Page 34 of Finding Her

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“Poppy,” I said slowly. My hands had dug into her hips, desperately wanting to keep her here, but also knowing this wasn’t a conversation I wanted her to have to witness. “I need you to go back to the locker room without me.”

Poppy’s eyes darted from me to my dad, who was standing at the entrance of the rink.

“But I?—“

“I’ll come find you later,” I cut off.

I looked at her, begging her with my eyes to do what I said.

She and I hadn’t spoken in-depth about my dad, but I thought the conversation in the restaurant and our argument about Claire had been enough to tell her what she needed to know right now—that he wasn’t going to be happy that I was kissing someone else right now.

And not only did I not want an audience for that conversation, I didn’t want her to have to hear whatever he was going to say about her.

I was sure none of it would be particularly complimentary.

“I’ll be okay,” I said. “I promise. I’ll meet up with you soon.”

She still looked hesitant, and I wondered if she was imagining in her mind what was going to happen while she was gone, what was going to be said between us. If I was in her shoes, I would wonder too—and I wasn’t sure I would be able to leave.

But Poppy finally nodded and I lifted her back down onto the ice.

She was still unsteady on her feet, but I watched with pride as she managed to skate all the way back without falling over or stumbling.

She glanced at me one last time as she stepped off the ice, her eyes wide and nervous, then awkwardly shuffled past my dad.

I was glad to see that he wasn’t trying to stare her down—he was just watching me.

I waited until Poppy was completely out of sight, then another minute for good measure, before I skated over as well. I came to a stop in front of him, but didn’t step off the ice. I felt better with some space between us, and I couldn’t have that if I came into the cramped hallway with him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, crossing my arms. He hadn’t told me he was coming down today, which meant it either hadn’t been planned or he’d been trying to surprise me. Neither reason seemed good.

His eyes flashed with anger. “What kind of greeting is that?”

“Better than you ask me what the hell I think I’m doing,” I snapped back. All my frustration in the past few years was bubbling to the surface. And, for once, I didn’t feel the need to hold it back. “Ever heard of a ‘Hey son, how are you?’”

It was a rhetorical question, because he had never once asked me how I was. At least, not in the traditional greeting sense that most people did. When he asked how I was, the undertone was clear: are you doing what I want and putting hockey above all else?

“You are my son,” he said. “I have the right to be upset at what you are doing.”

“Oh, really?” I asked. I raised my eyebrows. “When was the last time you ever thought to ask what I was doing, if it wasn’t about hockey or Claire?”

“I—”

“Oh, that’s right,” I said, not wanting to hear his answer. “Never!”

“You want me to ask?” He yelled. He whipped a paper out of his pocket and held it out. “Fine. Who is this girl and what are you doing with her?”

My heart sank as I realized what the paper was: a print out of the photo Claire had shown me, of Poppy and I kissing on the camping trip.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

“Answer the question, Levi! Who is she?”

“Her name is Poppy,” I said in a tense voice.

“What were you doing with her ?”

I narrowed my eyes, hating the way that he spat out “her”. In that moment, he sounded a lot like Claire.

“Kissing her,” I said flatly. “What do you think?”

He crumpled up the paper in his fist and threw it across the hall. “You know you’re not supposed to be dating.”

“You mean I’m not supposed to be dating anyone unless it’s Claire Thompson. Right?”

“Claire is a respectable young lady?—”

“Claire is a demo. She is possibly the worst person I have ever met, and I could not hate her any more than I do.”

Dad balked at me. “Don’t say that. The Thompson’s are good friends of ours.”

“They’re good friends of yours ! I don’t like them. I’ve never liked them. And I definitely don’t like Claire.”

I’d spent so much of my life pretending that I did.

Or trying not to show how much I hated her, at least. I’d been the gentleman that Dad wanted me to be.

I was polite. I was civil. I spent countless hours of my life convincing myself that maybe if I just spent a little more time with her, I could grow to care for her.

But it was obvious now that could never happen—not with Poppy in my life.

Maybe, if the past month hasn’t happened, I could have fit into the mold that Dad wanted me to be.

Even if I never loved Claire, I could have tolerated her enough to be with her.

But now that I knew what was out there, now that I understood what love was, I could never go back.

If I couldn’t be with Poppy, then I didn’t want anybody.

“I don’t want her, Dad,” I said. “And I can’t be with her just because that’s the dream you had for my life.”

Dad let out a long suffering sigh. “Levi?—”

“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear about how Claire is my soulmate, how this is my duty in life, how hockey is everything and I can’t let a girl get in the way of it.” I dropped my chin to my chest and let out a long breath. “I love Poppy, Dad.”

“You love her,” he scoffed, shaking his head. “Love is just a distraction. It takes away from your focus on hockey, on your career.”

“I don’t have a career!” I yelled, the words ripping from my chest. “Don’t you get it? I’m seventeen! I’m not playing professionally, I?—”

“Get off the ice.”

“No.” And just to make a point, I skated backwards.

“Levi Barrett,” he said in a dangerous tone.

“I thought this was what you wanted,” I said mockingly. “For me to put hockey above everything else. For me to never step out of my skates.”

I couldn’t stop the disgust that laced into my tone.

Years of resentment and hurt were piling up in this moment and threatening to destroy me.

How many moments of my childhood had I missed out on because hockey came first. How many friends had I lost because I could never see them after school or go to their birthday parties, because I had hockey practice?

How many nights had he taken me to the rink after school to skate for hours, until I was dead tired and forced to do my homework on the bus ride to school every morning?

When I thought back to my childhood, all I could think of was hockey.

It was what we talked about at the dinner table and what he bragged about to other parents.

In public, he praised my gameplay and boasted about how I was going to be a star.

In private, he would criticize everything I’d done, to make sure I was a better player next time.

There was no you did great or you tried your best .

Everything could be improved on and he would find every little error he could.

I wasn’t allowed to have a life outside of hockey. I wasn’t allowed to be anyone outside of hockey. And I was sick of it. It had cost me so much of my life, and I wasn’t about to let it cost me Poppy.

“Because it matters more than anything,” he said.

“No.” I shook my head and backed even further away from him, desperate for my own space.

“No it doesn’t matter more than anything, Dad.

And I don’t care enough to make it matter—sometimes, I wish I did.

I wish I could love it as much as you do and let it be my life, the way you want it to be.

But I can’t. It’s not everything I want to do. ”

I strongly believed that hockey was the best sport out there and I loved it more than anything in the world, but I would be lying if I said it was the only thing I ever thought about. And I didn’t think that was wrong for me to do, even if Dad constantly made me feel like it was.

“What else would you want to do?” he asked. He “sounded genuinely confused, like he couldn’t imagine it at all. “What else is there?”

“I don’t know!” I yelled. My voice echoed across the empty rink.

“I don’t know because you have never given me the chance to find out.

All it’s ever been is hockey. The only thing I’ve ever been allowed to talk about is hockey.

And I don’t want to.” My voice cracked as I repeated, “I don’t want to. ”

Dad looked horrified. “What do you mean you don’t want to ?”

“I mean…” I chewed on my lip for a minute, wondering if I was ready to say this.

I could still backtrack. I could take this back and say I was just surprised by his arrival, that I was angry about something else and decided to take it out on him.

I could go back to being the good kid, the one who did everything his Dad told him to do.

But then I thought of Poppy and her eternal happiness, of the way she looked at me with all the love in the world.

Doing what he wanted meant letting go of her.

Was I willing to do that? For him? “I mean that I want to explore options for college that aren’t just based on their hockey teams. I want to pick a major that I think will be fun, not because it will be the thing that gets the least in the way of hockey practices.

I want to have my future open to me. I want to be more than a future professional player.

” I stared at him and had a long breath. “I want to live, Dad.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He pointed a finger at me and I felt like he was accusing me of committing some crime. Maybe, in his mind, I was. “”You don’t know a single thing of what you’re saying.”

“Yes, I do,” I said flatly. “I’m in my last year of high school. I know what I’m doing. I’ve gotten this far. And I’m going to be okay.”

“You’re a hockey player,” he said. “Nothing else. You’re not?—”

“And why can’t I be more?” I yelled. “Why does it have to be one or another?”

“This girl is putting ideas in your head. You never felt this way until?—”

“No, she’s not!” Anger flooded through me at him accusing Poppy of anything. As if she had been the one to hurt me instead of him. Poppy didn’t do anything to ruin me—she’d been the one to save me. “This is me. All me. If you can’t deal with that, then you can go.”

He just stared at me, breathing hard. Then he said, “Fine. You want to quit? You want to throw it all away? Do it. See if I care.”

He turned and stormed off, leaving me there, alone.