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Story: Call It Home
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SPRINGFIELD AND HARTFORD get eliminated from the playoffs almost at the same time.
They both make it to six games, both lose at home, both don’t live up to the expectations the fans had for them. The Cards may have made it to the second round if they hadn’t lost two d-men: first Russell, then Yang. Louie isn’t expecting either of them back, although that doesn’t change anything for him. He’ll have to wait and see who decides to leave, how many forwards the Cards sign once free agency rolls around, and if they trade for anyone.
After the game, after their season is essentially over, when they’ve done their exit interviews, Louie starts to pack. Their lease is up at the end of the summer and his roommates both want to move in with their girlfriends, so Louie will have to find a new place to live. He’ll worry about it in a few months.
The optimistic part of him doesn’t even want to start looking until he knows whether or not he’ll make the Cardinals’ roster in the fall.
His phone lights up with a text. Family group chat.
From: Dad
Louie, when are you coming home ?
Louie stares at it. Until his phone screen turns off again. He taps it. Stares at it some more.
The thought of going home makes his stomach roil. Technically, he could go home today. It’s not that late yet. He could be in Boston by dinnertime. He does not want to be in Boston by dinnertime.
One of his roommates comes upstairs to say goodbye. He’s getting on a flight to Calgary in a few hours. They’ll see each other in the fall, or at least that’s the expectation right now.
Louie is almost certain that the Cardinals will not want to get rid of him during the summer. He played well in Springfield, and he played well while he was in Hartford, at least toward the end of his time there. The question is: does he want to stay?
It’s not a contract year for him, but he could always ask them to trade him. Give him a chance somewhere else. He may finally make an NHL roster. Except he wants to make the NHL roster here. He worked hard and he wants someone to see it.
But what if there’s not enough to see? What if he wasn’t impressive enough? Six playoff games and his dad sent him clip after clip— you were too slow here, that play was a mess there. Louie wishes his dad had stuck to not watching AHL games at all.
Anyway, Louie shouldn’t expect to make the Cardinals’ roster in the fall. He knows better than to go into a new season with expectations. He did that exactly once. When he was twenty. He thought he was ready back then. Three years later, he’s smarter.
He unlocks his phone and goes to the group chat. I’ll be there in a few hours , he types.
Considers throwing up in his bathroom as a final farewell to this place.
He deletes the message instead.
Bastien is already home; the Bears didn’t even make the playoffs. Dad has been posting videos of them skating together for days. If Louie goes home tonight, he’ll be on the ice with them tomorrow .
His stomach throws another tantrum about it.
I don’t know yet, I have some things left to take care of here , is what he finally sends.
Louie piles his things into the car.
He doesn’t own a lot of stuff. Stuff is for people who are expecting to stay in the same place for a good, long time. Clothes. Hockey gear. A few milestone pucks. His leftover food. They ate most of what they had left in the fridge and the freezer after they did their exit interviews.
When he gets behind the wheel, he knows two things: he’s not staying here and he’s not going home.
He thinks about Liam Hellstrom and his kitchen table with the crayon marks and his wife’s meatballs and the guest room with the hockey pictures drawn by little Ida on the walls.
Obviously, Louie can’t show up at the Hellstroms’ house unannounced. So there’s absolutely no reason for him to get on the interstate. South. Toward Hartford.
There’s nothing there for him.
He still drives all the way to Cedar Mills because he wants pasta and the local Italian place has the best fettuccine Alfredo he’s ever had in his life. Louie would have never ordered from Giuliana’s if Ryan hadn’t come home with a pizza and a takeout menu a few days after they’d moved here and insisted they support local businesses.
Louie feels kind of pathetic sitting at a table for two by himself. At least the pasta is exactly as amazing as he remembered.
He leaves. He thinks about going back to Springfield, even though he doesn’t have keys to the house anymore. If he rang the doorbell, they would let him in. He could stay for a few more weeks, until summer is over. But then he’d have to explain why he didn’t go to Boston. Actually, he never said he was going to Boston. He just said, “See you at training camp” and left.
Louie drives to Ryan’s neighborhood, now on autopilot .
The lights are on at his house, so he hasn’t gone home for the summer yet. He’s got the curtains drawn. He may have fallen asleep on the couch.
Louie can’t bug him.
He parks the car in the driveway.
He can’t just show up here without a warning.
He gets out of the car and slowly walks up to the door.
He can’t ring the doorbell.
He can’t.
He rings the doorbell.
Footsteps approach almost immediately and a moment later Ryan opens the door in sweatpants and a shirt that says Davis Carrolton’s #1 Fan above a picture of Ryan’s former teammate Davis Carrolton. Ryan wore that shirt for practice once and of course everyone asked him about it. He lost a bet, he said. A few days later, Carrolton posted a picture of himself wearing a shirt with a photo of Ryan wearing the other shirt.
“Hey,” Ryan says. He’s holding half a Dorito bag in one hand and a fork in the other. If he’s surprised to see Louie, he’s hiding it well.
“You’re eating Doritos with a fork?” Louie asks. He knows he should have said hello. It only occurs to him a second too late.
Ryan tilts the bag. The Doritos are mostly crushed, with ground beef and sour cream on top. “It’s a taco in a bag.”
“That’s so not a taco,” Louie says.
“Anything can be a taco.” Ryan grins. “I saw a video of some lady making pancake tacos the other day.”
“Sounds weird.”
“Hm,” Ryan says. And that’s it. He doesn’t say anything else.
Louie was kind of expecting a get the fuck out or something along those lines. It doesn’t come. Ryan just looks at him. Eats a bite of his taco abomination. Waits.
“I—I don’t even know why I’m here,” Louie says.
Ryan picks a big piece of Dorito out of the bag. “You’re here,” he says, “because you needed a friend.”
Louie bounces on the balls of his feet. He mostly needed to not go to Boston. And he—he didn’t want to go to just anyone’s house. He didn’t need some random friend.
“Wanna come in?” Ryan asks, stepping aside to let Louie in.
Louie nods and takes his shoes off by the door, slowly shuffling into the living room, where Ryan left a nest of blankets behind on the couch.
“Want some water?” Ryan asks.
“I…” Louie sits down in his spot. He has a spot here. He doesn’t even have that at his parents’ house in Boston.
Ryan sets down his not-actually-a-taco next to a can of Coke.
Louie’s dad would drop dead instantly if he saw a hockey player eat that. Even though a lot of the guys love their cheat days. And then for some guys, every day is a cheat day. They eat a ton of pizza and are still better hockey players than Louie.
“Can I have a Coke?” Louie asks.
A second ticks by before Ryan moves. “Sure,” he says. “Anything else? Have you eaten? I’ll order you something that’s not a taco in a bag, although you’re totally missing out.”
“Yeah, I had dinner before I came here,” Louie says. Slowly, he reaches out to snatch his favorite blanket, even though Ryan is still in the kitchen and won’t stop him. He probably wouldn’t even stop him if he was sitting right next to Louie.
Ryan returns with a Coke, cracks it open for Louie, and hands it over.
Then he sits back down in his nest.
Then he stares at Louie.
He has a playoff game on TV, but he’s muted the broadcast, so the players are moving around in total silence. Boston’s still in the playoff race and it looks like they’re winning the first game of Round 2. Louie looks away.
“So,” Ryan says.
Louie understands that he’s supposed to tell him something, that he’s supposed to explain how he ended up here. Instead, he asks, “When are you going home?”
“Oh, uh, not immediately,” Ryan says. “I’m not going home for the whole summer. I’m training here, with Nick and Santa and Waldo. They’ve got a guy they like. Well, Santa isn’t training, but he’s getting back into it, so I guess he’ll join us every now and then.”
Louie is maddeningly jealous. “But you’re still gonna go see your parents?”
“Obviously,” Ryan says. “Gotta go home for Ami’s annual summer potluck. It’s a legendary event. Highlight of every summer.”
“Sounds nice.”
“You can be my plus one,” Ryan says and picks up his Doritos bag.
Louie frowns at him. Because of the plus one thing—he can’t just go to Pennsylvania with Ryan to some potluck where he’ll know exactly one person, maybe one and a half—and also because he’s still so confused about that taco situation. He points at the bag. “Why?”
“Saw it on… Insta? TikTok? Not sure,” Ryan says. “Seemed like a great idea, though.”
“Horrific,” Louie says. “Did you throw an entire block of cream cheese in there, too?”
Ryan cackles. “Hey, I am thinking about getting a Crock-Pot and I will be throwing entire blocks of cream cheese in there like there’s no tomorrow. I’m becoming a real culinary… something.”
“I’m not sure that’s a culinary anything.”
“Don’t shit on it until you’ve tried it,” Ryan says.
Louie rolls his eyes. He takes a sip of his Coke. He hasn’t had one since—yeah, he doesn’t remember the last time he had one.
“I, uh, I was gonna switch to one of the Western Conference games in a bit?” Ryan says and holds up the remote. “Or we can watch something that has nothing to do with hockey. What about… Top Gun ? We have to go see the new one, by the way. Or maybe something happier. Paddington ? Or maybe we need something like… oh, I know, we sh ould watch the show where people guess if stuff is cake or not.”
“Hockey is fine,” Louie says.
“Sailors, then,” Ryan says and pulls up the game.
Louie isn’t sure if Ryan actually wants to watch the Sailors or if he’s doing Louie a favor because he knows that his dad used to play for the Grizzlies and has deduced that Louie doesn’t have the greatest relationship with his dad and therefore doesn’t want to see anything Grizzlies-related.
For a few minutes, they listen to what the commentators have to say about the Sailors, Ryan noisily munching on his terrible culinary creation. Louie hates to admit it, but it smells good. Like tacos. Which is kind of the point of it.
Louie pulls the fluffy blanket all the way around himself. It smells like Ryan. He stares at the TV for a few more minutes, the commercials getting more and more obnoxious somehow. Then he says, “My dad asked when I was coming home and I panicked.”
Ryan turns to him. “You panicked. Because he asked when you’re coming home,” he repeats slowly.
“I know it sounds stu—”
“No, it doesn’t,” Ryan interrupts. “It’s not stupid. He treats you like shit, so obviously you don’t want to go home.” He clears his throat. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have said that.”
Louie picks at one of the tassels on the throw pillow next to him. Ryan texted him a few times while he was back in Springfield. He apologized for overstepping. Louie never replied, too caught up in making the playoffs. He mostly looked at the texts when he couldn’t sleep. At two in the morning. He couldn’t reply to them in the middle of the night and three weeks too late.
“It’s fine,” Louie says now. “It’s not really about him, though.”
Ryan’s eyebrows shoot up. “It’s not?”
“It’s…” Louie shakes his head. Maybe he doesn’t enjoy being told what he’s doing wrong every single day, all summer long. But his dad ju st wants him to become a better player in the end.
It’s the dinners. Dad, Mom, Bastien, Louie. Not talking. Or talking about hockey.
It’s that he has no one else in Boston.
It’s his childhood room that makes him feel like he’s still a stupid kid.
It’s that he doesn’t have a spot on the couch.
“Point is,” Ryan says, “you didn’t want to go home yet.”
“Yeah.”
“So you didn’t. Good for you.”
“I—hmm.”
Ryan puts down his now empty Doritos bag. “You can stay here tonight.”
“Thank you,” Louie says. If Ryan hadn’t offered up his guest room, Louie would have asked. Other than Boston, he has nowhere to go.
“You can also stay here tomorrow,” Ryan adds.
Louie stares at him.
“You know,” Ryan goes on, waving his fork, “in case you need another day. A buffer, if you will. I’ve been thinking about going to Salem. The one with the witches?”
Louie laughs. “Why?”
“Because it sounds cool as fuck,” Ryan says. “And, hey, if you want to stay here all summer, the room’s all yours.”
“What?”
Ryan shrugs, like it’s not a big deal. “Yeah. Train with us, it’ll be fun.”
“But… I have to go back to Boston.”
“No, you don’t.”
Louie stares at him. He doesn’t know what it is about Ryan that is just so completely incomprehensible to him. Part of it is that he says stuff like that. Stay here. Sleep in the guest room. Train with a bunch of Cards players.
“You don’t have to go to Boston,” Ryan says. “You’re an adult. You can do whatever the fuck you want. That includes staying here. ”
All of that is objectively true. But Louie honestly can’t imagine what his dad would say if Louie told him he wasn’t coming home at all this summer. He’d be so disappointed. A quiet voice at the back of his mind whispers, So what? “I don’t know, I—”
“Sleep on it,” Ryan says. “A trainer that is good enough for Nick is good enough for the both of us.”
For the first time today, Louie doesn’t feel nauseous.