The knot of anxiety that I’ve been holding in my chest loosens just slightly. “Okay, new round. Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
“Tell me about your family.”
He looks away from me, hesitating for a moment like he always does before he answers a question like this.
“What do you want to know?”
“Whatever you want to tell me. Both people answer, remember? I’ll go first.” I tuck my legs under me. “My dad obviously you know. My mom was eighteen when she got pregnant with me. My dad was this wild young NHL guy who was—I mean, the stories my mom tells sometimes.” I shake my head. “She’ll be on her second glass of wine and start with ‘your father, before you were born.’ What follows is always something that makes me think, damn, I would have never put up with that. He was a huge playboy, Zach. Legendary. Somehow my mom looked at this disaster of a person and said yeah, I’m keeping him and the baby. Nineteen years later, they’re still together. She knows about us, by the way. I’m actually pretty sure of it. I don’t think she minds. I think she’s just happy I’m happy. Or maybe she recognizes my dad in me, and you’re the calming one. It’s weird. I try not to think about it. Okay, your turn.”
He nods slowly, like everything I’ve just said makes perfect sense.
“My dad left when I was eight,” he says. “About a month after that, my mom drove me to my grandparents’ house. Her parents. She brought my bag inside and told me I was going to stay with them for a while.” He trails off, like he’s stuck in the memory. “She didn’t come back.”
“Zach—”
“My grandparents never explained it. I was just there now.That was the situation. They were good people. They took care of me, but they were old and tired. They didn’t know what to do with an eight-year-old, and I didn’t know what to do with any of it. We all just sort of existed in the same house and didn’t talk about it.”
He pauses and I hold my breath, waiting for him to continue.
“I used to sit on their front porch and watch the neighbor kids play street hockey. One day they needed a goalie, and somebody’s older brother had pads that were three sizes too big. They put me in front of the net and told me to stop the ball.” The corner of his mouth moves. “I was terrible. But I kept showing up. They kept putting me in, and after a while, I started getting better. One of the moms in the neighborhood noticed me out there every day. She got me connected with a youth center that had a community hockey program for kids who couldn’t afford it. That’s where I learned to actually play. That’s where I started.”
“That’s how you became a goalie? Because some kids on a street needed someone to stand in the net?”
“Well, there’s a lot more to it after that. Some coaches noticed me and started talking to my grandparents about it. They agreed to put me into actual programs and lessons and stuff.” He looks at the ceiling.
I’m holding it together so hard I can barely breathe. He just handed me the missing piece of him—the thing that explains the quiet, the caution, the way he braces for impact—and I don’t have the right words. I don’t know if there are right words.
But I can show him. I can show him what he gets on the other side of all that.
“Okay,” I say. “New round. Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
“How many kids do you want with me?”
He sucks in a sharp breath, then chokes on nothing, his whole body jerking forward in a cough. I sit there watching with what I hope is an innocent expression. I know this is insane. We’ve beentogether for only a few months, and I just asked about children. I want to know if he thinks about it too, or if I’m alone in this particular brand of crazy.
“How many—” He’s still coughing. “You can’t just?—”
“Both people answer so I’ll go first. Three. Two boys and a girl. Or three boys. I’m flexible. But at least one of them plays hockey, and at least one of them is named after a hockey term.”
“A hockey term.”
“Celly Almardon. Tell me that doesn’t go hard.”
“That does not go hard. That sounds like a salad dressing.”
“Or Deke! Deke Almardon. Coolest kid on the playground.”
“He’d get beaten up on the playground.”
“Not if he can fight. Which he will, because his mom is going to teach him.” I poke him in the chest. “Stop deflecting. How many?”
He’s quiet, looking at where my finger is pressing into him. I can see him thinking about the story he just told me about the grandparents who didn’t know what to do with him.
“Two,” he says quietly. “Maybe three. If the first two are good. If we’re... good at it.”
