“It is a huge deal. But a good one,” I assured him. “The dream you never wanted to dream in case it couldn’t come true, but now it can.”
“Maybe.”
“Which is why you were never going to say no.”
“I didn’t want to decide for us. For you.”
“Baby.” I kissed his cheek. “I’m a grown-ass grown-up. I can decide for myself.”
“But you told him we go together.”
“Like rama-lama-ding-dong?” Robbie asked.
“Bye Robbie!” Perry called.
“Bye! Call me tomorrow so we can talk deets.”
“Sure.” Perry hung up and turned to me. “I’m being serious. You have to decide for you what you want.”
“I just told you.”
“You want to stick it to a bunch of people you knew in elementary school?”
“I want to pursue this thing I found out I’m really good at. Like literally Olympic level good, maybe. And I get to do it with arguably my favourite person ever. So kind of a no-brainer.”
“When you put it like that.”
“You’re overthinking it,” I said.
“As I do.”
“Which is why I’m here. To keep you out of your head.”
“I’ll need to be so in my head for this, if we do it. What if I can’t? What if all the people, the press, the pressure?—”
“You handled that guy outside the rink perfectly today. Complete honesty, confidence, and crazy cold fuck-off vibes without being mean about it. I was impressed.”
“You’re biased.”
“Obviously. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t do that. Plus you played a tight game. Nothing got to you.”
Perry slumped against the couch and glared at his socks. “What if that was only because you were there?”
“It wasn’t. I didn’t do anything.”
“Held my hand?”
“Not today. At least not like that. Today, you played your game without me. Well. I mean, not like yesterday. Today, you were fire all on your own. That’s why Alan wants us both. For his team. The other, we’re just speculating, but it doesn’t matter as much as this does.”
“It’s so much pressure on you to try and hold me together if I freak out and I know you came through yesterday but you can’t always do that. That isn’t how we really work.”
“I don’t think it will come to that, and anyway, if it doesn’t work out it doesn’t work out but no one ever regrets doing something like this, right? You take your shot and you miss, at least you took the shot.”
He nodded.
“Don’t take it and you’ll always wonder what if.”
Again, he nodded. “You know what it feels like?”
