9. Mads #2
“Okay, let’s move this back to you, son.
As I see it, your options are, you quit now and impress the scouts and get yourself up to the CHL.
Or you stay at Shattuck until senior year and you’re eligible for the draft but you’ll have strengthened your game and grown into your height.
Hell, maybe you opt to go the college route. Who knows?”
He looked uncertain for a moment, and then dipped his gaze. “I don’t know what to do, Dad. Should I take what I can, when I can? What would an agent say?”
Fuck, he looked so lost, like he was pinning everything on the idea that an agent was the answer to all things. Was that what Ev had been feeding him? Agents guided and assisted, but this kind of a decision was way above the pay grade of any agent.
“Any agent who really cared about the player—and there are a lot out there, good ones—would be looking to you for what you want to do.”
Ryker looked like he was going to cry again. Jesus, the pressure that Ev was putting on my son was tearing him apart from the inside out.
I moved further onto the bed, cross–legged, and waited until he did the same thing.
We used to play a game when he was a kid.
I would say a word, and he would say the first thing that came into his mind.
A stupid game, where every answer was related to hockey.
I wished I could use that game now, but this was way more serious.
I needed to string proper words together. I needed to be the adult here.
“Do you agree with your grandpa that you’re the next big thing?”
I couldn’t help but think of Ten as I asked that.
Ten had always come high on all those lists that rated skill, and when I watched him on the ice he had a hockey sense that was rare.
He was fast and confident. But under it all he was everything I wanted for Ryker—a person happy in his own skin, endlessly optimistic, when it came to hockey at least.
“No,” Ryker said, and looked at me like I’d accused him of some heinous crime. “But…”
“But what? You can say anything you want. It won’t go any further than this room.”
“I’m good,” he added with a splash of confidence I wanted to see.
“I know.”
He looked right at me, with that focus I admired in him, and half smiled. “Will you be my agent?” he asked.
“God, no!” I exclaimed. I wished I hadn’t said the words quite so strongly when Ryker’s face fell. “I didn’t mean it like that,” I amended. “I’m a grunt, a player, a coach. An agent finesses all kinds of legal shit.”
That made Ryker smile, and the smile reached his eyes. “Is that a technical explanation, Dad?”
“You want to go to this meeting with your grandpa?”
“No. But he won’t listen to me, and he keeps saying you’re wrong, and I need you to talk to me like…
” He stopped, and I waited for more, because he looked so deadly serious.
He bit his lip, an unfortunate habit he’d picked up from his mom.
I recalled watching her biting her lip a lot the night he was conceived.
One thirty-dollar room, one experimentation, and Ryker was made, just like that.
Not out of love maybe, but certainly out of a strong friendship that only wavered when Casey’s dad got involved.
Ryker was the best parts of me and of Casey. I couldn’t be prouder of our son.
“Go on,” I encouraged him. “You want me to talk like what?”
“Not my dad,” he said finally, and dipped his gaze again as he flushed scarlet.
“You want me to give you advice man to man?” I smiled at him.
“No, Jesus, no.” He looked aghast again, and I didn’t have the heart to call him on his cursing, because hell, his mom wasn’t there and he would say worse on the ice. “Properly, like hockey player to hockey player.”
Now that I could do.
“Okay, so this is the way I see it. Looking at your skill, seeing you skate, I think you need more development time. You have a lot of raw talent, you’re fast, focused, you see the puck, you look at the play not the player…
it’s all good.” His smile was wide as I said that.
“I’m so proud of the work you put in, and when I’m in the stands for your first NHL game, I will probably embarrass you by cursing the refs and shouting plays. ”
“Dad… jeez…”
“Look, if I were you, I would stay at Shattuck, get my education, become the left wing that can be counted on, get taller, get faster, and put myself up for the draft at eighteen, hell maybe even think about going to college and work on your skills on a college team.”
“Yeah?” He looked so hopeful—settled, almost. “You think I could go to college?”
“Of course I do, hell, you’re a bright kid. You could get a degree, you could do it all. College and hockey.” I didn’t know what college could mean to him, I hadn’t gone to college, or even properly finished school, but I knew he was capable.
He glanced at the door, the confidence slipping a little. “What about grandpa?”
“I’ll deal with him. And I’ll talk to your mom; she and I are on the same page.”
“She doesn’t stand up to grandpa, though.”
I remembered the day they’d slammed the door on me, Ev telling me that Casey was having an abortion.
I’d seen Casey behind him, crying and saying nothing even though I called her name.
I also remembered the courts, the news articles, the lies, and that singularly beautiful day when she’d turned around to her dad and said one word.
He’d been mid-rant—something about me being a bad influence, drinking too much, whoring around—and she’d just said enough.
She had a backbone that I admired, she just also knew how to keep the peace around her blustering asshole of a father.
“She would if she knew for sure what you wanted, Ry.”
“Really?”
“I promise you.”
“Dad? Can we talk about something else?”
Uh-oh, this sounded ominous, like there was a hidden world of hurt for me in that simple sentence.
“Yeah, sure,” I said, making sure I sounded way more blasé about leading questions like that than I was.
If this was a sex question, I would show some backbone and actually talk like a real adult would, about responsibility and shit.
I would not resort to crude jokes and pass over recommendations for the best condoms.
“You could have invited him over when I was here,” Ryker began. “Your new boyfriend, I mean.”
For a moment I blinked at him, parsing his words, trying to get a grip on a response, but all that came out was a string of “I don’t…” and “I can’t…”