“What?” I ask. “You’re staring at me.”
“I can’t help it,” he says, that overconfident, flirty smile on his face.
“This isn’t a date.”
“Of course it isn’t,” he says. “Just two old friends getting a romantic dinner.”
I can’t even argue with him about this not being a romantic setting. It’s deeply romantic and does not help that we are boxed in by couples holding hands and staring longingly into each other’s eyes.
“Question for a question?” I offer, trying to avoid the topic of dating at all. That stuff is in our past and needs to stay there.
“I’ll play. You first,” he says.
“You mentioned your brother Gray the other day, and you’ve mentioned your mom. It seems like you’re still close with them. What about your dad?”
He sighs, a heavy, deep breath, and raises his eyebrows, looking at the table, like there might be answers there.
“Boy, you did not start with an easy ball, did you?”
“Not my style,” I say with a smirk.
“All right, that’s okay. I can go deep on the first round.” He smirks at me.
The insinuation makes my cheeks warm. I raise an eyebrow at him, but he doesn’t make any other comments, just taps his fingers against his glass, as if choosing his words. He takes a fortifying sip of his drink before speaking.
“We don’t talk. Well, I don’t talk to him. He reaches out at least once a month, inviting me to dinner or something. Texts me on my birthday, all of that. But our relationship changed when he left. I mean, you know.”
He gestures to me, and I nod. I do know. Miles’s parents’ broken marriage defined our relationship. He didn’t deal out trust easily, certainly not as easily as he dealt out anger. He was never violent or raised his voice toward me. But he found anger quicker than anyone else I knew. He cared for me, and I always believed that he loved me—he told me as much withoutsaying the words. He promised he’d be able to someday, but left me before he could keep his word. I knew it had everything to do with the way his dad’s infidelity shaped his view of love and relationships. It’s why I never blamed him or rushed him. It hurt, but I understood.
I also saw the way he struggled with his relationship with his dad. He was still talking to him then, but barely. And when he’d go home for breaks for school, he would see his dad, and it would always ruin his day. I secretly hoped he’d take some space from his dad, for his own sake if nothing else, but it was one of those unresolved threads after our breakup.
“He came to one of my games, my first year in the NHL. I hadn’t responded to him in a month—the longest I’d ever gone without speaking to him. I was just busy, and every time he texted me, it pissed me off. I mean, I was a mess already. We had been broken up for six months or something, and so when he just showed up without warning at my game, it was my last straw. He’d waited outside the door where we always left after a game. I guess he told security he was my dad and they let him through. He tried to hug me, and I tried to start a fight. A couple buddies held me off him, and I told him to get lost.”
He pauses to drink. Even if it was my turn to talk, I don’t think I could. My heart is lodged in my throat. This sounds like something out of reality TV, not something that happened to Miles.
“I called him the next day and told him that when I wanted to talk to him, he would know. I told him never to show up at one of my games again, or I’d take out a restraining order.”
He laughs, but it’s a dark huff of a noise. “I think my mom keeps him updated on my life. He sent a card after my injury and, like I said, he still texts me, but I never respond. I know I sound like I’m still angry, but a lot of that has…lessened with time.”
He drags his fingers over the side of his cup and eventually lifts his eyes to mine. “Long answer, but yeah, that’s the gist of it.”
It’s hard to know the right thing to say when someone tells a story like that, so I break my own rule and reach out to place my hand over his.
“You did what was best for you, and that’s all you can do,” I say.
He nods: acknowledgment and agreement. “That’s what my therapist said, too.”
“Therapist?”
“While I was rehabbing my knee, I was also in therapy. My coach recommended it. He came back from an injury and said therapy helped him with the mental side of it. So I did it for a couple years. My dad got brought up, of course.”
I’m surprised and impressed by this information. Miles was not open to therapy in college. Hazel suggested it to him one time, when his short fuse ruined a dinner we’d had together. I don’t even remember why it came up. I just remember we were talking about our families and he almost spat when talking about his dad. Hazel asked if he’d ever consider therapy, and Miles was pissed about it, threw his napkin down and left the table. He apologized later, but his stance was clear: no therapy.
Maybe it was his relationship with his coach or the injury softened him a bit, but to change your mind about anything requires maturity.
“Have you thought about reaching out to him? Your dad. If a lot of the anger is gone, is there a part of you that wants a relationship with him again?”
Miles twists his mouth to the side, studying his drink. “I’ve thought about it.”
