Chapter 5
THEO
I swear, sometimes it feels like I should just move into the Jaguars’ practice facility.
My rehab schedule has been relentless, but the last thing I want is to start the regular season on injured reserve.
I need to be at full strength by training camp, so every workout matters twice as much as it ever has before.
Unfortunately, a lot of what I need to be back to full strength is time.
And the most tedious workouts on the planet.
Grip strength, wrist rotation, sensory retraining. It’s hard to feel like such small movements are making any difference when what I want to be doing is skating. Stick handling. Shooting.
“You have to stick to the plan,” Nico says when I press him, not for the first time, to let me hit the ice.
“Come on,” I argue. “I already feel so much better than I did the last time I tried. I’m not going to have the same problems.”
The biggest challenge to skating is that the cold makes my hand hurt like hell. Last time I skated, I only lasted ten minutes before my grip strength was shot and three of my fingers had gone numb.
Nico is worried that trying again before I’m ready is only going to mess with my headspace and unnecessarily psych me out.
“You might,” Nico says now, dropping a dynamometer onto my lap to measure my grip strength. “Come on. Show me what you’ve got.”
I squeeze the instrument with my left hand, flinching as a jolt of pain races up to my elbow.
“I saw that,” Nico says.
“It barely hurt,” I say, gripping a little harder.
“Not bad,” Nico says as he notes the reading on his clipboard. “Better than last week.”
“See?” I say. “You should let me skate.”
“You can skate all you want,” Nico says. “Just not with a hockey stick in your hand.”
“What’s the point without a hockey stick?”
Nico chuckles. “If you don’t slack over the weekend, we can try next week. But you have to be honest with me about the neuropathic pain. No putting on a brave face just to get back out there.” He points to a set of dumbbells sitting on the bench beside me. “Now do your wrist curls.”
I do as he asks, even if I grumble while doing it, and Nico drops a hand onto my shoulder.
“You’re gonna get there, man. I promise.”
I think I will get there, but I can’t fully shake my sense of trepidation. What if I don’t? What if this freak-accident injury derails the rest of my career?
It’s a risk we all take every time we’re on the ice. I get that. But I can’t truly fathom the disappointment of never playing again. Or worse—playing with half the skill and precision I used to.
After my wrist curls, I move on to my typical summer conditioning routine. I have to modify a few exercises on account of my injury, and I don’t love working out alone, but I’m here, so I might as well knock everything out while I can.
After I finish, I hit the showers, then stop by the therapy room to say goodbye to Nico.
“You looked good today,” he says, looking up from where he’s seated at his desk. “Back at it tomorrow?”
I nod. “Yeah, thanks. I’ll be here.” Tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.
On the way to my car, my phone rings with a call from my mom. I wince when I see her name. Even after her many attempts to reach out on Sunday, I never called her back.
It’s been three days since then, and I hate that she had to reach out again.
“Hey, Mom,” I say after picking up the call. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back.”
“Thanks for apologizing,” she says. “I figured you were busy. How’s your rehab going?”
“I just left. It’s good, I guess. Slower than I would like.”
“Don’t push yourself too hard,” she says as I climb into my SUV. “Your paycheck won’t change even if you aren’t playing, so give yourself the time you need to heal.”
I get what she’s saying, and she’s right. But money has always been secondary to me. I just want to play. To be out there with my team. A hockey player is the only thing I know how to be.
“You sound like my trainer,” I say.
“Your trainer sounds smart,” Mom says with a little laugh. “So, I actually have something interesting to tell you.”
“Hang on. Let me start the car and switch you over to Bluetooth.” It’s miserably hot outside, and I can’t sit in my car for longer than a second without turning on the air conditioning. “All right, you’re good,” I say to Mom once the car is on, cool air blasting in my face.
“So, you know I’ve got my pickleball league, right? Guess who recently signed up to play with us?”
I wait for her to tell me, but her silence must mean she actually expects me to guess. “Uhhh, Brenda the librarian who lives across the street?”
“Brenda is a hundred and three years old, dear.”
“You did say it was interesting,” I say.
“Well, true,” Mom says. “But it’s not her. Want to guess again?”
“I think we’ll be here all day if I do, so why don’t you just tell me?”
“It’s Cassie Bradley,” she says. “Rebecca’s mom.”
I’m so surprised to hear Becca’s name that I miss the light change from red to green in front of me until the person behind me honks and jolts me back to awareness. I quickly pull through the intersection and turn onto the boulevard that will take me to Midtown.
Cassie Bradley is playing pickleball with my mom?
My mind immediately jumps back to my conversation with Becca. She mentioned her mom had started to play; it probably should have occurred to me to ask where. Though I wasn’t really thinking about my mother’s hobbies at the time. Not when I was face-to-face with Becca for the first time in years.
“We had such a great conversation,” Mom continues.
“She looks great, like she’s hardly aged, though she was open about her MS. She said she was having a good day, but they aren’t always good, so she hopes she won’t let people down in the league.
I told her she didn’t need to worry about that at all.
We’re so happy to have another player. And honestly, we spend as much time hanging out and drinking Diet Coke as we do actually playing.
Anyway, I thought it was the strangest thing to run into her the same week you saw Rebecca. Truly, what are the odds?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty wild,” I say.
“Did Rebecca tell you why she’s in Atlanta?
Cassie says it was because her cousin asked her to housesit, which meant a free place to stay while she’s in the city.
You know she’s a travel nurse, right? I think her friend is from somewhere nearby.
South Carolina? North Carolina? I can’t remember which. ”
This is new information to me, but I resist the urge to ask for more details. If Becca’s cousin’s home is near the hospital. Or how long she has on her contract before she’ll move again. But asking follow-up questions feels too much like showing my hand.
“Free housing is always a good thing,” I say instead, proud of myself that I sound so normal.
Mom’s quiet for a beat before she says, “Well, sure it is,” her tone making it clear I didn’t sound normal at all. She clears her throat. “So how was your visit? Do you mind me asking?”
I ease to a stop at another red light. “It was fine.”
“Are you going to see her again?”
I breathe out a sigh, hating that we’re even having this conversation. There’s no point. Especially not if Mom is regularly seeing Becca’s mom. The last thing I want is for anything I say to get back to her.
A tendril of panic creeps its way up my spine. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that Mom talking to Cassie Bradley about anything related to me and Becca can only end badly.
“I don’t think so, Mom,” I say. “We had a nice conversation, but that’s it. We didn’t make any plans.”
“Has she texted you? Carter told me she might.”
I clench my jaw a little tighter. “No, she hasn’t.”
“Well, that’s too bad,” Mom says. “The two of you were so great together. Cassie said the same thing. Maybe you ought to reach out again. Or I could ask Cassie to give Rebecca a little nudge.”
My panic grows, shifting into a looming sense of terror. The thought of Cassie calling Becca and relaying this conversation is enough to make me spiral. What if Becca thinks I put Mom up to it? That I’m using our mothers to try to contact her again?
I might have to leave Atlanta. Forget hockey. Change my name and move to Topeka to be an auto mechanic.
“Please don’t do that,” I say. “Definitely don’t do that. I would honestly love it if you didn’t talk to Cassie about me and Becca at all. I’m sure Becca’s leaving the city soon, moving on to somewhere else. There’s no reason to make this a topic of conversation.”
“October seventh,” Mom says.
“What?”
“That’s when Rebecca is leaving Atlanta. October seventh.”
Great. Now I’m going to have a ticking alarm clock in my brain. It’ll fit right in with all the other Becca-shaped thoughts I can’t seem to shake.
The light changes, and I slowly ease forward. “Mom, do you understand what I’m asking? Please. Just don’t talk about me, all right? Not about me, definitely not about me and Becca.”
She takes an audible breath. “Ohhhh,” she finally says. “Got it. Absolutely. I understand.”
I frown. Does she understand? Or did I just overshoot the mark? Did I protest so much, I basically admitted to having feelings by being overly insistent that I don’t?
I grip the steering wheel a little tighter. The next time I see my brother, I’m going to punch him right in his stupid face. Or at least push him into his pool.
“Listen, Mom, I’m almost home, and I’ll lose you when I pull into the parking garage. But I need you to promise me, okay? No meddling.”
“When have I ever meddled?”
“You just offered to have your new pickleball partner nudge her daughter to text me. That would be meddling.”
“Okay, true,” Mom says. “I see your point. But if you like her, a little meddling might do you good.”
I tug at my collar, suddenly feeling weirdly sweaty. Is my A/C not working? I reach forward and crank the temperature all the way down. “Promise me, Mom.”
“Fine,” she says. “No meddling. I promise.”
I say goodbye, then end the call right before turning into the garage attached to my building.
Truly, what are the odds that after all this time, Becca’s mother and mine would wind up in the same pickleball league? After eight years of never seeing her anywhere but in my dreams, suddenly, Becca is everywhere.
Well—everywhere but in my text messages.
Except when I turn off my car and grab my phone out of the center console, I do have a new message.
I stare at the screen, wondering for a split second if Mom ignored my request and messaged Cassie anyway, asking her to tell Becca to text me already.
But the timestamp on the message is more than fifteen minutes ago.
She sent it right after I left the Vortex, which means she did it all on her own.
Becca
Hey. Sorry it’s taken so long to reach out. Do you have a second to talk? I need a favor.