He had retired before my rookie season, so it was a pleasure to get this chance. His former Rebels teammates, Remy DuPre and Bren St. James, joined us. Not just teammates, but also brothers-in-law as they had each married a Chase sister, co-owners of the team.
For the next thirty minutes, I existed on instinct. I was a man with no problems except for how to dispossess Vadim, how to find Remy with my pass, how to thread the gap between Bren’s legs and plug the basket. We worked hard, ran the puck down, sent ice shavings flying, and for a while, I reveled in the glorious state of forgetting. Which seemed weird when that was the one thing I had fought against for the last year since I found out about my father’s diagnosis.
But as soon as we called time, the memories came back and with them, my impotence at being unable to resolve them. Parts of my father were leaking away. He could no longer appreciate what we did together, the memories we had created, the life well lived.
I would have to remember for both of us.
And then there was my other problem.
Checking my phone screen in the locker room, I saw I had a voice mail. While I listened, a small seed of hope sprouted in my chest. Could it be possible?
Just as I finished listening, Vadim held up his own phone screen to me. “You see this?”
I scanned the headline quickly, absorbing my second surprise of the morning. “No, but thank you for sharing.”
My friend rubbed his goatee. It made him look slightly villainous, which I had no doubt was the desired effect. “Are you coming to breakfast with us?”
“I think you know I have somewhere else to be.”
There was no answer when I knocked. Taking a chance, I walked through the gate to the backyard and found her sitting on the newly varnished deck, drinking her morning coffee.
She smiled at me. The rightness of it caught hard in my chest.
“I hoped to catch you,” I said.
“Well, you have.”
If only that were true. I placed my foot on the bottom step. “I saw the news.”
She let out a sigh of relief, but perhaps of a breath long held. Yesterday, Thad Covington had been apprehended in a beach town in Mexico. He would soon be extradited to the US to face charges.
“Hoping to get your money back?” she asked.
“It would be nice, but if not, it was worth every penny.” I gestured to the seat beside her. “May I?”
She nodded. I stepped up to the deck I had helped build and placed my shopping bag between us. She gave it a cursory squint while I admired her lovely thighs, revealed in all their glory by her sleep shorts. Bunny slippers, too. A memory of that first night we talked in her kitchen washed over me. She had knocked on the door while I screwed another girl, and I had fallen in love.
“How’s Sasha?”
“He is having a good morning. Right now, he is playing chess with Dimitry, his new nurse.”
“Oh, that sounds so good for him.”
“It is.” I was learning to play myself, hoping to create something new, just as Maya had suggested. My father’s recognition of me weaved in and out, but in the moments when he didn’t see his son, he seemed to acknowledge that I was a positive in his life. “Dimitry is a little scary, but he is as gentle as a lamb with my father when he gets agitated. And there would be space for him at the home I’m looking at for Sasha’s full-time care.”
Her expression was warm and sympathetic and went straight to my bones. “You’re a good son, Alexei.”
“I am trying.” Not only to be a good son, but to be a better man.
She gestured to the shopping bag. “The Wine Goddess?”
“I hear you have signed some new clients. I thought you might like to celebrate.”
“New clients? Or my scummy ex-boyfriend is in custody, and you brought …” She hooked her finger in the bag’s opening. “Champagne? At eight in the morning?”
“Shush now, I haven’t a petty bone in my body. It is to toast your reinvigorated client list.”
“Getting to be a habit. Hold that thought.” She headed back into the house.
