Chapter 29
Theo
April…
I rub my palms against my jeans. It’s a nervous tic, but I’m not nervous.
Not the way I used to be when I started coming here.
After a couple of months of seeing a psychologist, I feel calm coming here.
Even though sometimes I leave the session feeling like my guts are still on the couch.
I don’t think she’ll find something unfixable about me and tell my family and my coach to give up on me because I’m a lost cause.
I did think that at first. And I also felt like a bit of a failure.
My parents are very well-rounded, grounded people.
My whole family is. But not a lot of them talk about mental health, and other than a sports psychologist, no one has gotten help—that I know of.
Maybe one or two have, but if they have, they don’t talk about it.
My mom, especially, has been through some shit.
Lots of shit, but I only know from secondhand stories my uncles murmur about very occasionally.
The thing is, when your family is perfect, even the extended one, any whispers of imperfect times pique your interest, so I held onto those stories. Filed them away.
“What does your week look like?” my therapist asks me as the session is about to end.
“Last game of the regular season tomorrow night,” I say. “And tonight there’s a birthday gathering for my teammate Callan and his sister.”
“The woman you’re…”
“In love with? Yeah. Lola.” It’s probably fucking weird that I’ve told my therapist I love Lola but I haven’t told Lola.
I’ve seen her enough to tell her. Since that event at the Art Collective where we went for hot chocolate and she said she would wait for me, we’ve seen each other a lot—platonically.
Sometimes we meet for dinner after she finishes at the gallery.
Sometimes I go out with her, Callan, Landon, and Grady after a game.
Once she invited me over to her and Callan’s place to use their hot tub because my quads were killing me from a particularly grueling week on the ice.
That was probably the hardest time I’ve had staying platonic because Lola was in a bikini and my dick was half hard the whole damn time. But I managed it.
And sure I miss sex, and touching her, and being touched, but the fact is I’m getting so much out of spending time with her that it’s worth the torture.
She makes me laugh. She challenges me to think harder or differently about things.
She’s teaching me about art, and I’m teaching her to cook.
We spent last Sunday, a day with no games or practice, making vegetarian chili, and last night I took one of the art classes at the collective.
My acrylic painting didn’t turn out half bad, actually.
I mean, it was nothing compared to the forest landscape Lola did ,but I wasn’t embarrassed.
And I kept sneaking glances at her at the easel beside mine, just letting myself drown in how beautiful she looked and how her whole body relaxed as she painted, even though her eyes were literally glowing with focus and concentration.
I wonder if that’s how I look playing hockey.
“You going to let her in on your feelings sometime soon?” she asks, bringing me back to the present.
“Maybe. I was hoping to hit the one-year mark,” I say.
“Of sobriety? You hit that back in February, Theo.” She’s not wrong. I mean, technically, my last drink was the night I fell off the roof.
“I was thinking more of, like, one year since I got my second chance,” I explain, and the words feel hollow as I say them.
Like I’m trying to shove some meaning into them that doesn’t exist. But yet, I keep talking, like over-explaining gives them the weight I’m searching for.
“Here in Portland. With hockey. With my life.”
“She isn’t hockey, Theo,” she reminds me softly in that tone she has that makes me feel less like a dumbass even though she’s calling out my dumbassery.
“She also isn’t something that you have to earn.
You’ve already earned her respect and her affection, or else she wouldn’t have told you she would wait. And she wouldn’t be waiting.”
I nod. “I’m scared I will fuck it up again if we try again. And there’s probably no more chances left.”
“You might fuck it up, sure. She might fuck it up. But then again, you might not.” She smiles. “You haven’t fucked up hockey. You guys are second in the division.”
“Yeah.” Even if we lose tomorrow night, the last game of the season, we won’t drop a spot in the standings. We’re guaranteed a playoff run, and it feels both daunting and exciting.
The timer she sets at the beginning of every session goes off, and she clasps her hands and stands up from her chair across from mine. “So, next week?”
I nod. “Yeah, I’ll have to call and book something once the playoff schedule is released.”
“Okay. And—”
“I’ll think about what you said.” I smile and leave the office.
My mom calls as I’m walking back to my apartment.
It’s a glorious spring day, with the trees and bushes all blooming and the sun shining, so I walked the thirty minutes to my therapist’s office.
I answer, and her voice instantly makes me smile.
“Just confirming you can get enough tickets for the game tomorrow night.”
“I’ve got four in your name at will call, Conner has four reserved for you, and Grady has another four,” I reply, because half the Garrison family wants to attend our last game of the season.
“If you need more, Landon says you can have his tickets too because his parents aren’t in town until playoffs. ”
“No, that should be enough.” There’s a pause while she does the mental math. “What are your plans for today?”
“Well, I just finished therapy, and now I’m going to go home and eat and figure out a gift to get Lola.”
“Not Callan?”
“I got Callan one of those track experiences where you get to race sports cars,” I explain. “Grady, Landon, and I went in on it together.”
“And you can’t do a group gift for Lola?” he asks as I make my way down a cobblestone street filled with gift shops. All it does is overwhelm me.
“I could but… she’s special, and I want her to know it,” I say and wait for the enviable reaction.
“I knew it! Oh my God, you like her!” Mom squeals so loudly I have to move the phone away from my ear. “I could tell there was a vibe when I saw you together months ago! She’s a lovely girl, Theo. I’ve chatted with her a few times now, and she’s smart and sassy.”
“I know. We… we had a bit of a thing at the beginning of the season, and I kind of messed it up. I needed to sort through more of this sobriety thing,” I explain as I cross Main Street to walk on the water side.
The sun is warm and inviting on my face.
“She’s still interested, though. I think. And I feel like I’m in a better place.”
“Okay, so you want to do more than just sleep with her?”
“What? Mom—”
“Please, I know what bed buddies are. You’re saying you guys tried the sex only thing and it turned into feelings. Good!” she says. “Some of the best relationships in this family started that way. Your parents started that way.”
“Mom! Gross!” I bark out and make a face so repulsive that a woman walking the other way does a double-take.
I stop and sit on a bench at the edge of a park that skirts the docks. My mother is chuckling on the other end of the line. “Look, I’ve been thinking a lot about you. How proud I am but also how you got to the place you were at in Vegas. I feel responsible.”
“Mom, you and Dad aren’t responsible for my choices. Please don’t think that.”
She sighs. “Not directly, but… we never talk about the bad stuff. I grew up with a cold, horrible grandmother who left me, Callie, and Jessie to raise ourselves after my mom died of cancer and my dad took off to drink himself to death. Your dad and I had a rocky start. At one point, I thought he cheated on me. We struggled a little with fertility and lost two babies, one between you and Harlow and one after you.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I know because we try so hard to protect you from the bad stuff that we act like it never happened.” She pauses.
“I just want you to know that you can tell us anything. No matter how bad you think it is. Have the big feelings, Theo. Share them. Bad things happen to all of us. But feelings exist, and you’re allowed to have them, no shame. ”
I exhale and stare up at the near cloudless sky.
“What if I tell Lola I love her, and we get together for real and… I’m a disappointment?
What if she gets tired of me not being able to have a good time, not being able to party?
She’s only twenty-five, and partying is what people her age should do.
What if she gets sick of me, or I don’t live up to whatever she has in her head as a good boyfriend or—”
“Theo, you’re enough. Faults, quirks, and all,” Mom says firmly. “And if you aren’t for her, you will be for someone else. That’s how life works… But I really have a good feeling about her.”
I let out a huff of laughter. “So do I.”
“I love you, Theo. So much.”
“You’re the best mom in the world,” I tell her. “But if you ever talk about hooking up with Dad again, I will disown you.”
She laughs. “We were just as hot and heavy as you probably are with Lola.”
“Goodbye! Love you. Goodbye!” I hang up on my mom, but I’m grinning.
Life is good. Now, what the hell am I going to get Lola for her birthday that shows her I love her, want her, need her, and…
A block from my apartment, I notice a shop I’ve walked by a thousand times, and it hits me. I send her a text, since I was finally smart enough to get her number.
THEO
I need you to draw me something.
LOLA
Okay. What?
THEO
Something simple and quick. Whatever makes you think about me. About us. Don’t overthink it.
LOLA
How much time do I have?
THEO
24 hours.
LOLA
This is weird but okay. Challenge accepted!
I smile, and my stomach flutters nervously as I step inside.