Page 25 of The Slapshot and the Single Mom
“You sound like a good mom.”
She blinks rapidly, looking away, and I don’t miss the catch in her voice when she says, “Thank you.”
Part of me wants to push at that because why would that make her cry? It’s more statement of fact than compliment, even. But the obvious answer is that someone—and I’m pretty sure I onlyneed one guess as to who—made her feel like sheisn’ta good mom. Which is so shitty. Especially when she’s given up pretty much her whole self in service of her ex and then transferred all of that energy into being the best mom she can be. It’s ridiculous that she would even give credence to the suggestion she might be a bad mom when there’s so much evidence to disprove that.
But I know it’s easy to get in your head, to wonder if someone else is maybe right about everything. Hell, even the fallout from this interview has me questioning how good of a player I really am, how valuable I am to my team and to my sponsors. Even though Iknow damn wellI’m not responsible for our loss in the playoffs, and I know that my team and the coaches know that too, I can’t help wondering if I’m maybe not as big of an asset as I think I am even so.
It’s a shit way to feel, and I hate that Maggie is experiencing it about something so important.
Our food comes, giving us both something else to focus on besides the moment of vulnerability we both stepped in on accident.
“Oh my god, I’m starving,” Maggie says, just above a whisper. Then she takes a big bite of her burger, groaning in pleasure.
My blood rushes south at the sound, and I shift in my chair, hoping I can avoid getting a raging boner—or at least hoping it subsides before it’s time to go. Instead, I focus on my own burger, taking a bite and seeing if it’s as orgasmic as Maggie seems to think.
It’s fine. Not terrible, but nothing spectacular. She must be hungrier than I thought.
“We could’ve eaten earlier if you were that hungry,” I state, meeting and holding her eyes.
She shrugs, holds her hand in front of her mouth as she finishes chewing, and shakes her head. “No, this is perfect. It was one of those things where I didn’t really realize how hungry I was until I was absolutely ravenous. And by then, we were on the way here.” Her eyes twinkle. “Unless you have a time machine in your trunk, we couldn’t have done anything different.”
Laughing, I shake my head. “No, sorry. No time machine.” I’m about to say that if I had one, I’d use it to go back in time and not do the interview with her boss, but then I realize that if I hadn’t done that, I never would’ve met Maggie.
She never would’ve showed up to The Salty Salmon that night because she only knew about it from meeting me there when she said she wanted to buy me a drink. We never would’ve gone to the paint and sip night, I wouldn’t have our paintings hanging up in my hallway, and I wouldn’t have the chance to take her out to go mini golfing or eat a burger or watch a baseball game.
“So you grew up a baseball fan?”
Mouth full again, she nods. “Yeah. My parents are big fans, and I grew up watching games with them. We went to quite a few professional games growing up, and they’re still season ticket holders to the minor league team in Tacoma. I feel like it would be hardernotto be a fan growing up like that.”
Chuckling, I nod. “For sure.”
“My dad had me out playing catch from the time I was pretty young. I honestly don’t remembernotknowing how to play catch. I played T-ball and softball through high school, but I wasn’t good enough to play in college. I majored in marketingand minored in broadcast communications, and …” She shrugs, leaving the rest left unsaid. I suspect a great deal of that blank she’s not filling in involves her ex-husband, and I imagine she doesn’t want to talk about him right now. Which works for me. Dude’s a deadbeat asshole as far as I can tell. I’m happy not to talk about him either.
“Does your son play baseball too?”
She tilts her head from side to side. “Not as much. He played last year for the first time, but it was not that great of an experience, really. He got sick at the beginning of the summer, missed the only practices they had, and since he hadn’t ever really played before, he didn’t do that well. We played catch some, and that helped, but he would get mad any time I tried to show him how to do anything, so …” She shrugs. “Anyway, he said he wanted to play again this year, so I signed him up. He has his first practice next week. This year’s coach seems a little more intense, saying something about two practices a week through the season.” She grimaces. “On the one hand, more practices will help him a lot. On the other hand, sometimes guys that are that gung-ho about kids baseball can be …” She trails off, seeming to shrink into her shoulders like she doesn’t want to say the word that immediately comes to mind.
“Raging assholes?” I offer
Straightening up, she laughs and nods. “Yeah. That.”
Thinking back over my own experience as a kid playing sports, I shrug. “That can be true, but some coaches just really want to help the kids learn as much as they can. Most of mine were like that when I was young, and that foundation helped me be the player I am today.”
She chuckles. “I’m under no illusion about my kid becoming a professional athlete. And anyway, he’d want to be a basketball player, not a baseball player.”
I grin. “You can always tell him that Michael Jordan did both.”
Laughing, she shakes her head. “That’s cute you think he listens to me about sports. According to him, his dad is a god, the bearer of all sports information, and I’m just Mom. It doesn’t matter that I worked on his dad’s show from the start, helping build it from the ground up, or that I still work in sports media. I’m just”—she shrugs—“Mom.”
“Oof. Ouch. That’s gotta sting.”
She puts a smile on it, but she nods. “A little, yeah.” A shrug. “It sorta comes with the territory, though.” I can tell there’s more that she could say but doesn’t. Part of me wants to press, but I don’t want to take us down a conversational path that ends with her sad.
“Well,” I say lightly, “maybe when he learns his mom’s hanging out with a professional hockey player, that’ll raise your standing.”
She laughs, a full throated laugh, and shakes her head. “First off, he’d have to find out about that, which isn’t in my plan at this point. And second, I’m not sure that would matter much to him. Now, if you were a basketball player …”
“So harsh. I’m wounded. Truly.” That gets another laugh, and I feel like I’ve successfully navigated us back into safer territory. Let’s just hope I can keep us there.
