Chapter 7 #2
“So do you just go in on your ranch?”
“A lot of times, yeah. There’s tracks at the school. I’m a member of a gym, but I’m not really a gym guy. I always feel a little bit like a poser.”
“Why? It’s obvious you are in great shape, man. You can’t do what you do and not be in great shape.”
Sam patted his belly, which was still flat, thank God. “I’m fixin’ to be an abuelito.”
“A very young one,” Evan pointed out.
He rolled his eyes. “Well, I was a really young papa.”
“True enough. But trust me, you still got it going on.”
He met Evan’s gaze, letting one eyebrow drift upward. It was good to hear, and he kind of got the feeling that maybe Evan wasn’t as straight as he thought the man was.
“Thanks. What all do you do for a workout?” They needed the conversation to keep moving and not in a direction that was ‘hey, what do you think about making out with a man’?
“I don’t work as hard as I used to when I was playing, but I have to stay in shape for all the camps I do with the young players and stuff.
So I still have a pretty hard regimen—I jog, a lot of it on the treadmill these days.
But road or beach jogging are always good for stamina, right?
I lift, I row, and I do a lot of squats. A lot of squats.”
Yeah, Sam had noticed Evan’s ass. He’d have to be a dead man not to notice because that thing was tight and round and hard, and he could probably bounce quarters off it.
And then there were the big thighs.
Max had them, too, not that Sam thought Max’s were attractive; it was just more he noticed it in an academic way. So clearly hockey players had big legs.
Evan’s on the other hand were drool-worthy.
Sam shook it off and nodded. “That sounds like you still work pretty hard.”
“Like I said, I’m on the ice more than you would think for somebody who’s retired because I’m out there a lot with the kids—high school, college age—working on stuff, and then I do a few summer camps for underprivileged youth, too.
The ages of the kids I work with are five to seventeen, so I have to be able to keep up with them. Hockey is a stamina sport.”
“Right, where my job is stop and start. I guess you guys eat a lot of carbs, huh?”
“On game day for sure, big bowls of pasta with chicken and greens.” Evan shrugged. “Trust me, you don’t want to be running out of gas when you’re halfway through a game. But it made it nice because that meant I could eat six thousand calories in a day sometimes and not feel guilty at all.”
“Christ, if I ate that much, I would be the size of a house.” Sam could eat his weight in tres leches cake, but should he? Probably not. So, he didn’t.
He sucked down his coffee in about two gulps, even though it was still hot enough to burn a little bit, but it did have enough cream in it to kind of mitigate that. He held up his cup when the server went by with the pot, and she stopped to refill it.
“You guys know what you want?”
“Yeah, lady, I think I’ll take the chilaquiles.” He had changed his mind on the huevos rancheros.
“Everything on it okay? “
“Yes, ma’am. I’m not like the gringo here.” He jerked his head at Evan, who laughed out loud.
The server grinned at Evan with a questioning expression.
“I’ll take the blue corn pancakes and then the two-egg breakfast.”
She didn’t bat an eye at how much food that was. She just nodded. “You got it. I’ll be back.”
Sam sipped his new coffee after he doctored it just right. Then he sighed. “I reckon we oughta talk turkey, huh?”
“It won’t take long to work everything over. Bobby pretty much agreed to all the stuff we talked about.”
“Did you discuss it with Max?” Sam knew it was going to be important to have Max on board, and he kind of wondered after he got rejected yesterday whether he would be or not.
Evan sipped his water, looking as though he was pondering what to tell Sam.
Finally, he seemed to go for it. “Yeah, he was butt-hurt about the whole proposal thing, but after I talked him down off that, because I did, we discussed it. He’s willing to go with pretty much whatever his dad, you, and I decide, but he’s worried about his future.
He’s a lot worried about Hillary’s too, and how they’re going to be able to pull this off, going back and forth with the baby, but he’s on board. ”
Sam started tracing a pattern on the paper placemat with his fingers. “Good. So do I need to have something put up in writing?”
“Do you have a lawyer on retainer?” Evan asked.
“No. I have someone who looks over my contracts when I sign a new one but that’s it.”
“I have somebody on retainer because I basically do a lot of contract work. So let me have him draw something up. I’ll give it to you.
You read over it. You get your guy to read it.
We make any changes and then we’ll sign something.
” Evan made a little bit of a wry face. “Or Bobby will sign it. I just have to courier it to him or email it to him or something.”
Sam reached his hand across the table to shake. He wanted that handshake because he knew Evan would abide by it.
The man took his hand in one big paw and shook, and it made tingles run all the way up his arm. Tingles he didn’t want to ponder too hard.
“All right then. I have been thinking, though.” He offered Evan a wink. “We might end up taking a quick trip before the finals to let Max’s folks meet Hillary when she’s not actually in labor.”
Evan’s eyes went wide, and he kind of blinked, “Oh, I think that that might be an amazing idea. Very smart, man.”
“Well, you know, that’s not the best time to meet anybody.” Six months? Seven? Even eight was okay, but nine months pregnant was not a great time to meet anyone.
“That’s totally fair.” Evan chuckled. “I can’t believe that neither one of us thought of it before now.”
“Well, it crossed my mind in the middle of the night, but it’s hard to think about the future when there’s so much you have to do.” This whole thing was like eating an elephant—one bite at a time. “I mean, not that this is your problem; obviously it’s not.”
Evan opened his hands. “Well, I’ll always be there for Max…”
“Of course you will.”
Until Evan wasn’t, because that was how this worked. At some point Evan would be somewhere else. It wasn’t like Max was gonna stay a young player forever. Evan had already said he worked with younger players, mostly.
All of the sudden, the idea that Evan was going to disappear and take the moral support system they were forming away made him queasy.
“I’d like to set up a Zoom call with Max’s dad once he’s in a good place for it—not while he’s in the hospital and stuff, but once he’s out. Do I call you to make that happen? Are you gonna be around for any more time?”
Evan’s lips twisted. “Well, I think Max is going to go home now. I’ll probably stick around for another week so we can get the legal stuff taken care of.”
“Well, instead of paying for a hotel, if you want to come stay at the house, you’re welcome to. I’ll be gone for three weeks starting Friday, but that should give you time.”
Evan blinked at him. “Are you serious?”
“I don’t see why not. It’s not like… I mean, you might have to listen to Hillary barf in the mornings, if that’s a problem. But I make coffee, and there’s always breakfast—” He rolled his eyes. “Even though we might be eating it here.”
It would save the man damn near a thousand dollars, which had to be a relief.
“Sure, if you don’t mind?”
“No, I don’t mind.” Was he supposed to mind? He probably ought to, but it wasn’t like anybody was being unreasonable here.
Stupid maybe a little, but that was Max, not Evan, so…
“That sounds like a plan then. Easy access.” Evan paused, and Sam would swear the man’s cheeks pinked up. Then he shook his head. “If you need me for paperwork or calling Bobby or anything.”
“Sure, man.” His brain had gone off on a tangent with the easy access comment. Just for a minute. Maybe a minute and a half.
Lord have mercy.
“Cool. I’ll check out today then, as long as Max is good with it. He’s ready to flee, I think.”
“Yeah. Personally, I think it will take a lot of stress off Hils if he’s gone too.”
“I can see that.” Evan sighed, shaking his head. “It’s nuts, huh?”
“One thing you can say about teenagers one hundred percent of the time, is that they’re not thinking with their brains. With their emotions, with their hormones, possibly with the devil whispering in their ear. I don’t know, but it’s totally not their brains.”
Evan snorted, almost choking on his coffee.
He waggled his eyebrows and grinned. “Spoken like a true dad, no?”
“Totally, and she’s lucky to have you.” Evan’s words didn’t sound sarcastic, but they did sober him.
“I can’t believe she did the same thing her mother and I did. She’s lived her whole life sunk in how there was challenge after challenge—from living in a trailer every other weekend to staying with her grandmother when I had to work at the trade shows in the deep of winter.”
“So, your wife never had custody.”