Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
My father supervises the moving truck, as if the professionals I hired don’t know what they’re doing. Mom frets about her “Fine ceramics.” They’re thrift store finds and not antique collectibles, so I don’t get the big deal.
I get a notification. My ride to the airport is two minutes out. “Guys, I have to jet. Meet you on the other side and take care of my baby.” I glance at my car, which I insisted my father drive, adamant that my younger brothers don’t get behind the wheel.
Pop claps his hand on my shoulder. “Son, we got this. It’s not our first rodeo.” He’s speaking English, only he pronounces it Roh-day-oh, as in Rodeo Drive—the famous street in Beverly Hills, California.
Ma replies in Italian, “If only we were moving to Southern California. There’s a team there, right? The Lions? Why not switch to them?” She makes prayer hands under her chin.
“That’s not how it works, Ma.” She knows this. I think. I kiss her on the cheek, and then she kisses both of mine in the traditional Italian way.
Our family switches easily between English, Spanish, and Italian—sometimes a blend of all three. Pop is from Mexico and Ma is from Italy—though they’ve both lived here for about thirty years and are fluent in English.
I only ever kept my Italian separate from Spanish because my mother and her best frenemy routinely argued in Italian.
Pop and I shake hands and then hug. Ma asks if I have enough snacks packed.
It’s not as if I’m marching off to war. I’m merely traveling to New York for a day before the season starts to see my buddy Shane Finch.
He’s getting married and I have a hunch he needs my help, which is baffling since we both know my almost-wedding was an abysmal failure.
My brothers wave.
Joey winks. “Say hi to Frederica if you see her.”
I roll my eyes at the reference to his sixth-grade crush. The kid just graduated from high school, so I’m not sure why he’s still thinking about her.
“And Juniper,” Charlie adds with a laugh.
If my ride to the airport didn’t just arrive, I’d double back and knock him sideways.
My mother perks up and launches into a long monologue about how she always knew Juniper and me were meant to be, that she trusts we’ll someday find each other again, and then adds a few choice words about Guiliana Popovik, her would-be in-law, and the aforementioned frenemy.
I throw myself into the backseat of the sleek black sedan before it comes to a complete stop. No need to prolong this discussion.
The problem is, they’re the reason we called off the wedding. Well, partly.
Even though that’s not what I want to be thinking about during the flight from St. Louis to Manhattan, Junie carves up my thoughts like the blade of a skate into the ice.
I shove on my headphones and let my mind wander away from thoughts of Junie Popovik ... the one who got away ... yet when one playlist ends and another starts with an Italian classic by the crooner Dean Martin, singing about moons, eyes, and pizza pies, I’m right back where I started.
After touching down and leaving the airport, I swiftly shift back into city-Mikey, recalling the scents of fall on these familiar streets—diesel fuel, sweet and salty roasting nuts, and the particular odor of steam rising from the subway vents.
It feels good to be home. I almost stagger at this thought because I haven’t lived here in three years. I was a late-round pick in the NHL draft, which shocked me. Not that I wasn’t higher in the rankings, but that I was chosen at all.
My older brother, Paulie, said that gave me a complex—not because I feel the need to prove myself, though I do—but that I’m cooler and better than I actually am. Nothing like a big brother to try to knock me down a peg ... or ten.
The sports I grew up on were soccer and football. I wasn’t exactly a prime candidate for playing hockey—the rest of the family are huge fútbol fans.
Tony, my oldest brother, was in a minor soccer league for a while but stopped short of going pro after he and his wife had their third kid in almost as many years.
Charlie got a full scholarship to play soccer in college.
He turned it down because he works for the family business—and let’s be real, he’d sooner lug bags of cement up a ladder than be stuck in a class getting lectured about the sub-textual meaning of penguin mating habits as it relates to postmodern relationships.
I went to college and had to write an essay on that very subject. Junie helped me make sense of that and we laughed the entire time.
Pop watches every second of soccer he can—even for teams he’s not a fan of—except when I’m in the room. Then he quickly changes the channel to hockey, as if he wasn’t just cheering for his favorite sport, fútbol.
I consider taking the subway stop that would bring me to my old neighborhood, but there isn’t time before I have to meet Shane.
Anyway, I’d risk running into Junie—the real reason I started playing hockey.
Nothing like trying to impress a girl to lead to a successful career. Am I right?
Actually, that’s not how it began, but that became my fuel.
My mother, Carlotta, and her mother, Guiliana, met in the old country. They found themselves in America at roughly the same time and, for reasons that date back several generations, had a family rivalry. I think it has something to do with a Neapolitan dish called O Pere e ‘o Musso.
Translation: foot and muzzle
Interpretation: ew
Thankfully, that original culinary dispute morphed into who makes the best meatballs, ragù Napoletano, and so on.
I was born around the same time as Junie and her twin brother, Asher.
He and I became friends and even though the two women tried to keep us apart—Ma insisted Asher had smelly feet and he told me that his mother claimed I didn’t wash behind my ears.
For the record, I do, and yes, his feet smell.
But little boys don’t care about stuff like that.
Thankfully, our friendship toned down the motherly rivalry a degree.
Mr. Popovik was into hockey, so Asher played. Like a good member of the Cruz family, I dutifully learned soccer—dribbling the ball while I was still a dribbling toddler.
Later, given my size, I was better suited to the football team, so I joined in high school, much to my family’s dismay.
Our junior varsity team wasn’t great and the cheerleaders often hung out with the opposition after games.
Even Junie, our kicker, caught the eye of the rivals, which stirred up a fury in me, and I became known for my penalties rather than my plays.
When Asher told me girls loved hockey players, I was sold.
Considering only two things occupied my mind when I was seventeen—girls and sports—I followed him onto the ice.
To say I was a virtuoso was an understatement.
His dad, Anton, told me he’d never seen anything like it.
An Italian-Mexican-American who took to skating the way I did.
It didn’t take long for others to notice and college came next with a full ride to play on the Division I team. The rest is history ... almost.
There was one snag. Junie didn’t like me warding off the guys on the football field.
I heard everything they said in the locker room and not one of them was good enough for her, despite our family feud—in which our mothers barely tolerate each other under a thin veil of so-called friendship.
Of course, I let her think her brother put me on guard duty.
But that was nothing to the claws that came out when she’d join her dad and brother for my games.
They were a hockey family, and she was not a team player when it came to the attention I’d received from the opposite sex. Either that or it was payback.
So yeah, our rivalry involved sabotaging each other at every opportunity when it came to flirting, dating, and hooking up.
But that ended one winter’s night in college during a snowstorm. If I let myself think too much about how romantic it was with the snowflakes dotting her hair, the pink in her cheeks, and her lips on mine, warming us both up ... I might just want her back.
Okay, fine, I do. But I’d never admit it because I know all too well that it’ll be a warm day on a hockey rink before that happens.
It’s early and the autumn air is just cool enough for me to see my breath, and just like that, she skates back into my mind.
I reach the hospital where Shane is finishing his physical therapy residency. It’s the same place where I last saw Junie. Her father passed away a few months after we broke up. I was there to be a source of support, but she told me not to bother going to the funeral.
Of course, I attended. Her father was like family.
Junie and I were great in so many ways, but listening to each other wasn’t one of them.
Waiting outside, my phone beeps with a message from Shane, saying he’ll be right down.
I hadn’t checked my texts since getting off the plane.
Although I usually receive messages from several team members across various group chats, I realize the captain must’ve deleted me now that we’re nearing the start of the new season—now that I’m playing for a different organization.
My career began with the Empire State Kings here in New York. The next year, I was traded to the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest, and the year after that, I was moved to the St. Louis Liberators. Now, I’m on the Nebraska Knights.
To say I feel like a kid caught in a custody battle, being shuffled between homes, is an understatement. I keep telling myself that the fourth time will be the charm, even though that’s not a thing.
My older brothers tease me about it because they can get away with that.
The younger ones keep their mouths shut because they like the advantages of having a pro NHL-playing brother, given the puck bunny situation.
Though I hear the Knights are more of a family-oriented organization and all the WAGs scare the fangirls away.