"Same thing. I was horizontal and everything. Who's watching Leo?" I asked.
A pause. "My cat?"
"Yes, Nathan. Your cat. Who's watching him?"
"He's a cat," Nathan said. "He doesn't need watching."
"He's alone."
"He's fine." Nathan sat on the edge of the bed. "He sleeps the whole time I'm gone. Sleeps on my bed, eats his food, waits for me to come back."
I stretched my arms above my head.
"Just curled up in the middle of it? Waiting for you? Very relatable behavior actually."
Something happened at the corner of Nathan's mouth that was pretty damn close to a smile.
"Leo," he said, "doesn't have a game tomorrow."
"Leo," I said, "also doesn't have to put up with you being responsible at eleven p.m. in Toronto."
"Fair," Nathan said, which was the most ground he'd ever conceded in a single word.
"My parents are coming to the game," I said. To the ceiling.
Nathan made a noise that sounded like a question.
"My dad’s been to every home game this season. This is his first away game."
"Toronto's not close," Nathan said.
"No," I said. "It's not."
Nathan was quiet for a moment. "Every time?"
"Since I was eight," I said. "Four hours each way sometimes, when I was in juniors. He'd drive up Friday night, watch the game Saturday, drive back Sunday morning for work." I looked at the ceiling. "Linda—my mom—she couldn't always come. Work. But Rob came."
He missed Dylan's playoff games three years in a row to do it. Dylan's third year, his team made the finals. Dylan was captain. Rob wasn't there; he was four hours away watching me play a regular season game in a February snowstorm. That was the deal, that was the system, and Dylan had built his entire junior career around being the kind of player his dad would be proud of and his dad hadn't been there to see the part where it worked.
Dylan never said a word about it.
I found out from Mom when I was twenty. She mentioned it like it was already resolved, something that had happened and been processed and put away. I had never known what to do with the fact that it hadn't been.
"Every game?" Nathan asked.
"Almost." I paused. "He missed one. His was sick. He called me from the hospital to apologize."
Nathan was very still beside me.
"He apologized," I said. "For missing a hockey game. Because his dad was dying."
In the eleven placements before the Morrisons, nobody had shown up for anything.
I had never told Dad that. I didn't know how to tell Dad that without it becoming a thing, and Dad wasn't a thing person. Rob Morrison was a showing-up person. So was I, now. I think I had learned it from him.
The hotel room was quiet.
"Anyway," I said. "They're both going to be at the game tomorrow.”
