Chapter 6
ARAVIND
“How many aunties are coming?”
My dad glanced across the desk at me. “Does it matter?”
The question was rhetorical. No, it didn’t matter.
It could be two, it could be five. The aunties were going to do what they were going to do, just like always.
They were now and would always be convinced that they knew better than me, and all of them hadn’t stopped worrying about me and my dad’s ability to take care of ourselves after Mom died.
So the house would be full of food, laughter, complaints, judgment, and unhelpful advice because while they meant well, they also didn’t understand the world we lived in.
Almost all of them were married—none of them were anywhere near my age, and most of them barely understood texting, let alone what it meant to have your access to the social world exist almost exclusively on apps.
God, what I’d give to be a nineties kid where cell phones were thick bars that did nothing but make calls with terrible connections and you only answered on nights and weekends because you had to pay for minutes. The expectation of instant and constant access to people was starting to weigh on me.
And becoming a hermit in the woods, living behind a waterfall in a damp cave, was starting to sound like the dream.
“I don’t know if I’m going to stay the whole summer,” I said, kicking my foot up on his desk.
My dad gave me a glower and smacked my ankle with the pen he was holding.
“Ow.” It didn’t hurt, and he gave me a look as I rubbed it.
“You’d think you were raised in a barn with a bunch of goats who put their feet up on their parents’ furniture.”
“I would so go live with goats if that was an option.” I ran my fingers up and down the seam of my shirt. I was wearing a mesh top with a lace pattern, and it felt nice on my skin. “Anyway, as long as that’s fine with you—”
“Aravind,” he said, then softened. “Beta, you have to stop worrying about me.”
It was annoying as hell that he understood the whole reason I was feeling panicked about not going to the beach house for the entire summer was because I worried about him.
Not that he was going to be able to make it for the whole summer either. He had maybe three weeks of free time before he was going to be called back for his obligations to the league.
There was the draft, there were several organization meetings, then dealing with onboarding whatever rookies and trades who were coming onto the team. Then, after his short break, there was training camp and preseason, and once again, my dad would be lost to the time suck that was the NHL.
It was an echo of my entire childhood, but I was no longer a nervous kid hiding in my mom’s closet, worried about how angry my dad would be if he saw me in her long, bohemian-style skirts as I slipped my tiny feet into her huge heels.
But even that fear never stopped me, and sometimes I wondered how my dad would have felt if he’d known about me sooner.
I had idolized my mom in a way that was probably unhealthy, but she had been so, so beautiful.
She was tall—which she used to tell me her parents thought it would make it difficult to marry her off.
She was chubby, and I used to bury myself in her curves whenever I was scared.
She wore things that seemed like they were made for her and just her, and I wanted to be like that.
I wanted to be comfortable in my own skin the way she had been.
I wanted to look in the mirror every day and smile at myself.
And I was confident. She had given me that.
My hair was as long as hers had been right before she died, though mine didn’t have her curls.
But we shared the same shape of eyes, and my skin was closer to her shade than my dad’s.
I had his chin, though, and his jawline.
I was a good mix of them both, but I saw her a lot in my own reflection, which made looking at myself hard some days, and I was starting to wonder if it was ever going to get easier.
My grief therapist told me that there was no one way to grieve—that there wasn’t some kind of timeline I was meant to be following. But sometimes it felt like carrying around a heavy weight, and occasionally, I felt a small prickle of fear, like one of these days that weight was going to break me.
“Listen, beta,” my dad said, leaning over toward me, “if you don’t want to be around everyone, or you need some space, I can help. I can buy you a ticket, and you can go visit Rajesh and Shaan. I know they’ve been trying to get you to Dublin for a while—”
I held up my hand. I loved my cousins. A lot.
After my mom died, they flew here to be with me and my dad until the screaming, aching part of the pain had passed.
And they had been up my ass about coming to Dublin, where they were both working, so we could drink like the Irish and forget about how horrible the world was starting to become.
But I wasn’t ready for that. I didn’t think getting blackout shit-faced with my cousins was going to help me figure out who I was. Or what I wanted to do with my life now that my era of chasing that fuck-face Leon was over.
“I think a few weeks by the beach sounds like what I need. Seriously, Dad. I promise I don’t need special treatment.”
He stared at me for a long moment. “I know that job was hard. And I know your thing with Leon—”
“Don’t say his name. He’ll appear like some kind of magical cockroach,” I said.
His lips twitched. “I have warned you about men like him.” I sucked in a breath to say something sarcastic, but he cut me off. “I’m just glad you got out before you got hurt worse. And I know you took on sports reporting to make me happy.”
“I didn’t do it just for that,” I said, feeling kind of pathetic because yeah. I mostly did. Being next to Leon’s office was the bonus that quickly turned into a curse. But I was still the small child trying to make my dad proud.
He was better at showing it now than he had been before, which helped.
“I think you made some good friends out of it, didn’t you?”
That was a stretch. Like a warm vat of saltwater taffy stretch. Some of the hockey guys were really nice to me. Some wanted to keep in touch.
Some followed me on my socials, and Vanya was always commenting on all my OOTD posts and gave me hearts when I tried out a new metallic eyeshadow or bought a pretty top. But it was hard to tell if he was being performative and trying to look good for the public or if he actually gave a shit.
I was probably too jaded to believe anything but option A.
“Well, I’d better get going.” I pushed up from the chair, but my dad held up a hand.
“Everything you wrote in the article, it was true, right? About Nadeau?”
My brows furrowed in confusion. The article had a fairly ambiguous ending since Tiago’s final statement to me on the record was fairly ambiguous.
I wasn’t even sure why my dad was asking.
“Uh, yeah? I have journalistic integrity, even if my boss is a complete waste of space. And it wasn’t like anything Nadeau said was out of character. ”
He sighed and didn’t look convinced. “Alright.”
“Did someone say something?” I pressed. I hadn’t looked at the article since it had gone live.
I emailed it off to the editing desk, sent Daryl a message letting him know that I was looking forward to forgetting every second I ever worked with him, and then left my badge with reception and didn’t look back as I drove off from the campus.
I treated myself to a California burrito with extra fries and extra cheese, jerked off, watched six episodes of a random flower design competition show, then passed out in a puddle of my own drool and regret.
It had been a great night.
“No. No one said anything. It just wasn’t what I heard.”
I frowned. It felt like I was missing something, but I didn’t want to care. I was done with the job. I would never be done with the hockey world—not until my dad was, which was probably going to be never. But whatever happened after this wasn’t my responsibility.
My dad stood up and came around the desk, tugging me into a hug, which allowed me to let it go.
It was easy to fall into his arms, to bask in the physical comfort I’d wanted and been denied by him as a child.
I was still kind of bitter about it, but he was both South Asian and a hockey player, so he had been allergic to physical affection for years.
It sucked so fucking much that it took my mom’s death to flip that switch, but I did like to believe he would have come around eventually.
His injury and retirement had also changed him.
“The keys for the house are in my desk. Soma and Ankita will be in on Friday, so you’ll have the week to yourself. And it should have a fully stocked fridge and pantry.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t going to touch shit in the kitchen besides maybe the toast and jam. But there was a bunch of cute little restaurants along the cove that would keep me alive and fed.
“Drive safe,” my dad said, giving my cheek a pat before he walked over to his desk. His limp was more pronounced today, but I wasn’t going to draw attention to it. He didn’t need that.
I shot him a wave, then slipped out the door and began the long walk down the corridor that would lead to the arena employee parking lot. I still had my press badge, which felt a bit like cheating, but my dad insisted I keep it, so I was going to do exactly that.
Turning the corner as I pulled out my phone, I got four steps past the wall before immediately crashing into a tall, very bulky body.
“Oh my god, will you—” I froze when I recognized the baby face of the player who was probably the sole reason my dad had decided to pick up the Glaciers gig.
Ferris Redding blinked at me owlishly before his eyes cut to the floor. His fingers danced along his thighs—probably the only public trait of his autism, and most people didn’t pick up on it.
I knew because there had been a whole piece on him by ESPN for his rookie year.
“Sorry,” he said very softly.
“No, it was my fault. I was being a jackass and not looking where I was going.”
He glanced at me again, so quick I could barely catch the whites of his eyes. “Did I hurt you?”
“What? Honey, no. Did I hurt you?”
His lips twitched into something like a smile, and he shook his head. A few locks of his messy, dark curls fell over his forehead. “No. I’m used to getting checked around here.”
“I—oh. Right.” Rubbing the back of my neck, I shifted from right to left. “Were you looking for my dad? He’s in his office if you need him.”
Ferris shook his head again. “No. I was waiting on Quinn. He had a meeting, so I decided to go watch the crew drain the rink water while I crocheted.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out what I was pretty sure was an elephant seal.
“That’s pretty sweet.”
He shoved it at me so hard his knuckles hit my chest. “You can have it.”
“Oh, hey.” I curled my fingers around the soft, squishy bit of crocheted yarn and stuffing. “I don’t want to take your stuff.”
He looked up at me again, holding my gaze a bit longer this time. “I don’t like to keep them. It makes me feel good to give them away to people.”
I held it a little tighter. “Okay. Then he’s coming with me everywhere. Should I name him?”
“Yes,” Ferris said without missing a beat. “He should have a name.”
I stared down at the seal and his weird floppy little snout. He deserved something dignified. “Snoot the Boop.”
Ferris broke out into a big smile, and his cheeks darkened a bit. “That’s not what I would have named him.”
“Oh. Should I—”
“No,” he cut me off very quickly. “No. It’s a good name.”
I stared down at Snoot the Boop and stroked my thumb over his head. Yeah. I was going to keep this thing forever. “Well, ah…it was good to see you outside of work and whatnot.”
Ferris frowned. “Yes. Um. Will you be doing pieces on the NHL this year?”
“Nope.” God, it felt so fucking good to say that. “I quit my job. I’m heading out into the world to find myself. Or something. Like a white lady going to love, eat, and whatever in Italy.”
“Oh. I’ve never been to Italy. They probably have good pasta, but I really only like it with butter and maybe a little pesto, and I think they’d be annoyed and think I was some terrible American tourist. But I’m not American. I’m Canadian.”
I fought back a laugh, covering it with a cough. “Well, I don’t actually mean I’m going to Italy. That’s just a thing middle-aged white women fresh off divorces do. At least according to movies and books. I just mean I need to figure out what I’m doing next.”
“I’ve been there,” came a rumbling voice from behind me.
Before I could spin around, Quinn appeared. I knew him both from his tenure in hockey and from the stir he’d caused when he not only came to work as a physical therapist for the Glaciers, but also when he came out as the husband of their newest rookie.
It was a whole thing, and I couldn’t begin to imagine what that attention had done to poor Ferris.
“You didn’t struggle. You always knew you wanted to work in PT,” Ferris said.
“Yes,” Quinn said, bringing Ferris’s hand up to his lips so he could kiss his knuckles.
“But I was turned upside down in my brain when trying to decide if I wanted to come to work here and be with you.” His gaze met mine, and fuck, I would really like someone to be obsessed with me the way Quinn was obsessed with Ferris.
“It ended up not being a hard decision.”
“My mom says something like, when you know you know,” Ferris said with a shrug. “I don’t really get it, but she’s probably right.”
“She is,” Quinn rumbled. “It’s good to see you, Ara.”
Vind, I finished in my head, but I didn’t say it aloud. Quinn got a pass. For now. “It’s good to see you too. Hope you guys have a good summer.”
With that, I walked off. I didn’t need to be subjected to people being so damn happy. It was gross.
And I was jealous.
And this was supposed to be the summer of me, so I made a vow right then and there that I wouldn’t subject myself to any more bullshit that made me question my life’s choices.
Too bad that didn’t stick.