Chapter 36
thirty-six
SOPHIE
Mike hasn’t touched his risotto in ten minutes.
I watch him push mushrooms around his plate with mechanical precision—fork to plate, plate to mouth, mouth to fork. Someone programmed him to simulate eating while his actual self floated somewhere far away, probably ice-level, where I’d banished him from.
“This is really good,” he says, because of course he does.
Everything I make is good now. Every suggestion brilliant. Every opinion unassailable. The compliment tastes worse than the risotto, which has gone cold and gluey on my tongue.
I stab at my own portion. “You hate mushrooms.”
“No, I—” For half a heartbeat, the real Mike surfaces—the one who once spent twenty minutes explaining why fungi were nature’s greatest betrayal, gesturing wildly while I laughed until my stomach cramped. Then he vanishes, replaced by hollow compliance that knots my gut. “They’re growing on me.”
They’re not. Nothing is growing anymore. Not his tastes, not our conversations, not the future we’re supposedly building. Everything withers under the weight of my demands.
“What do you want to do tonight?” I say, despite already knowing the answer.
“Whatever you want.”
I set down my fork with exaggerated care, fighting the urge to flip the entire table. “Mike. What do you want?”
He looks at me then, and the naked hurt flickering behind his eyes crushes my ribs. “I want what makes you happy, Soph. That’s what we agreed on.”
That’s what I forced on you.
The thought arrives sharp and deserved.
“Right.” I push back from the table, chair legs shrieking against hardwood. “I need to help Hazel with her homework.”
“I could come?—”
“No.” Too harsh. I soften, but the falseness remains. “You don’t have to. Stay here and relax.”
Relax.
Neither of us has managed that since I caged him with my fear. But he nods anyway—always nodding now, always agreeing—and forces his mouth into something that might resemble a smile if you squinted.
As he starts to clean up, I practically sprint to my car, cranking the music loud enough to drown my conscience, which sounds suspiciously like Mom telling me that fear makes terrible decisions.
Twenty minutes later, I’m at my parents’ kitchen table, theoretically helping Hazel paint Jupiter while actually creating abstract art titled “Woman Destroys Everything She Touches.”
“Sophie, you’re getting orange on Saturn.” Hazel’s eight-year-old exasperation cuts through my spiral. “Saturn is not orange.”
“Sorry, bug.” I try focusing on the styrofoam ball, but my hand trembles, sending orange across the newspaper.
She sets down her brush with judicial solemnity. “Why are you being weird and sad?”
Trust a third-grader to diagnose my entire emotional state in six words. But silence isn’t an option, so I sigh. “I’m not sad.”
She dips her brush in yellow paint with surgical precision. “You look like someone took away your favorite thing.”
Like I took away his.
Dad materializes in the doorway—perfect timing for emotional crises—takes one look at my face, and sends Hazel to wash brushes. She goes, deploying her most dramatic eye roll and a look that says adults are so completely lame.
“Coffee?” Dad’s already moving to the machine, giving me the option to talk or bolt.
I nod, and while I marinate in guilt, the coffee maker gurgles. Outside, the neighbor’s dog launches his daily crusade against invisible threats, while inside, silence stretches until it snaps.
“I really fucked up, Dad.” The words emerge coated in self-loathing. “I think I broke Mike.”
Dad sets a mug in front of me—the one with “World’s Okayest Daughter” in faded letters that used to be ironic. “Broke him how?”
“I asked him to give up the NHL. For me. To stay here.” Each word tastes more pathetic than the last. “And he just… agreed. Like I’d asked him to pick up milk instead of abandon his entire life’s dream. And since then, he’s been… not him.”
Dad’s eyebrows climb toward what remains of his hairline. “That’s…” He recalibrates. “Not what I expected.”
“Mom had just been in hospital, and I panicked. I needed to know he wouldn’t vanish when things got hard. That he wouldn’t be in Vancouver or Toronto or wherever when she…” The possibility sits in my chest, stone-heavy.
“No need to think about that right now,” he says. “But Mike, he agreed immediately?”
“Without even blinking.” My laugh tastes acidic. “Didn’t negotiate, didn’t argue, didn’t even ask why. Just ‘OK, Sophie, whatever you need.’”
Dad leans against the counter, studying me with eyes that caught every tell when I lied about homework or boys or why I came home at 2:00 a.m. instead of the agreed upon curfew. “You know, when your mom got diagnosed, everyone assumed she made me leave Michigan.”
My head snaps up.
“She didn’t. She actually fought me on it.
She said we could handle the distance, and that her treatment wasn’t worth me giving up a program I’d built from nothing.
” He takes a thoughtful sip, and I notice new lines around his eyes, carved by watching Mom fight a new enemy. “But I knew where I was needed.”
The parallel lands, bullseye.
“The choice was mine,” he continues, voice gentle but firm. “She gave me that dignity. That agency. And even on the worst days—when she can’t get out of bed, when the treatment makes her sick, when we both know it’s getting worse—I’ve never resented it. How could I? It was my choice.”
Tears arrive hot and sudden, streaming down my face faster than I can wipe them away. “But what if he chooses hockey? What if I’m alone when?—”
“When Mom gets worse?” Dad’s directness surprises me. We usually tiptoe around the progression. “Sophie, her illness doesn’t follow our schedules.”
“But—”
“No buts, Sophie.” He cuts me off. “There’ll be good years and terrible days and everything in between. But she’s got me here, and the last thing either of us wants to do is for you to live your life in fear—or, worse, not live your life—because of what ifs.”
“That’s why you were telling me to back off?” I say, the realization hitting me like a brick to the head.
“It was.” He smiles. “You’re twenty-three. You’ve got a whole life to live. We don’t want you to be a prisoner to this. And it’s not fair to ask Mike to be, either.”
“Too late.” The words emerge soggy with snot and tears. “I already locked him in a cage because I was scared.”
Dad rounds the counter and pulls me into the kind of hug that’s gotten me through playground humiliations to first heartbreaks, and something in me breaks completely.
“You don’t cage someone you love, Sophie,” he murmurs into my hair while I sob into his shirt. “You become the reason they want to fly home.”
He holds me while I ugly-cry, this man who rewrote his entire life’s plan without anyone asking. And, when I finally surface from his embrace, my face feels swollen and raw.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“Anytime.” He hands me paper towels. “Though maybe next time we could talk before you demand life-altering sacrifices?”
A wet laugh escapes. “Yeah, I’ll add it to my Google calendar. ‘Tuesday: Destroy boyfriend’s dreams. Wednesday: Panic. Thursday: Cry on Dad.’”
Hazel’s voice floats from the doorway, dripping with disdain. “Are you done being weird? Because Jupiter needs another coat.”
She drags me back to the table, but my mind churns through every interaction with Mike. How selfish I’ve been, and how accepting of his help and his love I’ve been, and only sometimes giving it back.
How I only half-watched his games on my laptop while studying, treating every power play explanation with the enthusiasm of someone enduring a timeshare pitch.
How I called his NHL dreams “nice”—the same word you’d use for a child’s macaroni art—and how his stories about incredible shots by Maine or saves by Rook got the same ‘mm-hmm’ treatment as telemarketer calls.
Two hours and one solar system later, I’m sitting in my car outside my apartment, engine running, paralyzed. Mike’s in there, probably reorganizing my spice rack alphabetically or scrubbing grout that’s already sterile.
Being perfect.
Being compliant.
Being everything except the man who made me laugh until my sides ached.
My phone buzzes:
Game starts in 30. Heading to the rink.
I stare at this tiny reminder of everything I’m destroying. Before fear can talk me out of it, I’m driving toward the arena, Dad’s words on repeat. You don’t cage someone you love. You become the reason they want to fly home.
The parking lot teems with fans in Pine Barren jerseys, their excitement a foreign language I never bothered to learn. But tonight feels different. Tonight, I’m here to witness what I’m asking Mike to abandon.
I buy a ticket, finding a seat high in the stands where I can see everything but stay invisible. Where I can finally pay attention to the thing that makes Mike’s eyes light up the way they used to when he looked at me.
The arena thrums with pregame energy—skates carving ice, sticks cracking against pucks—and the air vibrates with anticipation thick enough to taste, until a PA announcer cuts through everything else.
“Number 18, your captain, Mike Altman!”
The crowd detonates.
The sound hits me physically, rattling my ribs and stealing breath.
And there he is, skating out with liquid grace I’ve seen before but never truly witnessed . The jersey he’s wearing isn’t decoration—it’s identity, responsibility, dreams, fears, and everything I’ve been content to delete like junk mail.
He raises his stick to acknowledge the roar, but even from here, the absence shows. He performs the motions, present but not present , someone forced to recite their own obituary.
I did that. I took this away.
This isn’t just a career or possible paycheck. This is his soul.
And I asked him to rip it out and hand it to me.
Because I was too scared to love without guarantees.
The puck drops, and Mike explodes into motion. On ice, robotic compliance vanishes. He becomes power and grace, more alive than he’s been all week in my apartment. This is the real Mike, the one I’ve been suffocating with my fear.
My phone buzzes. Mom:
Dad said you stopped by. Everything OK?
I type back:
Watching Mike’s game.
The three dots appear and disappear several times before:
Good. About time.
The truth stings. About time I showed up for him the way he’s been showing up for me. About time I witnessed his world instead of treating it like an inconvenience. About time I loved him freely instead of conditionally.
The arena lights blaze down on the ice, crowd energy pulsing through the building, and one thought crystallizes with painful clarity. That if I love him, I have to let him fly.
And trust he’ll choose to come home and help me fly as well.