Page 26 of Looks Real Good Now
She chose the moment I got out of bed to roll over onto my side. When she was met with an empty mattress, she grabbed my pillow and hugged it to her, sighing as she settled again.
I left the room before I could try to take the pillow’s place. Once I got downstairs, I picked my keys off the hook by the front door, slipped on a pair of shoes and jogged to my parents’ house. As I unlocked the front door, I waited for the alarm tostart sounding but nothing came, which meant at least one of my parents was awake.
“Liam?” Mom called out as I closed the door behind me. I found her in the kitchen with the newspaper crossword spread out in front of her and a coffee in hand.
“Hey Mom,” I said as I poured myself a coffee.
“What brings you over here?” she asked as she put her pen down.
“Do I need a reason to come and see my parents?”
“No, of course not,” she said before taking a long sip of her coffee.
“Why do I feel like there is a but coming?”
“Butthere is a beautiful woman in your bed, and you’ve left her there,” she said with a smile on her face.
“Technically, it’s her bed and she’s still asleep. Probably will be for a while.”
“You leave her in bed alone a lot then?”
“We haven’t exactly got to the sleepover stage,” I answered. It wasn’t a lie. “Anyway, I am partly here for a reason independent of seeing you. I need skates.”
“What for?”
“Don’t get your hopes up, I’m just taking Len to the public ice rink, and I know I have skates here, so I don’t have to hire a pair.”
“I wasn’t getting my hopes up, I respect your decision to go out on a high,” she said, and I knew she meant it.
“Can you get Dad on board with my decision while you’re at it?”
“I’ve been trying, honey, but you know what he’s like.”
“Most parents would be happy that their kid made it to a professional league at all, not mad at them for retiring before it damaged them beyond repair,” I retorted.
“He is proud of you,” she insisted.
“I know, Mom, but it would be great if every conversation we had now didn’t revolve around him telling me that I should still be out there on the ice.”
“He’ll get there. He’s just having a hard time adjusting. He got used to you being at the top and now you’re not there anymore.”
I just about managed to stop myself from rolling my eyes.
“I had to retire at some point. Would he rather I kept declining until I was forced off the ice? Did he want to see me get slammed into the boards and get an injury I couldn’t come back from? Would that have made his adjustment easier? It’s been eight months since I retired and he’s still not there yet. I gave eighteen years to the sport, Mom, and I didn’t want to do itanymore. It’s as simple as that.” It wasn’t her I was frustrated with, so I tried not to sound annoyed. I didn’t feel like I was succeeding.
“How does Alana feel about it?” she asked quietly.
That caught me off guard.
“Feel about what?”
“The retirement,” she clarified.
“Oh. Don’t think she cares,” I said. The few times it had come up she seemed pretty indifferent to the whole thing.
“You don’t talk about it?”
“Not really. You know her. She’s never cared about hockey. I mean she cared if I liked it and wanted to do it, so me not playing doesn’t really come up often.” It had always been one of my favourite things about Lenny, the way she viewed my life off the ice as just as, if not more, important than my life on the ice.
