11. Theo
THEO
Ilook at my phone on the way out of the locker room to see a text from my father. Mansfield's at one. Don't be late.
The timestamp says he sent it forty minutes ago, while I was in the shower, while Maddox's hand was between my legs.
I text back, on my way and think, Okay. I can do this.
I can walk to lunch with my father. I can sit across from him and order what he orders and answer his questions about the power play, and I can do all of it with another man's come not yet out of my body.
I put my jacket on and walk out of the building.
Mansfield's is two blocks off the rink. White tablecloths, brass fixtures, the kind of restaurant where the waitstaff wear ties. Paul likes it because the booths are deep and you can't hear the table next to you. He likes anywhere he can talk without being overheard.
He's already seated when I come in. Suit jacket off, folded on the bench beside him.
Water glass half-empty. Phone face-down on the linen.
He looks up when the hostess brings me over and his eyes do the quick sweep they always do, catching hair and posture and watch and shoes.
I pass the sweep. I usually do. It's the one thing I'm reliably good at.
“Sit down.”
I sit. The leather of the booth is cold through my jeans. The table is set for two already, napkins folded into stiff triangles, the heavier cutlery on the outside in the order he likes.
“You're late.”
“Two minutes.”
He turns his wrist and checks the watch even though he already knows.
“Two minutes is late.”
“Yes.”
He nods, once. It's the nod he does when he's decided to let something go but wants me to know he's letting it go. The waiter comes. Paul orders for both of us without looking at me. Salmon, no starch, water with lemon. I would have ordered the same thing anyway. He knows that.
The waiter leaves. Paul folds his hands on the table. His wedding ring is still on, seven years after my mother stopped existing to him in any sense that mattered.
“How did practice go?”
“Good.”
“Be specific.”
I take a sip of water to buy a second. The glass is cold enough that it aches in my teeth.
“Drills were sharp. Bateman was off on the wing. Phoenix had him reset the pivot three times.”
“Good. What about you?”
“Good.”
Paul's eyebrow moves about two millimeters.
“Be specific, Theo.”
I make my mouth move. I set the water glass back down and line it up with the edge of the coaster because if I don't do something with my hand I'm going to start picking at the cuticle on my thumb and he'll see.
“Faceoffs were clean. My left side is still slow off the wall. I'm working on it.”
“Your left side has been slow off the wall since you were thirteen.”
“Yes.”
He leans back a quarter inch, which from him is a full gesture.
“Which means you're not actually working on it.”
“I am.”
He looks at me. He waits. He has the exact same expression on his face he has when he's watching film in his office with the volume off. Assessing. Not cruel. Not warm. Just looking.
I hold it.
I'm better at holding it than I used to be.
When I was small, I used to look at my shoes.
Then I looked at his tie. Then I looked at the line of his jaw over his shoulder, at whatever was behind him, because that looks like eye contact from his side of the table.
I've been eating lunch with him like this for twelve years, and what he doesn’t know only helps me out.
Today I look at his tie and I don't see his tie. I see the back of my neck under hot water and somebody's mouth on my ear saying you understand who you belong to this week.
I feel my cheeks go hot.
“Are you listening?”
My head snaps up.
“Yes.”
He folds his napkin down one crease and smooths it with his thumb.
“What did I just say?”
“You said my left side's been slow since I was thirteen.”
“After that.”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes.
“Uh.”
He sets his water glass down very carefully. The sound of it on the tablecloth is softer than it has any right to be.
“Theo.”
“Sorry. I didn't sleep well.”
“I can see that.”
The waiter comes back with a bread basket neither of us is going to touch.
He puts it between us and asks if we need anything.
Paul shakes his head without looking at him.
The waiter goes. Paul waits until he's out of earshot, which in this restaurant takes four seconds of silence that feel much longer.
“You're not sharp today. You weren't sharp during your weekend practice either. I watched the tapes twice.”
“I know.”
He tilts his head.
“Do you?”
“I know I wasn't sharp. I'll be sharp Wednesday.”
He doesn't answer right away. He looks at the salt shaker between us like it's done something wrong.
“Be sharp now. Sharpness isn't something you schedule.”
“Yes.”
He picks up the water glass. Puts it down without drinking. That's one of his tells. He does it when he's about to say the thing he actually came here to say. The whole conversation so far has been warm-up.
“I don't like the Creed thing.”
My stomach drops so fast I think I'm going to be sick on the linen.
I keep my face.
I've been keeping my face for twelve years.
“What about him?”
“Phoenix asked me to put him on your line for the second power-play unit. I said no. I'll tell you why so you don't ask.”
I don't trust my voice so I just wait.
“Creed doesn't play the system. He plays whatever's in his head. I'm not putting an unpredictable veteran next to a green center who's already not tracking on the left side. I won't give you that to learn from.”
“Okay.”
“I'm telling you this because he's been around you more than I like. In drills. On the bench. Phoenix seats the benches by line but Creed keeps moving. I've noticed.”
I can't breathe, I think. I can breathe. I breathe.
“He talks to everyone,” I say. “He's a veteran.”
“Mm.”
I try to hold his eye. My stomach is still doing its sick roll.
“Theo. Listen to me.”
I listen.
“I don't want that man near you any more than the work requires. Do you understand me.”
“Yes.”
He doesn't ask if I mean it. He rarely does. He's trained me well enough that the yes is enough.
The salmon comes.
I eat it.
I don't taste it.
Somewhere in the middle of eating, between one cut of the fish and the next, my mind slips the leash and goes somewhere I haven't let it go in years.
It goes to a kitchen in Trois-Rivières, me at ten, a woman at the stove frying onions in too much butter.
My father's sister. Her hands on my shoulders when she turned me toward the window to show me the snow.
Look, mon chou. She was the only adult in my childhood who ever called me anything other than Theo.
She used to tell Paul to let me play in the yard instead of making me skate one more set.
She used to ruffle my hair when Paul couldn't see.
She used to put a plate in front of me with something fried on it and watch me eat like my eating fed her too.
She hasn't been in my life since I was thirteen.
I don't know exactly what happened between her and Paul.
I know it was about me. I know after the fight she called once and Paul answered, and I heard him say, “I am his father. Not you.” Then the phone went back on the wall and he came out of the kitchen and sat down across from me at the dinner table and said we weren't going to talk about her anymore.
We haven't.
Her name sits in my mouth for a second, full and warm, and I shove it down so hard it leaves a bruise.
I'm not doing that here.
I'm not doing that ever.
I cut another piece of salmon.
I wonder, for the length of one chew, whether she even knows I play for Frosthaven now. Whether she watches. Whether there's a woman somewhere in a different kitchen who sees my name come up on a broadcast and feels something.
I stop wondering.
“You're quiet,” Paul says.
I set the fork down.
“I'm eating.”
“You're quiet even for you.”
“I'm tired.”
He studies me another second. Then he looks past my shoulder and signals the waiter for the check with a two-finger lift.
“Sleep earlier.”
“Yes.”
He pays the bill. He puts the card down without looking at the total the way men do who stopped looking at totals a decade ago. He stands. He puts on his jacket. He waits for me to stand.
I stand.
Outside the restaurant, the wind off the harbor gets inside my collar and my eyes water and for a second I think I'm going to cry, right here, on the street, at half past two on a Monday afternoon, in front of my father. I don't. I blink it back. I've been blinking things back since I was six.
“I'll see you later,” Paul says.
“Later.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder. Two seconds. Then he's walking the other direction down the block to where his car is parked and I'm walking to the bus stop because my car is still at the rink, and I don't trust my hands on a wheel right now.
On the bus I look at my phone.
There's a text from Maddox.
you at lunch?
I type, just left.
Three dots. Then, how was daddy?
I laugh into my scarf. The woman across from me looks over and I turn my face to the window.
fine
Three dots. you hard in there thinking about me?
I am, suddenly. Just that sentence on a screen and I am. I shift in my seat and pull my jacket across my lap.
yes
The three dots sit there. They sit a long time. Long enough that I start to think he's not going to answer. Then: I’ll tell you what you're going to do when you get home.
I'm going to do what he tells me to do.
That's what I figure out, on the bus, between that text and the next stop. I'm going to walk into my father's house and up the carpeted stairs and into the bedroom Paul picked for me and I'm going to close the door and I'm going to do whatever Maddox texts.
It's not even a decision. It's the shape my body is already taking.