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“Oh, uh. Cool. Yeah. Makes sense.”
Except it didn’t, not entirely. I’d had Cally pegged as the type of guy who didn’t date. Whose first love was hockey. Who maybe had never …
I shook my head.
Weeks of us being attached at the hip, and he’d never once mentioned a girl. So either I’d had him wrong, or there was a whole part of his life he’d kept from me.
I wasn’t sure which idea bugged me more.
Not that I had any right to be bugged either way. What Cally did in his free time was none of my business. Zero.
It was just that we’d spent so much time together that I’d started to think of us as a unit. My evenings were his and vice versa. Cally didn’t owe me a single one of them, though it didn’t stop me from wanting them just the same.
“Have fun,” I said, forcing myself to smile as the elevator arrived on my floor, the doors sliding open. I stepped out, holding them open to ask, “We still on for tomorrow?”
He nodded, meeting my eyes for what I realized was the first time in several long minutes. “Yeah. We can do that.”
“Seven o’clock?” I asked just to double-check. If he had a date, he might bring her back to his room. Which meant he probably wouldn’t want an early morning.
“Seven,” he confirmed.
I slapped the door. “Cool. See you then.”
I ate my sad, pre-made Caesar salad straight out of the bag while standing over the trash can. When I was finished, I cracked open a beer and texted my sister, then my mom to tell them the good news.
My phone rang less than thirty seconds later.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, flopping down onto the bed and staring up at the ceiling.
“Hi, baby,” she replied, her voice thick. “I’ve only got a minute; I’m on my break. You made it. You finally made it, Michael.”
“I made it, Mom.”
She made a wet-hitching sound on the other end of the line that she tried to cover with a fake cough.
“I’m so proud of you. You have no idea. Your grandma’s gonna cry when I tell her. You know how she gets about you.” She paused, another muffled sniff sounding in my ear. “All those years, all those frozen mornings out on that damn pond, and then the travel and grinding. I always knew. I want you to know I always knew you’d end up here.”
I felt my throat go tight, and I pressed the heel of my free hand against my eye to try and stop myself from crying. A tear leaked out anyway.
I’d never doubted my family’s love or support. Never once. We didn’t have money and we’d struggled—a lot—but I’d never gone one single day without knowing they supported the hell out of me. Whatever else I’d missed out on growing up, I’d never missed out on that.
“I know you did, Mom.”
“This is gonna change things for us,” she whispered, her voice awed as if she’d finally realized making the roster came with an NHL paycheck. A small one at my level, yeah, but more than I’d ever hoped to see.
“Hold on, baby,” she said suddenly.
She must have put her hand over the mouthpiece because everything went quiet. When she came back on the line a few seconds later, she said, “Shoot, I gotta go. They’re calling me back. I love you, and I’m so proud. Call me tomorrow if you can, okay? I want to hear everything.”
“Yeah. Love you too.”
I dropped my phone down to rest by my side, my mom’s words ringing in my head.
She wouldn’t have to worry about the cost of my grandma’s medicine anymore. Haley wouldn’t have to pay for groceries anymore when Mom came up short, even though she and her wife Kara lived paycheck-to-paycheck themselves. There’d be a car that started when it was supposed to. A new roof on the house. Hell, maybe even a new fucking house period.
My family would be able to relax for the first time in their lives because that little kid who’d once declared, “I’m going to play hockey for the rest of my life!” had finally turned that obsession into reality.
This was a good thing. It was a great thing.
