I’ve been rehearsing this for an hour. Sitting here in the dark turning words over like I’m trying to find the right combination for a lock, except every combination I try opens something I can’t close again.
“I watched your dad hold you on the ice tonight and I couldn’t breathe.” It comes out flatter than I mean it to. More like a fact than a feeling. “All I could think about was how we’ve been hiding this from him.” I scrub my hand over my face. “I don’t see how I can keep doing this.”
The line is quiet. I can hear her breathing.
“So what are you saying. Are you breaking up with me?”
“No. God, no. I’m saying we need to tell him.”
“Define tell him.”
“This week. Tomorrow. I don’t care. I just can’t keep being in the same locker room as him pretending I don’t know the sound you make when?—”
“Zach.” Her voice goes sharp. “We can’t tell him right now.”
“Why not.”
“Because we’re in the middle of the season. Because my dad just had the biggest night of his career and you want to follow it up with‘Hey Anderson, I’ve been sneaking around with your daughter?’That’s how you want to do this?”
She’s right. I know she’s right the way I know when a shot is going top corner before the stick even loads up. The timing is wrong. But the part of me that had to sit on that bench tonight and clap does the math on months of this. The numbers don’t work. The numbers haven’t worked in weeks.
“I don’t want to wait. I want it to be over. I want him to know.”
“And he will. After the season.”
“The end of which season. Regular season? And if we make a deep playoff run?”
“Then after that. I’m not telling my dad in the middle of a Cup chase.”
She says it like it’s a scheduling adjustment. Like we’re pushing a meeting back on the calendar. I think about how goalies spend their entire careers catching things that are flying at their face and I can’t catch a single break in this situation.
“So I’m supposed to look him in the eye while I’m?—”
“While you’re what?” Her voice doesn’t waver. “Loving his daughter? Taking care of her? Being the kind of guy he literally told Barrett you are? Zach, my dad respects you. When we tell him, that’s going to matter. But if we blow up the locker room in the middle of a season, he’s not going to hear any of that. All he’sgoing to hear is that his goalie was sneaking around behind his back.”
“The timing always matters with you.”
“Because I grew up in this. I know how a distraction tears a team apart and I know what it would do to my dad and I’m asking you to trust me.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just—” I close my eyes. “Tell me this isn’t going to blow up in our faces.”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Great.”
“But I can tell you that I’m not going anywhere. And when we tell him, we do it together. And my dad loves me enough to eventually get past it even if it takes him a while. And Barrett hasn’t said a word. So maybe he’s on our side.”
“Barrett’s on the side of not having to deal with it.”
“That counts.”
I laugh, surprised by it. She always does this—takes the thing that’s tearing me apart and finds the one angle where it’s almost funny. I don’t know if she does it on purpose or if that’s just how her brain is wired but it’s the only thing that works on me.
“End of the season,” I say. “And if I can’t make it that long?”
“Then I’ll help you. But you can make it. You’re a goalie. You’re built for sitting with things you can’t control.”
“That’s a terrible pep talk.”
