Page 8

Chapter 8

Nat

“Okay, but we are getting Chipotle though, right?” Syd doesn’t look up from the screen of her phone. One of her legging-clad knees curls up against her chest, so her Converse rests on the Chevy’s dash.

“Yeah, when we get back into town.” I lean over the center console to swat at her foot, so she huffs and drags it back down to the floor. “You know there’s no Chipotle out here.”

There’s not much of anything out here, to be perfectly frank. It’s barren desert land—rolling plains broken only by low mesas and the occasional red-rock butte. All of it tufted with grey-green scrub grass.

Not that much of it’s visible in the gathering darkness.

“Could’ve got it first,” Syd grumbles, her gaze still fixed on her phone. “I’m hungry.”

“Did you eat after practice?”

“No.” Her gaze slants towards me. “Someone didn’t buy yogurt.”

“My God, Syd! It wasn’t on the list.”

She finally cracks a smile. “You’re supposed to just know these things, Dad. Like, isn’t that some kind of special parent sixth sense?”

“Your yogurt preferences ?” If I could see my own face, I’d bet my expression is a tangle of bewildered lines. “No, I don’t think so. Not young, single dads anyway. Maybe that’s like a traditional middle-aged parent thing. ”

“I mean.” the corner of Syd’s eye slips towards me. “You’re kinda close to middle-aged.”

“That’s not very nice, Sydney.” I give her a mock warning glare, catch the faint curve of a smirk on her profile. “After all I’ve done for you.”

“You didn’t even buy me yogurt.” She huffs an overly dramatic sigh, tsks . “I think that counts as abuse?”

I shove my palm against her shoulder, nudging her sideways into the door. “It does not.”

“Definitely abuse!” Syd chirps, laughing. “Violence against a minor!”

I chuckle, return my hand to the wheel. “What a wimp! How do you handle playing boys’ high school hockey?”

“I’m very tough.” Syd sniffs, which, okay. That’s fair. I’ve seen the girl go down on the ice with a broken wrist and try to get back up and skate. She made it three shifts, actually, before her coach physically dragged her off.

She definitely inherited more than her looks from me. Still, I can’t tell her that. “You seem like kind of a weenie.”

“And you seem like a meanie .”

Which obviously makes us both break down into giggles, wipe tears out of our eyes. For all that I might be a thirty-five-year-old parent, I’m not really that mature.

Syd half lifts her leg, like she’s about to put it back up on the dash and thinks twice. Smart kid. “So, how far out is this car anyway?”

“About an hour.” I peer through the evening dark to the desert around the tow truck, like that might help me determine our location. “Why, you got somewhere to be?”

“Well, if I have to wait to get back into town to eat anyway . . .” another sideways glare aimed in my direction. “I might meet Avery . . .”

I bite back on a groan. “Instead of dining with your old man? But I’m offering you free Chipotle. ”

“But I’m also making a hundred bucks for driving this car back. That’s a lot of Chipotle.”

“Syd . . .” My hands grip tighter on the wheel, knuckles whitening. My voice goes nearly as tight as my hands on that wheel. “I don’t ask you to run these cars with me ’cause I’m trying to feed your boyfriend.”

“No? But he’s hungry.” Syd’s long black ponytail drapes sideways over her shoulder as she cocks her head. She must read the tension in my voice. “Why do you do it, then?”

“’Cause I don’t want to pay someone else money that could go to your future.” The words tumble out to hang in the space between us.

I’ve told her before I’ve been saving, putting money aside to help her get out of this town.

Day River , I said, will suck you in if you stay too long. And then you’ll never leave. And I won’t see Syd wind up like all the other sad, broken people in this town.

I’ve always wanted more for her than that.

But we’ve never talked—seriously, anyway—about what that really looks like. About college or trade school or . . . whatever comes next. About what she truly wants from her life.

It’s a conversation I’ve never known how to have.

How could I, when my own life has been a series of ill-trodden paths leading me around and around the same rutted circle? It’s not like I’ll ever leave Day River.

“My future.” Syd’s gaze tilts towards the darkness through the window. Gives me the faintest outline of her reflection: her curved lips and prominent cheekbones. “Whatever that means.”

She looks like her mother, sketched in soft, faded lines like that.

“Do you have any idea what you might like it to look like?” I ask, fumbling a little to find the right words. “I mean, if it could look like anything . . .”

“I don’t know.” Syd shakes her head, ponytail catching on the leather seat. Makes my chest feel too tight, the way she won’t look at me. “I can’t even figure out what I want to do for my damn senior project. Let alone with the rest of my life.”

But who really knows what they want, at seventeen? Aside from kids like Jesse, with futures rolled out in front of them like a red carpet, who are any of us to say at seventeen what we’d like for life to hold?

Would I have chosen Syd? No. Hell no. No kid with any kind of sense would choose that.

Not until I first held her in my arms.

Now, if I could go back, would I change anything about her, about us? Hell no. Even if I could have had the option to wait until I was old enough, to raise her alongside her mother, I’d still pick the broken little pea pod Sydney and I made for ourselves instead.

If Syd hadn’t popped so unexpectedly into my life . . . what the hell would my life have become, would I have become? An addict, maybe. No doubt an alcoholic. Maybe worse: incarcerated, dead.

The pressure in my chest builds so it almost hurts, like fluid in a lung that needs puncturing.

“Well, what about hockey?” My words relieve some of that pressure. “You want to keep playing?”

In this town, it’s not really a question. Everybody here grows up playing hockey. Wanting hockey. Dreaming of hockey. Aside from Jesse Taylor, most of us stop wanting it when reality catches up.

Syd’s answer is obvious too: “Of course I do.”

“Okay, so that’s something.” It’s not, though. It doesn’t mean anything about Syd’s actual future. Most of us keep playing it—open hockey, hack leagues, beer leagues, pond hockey, Ice Out . . . there’s always something.

It’s not a future, though. It’s a way to forget, for a few minutes, that you don’t have a true future.

“So . . .” Again, I’m fumbling for words, the pressure building up inside me. Fingers too tight on the wheel of the truck. “What about work or school? ”

“I dunno, Dad.” Syd sighs. Tired of this line of questioning—tired of thinking about it. “I’m still trying to figure out how to put together some kind of project that will be worth half my Social Studies grade.”

I wince. Try again. “Well, I’m sure you don’t want to work part time at the Dairy Queen for the rest of your life.”

Something in me would die, to watch her slowly fade into the tapestry of this town.

“No.” Syd snorts, and pale relief washes through me. “But that doesn’t mean people don’t do it.”

“No,” I agree, trying to sort through all my thoughts. “But if there’s something else you want, or want to learn . . . I’m paying for your school, Syd.” I finally blurt the words out. “Whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go, I promise you, I will get you there. Okay? You tell me what you want, and I will make it happen.”

My hands grip the wheel so tightly, a light puff of wayward wind nearly nudges the tow truck off the road. My headlights cut a yellow trail through the dark beige desert around us.

I’m paying for it. Whatever it takes. Whatever that looks like. Even if it means leaving the rink behind—and yet, my mind flashes back to Olli, sailing over the ice like a ship cutting through the waters of a calm sea.

“I know,” Syd murmurs, tilting her head against the cold glass. “But I don’t want to ask for something like that.”

“You don't have to.”

A huffed little laugh escapes her lips. “But why should I deserve that when there are kids like Avery . . .”

His name hangs between us. Kids like Avery. Like me. Kids who work hard, dream harder, break hardest of all. Fall flat. Lie flat.

The kids who live and die in Day River. Like a fallen pond skater, trapped under the ice of the city. Part of the tapestry, part of the darkness. Perpetuating the cycle .

Day River knows how to dig its claws in and hold . Aside from the Dingoes players who blow through for half a season, nobody comes into this town, and nobody gets out. Nobody but Jess.

I don’t blame him for leaving. And as much as I blame him for walking out of my life, for barely calling . . . I get it too.

“Avery could still do anything he wants,” I say, keeping my voice steady, firm. “He’s smart and talented, but he sells himself short. Skips school and practice because he doesn't think they’ll ever get him anywhere. Because he doesn't believe in his own abilities.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Syd nods her agreement, tilts her head towards me, green eyes bright in the darkness. “But he’s good, right? You know he is. He could be so great!”

I nod, because she’s right. It’s true. Avery has talent even for the kids growing up in this ice-town. “He should be talking to his coach about setting up meetings with recruiters.”

“He’s not doing that,” Syd hums, and her disappointment—her anxiety—is an almost tangible thing between us. “Coach talks to him about it, and he just brushes him off.”

I keep my eyes on the road, on that narrow beam of light in the otherwise all-consuming dark. “He could definitely play in college or juniors. Hockey’s in his future, if he doesn’t fuck it up.”

Syd sighs, tips her head back on the seat rest. “He’s gonna fuck it up.”

“Honestly, Syd. He could.” I chew my lower lip, then offer her a bit of truth. “He reminds me a lot of me when I was a kid.”

“Really?”

“Why do you think I’m always nagging him about going to class?” I offer her a grim smile. “Not starting fights and doing stupid shit? Because those are the reasons I am not playing for the Dingoes today.”

“Yeah.” Syd’s eyes flutter closed.

“ Those reasons, Syd.” I keep my voice firm, leave no room for argument. “I could barely keep my head out of my ass long enough to get to practice once a week. You know how many games ended in me fighting? Coach kicked me off the team before the end of my senior year.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” I snort. “I was a loser. I was going nowhere, and everybody saw that. Told me that. Believed that, so I believed it too. Acted on it. Maybe if I’d had a Syd in my life to steer me straight, things would’ve been different.”

Her mouth twitches in half a smile. “Maybe.”

“But at the same time,” I say, because as much as she saved me, gave my life meaning, direction, purpose . . . “His future—his happiness—isn’t your responsibility. You know that, right?”

A tiny sigh escapes Syd’s parted lips. “Yeah, I know.”

“But your future is your responsibility.” I reach across the center console to set a hand on her shoulder. Squeeze. “And it’s mine . ’Cause you’re my kid, and I’ll do anything and everything to help you live your dreams. To see you happy. Whether you want me to or not. Because that’s my dream.”

Syd’s mouth twitches as she fights a smile. Finally, she gives in and lets the white grin crawl over her face. “ Bawww , thanks, Dad. That’s real cute.”

“Fuck off.”

She laughs.

I laugh too. “You ready to drive some random dude’s Impala to Chipotle?”