I rolled my eyes at the little imp with a mouthed apology to the young dad as Theo handed the candy bar to the toddler in the cart. The man laughed.
On the way homethatsong came on. That one that gets fucking stuck on repeat in your head:Best Song Everby One Direction. I was about to change the station, because fuck that song, when a newly refreshed voice I’d been missing all week from the backseat stopped me.
“Turn it up, Merc!” Theo punched his fist in the air. I caught a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror.There’s my curly-headed ray of sunshine. Suddenly the rancorous voices of some boy band Simon Cowell had put together on American Idol—think that’s how it went—were sending him.
Double fuck it. Or unfuck the original fuck where I fucked this song to. I turned it up and made a fool of myself bopping along with him. He shouted the words, and I was sure my eardrums were going to be toast by the end, but he was living his best life, laughing till his stomach hurt.
Back at the house, he said, “Let’s play the sunshine song again, Merc.”
I didn’t have the “sunshine song” and had to download it from iTunes just to play it. We proceeded to listen to it eighty-six times. Each listen got cheesier and cheesier. I’d learned the words by playthrough number ten—not rocket science—and was forced to admit it’d grown on me.
Only a little. Only because Theo was back to being Theo and his dance moves, while he bounced on my sofa, were epic.
Ari showed up on round twenty-seven. “One Direction? Awesome.” He joined right in without missing a beat.
We choreographed our own dance. Ari pretended to play air drums. I did my best Harry Styles—yeah, I looked him up—and Theo never stopped giggling.
“I’m gonna be okay now,” he told me at the end of the night. “Gonna name my cat Harry Styles.”
Does a song really have that kind of power? It might.
* * *
Ijust left them at the airport an hour ago. Even the surly teens gave in and hugged me, crying angry tears. Theo clung to Ari and their ribcages shook in sync as they sobbed.
“You two can drive or fly to see me anytime,” I said more to remind Ari since he was more than old enough to know that. “And it’s not like I’m moving. I’ll be home again.”
“I kn-know.” He kissed Theo’s head.
Even Bea, our voice of reason, shed tears and that’s what almost made my eyes give up the fight. Because she and I knew something the others didn’t. The future had become uncertain. My life was about to change forever. I’d spent the last several years of my life on pause, but it was time to press play.
Coaching hockey isn’t just about money for me, it’s what fills my soul.
Chapter4
In The Ballpark of I’ve Never Stopped Loving You
JACK
Why oh why did I agree to this road trip? I could haveflownto Kelowna. Airfare is cheap and it’s an hour. One. Instead, I’m in a rented RV, which Casey is driving—also, while I’m asking questions, why did we let Casey drive?—and the five-hour trip is taking nine years because we’re making stops along the way. They wanted to take the Princeton route, which is extra-long, so that we could hit up Princeton, Osoyoos, Oliver, Penticton, Summerland, and Peachland.
That’s too many “lands”.
Part of the aim of the road trip—an ode to Coach—is nice. I crumbled when I heard the news. He was young, only fifty-five. One of my dads is fifty-five. I wasn’t as close to him as Stacey was. He’s taken it extra hard, which is why I agreed to this at all.
It’ll be four days of debauchery and when we get to Kelowna, we throw a puck signed by all of us into the Okanagan Lake. I say we could have done that after a night of drinking once we arrived there by plane, but what do I know?
Anyway, we’re in a musty-smelling RV that I’m pretty sure is from two thousand and three and I’ve got a cold Corona with a lime floating inside the bottle, in my hand. We just left Osoyoos. We’re surrounded by mountains, even out this far. Each town is similar: quaint and quiet. There’s a lot of green, a view of whichever body of water you’re nearest to, and a rock face you can almost touch if you stick your hand out of the window. There’s a winery everywhere you look. I promised my parents a bottle from every winery we stopped at.
It was the selling point of this trip for the captain since Dad’s obsessed with wine. The captain, my other dad, wasn’t keen on it for a few reasons and yeah, I’m an adult—technically—but they still fund my life because you don’t make enough playing for an American Hockey League team or any league that isn’t the NHL to live comfortably in Vancouver. More specifically, I don’t. You’re paid according to how good you are and with the way I played last season, no one’s giving me a raise any time soon. The twenty-five percent pay cut didn’t help.
But yeah, living at home enables me to save enough for while I’m away so I can focus on hockey as long as I budget. I needed some extra dough for this trip though.
It’s also my last hockey season.
My parents sat me down before I left and had “the talk” with me. Not the sex one. The “you need to get your life together” one. It was the same one they had with each of my brothers when they needed to get serious about their lives.
“You know we love you, Jack-Jack,” Dad said. He’s the nurturing one. The very definition of that stereotype.
