Page 8 of Walking on Broken Paths

Chapter Seven

“How do you feel about being home?”

Sitting at his kitchen table, Jesse looked away from his therapist’s face on his laptop screen and out the kitchen door.

A week ago, the backyard had been as overgrown as the front yard.

But he’d tackled it this weekend, and although it was yellowed, it was more presentable now that it had been mowed.

He had plans to add saplings against the fence and maybe some low-maintenance bushes.

“This isn’t really home anymore,” he said, turning back to his computer. “I’ve lived in Vancouver for more than a decade. That’s been home for a long time.”

Dr. Ippolito hummed and adjusted her glasses. “And how have you been dealing with the memories? I’m sure there’s one lurking around every corner.”

“Not every corner,” he muttered. But he knew what Dr. Ippolito meant. “It actually hasn’t been too bad. I haven’t curled into a puddle of grief, so... yay?”

Dr. Ippolito barely held in a snort.

“So far, I’ve been remembering a lot of the good about Mikey, and I’ve been trying not to fall back into the guilt spiral I was in for years after he died.”

“Because even if you’d seen the signs of his depression?—”

“I wouldn’t have recognized them for what they were,” Jesse finished for her. “I know.”

It had taken him years to get there, but he did know. And although there were still days where he walked around in a fugue, wondering what he could’ve done or said differently, those days no longer outnumbered the good ones.

“Have you bumped into any old friends or have they all moved away?”

“I haven’t spoken to anyone from here in years, so whether they’re still around or not is anyone’s guess.

” Jesse’s gaze strayed outside again. “I did bump into my childhood best friend last week. His dad passed away recently, yet he seems to be in an okay place. Anyway, I think we’re at time, Doc. I’ll let you go.”

“I’ll see you again in two weeks, yeah?”

“Actually, I’m heading to Toronto in a couple of weeks to visit friends, so I need to reschedule, but I’ll reach out to your receptionist for that.”

“All right, Jesse. If I don’t speak to you before then, have a good trip. And remember...” Dr. Ippolito’s dark-eyed gaze went steely. “If you need me outside of our regular appointments, you have my cell number.”

He hadn’t needed it in years, though he appreciated it anyway. He nodded. “Thanks. Have a good rest of the week.”

He logged off the video call and closed his laptop.

Ten years ago, when he’d first started seeing Dr. Ippolito, his therapy sessions had left him feeling raw and exposed, as though someone had split him open with a rusty saw very, very slowly.

Now, they were a comfort. There weren’t a lot of people he could talk to about Mikey without feeling like he was treading on dangerous ground.

His parents were out of the question—surely, they didn’t want to talk about their dead son.

Friends were also out of the question—talking about dead relatives made people uncomfortable.

But Dr. Ippolito was trained for this sort of thing, and although it would’ve been nice to talk about Mikey with someone who’d actually known him, she was a good alternative.

His doorbell rang. Before he could rise, there came the sound of the front door opening and a cheery voice calling, “Hello!”

“I’m in the kitchen, Parks,” Jesse said, unsure if he was amused or annoyed that Parker had let himself in.

Maybe a little of both.

“Speaking of kitchens,” Parker said as he walked in.

He wore old jeans, thinning at the knees, and a threadbare Concordia University T-shirt that must’ve once been a dark burgundy colour but was now closer to auburn.

“I was doing research on kitchen renovations, and did you know that it can take up to ten weeks to renovate a kitchen, if not more?”

Jesse rose to refill his water glass. “Okay?”

“Ten weeks for a kitchen , Jess. And you have a whole house to finish before you go back to Vancouver.”

“Eh.” Jesse shrugged. “If I don’t get it done, I don’t get it done. It’s not like I’m on a timeline. I can finish it next summer.”

“I guess,” Parker muttered, unconvinced. He held up a small box. “I brought masks.”

“For?”

“We’re tearing out carpet today, aren’t we? Can you imagine how much dust there is in carpet that hasn’t been replaced since the seventies?”

“The real estate agent said it was replaced in 1995.”

“You think that orange shag is from the nineties? Your real estate agent lied to you, Jess.” Parker took a mask out of the box and thrust it at him. “Wear it.”

Jesse wore it.

They worked side by side to rip out the carpet in the living room, and it was as dusty as Parker had predicted. By comparison, tearing down wallpaper—which they’d done over the weekend—had been messy but not dusty.

It was an easy enough job given he didn’t have any furniture to relocate, although by the time they were done and hauling the carpet outside to the dumpster he’d rented, he was sore in places he’d never been sore before.

And that was saying something, considering he was a thirty-two-year-old professional athlete. He was always fucking sore.

“Why is there a box of dolls at the curb?” Parker asked, wiping his hands on his thighs and squinting against the sun.

Jesse whipped toward the street. “It’s back? For fuck’s sake.”

“Uh... what?”

“I put this box out here last week—” Jesse marched over and gave it a light kick. “—and it disappeared within a few hours, but now it’s back.”

“Why did you have a box of dolls?” Parker asked, joining him at the curb.

“I found them in the shed out back.”

“You could donate them to—gah!” Parker jumped back when Jesse held one up. “What the fuck is that?”

Jesse waved the doll. “They all look like this. All big-eyed and smirking and looking like they want to chop off your head. Now you see why I didn’t donate them.”

“Christ,” Parker muttered. “No wonder someone brought them back. I wouldn’t want to give those to my kids either.”

“But why bring them back at all? Who does that? Why not just put them at their own curb?”

“For the same reason you don’t want them on yours.” Grimacing, Parker pinched the arm of the doll between two fingers and chucked it back in the box. “I’m putting them in the dumpster. I never want to see them again. This is the shit nightmares are made of.”

Jesse couldn’t argue.

“Did you know the most haunted doll in the world is named Robert?”

“What the hell makes you think I want to know that, Parks?”

“He’s in a museum in Key West.”

“Never going to Key West,” Jesse murmured as he headed back inside the house.

Parker chuckled behind him, and the sound curled into him, hitting him with a twist of nostalgia that made his vision blurry for a second.

Parker had always had a contagious laugh, and he’d been freer with them than Jesse had ever been.

There was something about how Parker’s eyes squinted and his mouth curved upward and his shoulders shook when he laughed that made another person want to laugh along with him.

He was—and always had been—sunshine where Jesse often saw shadows.

Jesse didn’t want Parker to leave—hell, he never wanted Parker to leave, and that could turn into a problem if he wasn’t careful—so he said, “Pizza and wings?” and refused to acknowledge the pleasant burst of happiness in his chest when Parker grunted his assent.

Jesse ordered dinner, then they grabbed beers and took them onto the back patio. Sitting on the top step, Jesse clinked his bottle against Parker’s. “Thanks for the help today.”

“What’s next on your list?”

“Put in the hardwood flooring? Or maybe paint. Which one comes first?”

“You’re asking me? I still say you should hire someone for this.”

“Maybe,” Jesse admitted. “But then I’d have nothing to do all summer.”

“Why are you here this summer?” Parker asked. He dangled his beer between his knees, and his clothing was streaked with dust. He looked hotter than anyone had any right to, and Jesse’s stomach swooped. “From what your parents said, you haven’t been back since...”

Jesse’s stomach did a different kind of swooping. “Since Mikey died. You can say it.”

Parker leaned closer, resting his left side against Jesse’s right. “I wasn’t sure if I should bring it up.”

“I can talk about him. I couldn’t for a long time, but now I can.”

“What changed?”

Jesse huffed a small laugh. What changed? Man, that was a loaded question. “I did. I started grief counselling and therapy, and it helped me work through some stuff and just generally be a better human.”

“You were always a good human.”

“No,” Jesse said, somewhat reluctantly. He didn’t want to relive that part of who he’d been—the shame still sat heavy in his gut—but at the same time, he knew he could talk to Parker about it and Parker wouldn’t judge.

“I wasn’t. When I first landed in Vancouver.

..” His stomach knotted, the weight of that shame like a thick soupy fog he sometimes couldn’t see through.

When he’d first arrived in Vancouver, he should’ve been on top of the world—playing in the major juniors was a big fucking deal. But with grief fresh and guilt hammering at the back of his skull, he’d been so far from the top of the world that he couldn’t even see the sky.