Chapter One #2
She takes care of all the banking and bills anyway. There’s no point in letting him in on the details of how they are getting paid.
"Tell him I'll call him tonight," I say quietly. My father was always a good provider when I was younger. Since the accident, I know he deals with temporary bouts of depression that he hides from my younger siblings. He has a hard time not being the same provider now.
When those days happen, my dad calls his brother, and my uncle will take my dad “fishing” in a boat he had retrofitted for my dad’s wheelchair.
If I were a betting man, I’d bet that they don’t even fish at all.
They just sit in the middle of the lake for a couple of hours with a few beers.
It must work because my mom says he always comes back in better spirits.
True strength is in knowing when you need to accept help. Sometimes help doesn’t look like a chaise lounge chair in a therapist’s office. Sometimes help looks like fresh air, a beautiful view, and drifting around aimlessly in a boat with your brother.
"I will. Now go play hockey and stop worrying about us. We're fine."
She hangs up before I can argue.
I stare at my phone for a second longer than necessary, then shove it into my locker and start changing into my gear.
"Was that Mama Matchmaker?"
I glance up to see Hunter leaning against the lockers, towel slung over his shoulders and a shit-eating grin on his face.
"Yeah, she called about my cousin's wedding in two weeks.”
"Sounds like there was a lot more to it than that. So what's the damage this time? Is she setting you up with the mayor's daughter? A former Miss Montana? Please tell me it's someone ridiculous."
"A kindergarten teacher who bakes sourdough. An old girlfriend from middle school.”
Hunter clutches his chest like he's been shot. "Oh no. Not sourdough. That's serious, East. She's going full domestic on you."
"Shut up."
Wolf Ziegler, our right defender, wanders over, eyebrows raised. "Your mom's still trying to marry you off?"
"She's relentless," I admit, yanking my skate tight. "I swear she's got a vision board somewhere with the wedding announcement already printed.”
"You could just… tell her you're seeing someone," Wolf suggests.
“So, I should lie to my mother?” I ask, though the question is ridiculous. I’d never do that. “She’s the kind of mother that raised me to believe that there is a special hell for little boys who lie to their mothers.”
"Fair point."
Wolf leans back, arms crossed, clearly enjoying himself. "You know what you need? A fake girlfriend. Bring her to the wedding, show your mom you're a big boy who can find his own dates, and boom—problem solved."
"Yeah, because that's not a terrible rom-com plot waiting to happen."
"I'm just saying. It's either that, or you're going to end up married to Sourdough Sarah by the end of the reception."
I throw a roll of tape at his head. He dodges, laughing.
"Honestly, I'd settle for just borrowing someone's sister for the weekend," I mutter, half-joking. "Someone low-maintenance. Shows up, smiles, eats cake, goes home. Everyone's happy."
"Good luck with that," Hunter snorts. "You really think any of us are going to hand over a sister to a hockey player?"
"Hey, I'm a gentleman."
"You ate an entire pizza in the parking lot last week. In your car. Alone."
"What's your point?"
"My point," Hunter says, grinning, "is that you're more likely to get one of us to do your laundry for a month than hand over a sister."
"Harsh man…”
The locker room door swings open, and Luka Popovich strolls in, looking annoyingly well-rested for a guy who’s got the Olympic Association on his ass for posing “tastefully” nude in a Playgirl magazine full spread with his three gold medals covering up his “family heirlooms”.
"What are we talking about?" he asks, dropping his bag next to mine.
"East's mom is trying to set him up again," Wolf says. "We're workshopping solutions."
Luka raises an eyebrow, glancing at me. "Is she still doing that?"
"Every single day."
“He wants to borrow someone's sister,” Wolf says as if it’s a joke.
"Good luck with that. No one’s going to hand over a sister to a player on this team. We’ve all seen enough of what players on this team do after dark with puck bunnies," Luka says, the usual detachment he has from our locker room conversations. He takes hockey seriously and not much else.
Before I can dwell on it, Coach's voice echoes from the hallway.
"Let's go, boys. Ice time in five."
The room erupts into motion—guys pulling on gloves, adjusting helmets, chirping at each other as they file toward the rink.
I grab my stick and follow, shaking off the weird knot of homesickness that's settled in my chest.
Hockey's always been the thing that makes sense. The one place where I know exactly what I'm supposed to do and how to do it.
Everything else? That's just noise.
Practice is brutal in the best way.
We're gearing up for the first game of the regular season, and Coach is in full drill-sergeant mode. Bag skates, breakaway drills, line changes until my legs are screaming and my lungs are on fire.
I love it.
There's something about the burn, the speed, the sharp crack of the puck hitting the boards. It clears my head better than anything else.
Luka and I end up on the same line for a scrimmage, and we fall into an easy rhythm. He's got this weird sixth sense for where I'm going to be, and I've learned to read his tells—the way he shifts his weight before a pass, the angle of his stick when he's about to shoot.
We've been linemates for two seasons now, and it works. On the ice, we're in sync.
Off the ice? He's a bit of a mystery. He doesn't talk much about his life before hockey. I know he's originally from Russia, that he dominated in the Olympics before getting drafted into the NHL, but that's about it.
The guys joke that he's probably got some deep, dark past—maybe he's a spy, or a former assassin, or secretly royalty.
Luka just rolls his eyes and tells us we watch too many movies.
After practice, we're all sprawled out in the locker room, sweaty and exhausted but all hopeful that this is the year we win a Stanley Cup.
"The first game is in three days," Hunter says, peeling off his pads. "You guys ready?"
"Ready to get into the season, and back to the playoffs," Wolf says.
I'm about to agree when my phone buzzes.
Another text from my mom.
Mom: Just ran into Anika at the farmers' market. She’s very excited to see you again.
I groan and drop my head back against the locker.
"What now?" Luka asks, smirking.
"My mom's officially out of control."
He smirks and then heads to the showers.
Later that night, I'm stretched out on my couch, half-watching a rerun of some cooking show, a bowl full of chicken alfredo sitting on my chest, when my phone rings.
This time, it's my dad.
I answer immediately. "Hey, old man."
"Hey yourself, hotshot." His voice is gruff but warm, and I can hear the TV in the background—probably a game. "Your mother told me to call and remind you to cut your hair before the wedding."
"She called me this morning to guilt-trip me about being presentable for a girl. She probably bribed Corey’s fiancée into changing the seating arrangement to put me next to a woman I haven’t seen since before I hit puberty.”
He laughs—deep and familiar. "Yeah, well. You know how she is. She just worries that you’re not going to settle down. She wants the best for you, bud."
"I know."
There's a pause, comfortable and easy.
"How're you feeling?" I ask.
"Fine. The therapist is a pain in my ass, but I'm fine."
"Good. That's what we pay her for."
"You don't pay her for anything. We've got insurance."
"Dad—"
"Scottie." His voice firms up, just a little.
"We're fine. I mean it. Stop worrying about us and focus on your season. Use the money to go on one of those outrageously expensive vacations to the Maldives that your teammates are taking. Or buy that muscle car we’ve always talked about buying and fixing up. Don’t spend that hard-earned money on me. "
I want to argue. I want to tell him that I can't stop worrying, that every time I think about him stuck in that chair, something in my chest clenches so hard I can't breathe.
But I don't.
He doesn't want to hear it. And because I know he's proud… too proud to admit that things are hard, even when they are.
So I just say, "Yeah. Okay." Because I already have intentions of padding the next check I send to my mother.
"Good. Now go get some sleep. You've got a game coming up."
"Yes, sir."
He hangs up, and I'm left staring at the ceiling, the blue glow of the TV flickering across the room.
I think about my mom's texts. About the wedding I'm dreading and the hockey season that I'm not. I think about my father being too proud and remember the sting of Anika breaking up with me in the halls of our middle school, thinking that my life was over. But it wasn’t. It was just starting, and to think that I hadn’t even thought of her since middle school until this morning, when my mother brought her up.
It’s funny what you used to care about and what matters to you fifteen years later.
I think about how, now, at twenty-seven, I still feel too young to settle down, though, for the last five years I've had a steady stream of wedding invitations coming in from all my friends back in Whitefish. Most of my buddies are grown and married, starting families of their own or are currently getting divorced. It’s crazy how fast life moves.
It’s not like I don’t miss family life—growing up in a loud house of five of us kids.
And my mother is right… Having someone to come home to after a rough practice, a home game loss, a long week on the road sounds nice.
Having someone to share a life with instead of eating a bowl of pasta on the couch alone on a Wednesday evening watching TV, icing my ankle, wouldn’t be the worst thing.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, a little voice whispers: What if this year's different?
I don't know why.
But I can't shake the feeling.