“Creed doesn't play the system. He plays whatever's in his head. I'm not putting an unpredictable veteran next to a green center who's already not tracking on the left side. I won't give you that to learn from.”
“Okay.”
“I'm telling you this because he's been around you more than I like. In drills. On the bench. Phoenix seats the benches by line but Creed keeps moving. I've noticed.”
I can't breathe,I think. I can breathe. I breathe.
“He talks to everyone,” I say. “He's a veteran.”
“Mm.”
I try to hold his eye. My stomach is still doing its sick roll.
“Theo. Listen to me.”
I listen.
“I don't want that man near you any more than the work requires. Do you understand me.”
“Yes.”
He doesn't ask if I mean it. He rarely does. He's trained me well enough that the yes is enough.
The salmon comes.
I eat it.
I don't taste it.
Somewhere in the middle of eating, between one cut of the fish and the next, my mind slips the leash and goes somewhere I haven't let it go in years. It goes to a kitchen in Trois-Rivières, me at ten, a woman at the stove frying onions in too much butter. My father's sister. Her hands on my shoulders when she turned me toward the window to show me the snow.Look, mon chou.She was the only adult in my childhood who ever called me anything other than Theo. She used to tell Paul to let me play inthe yard instead of making me skate one more set. She used to ruffle my hair when Paul couldn't see. She used to put a plate in front of me with something fried on it and watch me eat like my eating fed her too.
She hasn't been in my life since I was thirteen. I don't know exactly what happened between her and Paul. I know it was about me. I know after the fight she called once and Paul answered, and I heard him say,“I am his father. Not you.”Then the phone went back on the wall and he came out of the kitchen and sat down across from me at the dinner table and said we weren't going to talk about her anymore.
We haven't.
Her name sits in my mouth for a second, full and warm, and I shove it down so hard it leaves a bruise.
I'm not doing that here.
I'm not doing that ever.
I cut another piece of salmon.
I wonder, for the length of one chew, whether she even knows I play for Frosthaven now. Whether she watches. Whether there's a woman somewhere in a different kitchen who sees my name come up on a broadcast and feels something.
I stop wondering.
“You're quiet,” Paul says.
I set the fork down.
“I'm eating.”
“You're quiet even for you.”
“I'm tired.”
He studies me another second. Then he looks past my shoulder and signals the waiter for the check with a two-finger lift.
