“You okay?” Monroe asks, and when I turn on him he’s so close he’s surprised, but he doesn’t move out of my space. The space he already spends too much time in. Popping up around town. Sitting next to me at games. The amount of real estate in my mind he occupies.
“I’m not falling apart because Jamie didn’t have the best game today, if that’s what you are asking.” My tone is tight and clipped, but not because Jamie had a bad game.
No, at some point Monroe got under my skin and in my head. I need distance from his distracting, smirky mouth, especially with all this worry about where Jamie’s head is at running through me.
I don’t know how to be a hockey dad. Not a good one. And that’s what Jamie needs.
The corded muscle in Monroe’s arms shows as he crosses them over his Iceguard T-shirt that stretches across his broad chest. “That wasn’t what I was asking.”
I close my eyes for a moment. I’m not sure how to feel right now. There’s just a lot of noise in my head. Too much to sort.
Monroe’s hand wraps around my elbow.
“He’s okay, Thatch. That’s what I’m saying. He’s got the fortitude to have a bad game and move past it.”
I nod, because somehow his tone and his touch are making my throat close up. I couldn’t care less about a hockey game, but Jamie being okay is my life’s work.
“I can’t fix it.” The words are pulled from me, but somehow I say them to Monroe.
“Okay,” Monroe says. “So you can’t fix it. He will be okay, though. I promise.”
I nod, unable to add any words to that.
Monroe gives me a long look and then heads out to his usual post-game meetup with the coaches and Alex.
I wait for Jamie by my vehicle, safely away from everyone in the parking lot. He’s the last one out, and he says nothing, a thousand-yard stare on his face as he makes his way to my truck.
“Listen, kiddo,” I tell him, lowering the tailgate for his gear. “Everyone has an off game. You—”
I’m interrupted by Jamie throwing his gear into the truck with a rare showing of violence, then slamming the tailgate shut, the sound loud in the nearly deserted parking lot. I step back, because of all the emotions I usually get from my twelve-year-old, anger isn’t one of them.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? A string of bad games. Maybe I’ll just give up hockey altogether, which we both know you would love. Maybe then I can hate hockey as much as you!”
I’m stunned silent by the words, the tone, the tears in his eyes, and the depths of the anger evident on his face.
“Jamie—” I step toward him.
“Just leave me alone!” He turns away, walking away from the truck as though he’s going to walk all the way home.
I watch him cover the parking lot in the long strides of someone who’s no longer a kid. Those weren’t kid emotions either.
Christ, I’ve never felt so helpless, as every scenario of what I could do right now races through my brain.
No one can prepare you for what it is to love your kids. Their hurt is your hurt, their loss your loss. Which is funny, because I’ve never felt like Jamie’s wins were mine. Never felt they were shared in any way. Those wins are his. Just his.
But I have felt every bad day at school, every fight with a friend, every neighborhood drama. Every lost hockey game.
I’ve done what I can to take away part of that hurt. To do something, reach for something—anything— that’s at the disposal of a father to make it better.
But this . . . I have no tool in the toolbox to fix this.
Jamie and I are only on shaky ground where hockey is concerned. And this is firmly in that territory.
I have no idea what to do.
I feel Monroe, sense him beside me before I can see him.
“He’s walking home?” he asks, and I shrug as we both watch Jamie’s back as he continues walking away in long, angry strides.
