23. CHAPTER 23
Locke
The lunch rush is gone and the dinner hour isn’t even close, so the Blue Line is quiet, only a handful of staff and a few players who’ve finished their afternoon workouts and haven’t yet found a reason to be anywhere else.
I had an extended rehab session for a sore elbow, and now I’m starved since I missed lunch.
I order at the counter, take my food to a table in the back corner by the window, and spend approximately twenty minutes not thinking about anything more complicated than how good my turkey club is.
I’m halfway through it when I see Van.
He comes through the side entrance in a jacket and street clothes and scans the room. His eyes land on me briefly and he nods.
I lift my chin back at him, which is an invitation of sorts, I guess. Meaning… I’m actually okay if he wants to come sit with me and… converse? Yeah. It’s cool.
Three minutes later, he’s at my table with a tray in hand and I push the chair across from me out with one foot.
He settles in and removes his plate and silverware from the tray. “How’s the elbow?”
I extend it. “Right as rain. How’s the chicken?” I ask, nodding down at his plate.
He cuts a bite and puts it in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “Fucking delicious,” he says with a grin, and I can’t help but laugh.
I’ve always given Van more than I give most people. Not a lot more, but there’s something about the man that makes hostility feel like overkill, and with me that’s not a low bar.
I know the outline of his story and maybe that’s why I feel more of a connection with Van because I know enough about punishing people who didn’t deserve it. He’s never said a word about any of it to me and I’ve never asked, and that arrangement suits us both perfectly.
“Good game Wednesday,” he says without looking up from his food.
“We needed the two points.”
“You needed the two points. Your line has been the difference-maker the last three games. You and Rome, and we’re going to need that tomorrow night against Quebec.”
“You’ll get it,” I say with confidence.
“I’m not blowing smoke.” He glances up. “I don’t do that.”
“I know you don’t.”
He sets his utensils beside his plate. “Penalty minutes are down too.”
“I’m aware,” I say, wiping my mouth with my napkin.
“So, what’s the difference?” he asks.
I look out the window. The performance center’s east wing courtyard is visible from here. The December sky is flat gray and a couple of groundskeeping staff are moving equipment across the far end.
Just an ordinary afternoon in the life of a professional hockey player.
“I guess a different environment,” I say, surprised at my words.
Van looks at me questioningly. “Different how?”
“I don’t know.” I don’t want to say the difference isn’t really this place so much as one person within this place. “Let’s just say it’s been easier to keep the lid on lately. And I’m guessing it’s this new environment.”
A half-truth. Well, maybe quarter-truth. It’s mostly Livia.
Van is quiet while he pokes his straw up and down in his iced water. His eyes come to mine. “I know all about keeping a lid on anger.”
I know what he’s talking about… his own anger issues because of his dad. He’s never brought it up to me before.
“It might seem to you like no one can understand, but you have to know I do. And I’m telling you… that anger I kept bottled almost cost me everything. Not just my career, but my marriage too.”
This advice is surprisingly similar to what Livia told me. That even though I’m currently coping, the problem is still down deep. I didn’t want to hear from Livia, but admittedly, my curiosity is piqued about Van. “What happened?”
He’s quiet for a moment. Not reluctant but more like he’s deciding where to start.
“Same thing that always happens when people can’t regulate emotion.
The anger runs quiet for a long time and you get good at managing it until something breaks through, and then it comes out sideways.
” He exhales through his nose. “I took it out on Simone.” His expression becomes pained and he shakes his head.
“I was ugly to her. I pulled away, lashed out over small things, made her feel like the problem when the problem was nowhere near her.”
“But she’s still with you,” I point out.
“She didn’t leave,” he says with a wry smile. “Which she had every right to do.” He picks up his water and takes a sip. “She kept showing up, hounding me to confront my past. Drove me batshit crazy actually, because it would’ve been easier if she’d given up on me. I could’ve used that as evidence.”
“Evidence of what?”
“That I wasn’t worth the effort.” He says it like it’s a fact about himself he sorted out a long time ago. “When she didn’t give up—when she kept being there—I ran out of excuses to not get my head out of my ass.”
I look out the window again, but I’m not thinking about Van’s wife.
I’m thinking about a woman who sat across a desk from me and poked into my life.
I’m thinking about two sessions of genuine access that I handed over against every instinct I have and the fact that none of it felt like an extraction.
I’m thinking about our last session scheduled for Monday and I have no clue where we’ll go from there.
Van watches me, reading the expression on my face. I realize I’ve been looking at the courtyard long enough that the silence has a piece of the conversation.
“There’s a woman,” I say, turning to look at him. It just pops out against my better judgment to remain closed off.
A smile forms on Van’s face. “Can’t say I’m sad about that. It was a woman who made the difference for me.”
“It’s new and there are—” I almost say land mines, but that’s not quite right. “Complications. Things that make it not simple.”
“Relationships are never simple.”
“This one has specific reasons to be complicated, and I’ve never been particularly interested in putting in the work with a woman before but…”
“But this one’s different?”
I don’t answer directly. “I’ve had other long-term situations. Women I saw for a while but nobody I actually liked as a person.”
“I get the distinction,” Van says.
“Yeah.” I exhale with a chuckle. “I genuinely like her, and maybe that’s the different environment I was talking about earlier.”
Van nods as if he understands me completely. “The complicated parts… are they actual problems or are they things you’re using as problems?”
I feel my chin pull inward… a flash of surprise running through me.
“Because there’s a difference,” he explains, reading the expression on my face. “Men like you and me…” He gestures between us. “We’re very good at finding reasons to avoid things. We can build a case against anything if we’re motivated enough.”
“I’m not building a case.” I push my pickle around my plate. “I’m just… I’ve never been here before. Wherever this is.”
“No map for it,” Van says with a chuckle. “That’s how you know it’s real.”
I don’t say anything to that, mulling over the possibility.
Real.
It does feel that way.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, picking up his utensils again, “if it’s real, then you don’t leave anything on the table.
Whatever it costs, you pay it.” He pauses, eyes locking with mine.
“Because the only thing worse than it being hard is looking back at it from the other side knowing you didn’t go all the way. ”
We eat in silence for a while, Van scrolling video on his tablet and me mulling his advice.
A future with Livia? Is that possible?
I’ve spent so long not letting myself look at that horizon that I’m not entirely sure what I’m seeing when I do.
I don’t have a framework for it. I don’t have a vocabulary for it.
What I have is the specific and uncomplicated knowledge that the idea of a future that doesn’t include her is significantly less interesting than one that does.
That’s not nothing.