Robbie gave a little laugh. “No? But also yes?” His expression read as sheepish—or was it just kind of rueful? Finn wished the parking lot lamps offered a little more light. He suspected Robbie was blushing. “I meant having something todo without having to think about it. Like, I was just sitting at home on a Friday night like a sad sack, thinking about what I was going to do with the rest of my life, and all of a sudden, I’m not doing that anymore because I have to leave the house in five minutes.”
Now,thatFinn understood. “There really needs to be a support group for athletes who retire early.”
Robbie’s eyes went wide. “Oh shit—was I just super insensitive? I did not mean to reopen the trauma of career-ending injuries past. Sometimes my mouth just kind of—”
“Relax,” Finn told him, fighting a laugh. “You think you’re the first person I’ve met with foot-in-mouth disease?”
“Okay.” Robbie eased back against the seat as much as he could. “But sometimes I get it so far in there I feel like I should offer it a breath mint.”
“Or maybe it should buy you dinner first?” Finn tapped his fingers on the wheel, debating. As a rule, he didn’t talk about the whole early retirement, am-I-wasting-my-life feelings he sometimes wrestled with… but if anyone would understand…. “I meant it about the support group, though. When I first stopped competing, it was rough. Luckily Imogen was pretty little and needed a lot of looking after, so that helped distract me.”
“Kids are good at that,” Robbie agreed.
“Nothing to put your life into perspective like a four-year-old throwing a fit because we’re out of her favourite brand of strawberry jam.” He chewed over his phrasing a little more. His phone had made not so much as a chirp. The notification light didn’t blink. No doubt Imogen would be closing the place down. “I’m glad I ended up with the show, don’t get me wrong. I made a lot of good friends and it helped me keep hold of something I was afraid I’d lose forever. But I’m still not sure this is what I want to be when I grow up, you know?”
Robbie shifted in his seat to try to look at him, but he hit his head on the doorframe. “Ow—Jesus Christ, they did not make this car with me in mind.”
Snorting, Finn pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Simple solution to a simple problem,” he offered, popping the car door.
They ended up leaning against the passenger side under the glow of the overly enthusiastic parking lot light. “As I was saying before your car viciously attacked me”—Robbie nudged his elbow into Finn’s side—“that’s the problem, isn’t it? When you’re a kid you’re like, ‘Okay, cool, I’ll be a pro athlete when I grow up.’ And then you do it, but you grow up some more and it turns out you still have half your life ahead of you and suddenly you’re at loose ends and you need a backup plan.”
“Youcould probably just retire,” Finn pointed out. Pro hockey paid a lot better than pro ice dancing, and Robbie had put in a lot more years.
“I could probably just retire.” Robbie tilted his head back and looked up into the night. “Except I would die of boredom in two weeks. Thank God Sawyer signed me up for this shit, honestly.”
Finn laughed. “Yeah, okay, I know what you mean. Some of us weren’t made to sit still.”
“Can’t even do it in an actual parking lot.”
They snickered.
Silence reigned for a moment, or whatever passed for silence at 9:56 p.m. on a Friday in the Greater Toronto Area. Then Robbie asked, “So what would you do? If you could do anything, I mean. Well, anything other than compete.”
“Mostly I avoid thinking about it,” Finn said dryly. “I mean, first of all, Holly will kill me if I leave her alone with this.” But he owed it to himself to take the question seriously, didn’t he? It wasn’t like he was going to do anything about it in the nearfuture. Thinking about it never hurt anything. “I don’t know. I teach precision skating and ice dancing the rest of the year, and I like that, though I prefer the older kids. Don’t tell anyone.”
Robbie mimed zipping his lips.
“Sometimes I think I’d like to get back into competing from another angle.” He didn’t think he’d ever said that out loud. “Like—organizing events, maybe? Announcing?”
“Not coaching?”
Finn exhaled. “I mean—yeah, obviously, but I wasn’t in the pro game that long. Nobody’s gonna think ‘Oh, yeah, that guy who crashed out in his twenties—that’s the one I want coaching me.’ And there are a bunch of certifications you need to qualify to coach at every level.” Certifications you only had so long to complete. Finn was pretty sure the window to submit his video lessons to finish his regional coaching qualification had closed, and he needed that before he could apply for anything else. But with the show, he’d never made it a priority.
“This is supposed to be pie-in-the-sky dreaming,” Robbie reminded him. “Not ‘give me a reasonable career path.’”
“Ugh.” Finn smiled despite himself. “Fine. Coaching, then, at the elite level. What about you?”
“Stand-up comedian.”
Of course he had that on the tip of his tongue. “Well, you’ve got half of it down.”
“Hey!” But he was laughing. “I don’t know either. I guess that’s the whole point of a midlife crisis, right? You’re already slowing down, so you might as well enjoy it. Look around, figure out who you are, who you’re going to be.”
Huh. “You make it sound romantic.” Who would’ve thought? He liked that, though, looking at aging as a fun adventure, rather than a journey away from the adventures you’ve already had.
“Maybe it is.” Robbie grinned and nudged him again. “I turn forty in the fall. It could be very romantic. I’ll let you know.”
“Definitely keep me posted. Maybe I’ll move my midlife crisis up a few years. We can match.”
