14. Jamie #2
I rest my shoulder against the brick and watch a cyclist cut smoothly through the intersection before answering.
“I’ve been thinking,” I admit. I hadn’t planned on going here today, not with Marcus, but the thought has been sitting in me long enough that it comes out anyway.
Marcus lets out a soft, knowing laugh. “That’s usually how these conversations start.”
“It isn’t about the media.” I wave the words away, almost physically, a brief absent swipe of one hand.
“What is it about?” he asks carefully. There’s a tentative quality to it, like he’s not sure what direction this is about to go. Poor Marcus, asks like he’s bracing himself for something catastrophic.
I take a slow breath and try to find the words for something I haven’t fully articulated even to myself.
“I’ve got three years left on my contract.”
“You do.”
“I’ve always assumed I’d play until my body made the decision for me.
That’s been the plan since I was a kid,” I say quietly, almost like I’m saying it into the open air rather than directly into the phone.
Like saying it too loudly might somehow disturb the arrangement I’ve had with myself for the last two decades.
Marcus doesn’t interrupt. He just holds the line and lets me keep going.
“I never really think about what comes after hockey,” I admit. “Every decision I’ve made since I was twelve years old has been about getting to the next level, staying in the league, finding a way to keep playing. I’ve always figured I’d know when the time came. That something would signal it.”
“And now?” he asks, the surprise quietly threaded through the question.
I glance back through the window. Tazja is smiling at something the estate agent is saying, clapping her hands together once, her whole face alight with a kind of excitement that she doesn’t try to contain.
She looks like she belongs in that room.
It is the first time since she moved to Seattle that I can picture her exactly where she is supposed to be.
“Now I’m not so sure anymore.”
Marcus lets the silence sit between us without rushing to fill it. By the quality of his quiet, I can tell he’s bracing himself. He is expecting this to be worse than it is.
“I don’t mean I want to retire tomorrow,” I add quickly. “I still love the game. I still want to play. I still think I have years of good hockey ahead of me.”
He exhales audibly, and the relief in it is genuine. “I know you do.”
I nod to myself. “I just don’t know if I want hockey to be the thing that decides when the rest of my life gets to start.”
The words come out steady, but they surprise me on the way out. I feel them differently in the open air than they’ve been sitting inside my chest. Marcus goes quiet for a beat too long, which tells me they landed the same way for him.
I’ve never said them out loud before. I’m not sure I’ve truly admitted them to myself until right now.
“When we negotiated this contract, you told me to think about where I wanted to be in five years,” I say. “Back then the answer came immediately. I wanted to be playing hockey.”
Marcus is quiet for a long moment. Knowing him, he’s definitely turning my words over in his mind before he finally speaks.
“I’ve represented enough players to know the question almost always shows up before the answer does.
” I let that sit for a moment, watching another car move through the intersection below me.
“It doesn’t mean the answer is urgent. It just means you’re starting to look in a different direction than you used to. ”
Marcus waits, comfortable in the quiet the way he always has been. He’s been doing this long enough, managing enough different personalities and egos and career crises, that he has developed what I can only describe as nerves of reinforced steel.
He has been my agent since the day I signed my first professional contract.
Somewhere across the years that followed, somewhere between every negotiation and every difficult season and every conversation that didn’t have anything to do with contract terms, he became something more than that.
He has celebrated every milestone. He’s talked me down from every setback.
He has never let me lose sight of who I am when I’m not wearing a jersey.
If there is one person I trust with my career in the same way I trust him with my actual confidence, it is Marcus.
“I never expected to be asking it this soon,” I reply.
Marcus chuckles quietly. “Jamie. You’re thirty-two, not forty-two.”
“I know.” I laugh despite myself, then release a long breath.
“You’ve got three years left on your contract, and unless something changes significantly between now and then, the Vipers are going to want to extend it.
You’re one of the leaders in that locker room.
You’ve built a career any player would be proud of, and the organization knows exactly what you bring, on the ice and off it. ”
I smile to myself. “I figured you’d say that.”
“I’m saying it because it’s true,” he says, his tone easing into something softer. “Don’t talk about yourself like you’re standing at the end of something when you’ve still got a lot of hockey in front of you.”
“I’m not,” I say quickly.
“Then what is it?” I’m sure he already knows but he wants me to be the one to put it out there.
I draw in a slow breath before I answer. “I think, for the first time in my life, hockey isn’t the only thing I’m planning around.” The words spill from my lips before I have a chance to second-guess them.
Marcus doesn’t move to fill the silence. He just holds the line and lets me keep going.
“I’ve always known what the next few years look like. I know when training camp opens. I know when the season ends. I know which city I’ll be living in and what my schedule looks like months before I ever set foot on the ice. There’s a structure to it. I’ve always found that reliable.”
“And now?” It’s a gentle nudge more than a question.
I glance back through the front window. Tazja is still walking the space with the estate agent, pausing every few steps, probably asking a thousand questions at once.
“I don’t know what the next few years are supposed to look like anymore,” I say, getting back to the heart of it.
Marcus stays quiet.
“I know where I’ll be,” I continue. “Training camp starts in September. The season follows. That’s the easy part. That part I can see clearly.”
I pause for a moment, trying to find the exact shape of what I’m trying to say.
“What I don’t know is where Cyaire will be.”
The admission hangs between us, sitting in the open for the first time. Because there it is. The honest center of all of it.
“His life doesn’t work like mine, Marcus. When this film wraps, he could be anywhere. Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Vancouver, London. That’s not uncertainty on his part, that’s just how his career works. That’s what the life looks like.”
“And you’re trying to figure out where that leaves the two of you,” he says, his voice warm and careful.
“Yeah.” I close my eyes for a second, leaning harder into the brick at my back. “I’ve never had to think beyond the next season before. My whole adult life has been built on a schedule I could see clearly. Now I can’t seem to stop thinking about the things that aren’t on any schedule at all.”
Marcus hums quietly, and the line goes still for a moment.
“I think you already know what I’m going to say,” he finally offers.
“I probably do,” I reply.
“You and Cyaire need to have the conversation.”
I let the words land before I exhale. “I know.”
“You’ve both built careers that don’t run on predictable timelines. That’s either something the two of you figure out together, or it’s something that eventually figures itself out without you. Neither of those is a great option if you’re not the one steering.”
He is not wrong, and he knows I know it.
“I’m not saying it will be easy,” he continues. “I’m saying it’s worth having before the two of you start quietly making assumptions on behalf of each other. That’s where things get complicated.”
I nod even though he can’t see me. “I appreciate it, Marcus.”
“I know you do.” He pauses. “And Jamie?”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever you figure out, don’t make the decision for him.”
The words land with more weight than I expect. I let them sink in before I answer. “I won’t.”
“Good.” Another brief pause. “I’ll let you get back to your sister. Tell Tazja I said hi, and congratulations on the new place.”
“I will,” I say, ending the call.
I lower my phone and stare at the blank screen for a beat longer than I need to. The street noise fills in around me, the hum of passing cars, a fragment of music from somewhere I can’t identify, the faint rise and fall of someone’s conversation half a block away.
“You okay?”
I look up. Tazja is walking toward me from the door, the estate agent disappearing back inside behind her with her phone already pressed to her ear, heading toward what I have already started thinking of as the reception area.
“It was Marcus,” I say.
Tazja studies my face the way she has always done, like she’s reading something slightly below the surface of whatever expression I’m wearing. “Everything okay?”
I slip my phone back into my pocket and nod. “Yeah. Nothing bad.”
Her expression softens before she hooks her thumb toward the building behind her. “She’s calling the landlord. Apparently we’ve arrived at lease terms.”
I smile. “I figured you’d love this place.”
She laughs, a full genuine laugh, clapping her hands together once and bouncing slightly in the high-heeled boots she wears like she was born in them. “I do. Jamie, I actually think this is happening.”
“I’m happy for you,” I say, giving her a gentle shove.
“I know.” She bumps her shoulder against mine and turns back toward the entrance, already moving. “You coming?”