Page 35 of Bountiful
“I’ll bet it’s weird saying, ‘mywife.’”
The rookie laughed. “I like it. ‘My girlfriend’ sounds like we’re sixteen,youknow?”
“Yeah,” I said, although I didn’t really know. I’d never called anyone my girlfriend. Not even when Iwassixteen. Leo was what—twenty-four years old? Wearing a ring and happy about it. If Georgia got pregnant, he’d probably dance a jig. “You two going tohavekids?”
“Sure. A soon as I can talk Georgiaintoit.”
“She doesn’twantkids?”
“Oh, she totally does. But she feels like it’s too soon. She wants another year or two in her seat as the co-head of PR. And that’s cool. We have plentyoftime.”
“True.” My teammate was awfully enthusiastic about procreating. Then again, Leo had a nice family. His parents showed up at home games, smiling in the hallway outside the lockers to greet him after games. Family made more sense to a guy like Leo than it ever wouldtome.
“What are you thinking so hard about over there?” heasked.
“How I promised myself I’d never be someone’s deadbeat dad. And now I’ve managed to be one without evenknowingit.”
“You can fix that, though.” Leo was quiet a moment. “You think you alreadyfailed?”
“Is there any other way of looking at it?” My plan had always been to keep things casual with women. I was a one-and-done kind of guy because I knew long-term entanglements were never going to work out for me. Accidentally creating a child wasn’t something I thought couldhappen.
The universe should really knowbetter.
“This baby is a year old, right?” Leo asked. “She probably can’t evensaydaddy. Declaring yourself a failure now would be like having a rough couple of games during the preseason and giving up on making theplayoffs.”
I snorted. “But hockey is a game I know how to play, kid. The Beringers don’t do parenthood.” A terrific understatement. My mother overdosed on cocaine when I was five. Then my father beat the crap out of me for nine more years, until people started to notice. He lost custody of Bess and me. We lived with our indifferent but nonviolent grandparents until Bess graduated from highschool.
Bess turned out okay, although she didn’t have a husband or a family. Bess thought men were great as long as they were paying her fifteen percent of their major-league paychecks. She was married toherjob.
Having a family? Like me, she didn’t seem to see thepoint.
A memory of Zara chose that moment to smack me right over the head. It had been one of the first times we were together—that night the crazy asshole threw a beer glass at Zara, and I almost had to break him in half. But Zara had handled him. And then we drank a lot of tequila together. That night we hadn’t even made it up to her room. I’d banged her on a bar stool until she’d screamedmyname.
Jesus. I remembered it like it wasyesterday.
After, though, I’d been holding her, locked into an embrace right there in the bar, breathing hard. She’d suddenly asked, “You’re not married, right? You don’t have a family you’re fuckingaroundon?”
And I’d said, “Fuck no. And Ineverwill.”
Now I lay back in the grass and put my hands over my face. “I used to be such a cocky bastard, Leo. I think Istillam.”
“One day at a time, big guy,” Leo said, crossing his legs in the hammock. “Today isn’t the day to make a lot of important decisions. Give yourself a minute, okay? And let your teammates get you drunktonight.”
“Sounds likeaplan.”
“It’s what we do,” Leo said, looking up into the canopy of thetrees.
“That’s right,” I agreed. My team was the only kind of family I understood. And when one of us had trouble, the rest of us were good at circling the wagons around him. I guessed it was my turn to be introuble.
“Love you, man,” Leo said. That’s the kind of guy he was—the kind who could say thingslikethat.
“You’re a good kid,” I said in return. Because I wasn’t the kind of guy who did endearments. Never had been, and neverwouldbe.
Afew hourslater we were sitting like ducks in a row on barstools at the new bar, The Gin Mill. Me, Leo, and our two new arrivals—O’Doul, our team captain, and Castro, another chipperyoungster.
“To Beri!” my team’s captain said, lifting his shot glass. “We’ve got yourback,man.”
“Thanks, O’Doul. I really appreciate that.” My teammates had decided we needed to go to a bar to properly christen this new complication. So herewewere.
