Chapter 20 Oceans #2
I change my gym schedule, running late at night so I don’t have to see him on the treadmill, on the rower, anywhere at all.
At practice, I keep to myself, eyes on the puck, ignoring the way Ash looks at me across the ice, the way he hovers in the tunnel like he’s hoping I’ll walk past and say anything at all.
The locker room is colder now. Nobody says it out loud, but the silence is thick enough to suffocate.
I tune it all out, counting saves, sets, miles, anything to drown out the memory of Vincent’s voice, "You deserve to know who you’re trusting."
By Friday, I’ve got the routine down. Skate, shower, eat, repeat. Don’t answer texts. Don’t make eye contact. Don’t let yourself think about anything except the next game.
That night, I sit on the edge of my bed, scrolling through the missed calls. Ash’s name is at the top, unread.
The urge to call him, to scream or explain or just hear his voice, is so strong my thumb hovers over the button for a full minute.
Instead, I turn the phone facedown, and lie back in the dark, letting the silence fill every part of me.
If I dream, I don’t remember.
All I know is that when I wake, I check my phone again, and it’s still just his name, and the empty space underneath, waiting for me to do something.
I do nothing.
———
The Uber stops at the curb, right in front of the pomegranate tree that’s dropped fruit all over the cracked sidewalk.
It’s dusk in Oakland, the kind of California twilight that turns the whole neighborhood lavender, makes the houses look like cutouts against a flat, painted sky.
I sit in the back seat with the engine running, staring at the porch light, not ready to move.
The driver glances at me in the mirror. “You good, man?”
I nod, but my hands are locked around the duffel in my lap, white-knuckle tight. “Yeah. Sorry.” I get out, sling the bag over my shoulder, and walk up the steps.
Before I even hit the doorbell, the front door opens.
My mother is there, in a t-shirt and workout pants, hair wrapped in a scarf, face bare and so open it hurts to look at.
She doesn’t speak. She just wraps me up, both arms, and holds me against her chest like she’s afraid I’ll blow away if she lets go.
She pulls back, cups my face in both hands, and scans me from brow to jaw, thumb brushing the line of my cheek. “Oh, baby,” she says, and the words are half prayer, half diagnosis. “What’s broken?”
The smell from inside is pure memory, onions, thyme, cloves, the faint background note of cumin and citrus. Haitian rice and beans.
She only makes it when someone in the family is sick or sad. Tonight, apparently, I am both.
She leads me in, her hand on my back like a compass.
The house is the same as ever, small, clean, every inch packed with a lifetime of framed pictures, art from my childhood, and books jammed onto every horizontal surface.
The living room is full of half-read New Yorkers and the latest from the Oakland Tribune.
My father is in the kitchen, wearing the same linen shirt he’s worn since the nineties, stirring the rice and sipping a glass of white wine. He glances over the rim, raises an eyebrow, and says, “You made good time.”
I nod, but my voice is gone.
I set the bag in the hall and just stand there, feeling the pull of my mother’s hand and the way my father watches me, eyes sharp but kind.
We eat at the round table in the kitchen, same as always.
My father asks about the team, about the next round, about whether Coach is still running “those sadistic suicides you used to hate.” I mumble answers, keep my eyes on the plate, push the beans around with my fork.
My mother doesn’t speak. She just watches, takes tiny bites, and waits.
After dinner, my father excuses himself to the den, “lot of emails,” he says, but I know he just wants to give us space.
My mother clears the table, then sets two mugs of coffee on a tray and leads me out to the back porch.
The air is damp, fresh cut grass and the distant tang of woodsmoke. The sky is a shade of blue so deep it’s almost black, the stars just starting to flicker on.
We sit on the porch swing, side by side, feet not quite touching the floor.
She wraps both hands around the coffee, blows on it, and says, “I didn’t want to push. I never want to be the one who pushes.”
I stare at my own mug, the steam rising, not sure where to start. “It’s been…a lot.”
She nods, waiting.
I try to find words. "I need to tell you something," I say, and even as I say it I feel like a kid again, stuttering through a lie about where I was last night.
"I'm bisexual. I broke up with Nia because of it, because I have feelings for someone on the team.
A guy. Ash. He's the only reason I made it through the last year. "
She smiles, a real one, corners of her mouth creasing. “I wondered.”
I look at her, not sure if she’s joking. “What?”
She shrugs. “You talk about him like you talk about breathing.”
That should make it easier, but it doesn’t. I feel the coffee mug rattling against my thigh, and I set it down so I don’t drop it.
“He’s the best person I know,” I say. “But I let him down. I let this other guy, Vincent, get in my head. He showed me this picture, made it look like Ash was…like he was one of them, a white supremacist. I didn’t want to believe it, but…” My voice cracks, and I shut my eyes, try to steady it.
My mother waits.
She never interrupts, never fills the silence. She just waits for me to find the words.
“I shut him out,” I say. “I left him alone when he needed me. Because I couldn’t figure out if I was protecting myself or just being a coward.”
She takes my hand, both palms warm around my knuckles. Her hands are small, but they grip like she could break concrete.
“You know what your grand-mère used to tell me?” she says, voice low and steady. “People will always try to put their fear inside you. Your job is to know the difference between their fear and your truth.”
I shake my head. “It’s not that simple.”
She smiles, soft and a little sad. “It never is. But the fear is always loud. The truth is quieter. You have to listen close, Darius. Otherwise, someone else gets to decide who you are.”
I sit with that, letting the air fill my lungs, feeling the weight of every fucked up decision I’ve made in the last two months. “I just… I don’t know what to do.”
She squeezes my hand, thumb tracing the scar on my wrist from the time I fell through the neighbor’s window, age ten, trying to impress a girl. “You know what you saw with your own eyes. You know him. Not the stories, not the pictures, not the fear. Him.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak.
She lets me sit there, not rushing, just holding my hand and watching the sky go from blue to navy to black.
After a while, she stands, picks up the tray, and says, “It’s late. You should get some sleep.” She leans down, kisses my forehead, and whispers, “Baby, you’ve spent your whole life being the person everyone expects. What do you want? Not what’s safe. What do you want?”
I don’t answer. Not yet.
But as I watch her close the door, I feel something loosen in my chest, a knot that’s been there so long I forgot what it was like to breathe without it.
I stay on the porch until the cold starts to bite, the sky overhead endless and empty and full of every possibility.
For the first time in months, I want something.
And it’s not what anyone else expects.
It’s mine.
———
Back in Seattle, the sky is concrete, the water gunmetal, and the city looks like it’s been left to rust.
My first stop isn’t the apartment, or the rink, or even the new gym. It’s Dr. Sharma’s office, on the sixteenth floor of a building that probably costs more to heat than my entire contract.
The waiting room is empty, so I sit on the pleather couch, staring out at Elliott Bay, letting the chill from the window cut through the sleep deprivation and airplane breath.
She waves me in after five minutes. I drop into the chair, hands jammed between my knees, heartbeat so fast I feel it in my molars.
She doesn’t waste time. “It’s good to see you, Darius.”
“Yeah. You too.”
She adjusts her glasses, clicks her pen, and says, “How can I help?”
I almost lie. Almost say, “I’m fine.” But I don’t. Instead, I start talking. And I don’t stop.
I tell her about Ash, about how I never believed someone could matter this much and still make me want to break things.
About Vincent, about the photo, the way it chewed up every rational thought I had and spat it out as fear.
About the way I shut Ash out, let him take the hit for something that was never his fault.
I talk about Nia, about how I tried to force myself into a life that looked perfect on paper, and about how, in the end, I was the only one surprised when it fell apart.
I talk about my mom, and the porch, and the question she left me with, still echoing in my head, “What do you want?”
Dr. Sharma just listens. No judgment, no interruptions. She lets the silence settle when I run out of words, then says, “I appreciate your honesty.”
I nod, staring at my hands.
She’s quiet for a beat. Then: “If Asher were a woman, and someone told you she was part of a hate group, would you believe it this easily? Or would you go talk to her?”
I blink, caught off guard.
She waits. “Would you?”
I swallow. “No. I’d talk to her.”
She writes something, then looks up. “So why is it different with Ash?”
The answer comes to me so fast it’s like getting hit in the chest. “Because I’m scared.”
She nods. “That’s a good start. What else?”
I think about it. “Because it’s easier to believe the worst than risk…everything.”
She leans in, her voice low. “Easier doesn’t mean better, Darius. It just means familiar.”
For a second, I want to cry. But instead, I sit up straight, square my shoulders, and look her in the eye.
“I don’t want to be the guy who lets fear call the plays.”
She smiles, small and proud. “Then don’t.”
The session ends ten minutes early. I thank her, shake her hand, and walk out feeling lighter than I have in months. Maybe years.
In the parking garage, I sit in the car, engine off, hands on the wheel. The city is still gray, but it doesn’t feel hopeless.
I take out my phone, thumb hovering over Ash’s name. It’s not even a question anymore.
I press call.
Whatever happens next, it’s mine.
And this time, I’m not running from it.