Page 75 of Two for Holding
Because the Sea Lions didn’t have a game tonight, his dad wasn’t working the late shift.He answered the phone after two rings.
“Kiddo!”he cried.“How’s California?”
Jax peered out of his hotel window.“Foggy.”
“Aw, I thought it was all sun all the time.”
“Nah, that’s a couple hundred miles south.”
“Hmm.Shame.See if I’ll come visit.”
Jax rolled his eyes.His parents had left Minnesota precisely once in their lives when he got drafted in Boston.It had been an enormous production, and they hadn’t visited him in Philadelphia.“Who knows how long they’ll keep me here anyway.Maybe I’ll get traded to the Minnesota Fury next.”The team hadn’t made the playoffs in seven years, but the location might be nice.Close to home.
“Hold on.Jax is being emo,” his dad called, and then a door clicked shut on his end of the line.“What’s going on, kid?”
Jax could picture it precisely: Dad on the tiny little deck at the back of the house, standing by the railing, squinting out at the patch of grass they called a garden.To his left, the rickety, fifteen-year-old IKEA table held the tin cup he’d bought Mom at the state fair when he was fifteen.The whole family pretended it wasn’t actually a secret ashtray for Dad’s secret smoking habit.He had a fantastic view of next-door’s fence, which they probably still hadn’t repainted.
“Did you ever fix the gutters?Must be coming down hard in St.Paul already.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
That was a no.Jax would have to call the gutter guy.
“Jax.”
“Sorry.Got a lot on my mind.”
Dad grunted.“You finally get an apartment?”
Jax looked around his hotel room at the clothes strewn over every surface, his bag from the last roadie only half unpacked.“Not so much.”
“But you love buying real estate.”
“Let it go, Dad.”
“Nope, I’ma be salty forever.”
“I could still sell the trailer and buy you a mansion,” Jax threatened.They both knew he wouldn’t follow through.He’d tried, as soon as he had his ELC, to buy his family a better life, but they resisted.All he’d managed was paying off the trailer they’d lived in since Jax turned four and helping his dad start his own diner instead of working shifts at someone else’s restaurant for the rest of his life.Dad, at forty-two, should not have as much gray hair as he did.
Someday, his dad might notice how every check he’d sent to repay Jax for the start-up costs of the restaurant bounced, or how the charges for internet and electricity in the family trailer never showed up on the family account.Jax wasn’t holding his breath.If his parents tracked their accounts properly, their power wouldn’t have been cut half as often when he was a kid.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Dad said easily.“So.No fancy digs in SF?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
Jax sighed.“I’m scared they won’t keep me.I only have two years left on my contract.If they’re smart, they’ll trade me early to turn a better profit.What’s the point in settling down if I have to leave again in a few months?”
“I remember some upstart eighteen-year-old with dumbass blond highlights telling me real estate is always a good investment when he bought my house.”
“Sounds like a smart kid.”
“Jax.”There it came—Dad’s cut-the-shit voice.He might have been a solid five to ten years younger than all the other dads in the PTA, but he had a voice meant for shouting orders in a busy kitchen, and he wasn’t afraid to turn it on his kids.
“I’m doing a thing,” Jax said.“With a shelter for homeless queer kids.A team charity thing.There’ll be media and everything.People might find out about me.”
“That sounds good.”
