Page 3

CHAPTER 3

EDIN

I’m watching the clock as the minutes tick closer to six. It’s difficult to concentrate on practice when I know I need to get Mo in twenty minutes or risk her being kicked out. They’ve given me a lot of warnings and I have a feeling I’m getting to the end of their patience.

Movement around me has my eyes snapping back down as our teammates come toward us. I shift to block the puck, making myself a wall between the oncoming offense and my goalie. However, they moved too quickly while I was distracted and I’m not nearly as effective as I normally am.

The puck hits the side of my skate as I try to shift and gets between my legs. Fortunately, in goal, Amadeo Smithers has been paying attention and blocks the shot with his pads.

Coach blows the whistle and I internally grimace. Especially since I can already hear him yelling at me before the words leave his mouth.

“Levine, come here,” Coach hollers.

Sighing, I skate to the bench and pause.

“Why are you always so distracted for the last twenty minutes of practice?” he demands.

“I need to pick up my daughter by six or they’re going to kick her out of aftercare, and I have nowhere else for her to go while I’m at practice.”

It’s only a slight exaggeration. I know Dak would take her after school or pick her up by six while I finished practice. But he doesn’t have kids. And if I only needed him to get her for ten or fifteen minutes, that’s a wasted and interrupted night. I know he wouldn’t mind. He wouldn’t make me feel guilty or expect anything in return. But I don’t want to impose on his life like that.

I already know that he and his husband remain in town because me and Mo are here. I can’t count how many times Dak said they wouldn’t leave me during the first year or so that I lived here—they were there for me during my darkest falls and the moments when I thought it would be better if I just wasn’t here at all.

I take a breath, trying to clear my head. These aren’t the thoughts I need to be thinking about while facing Coach.

“No one else can pick her up?” he asks.

I shake my head. “I have a friend who watches her during games, but I can’t ask them to pick her up for ten minutes every night.”

“Go get her. Bring her back here and she can watch the rest of practice. We started late, so we’re going late.”

I nod. “Thanks, Coach. I’ll be right back.”

Stepping into the bench area, I leave through the side door where the equipment manager usually is with our extra sticks during games. It’s not the most direct route to the locker rooms, but I don’t have to find someone to open the chute door this way.

I contemplate how I’m going to hobble my way across campus to pick her up in skates and decide they’re going to have to come off. I can manage with my gear on still, but it’s not good for the skates to keep them on as I run on concrete. That would eat right through the blade guards pretty quickly.

It takes a minute for me to unlace my skates and get them off. It would have been much quicker if I didn’t have all the extra bulk of my pads that got in my way. Once I slide my feet into my shoes—which makes me cringe because I can smell them from here—I race out the door and toward Mo’s aftercare.

Thankfully, it’s not far from the rink on campus. Her school is only a couple miles from Longwood U and she’s not the only kid who gets dropped off at the campus’ aftercare program. I don’t know if there are other students’ kids here, but I know there are plenty of the staff’s kids here.

They’re a fully licensed daycare with full-time staff who are excellent. They also have a continuous rotating intern-base because Longwood has a very popular Early Childhood Education program. I learned all of this when I spoke to them about enrolling Mo at the beginning of last year.

It’s exactly six when I race toward the door. Mo is already sitting outside with one of the staff members. As per usual, she’s the last one here.

“Daddy!” Mo exclaims, her face lighting up when she sees me in my gear.

I crouch to pick her up when she races to me, but keep my eyes on the woman. She’s one of the managers who is always irritated with me. “The change in your hours may have worked for most, but I have evening commitments I can’t change because they’re not in my control. I’m doing my best,” I say. While I try to keep my voice void of the defensiveness I feel, I can hear how clipped it is. “Not everyone has a big support system.”

Without waiting for an answer, I turn with Mo in my arms. “Hang on, MoMo.” Her arms tighten as I sprint back to the arena with her. She giggles the entire way. Because I know no one will be in the locker room, I bring her with me and set her on the bench beside my cubby while I put my skates back on.

“Ew!” she exclaims, leaning away from me. “Your feet stink, Dad.”

I laugh. “I’m sure they do.” They definitely do.

“You weren’t very nice to Miss Bess,” Mo says.

“I know. That’s never okay, but I’m frustrated that they’re not very forgiving when I’m running late.”

“Miss Bess says you should be considerate because they have families they need to get home to and can’t be there all night waiting for you.”

I tense as anger flares through me. “I will be speaking to Miss Bess about that. She shouldn’t be telling you those things. It’s inappropriate.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

“Maybe not, but I do,” I say as I put my laced-up skate on the floor. I dig through my cubby until I find a hoodie and pull it over Mo’s head. She laughs as she wiggles her way into it. I think I have a hat here somewhere. Ah. I shake it off and pull it over Mo’s head, right over her face. She continues to laugh at me.

Once she’s all dressed in clothes that are much too big, I pick her up so she’s standing on the bench. “Listen. If your teachers say those things to you, I want you to do two things. First, you’re going to tell them it’s inappropriate to be including you, an eight-year-old, in their adult grievance with me. Second, you’re going to tell me when I pick you up. Understand?”

“Are they in trouble?”

“Absolutely.”

Mo bites her lip. I can see the guilt form on her face. “You’re not in trouble, but they have zero right to be bringing you into the conversations of adults. You’re a child. All you need to worry about is practicing your two-times table and having fun. Not that Miss Bess wants to get home to her family, so she’s mad at me. Okay?”

She sighs. “Okay, Dad.”

“Good. Grab your bag. You have your tablet?” I help her jump down and she slings her backpack over her shoulder.

“Yep.”

I grab a couple of towels on my way by. She’s wearing a cute little dress, and I don’t have a blanket, so we’re going to pretend these towels will do. We’re in southern California, so it’s not unreasonable for her to be wearing a dress. It would be more unreasonable for her to be wearing a parka.

I bring Mo down the chute, and we cut across the seats until I can get her settled into one a couple rows up where she can see through the glass of the boards and over the half wall without having to be on her feet.

My teammate and frat mate, Denton Phillips, slams into the boards right in front of us while I’m getting Mo settled, startling her. She leans around me and then grins. “Denny!”

“Mo-bear! Ready for some hockey?”

“Yes!” she hollers, punching her fist into the air.

I chuckle. “If you get bored, you can play on your tablet, okay?”

Mo nods. “Make goals, Daddy,” she tells me.

“My job is to prevent goals, sunshine,” I remind her.

She shrugs.

Coach is standing in the bench area still, watching me. “Thanks,” I say when I get close.

He inclines his head as I get back on the ice. Now that Mo’s here, I can concentrate fully on what I’m doing. Which is 800 times more important than for literally anyone else on the team. Before coming to Longwood, I’d been out of hockey for five years. Out of practice. I had a long way to go to catch up.

One thing my therapist suggested during my first year of therapy was to get back on the ice. Not necessarily to play on a team again, but because that’s the last place I found joy.

It felt bittersweet at first because I knew I’d never play again. You don’t just take five years off and expect to come back. You can’t expect someone to give you a free chance just because you fucked up your life when you were fifteen.

Once Dak got permission for me to skate on the school’s rink when the hockey team wasn’t using it, I spent a lot of time there. Mostly, just retraining my muscles to skate again. Then I borrowed a stick and some pucks and began drills.

I spent a year doing this alone until the coach, who had popped in over the summer for something, sat in the bleachers watching me. He invited me to train with them at camp later that summer, and when I enrolled in school last year, he brought me onto the team.

I’m good. I know I’m good. But I have this feeling that I’m so far behind my peers because they weren’t forced to take five years off, during which they fell into a depression so deep that death felt like a better ending than living.

But my therapist was right. Getting back on the ice definitely gave me something to look forward to. It made me feel something other than misery and despair and failure and regret. Resentment. It gave me something to work toward.

And fuck this damn aftercare if they’re going to threaten that!

I skate my ass off for the rest of practice. Sometimes, I hear Mo cheering in the stands. Apparently, she knows more about hockey than I thought. The team cracked up laughing when she jumped to her feet and called a penalty on Conner Langley for hitting Silas Day with his stick on the way by.

I’m exhausted when I’m done, but my night has only just begun. I wait for Mo at the stairs as she gathers the towels and her bag. She jumps down the stairs, one at a time, before stopping at my side.

“You’re not bringing her into the locker room, are you?” Mikky asks.

Denton shoves him. “Don’t be ridiculous. She’s a kid.”

“Is that a penalty?” Mo asks.

Denton winks at her. “No, baby girl. That’s Uncle Denny making sure these boys remember we have a sweet princess in our midst and you should be treated with respect.”

Mo watches him with skepticism as he follows Mikky down the chute. Honestly, I’m not sure where to bring Mo right now.

“My office,” Coach offers. “She can sit with me until you’re changed.”

Sighing, I nod. “Thanks, Coach.”

I take the towels from Mo and she takes Coach’s hand. I follow them down the hall, waving to Mo when they take a right while I continue straight.

I’m not sure there’s been a single day since joining the team that I’m not rushing through this. Hell, I don’t think a day goes by that I’m not rushing from one place to the next. As it is, I’m one of the last ones into the locker room and the first out. Almost always. At least today, knowing I don’t have to race to get Mo, I thoroughly wash everywhere so I don’t smell like sweat.

Coach’s door is open when I head there, and I can hear him and Mo having a conversation. For just a minute, I listen as she explains about Christopher Columbus, who discovered America. My face scrunches as I remember the half-truths we’re taught in school. As someone with a mixed heritage that can be traced back to indigenous North American blood from the Mexican peninsula heavily mixed with some Spaniard blood, I know exactly how rosy-colored our history books are. It grates on me how they still teach this shit as if it’s not grossly skewed.

Not the topic to think about tonight, though. I round the corner and knock on the door. Mo’s removed my hoodie and beanie. Based on how full her bag is now, she’s stuffed them inside.

“Ready?” I ask.

Mo looks at Coach and they share a devious grin.

“We’ve been talking,” Coach says. “We’ve come to an arrangement. You’ll bring Mo to practice, and in turn, she’s going to be calling out penalties to keep our boys honest.”

Mo beams at me. While I want to share in her excitement or maybe give in to my relief, I’m slightly startled and just stare at Coach. “Really?” I ask. “That’s not… an inconvenience or whatever?”

“I need your focus on the game, Edin. Not worried about your daughter being kicked out of aftercare.”

“I’m going to get kicked out?” Mo asks in alarm.

“No,” Coach and I say together.

Coach gives me an apologetic smile. I crouch beside Mo in the chair she’s taken up residence in. “It’s my responsibility to pick you up on time and sometimes I run late with hockey. Remember, Miss Bess gets mad about that?”

Mo nods. “She’s not very nice.”

This is going to take a longer conversation than I have time for right now.

“Does that mean I can come here for practice, Dad? Coach Tavis wants to put me to work.”

“I’m sure we’ll have to negotiate the compensation. There are some pesky child labor laws in the U.S. that we’ll need to work around, but yes, if Coach says it’s okay, then you’ll come to practice now.”

Mo beams as she jumps out of the chair and into my arms. “Thanks, Daddy.”

I hug her tightly and then meet Coach’s eyes. I’ve always admired Coach Tavis Davenport. He was one of my three favorite NHL coaches. I knew when he retired from the Philadelphia Hatters a handful of years ago, but my life was still shit then, so I hadn’t followed along.

The day he found me here, I’d been both ecstatic and terrified, especially when he invited me to play on the college team he now coached.

With Mo in my arms, I grab her backpack and give Coach another thankful smile. He truly doesn’t understand everything he’s done for me.

“Let’s go see what’s for dinner,” I say as I head out of Coach’s office.