Page 22

Story: Call It Home

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

LOUIE IS SITTING in a chair on the back porch with a plush chicken cradled to his chest and a plate with a piece of sandwich cake in hand.

It’s almost midnight.

The mosquitos are relentless.

Louie does not care.

He cares about his sandwich cake and the chicken he has named Agatha. Ryan has pretzeled himself into another one of the chairs and is staring out at the quiet backyard. All traces of Louie’s birthday party have vanished. Monica left them with two glasses of water and the last two slices of sandwich cake. “You’d better eat that. It’ll just be soggy tomorrow,” she said.

Louie’s own mother would never encourage him to eat anything in the middle of the night. She’d probably hate the idea of a sandwich cake. Ryan and Ivy used a crap-ton of cream cheese to stick those layers together. There’s some mayo in there, too. Louie never eats mayo.

He’s eating mayo today. And buttercream. The chocolate Ryan got him that he once stared at when they were at the mall. Things wrapped in bacon. So many things wrapped in bacon.

He drank cocktails in the afternoon.

He doesn’t know who the fuck he is right now .

“What are you smiling about?” Ryan asks. “Is it my sandwich cake?”

“Yeah,” Louie says and eats another bite.

Ryan smirks. “Aren’t you glad you’re here?”

Louie glances at Ryan. For a second, actually, for much more than a second, he forgot that he was supposed to be somewhere else. “Do you still have my phone?”

“I do,” Ryan says. “I’ll give it back if you want. Technically, your birthday is over.”

“Keep it,” Louie says. He has no idea if the Awards are over. Maybe not. Who knows. If Bastien has already won the Calder, he doesn’t want to know yet. He’ll check before he goes to bed.

Ryan nods and leans back in his chair, looking out at the dark backyard.

On the horizon, lightning flickers. The roll of thunder is faint; far away. It’s still pleasantly warm. Maybe that storm isn’t even headed their way.

Ryan hums. “Have you ever thought about…”

“What?”

“Lightning and, like, ponds. Rivers. The ocean,” Ryan says slowly. “What happens when lightning strikes the ocean? Do all the fish die? Are they like, the fuck, who just turned the lights on?”

“Is this one of those ‘do pigeons have feelings’ kind of things?” Louie asks.

“Huh.” Ryan is quiet for a moment. “Okay, but do pigeons have feelings?”

“Of course they do,” Louie says. “Probably not like we do. They have… pigeon feelings.”

“Maybe pigeon feelings would be better than human feelings.”

Maybe Ryan has a point there. Louie doesn’t know what to do with the human feelings he’s been having.

This entire summer has been an absolute fever dream.

He didn’t go home .

He didn’t go home and now he doesn’t know who the hell he is anymore. Who is Louie without the rest of the Hathaways? It’s only starting to dawn on him that he’s never had a chance to find out before.

All his life, he practiced the way his dad told him to, he ate what his dad told him to, he held his stick and skated the way his dad told him to. He spent his life trying to be exactly the way Dad wanted him to be. More like Bastien, that is. Louie was never going to be that, though. He knew, Dad knew, Bastien knew. And Dad still tortured him about it summer after summer. Louie let himself be tortured. Bastien watched and was glad that wasn’t him.

Training with Nick has been feeling wrong because Nick’s trainer tells him when he does something well. He says, “Good.” He says, “Time to stop for today.” He says, “I want to try something else with you.” It has been feeling wrong because Louie is so used to being told that whatever he does isn’t good enough.

Thunder rumbles gently, a little closer now.

“You were right,” Louie says.

Ryan doesn’t reply right away. “About what? The sandwich cake?”

“That too.” Louie puts down his empty plate. “And what you said about my dad.”

“Oh,” Ryan says. “That’s… uh. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry for being right?”

“Yeah. Because that means your dad has been treating you like shit your whole life and you definitely didn’t deserve that.”

“I—”

“You didn’t deserve that,” Ryan says again.

Possibly, Ryan is right about that, too.

Louie keeps staring out at the dark backyard. Something is moving through the grass. A cat with white spots. “I don’t think he did it on purpose,” he says. Before Ryan can protest, Louie adds, “He just never understood me as a player. He wanted me to play like him. Bastien did. He thinks like Dad when he plays. ”

“Permission to share a thought?” Ryan says.

“Sure.”

“Don’t say sure .” Ryan huffs at him. “It’s not a fun thought. And it’s kinda still your birthday, even though it’s after midnight, and I don’t want to ruin a good thing.”

“Just say it,” Louie says. “I promise I won’t let it ruin my birthday.”

“Hm. I’m thinking maybe it’s been holding you back. You know, trying so hard to be like your dad? Maybe you should have just… played your own game. You weren’t ready because you weren’t you. You were trying to be whatever your dad was trying to make you.”

Louie sighs.

“I’m sure he taught you good things. He was a great hockey player.”

There is absolutely a but coming.

“But he never let you be your own person,” Ryan goes on. “Right? He thought you had to become a certain kind of player to be successful and he never considered you could be just as successful if he let you go your own way.”

“I think it’s too late to try to be someone else,” Louie says.

“You sure about that?” Ryan says. “I’ve seen you with Nick. You’re different with him.”

“Am I?” Louie says, although now that Ryan has said it, he thinks of all the things he’s been working on with Nick that his dad would call a waste of time. Like how to pull off a Michigan goal. “Maybe I am.”

“Maybe you are.”

Louie lets him have this one.

Ryan yawns.

Raindrops are starting to fall and the cat that was sneaking through the grass joins them on the porch. Louie grabs it and hugs it to his chest.

“That’s Clover,” Ryan says. “Because she’s lucky.”

Louie scratches Clover’s head and she takes that as an invitation to make herself comfortable. Somehow there are still cats around here he hasn’t met yet. He could use some luck for next season. Or just for his life in general.

As much as he hates it, making it in the NHL isn’t always just talent and attitude. It’s also luck and being in the right place at the right time.

Louie glances at Ryan, who has tipped his head back and closed his eyes. He still has a smile on his face.

“Wanna go inside?” Louie asks.

“Nah, I don’t think this storm will go right over us,” Ryan says.

“It looked like you were going to sleep.”

“I was just… enjoying that I get to sit here.” Ryan laughs under his breath. “I feel like there’s never enough time to just sit somewhere. You have to really… make yourself sit. And not think about the next thing and the next thing, you know? Like, I don’t need to plan how I’ll entertain you tomorrow.”

“You really don’t,” Louie says. “Today was enough entertainment.”

“Good entertainment, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Louie says. “I…” Oh, this is going to hurt to admit, but Ryan deserves the truth. “I’ve never had a birthday like this. You know, one that was just for me. When I was a kid, my birthdays were more for my mom’s friends and when I was older, I wasn’t supposed to care about my birthday anymore.”

“That’s bullshit. Birthdays are awesome,” Ryan says. “By the way, I still have your gift upstairs.”

“You already gave me a gift.”

“When?”

“The party? And lunch. And the sandwich cake. And the chocolate.”

“Okay, if you’re counting those as gifts, what I’m giving you will be really fucking boring.”

“What is it?”

Ryan nods at the back door. “Let’s go upstairs. You can bring the cat.”

Louie does bring the cat, who clearly doesn’t mind being carried through the entire house (with a detour to the kitchen to put away their plates) and up to Ryan’s room. Clover immediately goes to sleep on Louie’s pillow.

“Okay, here it is,” Ryan says and hands over a gigantic bag.

Louie reaches in and finds something soft. He pulls at it.

Ryan bounces on the balls of his feet. “It’s a blanket. Like the one we have in the living room that you like so much,” he says. “Except it’s black because I know you like dark sheets, so I figured—you know, you can still use the one in the living room, but now you have one for your room.”

Not for Springfield. For his room. To match his bedsheets.

“You hate it,” Ryan says. “I’m—”

“No, it’s great,” Louie says. “I—thank you.”

“I still have the receipt. I can totally take it back if you hate it.”

“I don’t hate it.”

“Are you sure?”

Louie puts down the bag and pulls Ryan into a hug. “I really like it, okay?” he says.

And, oh , big mistake.

Because Ryan is a hugger, so obviously he wraps his arms around Louie and gives him a tight squeeze. And he’s so warm. And he smells like summer, like the grill and faded sunscreen and the cherry cocktail he spilled on his shirt earlier. It’s so much. Louie’s heart is about to explode in his chest with how fast it’s beating and he doesn’t even know why, except he knows exactly why.

It’s always been like this. Well. Not always, not with everyone he’s ever met, but with the people he ended up dating. The feelings just sneak up on him.

Louie doesn’t want these. Not because Ryan’s a guy. The whole guy thing is inconvenient, but Louie could deal with it. Maybe. Actually, he’d most likely choose to ignore it if it was anyone else.

But this is Ryan.

Shit, this is Ryan.

Ryan, who gently rubs his back and says, “Okay, you’re welcome. ”

“Okay,” Louie says again and takes a step back. He takes the blanket and wraps it around his shoulders, even though it’s summer and too warm. He’s just trying to get rid of the awkwardness that has taken possession of him.

Ryan seems completely normal at least, so he must have not noticed the existential crisis Louie went through in the past thirty seconds. He grabs a shirt to sleep in and disappears to the tiny en suite bathroom his parents had built so Ryan’s sisters wouldn’t have to share with him, Ryan told him earlier.

Louie snuggles up to Clover while he waits for Ryan to be done and falls asleep without even meaning to.