Thirty #3
My brows pinch. “What?”
“You’ve been saying there’s something wrong with you since, like, eighth grade when you stopped letting Dad come to your games.”
My stomach tightens. My fingers twitch against Pumpkin’s fur.
“That’s not the same thing,” I mutter, my heart beginning to pound.
“Isn’t it?” he challenges. “You keep acting like this stuff is a mystery. Like no one’s figured you out yet.
But you’ve been assessed. Imposter syndrome doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.
” He pauses, long enough for me to feel the lump in my throat harden.
“Also, you have a therapist. Who is very worried about you, by the way. If you’re going to make me your emergency contact, at least pick up the phone when she calls.
It’s been three months now. It’s like you’re determined to be miserable. ”
His words sink into the pit of my stomach.
Growing up, his candor always irritated me.
He never bothered to sweeten his words. He just served them raw, no sugar to soften the taste.
But over time, I’ve come to appreciate it.
To love the sour twang, because even if it’s not what I want to hear, or what I want to acknowledge, it is the truth.
Maybe that’s what I like about Darcy so much. She doesn’t occupy herself with artificial sweeteners. She just tells it like it is.
“Have you told Mom and Dad that I haven’t been going?” I ask hesitantly, my voice embarrassingly small. There’s something hard and swelling, weighing over my vocal chords, tugging them down. He shakes his head.
“No, but if you keep ghosting her I will.”
I smile briefly. “Thanks.”
He just nods.
We’re quiet for a beat, but of course, I never let the silence sit too long. Not unless it’s with Darcy.
“Do you think he really misses it?” I ask. Avery hitches a shoulder.
“Yeah,” he responds. “I think he does. But there wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it.”
I nod, sucking my cheek back between my teeth. “Yeah. I mean, Mom was practically a single parent. Your diagnosis is probably the reason we don’t have daddy issues,” I joke. Avery doesn’t get it. His brows furrow, and he looks at me, puzzled.
“What do you mean?”
“Because if you didn’t,” I explain, “Dad probably would’ve played until he was like, sixty, and we would’ve never seen him.”
I expect the crease between Avery’s brows to smooth out, which is what normally happens when I explain a joke he didn’t catch. Instead, it deepens, and his head tips to the side.
“Wait, you think dad quit hockey because I got diagnosed with autism?” he asks.
“Yeah.” I hitch a nonchalant shoulder. “The same summer you got diagnosed, that’s when he quit.”
Avery’s hooded eyes narrow, and a chill shoots through my chest. “Peyton, Dad didn’t quit hockey.”
I blink. Then I blink again. Then again. A confused laugh escapes me.
“What are you talking about?” I ask, brows furrowing. “Yes, he did.”
Avery shakes his head. “Who told you that?”
“Nobody told me, I just connected the dots.”
Avery just keeps staring at me, his hand smoothing up and down the thigh of his pants to steady himself. He clears his throat. “Peyton, Dad didn’t quit. He got cut.”
“What?!” My brows shoot to my hairline, and I whip around to fully face him, propping my free hand on my hip. “What are you talking about?”
“How do you not know this?”
“Because every article I’ve ever read says he retired?”
Avery tucks his hair-covered arms over his chest. “Do you believe everything you read on the internet?”
I roll my eyes, letting them descend onto my father, who is now in the kitchen with my mom, feeding “Flower”. Avery continues.
“The team was going in a different direction. Dad wasn’t getting the minutes he used to. And honestly, he was barely hanging on. He knew he wasn’t going to last much longer, and then when they told him … well, he had to make the call.”
My eyes squint, like maybe if I shift their perspective, I’ll be able to see things more clearly. But everything remains blurred. “But he always talks about it like it was his choice. Like it was his decision to leave.”
Avery nods. “It was his decision. His choices were to retire completely, or try to get drafted by another team. But he’d been playing for like, fifteen years at that point.”
My breath stays caught in my lungs, and I rub the inner corners of my eyes, still trying to process.
This entire time, my whole life, I believed that my dad gave up his career for us.
I believed, in some twisted way, that I owed something to him because of it.
That because he was the best, I had to be the best too. And it was built on … an assumption?
“My brain hurts,” I mutter, rubbing my eyes. Avery pats my back awkwardly.
“Yeah, I don’t know how you jump to conclusions like that.”
From the kitchen, my dad cuts in, calling out to me, “Hey! You gonna show me that AIHL shit?”
I give him a slow nod, my mind still whirling. “Yeah,” I answer, finally releasing the air I’ve held hostage in my lungs. “Yeah, I’ll go get it.”