Page 19

19

Liam

L enny was cleanly on her side of the bed when I blinked my eyes open at half past seven. Part of me was sad that I wasn’t pinned under her weight like I had been for the last couple of mornings, but another part of me was happy to be able to get some space from her.

I was still surprised by how much hanging out with her felt like coming home.

That was a dangerous thing to feel for a woman who had run away from me once and was capable of doing it again. Space, even for a moment in the morning light, would help me remember what we were to each other.

A fake couple.

She chose the moment I got out of bed to roll over onto my side. When she was met with an empty mattress, she grabbed my pillow and hugged it to her, sighing as she settled again.

I left the room before I could try to take the pillow’s place. Once I got downstairs, I picked my keys off the hook by the front door, slipped on a pair of shoes and jogged to my parents’ house. As I unlocked the front door, I waited for the alarm to start sounding but nothing came, which meant at least one of my parents was awake.

“Liam?” Mom called out as I closed the door behind me. I found her in the kitchen with the newspaper crossword spread out in front of her and a coffee in hand.

“Hey Mom,” I said as I poured myself a coffee.

“What brings you over here?” she asked as she put her pen down.

“Do I need a reason to come and see my parents?”

“No, of course not,” she said before taking a long sip of her coffee.

“Why do I feel like there is a but coming?”

“ But there is a beautiful woman in your bed, and you’ve left her there,” she said with a smile on her face.

“Technically, it’s her bed and she’s still asleep. Probably will be for a while.”

“You leave her in bed alone a lot then?”

“We haven’t exactly got to the sleepover stage,” I answered. It wasn’t a lie. “Anyway, I am partly here for a reason independent of seeing you. I need skates.”

“What for?”

“Don’t get your hopes up, I’m just taking Len to the public ice rink, and I know I have skates here, so I don’t have to hire a pair.”

“I wasn’t getting my hopes up, I respect your decision to go out on a high,” she said, and I knew she meant it.

“Can you get Dad on board with my decision while you’re at it?”

“I’ve been trying, honey, but you know what he’s like. ”

“Most parents would be happy that their kid made it to a professional league at all, not mad at them for retiring before it damaged them beyond repair,” I retorted.

“He is proud of you,” she insisted.

“I know, Mom, but it would be great if every conversation we had now didn’t revolve around him telling me that I should still be out there on the ice.”

“He’ll get there. He’s just having a hard time adjusting. He got used to you being at the top and now you’re not there anymore.”

I just about managed to stop myself from rolling my eyes.

“I had to retire at some point. Would he rather I kept declining until I was forced off the ice? Did he want to see me get slammed into the boards and get an injury I couldn’t come back from? Would that have made his adjustment easier? It’s been eight months since I retired and he’s still not there yet. I gave eighteen years to the sport, Mom, and I didn’t want to do it anymore. It’s as simple as that.” It wasn’t her I was frustrated with, so I tried not to sound annoyed. I didn’t feel like I was succeeding.

“How does Alana feel about it?” she asked quietly.

That caught me off guard.

“Feel about what?”

“The retirement,” she clarified.

“Oh. Don’t think she cares,” I said. The few times it had come up she seemed pretty indifferent to the whole thing.

“You don’t talk about it?”

“Not really. You know her. She’s never cared about hockey. I mean she cared if I liked it and wanted to do it, so me not playing doesn’t really come up often.” It had always been one of my favourite things about Lenny, the way she viewed my life off the ice as just as, if not more, important than my life on the ice.

“And that’s okay with you?” she asked gently.

I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“No reason. I just wondered if she was supporting you through this transitional time of your life.”

“Yeah, she is.” I’d felt more supported by her in the last few days than I had in the last eight months by my dad. “She doesn’t bring every conversation back to hockey, which is great for reminding me that I am a person beyond putting the puck in the net. Do I have a pair of skates lying around?”

“Yeah, there’s a couple of old pairs upstairs that you left here in your last off-season. Does Alana have skates?”

“Don’t think so, but she’ll be better in rentals than me. This body is used to a certain kind of skate, and I don’t want it to be a public skate rink that takes me out. The irony would be too much, and Lenny would never let me live it down. I’ll just go grab a pair and head back next door before Len wakes up,” I said as I drained my coffee and rinsed the mug before putting it in the dishwasher.

“You seem happy, Liam,” Mom said as she picked her pen back up. I thought about it for a moment.

“Yeah, I am.”