Chapter Sixteen
Logan
We won the game. The kids hopped around like maniacs, even Andy was more or less gracious, and my parents were in the stands watching, just like the parents of the kids who were actually playing.
We won the game, and the kids all thanked me, and then they got packed up and headed home with their families, and I was left behind.
It was all over.
“You could learn to be a coach,” my dad said. I hadn’t noticed him coming to stand beside me at the boards, looking out at the ice. I hadn’t told him how I was feeling, either, but I guess he knew enough about having to leave your sport behind that he could understand it on his own. “Lots of ex-players coach,” he continued. “I can make some calls for you, if you want. Get you a spot as an assistant on a junior team somewhere. You’d be starting over in some ways, but you know the game. You’ve got the instincts. You could be great.”
“I want to play,” I growled.
“I want to play, too,” he said. “We all do. All the ex-players—we want to stay on the ice forever. But that’s not how it goes. You got pushed out earlier than most, but you also went farther than most manage in the time you did have. It is what it is.”
Well, that was a little dose of tough love I hadn’t exactly been expecting. But maybe it was what I needed.
“Let me think about it,” I said, which was more than I’d ever agreed to before. “And, thanks—for offering, and for putting up with me.”
“You don’t give us much we have to put up with.”
We stood their quietly for a while, looking out at the clean, fresh ice, and I expect we were both having similar thoughts. How great it would be to step out on that ice, to hear the crunch of our skates as we cut fresh patterns, and then to race over the surface, playing hard and fast and physical, fighting for the puck, for the chance to score—
I pushed away from the boards. “I should go pick up Dawn. She’ll be done with work soon.”
“Logan,” my dad said, and there was something in his voice that made me stop moving. “Dawn’s a nice girl. Your mom and I both like her.”
“Yeah. I like her, too.” I was trying to pretend I couldn’t hear the but in his tone, hoping maybe he’d just let go of whatever it was.
Didn’t work, though, because he said, “We like her. But you haven’t known her for all that long, and you had this trip planned when you’d known her for even less time, and you’re clearly—well, head-over-heels is an old expression, but it’s one that seems to fit.”
I didn’t say anything. There was nothing I could disagree with, and I was sure he hadn’t made his main point yet.
He blew out a heavy breath and then said, “Be careful, okay? You’ve spent most of your life chasing after one obsession, and now that it’s gone you’ve got a big hole in your life. And maybe it makes sense to want to fill that hole with just one thing. One person. But it’s probably a lot safer to try to find a few different things—or people, or whatever—to care about.”
I wondered how this would fit in with Mom’s advice about finding something to be passionate about, but I didn’t ask. My parents were a solid couple, but they didn’t agree on lots of things and I knew better than to expect a united front from them on much of anything.
“I’m working. I’m hanging out with new people, not just Dawn. I’m swimming and riding horses and learning about sand—I’m doing lots of different stuff. I’m not obsessing about anything.”
He nodded like he was more or less satisfied, then said, “What the hell are you learning about sand?”
“You should Google it. Magnified sand—it’s pretty cool.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, clearly thinking I was pulling his leg.
“I gotta go get Dawn,” I said. If he didn’t want to learn about sand, that was his problem, not mine.
…
Dawn
It was a bit strange hanging around with Logan’s parents. Not only because of the way we’d first been introduced—I was more or less over that, although I still got self-conscious the first time Logan took my hand with them around. Not because Mr. Balanchuk was an ex-NHL player and people kept recognizing him—as stupid as it might sound, Toby had gotten at least that much attention, if not more, whenever the Raiders were in the playoffs. No, it was mostly weird because it was so normal. All three of them were totally comfortable with each other and seemed to enjoy each other’s company, and it made me think about my own parents and wonder what the problem was there. Even when I’d been dating Toby, my family and I hadn’t gotten along all that well. It had been kind of like I’d borrowed some of Toby’s status in their eyes, so they deferred to me and maybe gave me more respect than I actually deserved. And then once he and I broke up, all that went to hell, of course.
I could have probably earned some of the respect back if I’d told them who Logan’s dad was. If I’d told them Logan had been drafted first round and had the contract and insurance money to show for it. But I didn’t want their respect on those terms.
So I spent time with Logan’s parents on Sunday afternoon, served the three of them Sunday dinner at the Grill, and sat down for my traditional fifteen-minute-break-and-food-inhalation, and tried to appreciate the contrast with my own family rather than resent it.
The senior Balanchuks went sightseeing on Monday, and on Tuesday Logan picked me up at home and drove me out to the little airport where Mr. Balanchuk had left his plane. Logan didn’t say much as we drove, and his hands were tight on the steering wheel.
“Are you okay with flying?” I asked. He must have done a fair bit of it, if his dad was a pilot. And he’d been raised rich, so I’m sure he had millions of vacations to fancy places he’d have had to fly to. But, still, he seemed nervous.
He glanced over at me. “No, I’m fine. It’s really safe—my dad’s hyper-conscientious.” But his shoulders were still high and tight.
“These are just routine medical appointments? Like, check-ins?”
I could tell I’d guessed the right source of tension by how long it took him to come up with an answer.
Finally he said, “They won’t find anything new wrong with my knee. There’s no way they could, not after all the poking and x-rays and surgeries they’ve already done. These guys probably know the inside of my knee better than they know their kids’ faces.”
Another look in my direction, this one long enough for me to see him wrinkle his nose as if trying to find the source of a bad smell.
“I just hate the appointments. Everyone’s nice enough, but they’re just doing their jobs, you know? I’m just one more athlete working through their system, one more busted up body for them to glue back together as well as they can. They’re nice, and they care about their work, but they don’t really care. You know? It’s not their knee. It’s a problem they’re trying to solve. They’ll talk to each other like I’m not in the room—like my knee’s been removed from the rest of my body and they’re working on it all on its own—and it’s just—” He broke off, then forced a smile. “It’s pretty terrible for me to be getting this top-level health care in a comfortable, pleasant clinic staffed with nice people who are working hard on my recovery. Really hard to take.”
“No, I can see what you mean. The whole thing is just not what you want to be doing. Not where you want to be.”
“To a really intense degree.” Which sounded like a complaint, but his hands weren’t gripping the wheel so tightly anymore.
“And this is all behind-closed-doors type stuff? I can’t hang out with you and take your mind off things?”
“I thought you and my mom were going to go shopping together?”
His mom had mentioned that, sure, but I’d mostly thought she was simply being polite, and I definitely hadn’t been clear on the timelines. “We’d be shopping while you’re at the doctor’s office? I thought shopping would be giving you time to go see your guy friends or some other manly activity I shouldn’t be part of.”
He reached for my hand then. “There aren’t any manly activities I don’t want you to be part of.” A pause and then, “Also, all my friends are hockey players. They see me coming and it’s like they’re watching their own worst nightmare limping into the room. I don’t spend a whole lot of time with them anymore.”
“You don’t limp.”
“They can smell the weakness anyway.”
“They’re smelling weakness on you? Can they smell the strength, too?”
He gave me a look like he thought I was just being loyal and making things up, and he pulled his hand away. He was just using it to shift gears, but he didn’t reach back when he was done.
“I’m serious,” I told him. “Your knee got wrecked. That sucks, but you’re getting past it, and don’t even pretend it was easy. It was hard, but you did it, and that means you’re strong. And personally if I have to choose between strength of character and strength of knees, I know which one I’m most interested in.”
He was quiet for a while before saying, “The knees, right? You’d choose strength of knees?”
“I do love a good pair of knees.” That earned me his hand again. Maybe I should have resented having to earn something as simple as physical affection, but given how hard the conversation must be for him, I was ready to cut him a lot of slack. “Being good at hockey isn’t the only way to be a good man,” I told him. It shouldn’t have been something I needed to say, but the way he looked at me made it clear he’d needed to hear it.
“God, we are such losers,” I said, and I laughed. Mostly the something-is-funny kind of laugh, with only a little bit of the something-is-painful kind mixed in. “Not even twenty years old yet and already we think maybe we’re washed up, worried that our glory days behind us. At least your glory days were actually yours, and not just reflected shininess from someone you were dating.”
“You think dating an OHL player is the most glory you’re ever going to get in your life? Are you paying attention to yourself?”
“What? Going to university? It might be a big deal for my family, but in general terms, it’s nothing. Right?”
“Going to university? Yeah, not a big deal if you look at it like that. But doing something nobody in your family has ever done? Pushing yourself to do more and experience more and learn more, just…just because? Letting your friends challenge you to quit your job and find a more interesting one? Following through on the challenge, when having a job is so important to you? Do you understand how cool that is? You took that much of a chance, gave up something you need in order to get something you need and want, and you think it’s no big deal? Maybe it isn’t a big deal to you, because you’re brave like that all the time. But for most people, it’d be huge, Dawn. Huge.”
I’d be lying if I tried to pretend that didn’t feel good. We were already holding hands, but I gave his fingers a squeeze to show my appreciation. “You coaching hockey was huge, too. I’m sorry I wasn’t more supportive or whatever. I mean—I don’t—it’s not—” Possibly I should have left well enough alone, but I’d gotten started so I had to try to finish. “I can handle it. If you end up doing more than that. I know you’ve been thinking about it—I can practically see the ideas whirling around in your brain. And I can be okay with it. You need a job, right? You coaching hockey is maybe not my favorite thing, but me hanging out with an old lady and having weird adventures maybe isn’t your favorite thing, and you’re not giving me a hard time about it.”
“That’s not a good comparison,” he said gently. “Because you hanging out with an old lady and having weird adventures kind of is my favorite thing, or at least one of my top ten favorites.”
I thought for a second. “Ooooh! Me flirting with customers at the Grill! That’s not in your top ten, is it?”
“That’s in my bottom ten.”
“But you haven’t made a big deal out of it. You’ve been cool, and I can be cool. Seriously, I can be.”
We turned off the road into the gravel parking lot of the airport before he came up with a reply. He grabbed our bags out of the Jeep’s back seat, slung them both over his shoulder, then said, “You already are cool. Not wanting to date someone who’s too involved with hockey is part of what makes you cool. You don’t need to change that; I’d never ask you to.”
“You not asking me is part of what makes you cool,” I told him.
His parents were standing by a plane that looked bigger than I’d been afraid of but smaller than I’d hoped, and they were clearly watching us and waiting for us to get moving. “So we’re cool, in general,” I said. “Right?”
“Absolutely.”
“And I probably can’t afford to even breathe the air in most of the places your mom shops, so if I’m allowed to hang out with you while you’re getting poked at, I’m happy to do that.”
He shook his head as we started walking toward the plane. “I think they want me on my own. And the stores don’t actually charge for air; you should give them a try. My mom’s a serious bargain hunter, so it may not be as bad as you think.”
“You guys ready?” Mr. Balanchuk called as we got closer.
Logan looked at me as if waiting for my answer, and I nodded. “Absolutely,” I said. “It’s going to be great!”