Page 13 of Love of the Game
At that, Jon kicked me gently under the table. “Stop that.”
“It’s true.”
“You know it’s not,” he said. “You’retwenty-two. Your whole career is ahead of you. Everyone has slumps, Drake. It’s how you deal with them that counts.”
I shook my head and poked at my salad. “I’m nearly twenty-three, and this doesn’t feel like a slump. It’s feels like… like… reality.” Back to the baseline I should’ve been at.
“What happened to you?” he asked, so very gently. “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want, but something took the wind from your sails.” He tapped his head. “Up here.”
I flicked another piece of lettuce. “Nothing happened to me. I just ran out of luck, I guess.” I ignored the memory of those messages from my sperm donor that I’d snapshotted. The ones I’d not told anyone about.
Jon grunted. “It’s not luck.” He resumed eating. For a while, that’s what we both did, and silence drifted between us, despite the general noise around the bar. The music, the chatter, the clack of pool balls from the back, those faded into this heaviness that seemed to blanket the booth.
Finally, Jon spoke. He didn’t look at me, but it certainly felt like his entire attention was on me. “How old were you when you started learning to play?”
The memory was visceral and almost painful, despite how much joy was in it. Or maybe because of that. “Five. I grew up outside of Philly and they had one of those programs where you could try hockey for free. Get some lessons and gear, you know?” I could still smell the rink and hear the echoes of shouts and the blades on ice. “Best day of my life.”
A flash of teeth at that. “I don’t remember whenI wasn’t on the ice. There are videos of my father and me on the practice rink when I was something like eighteen months old.” He chuckled. “Everyone thought I would be like him.” He gestured around at the bar. “Didn’t work out like that. I’m not my father. I can see the game like him, I know what’s supposed to happen, but I’m not as physically gifted, so I can’t actually do what I need to fast enough. Used to really bother me. Spent a number of years incredibly upset that I was always being bounced between the NAPH and the PHL because I felt like Ihadto live up to my father’s legacy.”
“What happened?” I had a hard time imagining this man being anything but upbeat. Granted, I hadn’t known him that long, but even on the bench when we’d been down two goals, he’d been chattering away at the team, smiling and happy.
Jon got that faraway look again. “I was up in the NAPH, playing for New Jersey, and was having a rough go at it. I missed a stellar pass that would’ve been the tying goal if I’d had better hands. Faster reactions. I was so angry with myself, so upset that I broke my stick when I came off the ice, and nearly took out the coach with the shrapnel. There were discussions about my anger issues.”
I really couldn’t imagine him that upset. Didn’t fit with the picture of the man before me. “They send you down again?”
“Of course. And traded me not too long after.” He chuckled. “I was a mess, to be honest. And it hurt, because I absolutely love hockey. I can’t imagine not playing.” There was such passion in his voice, and the way he leaned forward as he spoke. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do in my life, from the time I realized what hockey was until now.I’vealwayswanted to be a hockey player.” He took a breath. “And I almost lost that.”
I paused and watched him, and for the first time, I caught a glimpse of sadness in Jon. Then is smoothed over. “After the trade, as I was scrambling to pack my life up, my father showed up.”
“How’d he feel—I mean—did he want you to be a hockey player?”
Jon’s smile was beautiful. “Papa? God.” He shook his head. “Maybe you can meet him someday, because it’s hard to explain, but honestly, all he ever wanted for me and Sofia—my sister—was for us to be happy. And that’s what he told me. If hockey was making me miserable, I didn’t have to keep playing. He didn’t need me to be him. I could be anything I wanted—he just wanted happy, healthy kids.”
That stopped the breath in my lungs for a second. Because that’s all my mom ever wanted for me. And here I was—not happy. With my mind a mess. “But you kept playing.”
“Yeah. Like I said, I love this fucking game. I told him I didn’t want to embarrass him by playing in the PHL. And he told me that he would never be embarrassed by me. I could play rec league hockey and he would be proud. I could never pick up a hockey stick again, and he’d be proud of me, because I was his child. I was enough, no matter what.” Jon’s voice broke a little. He cleared his throat, took a sip of his water, then smiled. “So I decided to see if I could be good enough for the PHL and stay pro, and well—” Once more he gestured around him, and beamed. “It’s worked out.”
I stuffed some more food into my mouth, mostly so I didn’t have to speak while I figured out what even to say. Eventually, I took a drink. “So, I shouldstay?—”
Jon shook his head, then tapped the side of it. “I’ve got the IQ, just not the skills for the NAPH. You’ve got both. I’ve seen you play at that level and thrive. Give me a half hour, and I could probably pull up a dozen clips of you playing at an elite level. You’vegotit, Drake. You’re actually a dragon out there.”
“But your story…”
“Do you love to play?”
I froze. Did I…? No one had actually ever asked me that before. The answer crept over me at first, a faint tingling, then rumbled up, like a wave growing before it crashed onto the shore. “Yes.” I almost shouted the word. Then I fell back against the booth’s backrest. Because I hadn’t loved it tonight. Or even recently. “Shit.”
There was that glimpse of sadness. “I don’t know what happened between last year and this—and you don’t need to tell me—but you need to find that love again, Drake. That passion that makes you get out onto the ice.”
“I don’t know what happened, either.” Not really. I didn’t think. I was just…uselessout there. Like the message from that fucker had said. “I can’t score.”
He shrugged. “So?”
“Oh my God.” I put down my fork and clutched my head. “I don’t know if you’re helping or fucking me up even more.”
He tapped my leg again. “Hey.”
I looked up into Jon’s gentle, concerned face.
