“Yeah, I guess.”

“You need to give yourself more credit, Randy. We’ve broken the cycles we were following by default before we found each other. Now we’ve realized there’s another way.”

He cracks a smile. This time it’s real. “Loving you is the best choice I ever made.”

“I feel exactly the same way about loving you.”

He wraps me up in his warm embrace. I smooth my hands down Randy’s back, and it seems at least some of the tension he’s been storing there has dissipated. I’m not under some false notion that we’ve solved this problem with one conversation, but I know talking is progress. As long as we’re communicating, I think we can survive his dad’s latest ambush—and maybe eventually get to actual healing.

10

GROW SOME BALLS

RANDY

I drop Lily off at the arena twenty minutes before her first lesson. Instead of going home, I stand at the entrance to the rink and watch her skate for a good half hour. Right now she’s teaching three year olds how to stay upright. She’s great with kids. Later she’ll be dealing with twelve-year-old boys who need to develop ice skills. Their dads always hang out during the lessons. If I didn’t have to deal with my own father, so would I.

I’m not happy with the current situation in my house. Our house. Though it’s never fun, most of the time I can deal with my dad—his drinking and the asshole comments—but not when they’re directed at Lily. I won’t risk my relationship with her so he has a place to crash and someone to mooch off. Besides, watching his continued downward spiral is fucking depressing. I’m already anxious about the start of the season. I don’t need his presence making it worse. And that’s what he does. He makes things worse. He’s all the things I don’t ever want to become magnified.

I want to believe what Lily said—that I’m better than he is, and that I’ll make better decisions than he did. But it’s hard when I think about how he was when I was a kid and what he’s become now. I don’t understand what caused that change, so I don’t know how to guard against it in myself. And while I’m committed to remaining faithful on the road, I have no idea how Lily’s going to handle my being away. I’ve watched more than one of my teammates’ relationships implode over the years. I don’t want the same thing to happen to us.

I get a message from Lance asking if I want to hit the gym. I fire one back to let him know I’m busy, but I’ll catch up with him soon. We have a team meeting in a couple of days since we’re gearing up for season training. The long off-season has been good for the team in a lot of ways, even though it sucked to get shut down early in the playoffs. It’s also meant more time with Lily and more time hanging out with friends like we did this weekend.

While I’m stoked for the new season, I’m not excited for the travel like I used to be. I now understand my mom’s anxiety every time my dad prepared for a series of away games. Her tears when he walked out the door never lasted long; she always pulled herself back together, and we carried on like we always did. But she was different when he was away, and for a long time I didn’t get why. Now I do. The why is in my home, probably drinking my booze, even though it’s barely noon.

It’s in this mood that I arrive back at my house. I don’t want to go inside. I don’t want to face this issue that looks like me and talks like me. I don’t want to deal with the worst-case scenario of my future. But there aren’t any other options.

My dad’s kicking back on the couch with his wrapped foot propped on a towel on the armrest. Fresh blood has seeped through the bandage on his heel.

“We gotta go to the hospital. You need stitches.”

“It’s fine. Get your girlfriend off to work okay?”

“It’s not fine. You’re bleeding all over the place. Come on; we’re going.”

He sets his beer next to two empties. “You’re in a shit mood.”

“I wonder why that would be.”

“Look, I had no idea you were playing house with some ch—some girl. It’s not like you call me.”

“I really don’t feel like doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Talking. Let’s take a trip to the hospital and get your foot fixed up.”

For once he doesn’t push it, possibly because I almost punched him out earlier today when he made a dickhead comment about Lily.

We spend nearly three hours in the ER before they even get to us. It would’ve been a lot longer if I didn’t have connections.

Lily messages me while we’re waiting—in a different room now, but aside from a quick nurse’s assessment, still waiting. She’s hoping to get together for a quick dinner before her session with Finlay the fucker tonight. The guy probably isn’t that bad, but my stress level doesn’t allow for much generosity right now. I’m barely handling the basics. Unfortunately I’m stuck at the hospital at least until they take X-rays of my dad’s foot, so I can’t go anywhere. I probably won’t see her until after he’s been humping all over my girl. That makes me pissy. Pissier than I already am.

The X-ray shows that there’s still glass in my dad’s foot. So they shuttle us back to a room to deal with that before he gets the stitches everyone but him knew he needed. I almost want to tell them not to bother with anesthetic before they go digging around in there. Once he’s clear of foreign objects, the doctor stitches him up and gives him a set of crutches. He’s supposed to use them for the next few days, otherwise he’s liable to break the stitches open. The doctor also wants to see him again in forty-eight hours to check on the healing because the wound was still bleeding pretty good when they were working on him. I assume it has something to do with the blood-thinning properties of all the booze my dad consumes.

The whole thing will probably run several grand since my dad doesn’t have health insurance anymore. And he doesn’t pretend like he’s going to pay me back. Over the past few years, he’s probably cost me about thirty grand between the money he borrows and what I dish out for various reasons—hotel bills, hospital visits, other messes to clean up—when he drops by for a visit. I should probably stop helping him out, but if I do, I worry he’ll go to my mom, maybe get her to ask me indirectly, since he seems to have no moral compass. The last couple of times he’s asked for money he hasn’t bothered calling it a loan. I don’t question him about his personal financial situation, and I’m certain he knows what mine is; my annual salary is public knowledge.