It starts slow. He tells me about the shower at Eldridge. About the marker. About his coach and the student services suggestion. About the night he had nobody to call. Everything in full detail.
I don't say anything while he talks. I stay on the line and let him say it all. Neither of us says anything for a moment after.
Then he says, "Your turn."
"My dad died in September," I reveal.
The line goes very still. "Right before you transferred here." I put my hand flat on my knee to stop it from shaking. "Liver disease. He drank his whole life — not the loud kind, not the falling-down kind. The controlled kind. Composed. Nobody ever knew because he never let anyone see it." I pause. "He died on a Thursday. Went to practice Friday. I never told anyone."
"Jamie," Rhys says.
"I'm not—" I stop. Start again. "It's been weighing on me. Since September. I've been carrying it and not looking at it and I think—" I exhale. "I think that's part of why I ran this morning. Everything just got too close at once. I haven’t faced it, and because of that, he’s in my head now, more than ever before."
"He was mean when he drank?" Rhys asks carefully.
"Not mean the way people picture it. He never yelled. Never made a scene." I grip my knee. "Composed. Like I said. He hit me the way he did everything else — measured. Exact. Like it was a decision he'd already made and was simply carrying out the punishment."
Rhys says nothing. He's letting me find it at my own pace.
"He always suspected," I say. "About me. I don't know when he knew — maybe always, I don't know. Feelings. Problems. Whatever he decided was wrong with you. He didn't discuss it. He just — responded to it." I press my hand harder into my knee. "With me it was always the ice. Any time he saw something he didn't like. Any time something slipped through that I didn't catch in time." I stop.
"He'd take me to the rink. Really late or really early. Empty. Just us. And he'd put a bucket of pucks at center ice and he'd stand at the boards and he'd make me shoot until I couldn't lift my arms. And when I slowed down he'd beat me." A pause. "He never thought of it as hurting me. I think he genuinely believed he was fixing something. That if he just pushed hard enough it would go away." I exhale.
"It didn't go away. I just got better at hiding it. And eventually I couldn't tell the difference between hiding it and it actually being gone. He'd lock me in my room after. Days sometimes. Except for hockey. Always hockey. Like that was the thing that was going to save me." A long pause. "He never mentioned it afterward. Just put it away. That was the whole lesson. You don't talk about it. You work until it's gone. And if it's not gone you work harder."
"Jamie," Rhys says. His voice is rough.
"I'm not saying this for—"
"I know why you're saying it." He pauses. "I know."
I close my eyes.
"I care about you so much," I say. The words come out stripped of everything except what they are. "I don't know how to do that without losing myself. My father spent my whole life making sure I didn't know how to do it. And I—" I stop.
I drag a hand over my face.
"I spent years thinking if I worked harder he'd love me. I thought if I won enough. If I was tougher. If I never complained. If I gave him exactly what he wanted, eventually he'd..." My voice catches.
I can't finish it.
"He didn't."
I close my eyes.
"And now you're standing here asking me to do something I've never seen done right. I've never had it. I've never watched two people choose each other and stay."
My throat burns.
"I wish he had loved me, Rhys."
The words leave me before I can stop them.
"I wish he had loved me enough to teach me how."
I can't breathe for a second.
"I wish I was better at this. I wish I knew what to say. I wish I wasn't so fucking scared all the time."
