After a quick introduction, Marshall dives right in. “Look, I know that this has gotta be difficult for you to be sitting across from me right now. I appreciate that you’ve taken the time to hang out with us, obviously you want to be with your support system.”
Guilt swirls in my stomach. Fresh off a win on my first game back in skates in weeks, fucking my girl in the parking lot has been my dominating thought all night. Pressing down the grief of losing my parents only a couple weeks ago isn’t easy.
“But, coming off of the fact you got injured in the game only a few short weeks ago, how are you reconciling with yourself that you need to be on the ice during this time?”
I feel for the guy sitting across the table from me, this can’t be an easy interview for him either.
Interviewing anyone after injury, or loss, never mind both together, is likely extremely difficult. Marshall’s a stand-up guy, his eyes are filled with sympathy, and I can tell from the awkward way he’s sitting, he’s trying to tiptoe around the giant elephant in the room.
I’d say banana, but we aren’t at his studio, where the giant stuffed banana is a talking point of damn near all the interview’s he’s done with my teammates. It’s like we can’t help ourselves, once a teenage boy, always a teenage boy.
“Do you need...? I mean... Do you want to have time away? I know you had time off because of the puck to the face.” He winces, his gaze flickering to my jaw where the still-red scars of my recent injury fade away a little more each day.
“But... I mean, come on... your parents...” His sentence trails off like he’s not sure how to ask what he’s trying to ask. How canyou be on the ice playing hockey only two weeks after having lost both of your parents in a car accident?
In every interview I’ve ever heard Marshall do, he’s been empathetic to his guest, so he’d never come right out and say ‘what the fuck are you doing, man?’ but the question is implied in what he’s said.
“I know. It’s definitely going to be hard for people to understand. You’re right, the past two months have been some of the worst, actually.” I scratch the back of my neck with my palm. “The absolute worst of my life. But I need to be back on the ice. It’s a mental health thing as well as a physical health thing.”
I shift my weight on the seat. “I was given the all clear by the team doctors, my personal doctors, and I feel good, you know? I feel stronger, healthier. It’s going to take a while to regain the weight I lost from my all-liquid diet, but I’m working on it.”
There’s a lengthy pause, Marshall hasn’t interrupted me, he’s giving me space to finish my answer, and I’m endlessly grateful he’s not pushing, because the sorrow simmering in my body is hard to handle right now knowing my parents will never get to see me play another game of hockey again.
Fuck.
I swallow hard. “The other part of it is, the ice is where I belong, it’s where I’m happiest.” I shrug. “It’s much better for me to be on the ice, than to be stewing over my loss in my parents’ empty house, you know?” I shake my head. “This is where I need to be, on the ice, surrounded by the fans, my teammates and brothers, and cheered on by my girl. It was my dad’s favorite place to spend time, and it’s mine, too. I know it’s where he’d want me to be.”
Marshall gives me a long moment of silence before asking a couple of questions that aren’t quite so hard-hitting. And by the time we’re onto his last question, the mood has substantially lightened in the media room, and in my chest. It’s not an easything to talk about by any means, my injury or my parents passing, but I’ve popped my cherry and made it through the first interview on the subject. Hopefully that’ll make it easier the next time, and easier still the time after that.
“Now that you’re through the other side of your injury, are you looking at getting reconstructive surgery to maybe enhance some things?”
He doesn’t let me answer, instead he goes classic, humorous Marshall Bryant, lifting the mood even more. “Alright, we gotta know, if you’re enhancing here, what’s this going to mean for your time with the ladies?”
CHAPTER 44
Penelope
When Tate told me to wait in the bar for him to join me, I admit, my stomach sank, and my girl parts may have started crying. Everything about that hockey game was top level foreplay. The heated glances through the plexi, behaving like a caveman when he saw my shirt, and all the fucking points he racked up on his first night back.
My guy needs to come and pop the cork on this well shaken bottle of champagne.
“Can I buy you a drink while you’re waiting for Myers?” Mikko touches my arm, leaning close to me to be heard over the spirited crowd in The Den tonight. A win always brings with it a certain kind of energy, but tonight, it’s like a live wire has charged the air and everyone’s drinking it in.
Dad has taken Oliver out for a burger. He’s in town for the whole weekend, and we plan to spend some time tomorrow kicking each other’s asses on a gaming system or two and shoveling shitty food into our faces like when we were younger.
Karlya couldn’t come down for the game tonight, but she’s driving in tomorrow morning. I can’t wait to introduce Tate to the competitiveness that is my family with a gaming controller in their hands. He has no idea what’s about to befall him.
I nod. “Thanks, I’ll take a cider please.”
His brows tent. “You sure?”
Another nod. “Old Mout is fine.”
He doesn’t look like he believes me, but he pushes his way through to the bar anyway. My girls are scattered in the wind, their guys all got out faster than Tate did so they are currently nestled up in the VIP, closed to everyone but the Raccoons and their peeps section of the bar, while I’m down here waiting for a drink, and my man.
“Can you believe he’s with her?”
Being a fat girl, I’m programmed to think that when someone’s talking derogatorily about someone within my earshot, that it’s about me.
