Teddy
Dad
I heard you’ve got some challenges this season. Hope it goes in your favor.
I’m heading out on deployment, so I’ll be in and out.
It was a short message but showed he’d maybe been following my career, which was practically sentimental from him. I was about to ask if someone had hijacked his phone. Instead, I replied the only way I knew how.
Teddy
I’ll make sure of it.
He’d think I was concussed if I gave him more than that or even added an accidental kiss at the end of it. I kept it how we always did—militant.
I locked the screen and sat there for a beat longer, trying not to think about the fact that there was a part of me that still wanted him to be proud of me. Still wanted him to sayyou’re doing good, kid,even if all I ever got wasI hope it goes in your favorlike I was a horse at the track.
I breathed in once, twice, trying to ignore that tug of my heart strings. I wished he’d respect my career choice instead of treating it like a hobby I’d grow out of. I used to think if I worked hard enough and got my degree while playing rugby, he’d see my dedication. He’d look at me with a sense of pride that I’d spent my whole life chasing. But he didn’t even make my graduation—he chose a farther-away deployment. Being gone for that moment in my life only proved I was never going to get what I kept breaking myself to earn. Which meant, I had to do this for me.
He’d been this way forever, and I knew losing my mom the same week I was born had carved something deep in him, and growing up, I could always feel the edge of it. Looking at me became too hard for him because he saw what he lost; it didn’t matter what he gained in me. It didn’t matter that I never knew her, that I’d spent more time with paid help than a parent. That’s the thing we’d never talk about. The thing we could never repair. It was easier for him to stay away. Easier for me to pretend it didn’t matter.
And to make myself feel better, I called the one person I knew would always be around.
“Teddy-bear?” Her voice was warm and familiar. “I miss you, my darling.”
I closed my eyes, letting her caring nature soothe something inside me. “Nat-nat, I miss you too. How are you?”
“Oh, you know,” she said, a smile audible in her voice. “Montana is cold enough to freeze my eyelashes off this timeof year, but that husband of mine keeps saying it’s character building.”
I smiled. “You have the most character of anyone I know.”
A chuckle floated down the line. “Enough about me.” Her tone shifted to that gentle authority she never lost. “Tell me how you’re doing. I had a feeling you were going to call today.”
I’d never understand how she knew that. Mother’s intuition, maybe? She was the closest thing I’d ever had to one. My dad worked with her brother, and when I was four months old, she came into my life and stayed until I graduated high school. She stayed through my father’s deployments, the birthdays, the sports I’d play until I found rugby. I always knew she wasn’t my mom, but she felt like family all the same. She couldn’t have her own children, so I guess I became an extension of her dreams too.
“You always know.”
“Of course I do,” she said. “You’re my girl. Now talk to me.”
“I’m okay,” I told her, but it came out thin.
“Teddy Elizabeth Sloane, I know you didn’t just lie to me.”
I exhaled. “I guess this month has just been a lot so far. There’s been plenty to adjust to.”
“All the stadium sharing?”
It didn’t surprise me that Natalie followed my career to the extent she did, considering she had for most of my life so far. “Yeah, and everything feels a lot heavier. There’s pressure, and then there’s this. It’s more. I need to keep it all together for my team.”
“Mhm, you always were insistent on being a leader, even when you were tiny. Stubborn little thing walking before you were nine months.” Her voice was soft, remembering how she raised me. “Has your father been in touch?”
I hesitated. “Yeah. Today.”
“What did he say?”
“That he hopes the season goes in my favor.” I forced a small laugh.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she breathed.
