Gray nods, taking a pull on his beer.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“He was going to leave your sophomore year of high school. Mom asked him to stay. She said you would need him because of hockey. That you would need his help navigating college recruiters and contracts and making the best decision for your future.”
And I did. I was young and dumb and I had no idea what I was looking at. All I knew is that one day, I was just a kid playing hockey and the next thing I knew, colleges all over the country wanted me to come play for them. They were making big promises and offering large amounts of scholarship money and I had no clue what I was doing. My dad was there for every step of it, in every conversation, at my side any time I visited a school and heard out their coaches. He helped me pick a school. I had the experience I did because he helped me get there.
He set me up for success because even though he wasn’t there when I was navigating NHL recruitment and contracts, everything he taught me then was still relevant years later. There were a lot of times I’d wished he’d been there to help me decide about my career, but I was in a bad place and wanted nothing to do with him.
All of my insides feel frozen. I have to remind myself to inhale and exhale. I can’t process that he almost wasn’t there for those years, that he was going to leave sooner and changed his mind.
In the end he left anyway, but knowing he stayed for a while…for me…it’s really messing with my head. I can’t figure out if it changes anything for me, or what it means, but if I wasn’t going to get a therapist before, I definitely am now.
“Like, should he have cheated on Mom with another woman? No,” Gray continues as I reel. “And that was shitty and he knows that. But he stayed when he could have left. Was it selfish of him to eventually leave, yeah, maybe. And for at least those two years, when you needed him. He wasn’t selfish. He and Nancy didn’t really see each other for those two years so he could be there for you. At least you got that.”
Those last words are laced with a bitterness I don’t usually hear from Gray when it comes to our dad. It’s the first hint of any emotion besides acceptance that I’ve seen from him about it. I feel for him, and not for the first time. My chest hurts thinking about how he had to navigate high school without Dad, without me. Maybe this is why he put aside the hurt. I had good years with Dad while Gray was left wanting.
But that is only one of the things I’m having to process, as Gray is literally rewriting history for me.
When Dad told us that he and Nancy had been having an affair and he was leaving, I didn’t ask for details. I didn’t ask how long they had been sleeping together or when they started or if they took a little break so Dad could focus on his family. I didn’t care. Dad was leaving because he was a horrible person, love was a lie, and nothing would ever be the same again.
Maybe he made a choice to stay with the family for a few extra years, but ultimately, he chose himself. His new life.
“He still ended up leaving. He still made the selfish choice at the end of the day.”
“I don’t disagree with you, dude. I’m just saying, there was, in all of that fuckery, at least an ounce of effort on his part to be a good father to you. And that maybe it’s something to think about while you figure out your life. I’m not saying forgive him and make amends. You should have all the information, though.”
“How do you know this?”
“I talk to Mom and Dad. I have conversations with them about things, including the things that happened that you don’t talk about. You’re literally the only one who doesn’t—who refuses to speak about it. The rest of us are having conversations. Maybe you should try it.”
This is also news to me. I thought no one was talking about The Affair. The Mistake. But maybe Gray is right. If it ever got brought up, I was the one who shut it down. I didn’t allow it at family dinners or in private conversations. If I was nearby, no one was talking about Dad or what he did to us.
I thought I was doing the right thing by never talking about it, by keeping it tightly sealed in a locked box somewhere inside me where no one would touch it, no one would talk about it, no one would even know it was a problem.
But everyone’s been handling me with care, seeing it for the problem that it actually is and, like Abby, approaching me with caution.
It’s a wonder Abby wants to date me at all, given how bruised and battered I am, and how little work I’ve done in the last eleven years about this one, huge, glaring thing.
I thought leaving hockey and having an identity crisis was going to be the hardest emotional work I’d ever have to put in, but I can see now that it just scratched the surface of what I need to approach to be the kind of man that Abby deserves.
“I’m never flying you to Mexico to hang out with me ever again,” I say, and Gray barks out a laugh.
As we get up to leave the table, I pull him into a hug. We’re not a particularly affectionate pair, the two of us, but Gray has saved me more than once this week.
I told him the vacation was for him because he’s a workaholic who needs to slow down, but it turns out I needed him here for me. I wouldn’t have gone to the doctor last week if it weren’t for him and Destiny, and I only made it through my first panic attack because he was there to bring me back to myself.
And here he is again, opening my eyes to the truth about myself that might be the start of something new. Something I’ve needed for a long time.
26
ABBY
“I only packed a small box of things, but she said I could have the whole month of July to come clear out my classroom,” I say to Hazel on my way home from the school.
It’s been two weeks since I came home from Cabo, and a week since I requested a meeting with my principal. She scheduled us for the last Friday in June, and I called Hazel right as I walked out of the meeting.
“And she was surprised, you said?”
