counseling now that I’ll have a family plan.”
“Huh. Good luck with that.”
At the rink, he gets out to help me with my bag. “Try not to linger too long after practice. I’ll have just enough time to get you to school before work.”
“What are you gonna do until then?”
“Sleep, I hope.”
I’m speechless. Hunter’s doing all this for me, even though I was a shithead? Mom was right about me, and I’m kinda less mad that she said it. Her delivery sucked balls, but what she said was true. I need to treat Hunter better.
“I think this is too much. You work with heavy equipment, Hunter. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.” My throat clogs as I picture the worst things. Losing Dad was hard. Losing Hunter would fuck up my world.
“It’s only for a few months until you get your license. A buddy of mine has an old truck he’s selling. We’ll get it fixed up, and you can use it to drive you and your boyfriend to practice and then school.”
“Dash isn’t my boyfriend.”
“Whatever you say.” I don’t push it. I can see why people think we’re boyfriends. “Go play hockey, kid.”
I nod. “Thanks, Hunt.”
Walking toward the arena doors, there’s a pep in my step that hasn’t been there in a long time.
Things might actually be going our way for once.
I’m so giddy, the large hockey bag on my shoulder jostles, and the stick on top clatters to the ground.
At the same time, a man walks out of the large sliding doors, a big one.
The world comes to a halt.
Not only is he big, but he’s rough. He looks like he’s the leader of a motorcycle gang.
There’s something familiar about his face I can’t place.
Fucking Christ. Look at this guy. He’s also got the kind of swagger to his step I’d imagine one to have if they’d just hopped off their horse, and there’s a floppy bun tied atop his head.
Shit, the tattoos. So many of them climbing up his massive forearms.
Correction, he’s like some kind of biker cowboy who was taken in by hipsters. I’ve never seen anything like this guy.
“Oh, here, kid. You dropped your stick.” It’s a dark voice—of course, it is—clashing with the kind act of picking up my fallen stick.
I’m still frozen when he hands it to me. “Thanks, man.”
“No problem.” He salutes me.
Dash races out the door, and I think he’s coming toward me, but he’s not. “Dad? Dad, wait. I forgot my water bottle, too.”
Dad? Is that Dash’s frickin’ dad?
“Yeah, kid. G’on inside. I’ll bring it to you. That’s what I’m here for.”
Dash lays eyes on me. He throws his arms around my torso, knocking my bag and stick—again—to the ground. “Dirk! You’re here. I saw your name on the roster, so I was pretty sure it was you, but your brother didn’t say anything to me, so I worried it was a different Dirk Boulder.”
“Probably because he knew you woulda told me.”
“I totally would have told you.”
The change in my friend is noticeable. His grin doesn’t stop at his mouth, like it’s searching for more room than his face will give it. It pushes into his eyes, his posture, the way he leans forward. I’ve never seen him this joyful, and I don’t think it’s just because I’m here.
“Bro, is that your dad?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Your dad is whoa! He looks like he walked straight outta Sons of Anarchy,” I whisper.
“I know, right? He was in a biker gang,” Dash whispers back. “He’s really awesome. He let me ride on his Harley.”
“He’s allowed to bring you to practice now?”
“Yeah, he somehow convinced Mom. Robin doesn’t like it, but he didn’t say too much. Dad’s not planning to do it all the time, or anything, but he wanted to be here today. He’s gonna try to make it to our games, too.”
I pick up my fallen bag. “Perfect. We’ll all get to know each other,” I tease.
“Stop it.” He gives me a light shove, but he’s laughing.
“Seriously, though. He’s so cool. Do you know he draws those tattoos?
Like, he doesn’t ink them on himself, but he comes up with the designs in a sketchbook he let me look at.
You think he’ll draw one for me? You think he’ll take me to get a tattoo if I ask? ”
That is pretty damn cool that he draws them.
But let Dash get one? Hard to say. I don’t have much experience with dads.
I try to picture Hunt if I asked him about a tattoo, he’d flip.
I should for fun later, just to watch him have a mild heart attack.
He can get tattoos, of course, but not me for some reason.
He deserves a little poking for the hypocrisy alone.
“He’s given you everything you’ve asked for so far.
Seems like there’s no harm in asking.” And I’m curious myself.
His dad doesn’t exactly look like a dad.
He looks like he’d feed you your own innards for breakfast. He’s tall, too—gotta be over six feet—and built like a brawler with the kind of body that’s built from fights, not gyms. But then here he is, dropping his son off at hockey practice at an hour reserved for owls and truck drivers.
And, I guess, hockey players.
But anyway, what a damn conundrum that man is.
“Yeah, I’m gonna ask. I’ll ask for you, too. It’ll be so great. Let’s get skulls with snakes coming out of the eyes. Let’s start a skull-lover’s club!”
That’s why I love Dashie. He takes a small idea and goes waaaaaay too far with it. “Whatever you want, Dashie. I’ll get a skull with snakes for eyes for you—we should get hockey sticks in the background.”
“Oh my god, why didn’t I think of that? It’ll be our club logo! Know what? Let’s put Boulder and Nolan at the bottom, so people know we’re the club leaders.”
Hunter’s a fucking tornado charging through the house. “Pack your shit, Dirk. We’re leaving.”
“Hang on. What?”
He doesn’t wait for me to respond. He beelines to my room and pulls out my duffel bag.
“Hunter,” I plead.
He freezes mid-stuffing my clothes into my bag. “I can’t do it anymore, Dirk. I can’t do her anymore.”
Her is Mom. I get it. I get that. But. “We can’t just leave her, Hunter.”
Hunter tosses the bag on the bed. “I’m leaving. You can stay if you want.”
That should make my choice easy, but it doesn’t. As much as I know I can’t handle Mom, that Hunter’s been doing all the handling of her, I don’t want to leave her for the pure and irrational reason that she’s Mom.
“She just needs our help, Hunter. You said that. That’s what you said,” I repeat as if saying it in different ways will halt whatever crazy train he’s jumped on.
“Fucking Christ, she doesn’t want to be helped, Dirk,” he rasps.
My lip trembles as it does when he says things that like.
Why is that? Why does Hunter spark marrow-deep pain?
He softens, new lines appearing on his young face.
“It’s not what I want either, but I can’t do this anymore.
She’s a drowning ship, and all that’s going to happen is us drowning with her.
Old Mom, the mom we can’t stop remembering, would want us to get out while we could.
And I’m afraid, so fucking afraid, that if I don’t leave now, I never will. ”