Page 9 of Forbidden Hockey

“Need any help?”

His eyes flick toward Mom. “Sure, bud. Bring that salad to the table.”

I do, with all the sour energy of this room curdling in my gut. I sit at the table with Mom, kinda wishing she hadn’t come. Didn’t expect to feel that way. I thought that us living on our own would fix things, but maybe we were never the problem.

“How’ve you been, Mom?” I ask, trying to salvage the night. Maybe she feels guilty that we had to leave. Maybe if I show her we’re okay, she’ll feel better.

“I’ve been great,” she says. “Be even better with a glass of pinot gris.”

Hunter slams a platter of chicken on the table. “Eat first,” he tells her. “Dirk, sit over there, please.”

He points to where he usually sits at the other end of the table. It’s pretty obvious he’s trying to put space between me and Mom, which is made even more obvious when he plonks hard into the seat I’ve just vacated.

“I guess we all just do whatever Hunter says, huh, Dirk?” Mom says.

I shrug. “Pretty much.” I smile in Hunter’s direction, and he offers me a weak one in return. He usually rolls his eyes and laughs when I say something of that nature. I’m quickly losing my appetite here.

We pass serving dishes around, piling food on our plates in silence until Hunter breaks it.

“Dirk’s doing real well in school and hockey,” he says.

I beam over the praise.

“That why you left? Him? Needed to take him away from the big bad she-wolf?”

Hunter glares, and his fingers flex. I’m waiting on tenterhooks to know the answer, too. I don’t doubt I factored into his decision, but I got the sense that his leaving had more todo with her. He doesn’t answer. Instead, he’s up and over to the fridge, carting back a bottle of white, placing it on the table in front of her.

“Here. All yours,” he says.

“Fucking finally.” She pours a hefty glass and takes a sip so long you’d think she was about to wilt from thirst. She fills the glass again.

“Eat,” he says.

“Yes, King Hunter,” she mocks.

With wine in her, Mom relaxes. She launches into stories about her at work. She laughs. I missed that laugh. She even smiles in my direction, and I’m hit with a memory of racing into her bed at night when I was small, pushing my way between her and Dad. She’d pull me to her chest and smell like flowers and run her fingers through my hair.

She loved me then, right?

Could she love me now?

Her words slur together, vowels spilling long and lazy as if she’s forgotten how sentences are supposed to behave. Her hand misses her glass a few times, fingers fumbling before finally catching it. Hunt takes whatever’s left in the bottle away.

“Time for dessert,” he says, but his voice is stony. Mom’s laugh didn’t have the same effect on him as it did me. His guard’s up, in full alert mode.

Mom scowls. “I’m fine.”

Hunt ignores her, bringing out a chocolate cake he bought from the store—he’s still mastering baking.

“Cake? Heck, yeah,” I say, fist pumping. I hadn’t spied it earlier.

“Dirk’s fave,” Hunter says. “He’s been doing well in school, so I thought we’d celebrate tonight.”

Hunt did this for me? He was proud of me? My throat tightens as a tender feeling slides under my ribs. Maybe my big brother’s praise shouldn’t mean so much to me, but it does.

I only get a fleeting moment of that high.

“What, so you’ve got him on a rewards system like he’s a fucking puppy?” she says, like I’m not even there.