Page 5 of Caught Offside

CHAPTER THREE

“You must be Sean Tucker’s boy.” The retired hockey player had the build of a man whose body remembered contact and the handshake to match. His foundation’s logo sat pinned to his lapel like a campaign button. “He was one hell of a pitcher back in his day.”

“That he was,” Asher said. This was how it went at every gala. People chatting him up because of his famous dads. He tried to remember he was blessed to have the life he did, but it was exhausting feeling like everyone knew him, so he had to live up to some image they’d formed in their minds. “Both of them were great at their jobs.”

It annoyed the shit out of Asher that people seemed to forget about his pops’s career just because he walked away at the height of it. While Asher’s dad stayed on the field, Pops was home changing diapers, and he always said he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

The man laughed. “And you followed along in their footsteps.”

“Guilty. I’m a catcher with the Fox Cities Fireflies. Triple-A.” Like Pops, he thought but didn’t say.

Tonight was about his dad, and he tried to believe that was why this guy kept talking about Dad and had glossed right past Pops’s accomplishments.

“Oh, that’s great. That’s really great.” The careful nod. The tone that split the difference between encouragement and condolence. The guy probably thought it was some failing on Asher’s part that had him stuck in the minors. “So, what’s next for you? Big year coming up?”

“That’s the plan. Spring training starts in a few weeks. After that, we’ll see.” He glanced past the guy, hoping to see anyone else he knew to get him out of this conversation from hell. There was no one.

“Well, with your genes, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.”

“That’s what my dads keep telling me. I think they’re contractually obligated.”

Another laugh. The man launched into a story about his own foundation work in Toronto, and Asher listened, asked the right follow-up questions, smiled where the story warranted one. Three minutes later, the man clapped him on the shoulder and moved on, and Asher stood alone with his whiskey in the gap between conversations.

He checked his phone. A text from Briggs, one of the Fireflies’ starters, asking if Asher was coming to another teammate’s bachelor party next weekend. He typed back a noncommittal maybe and pocketed it.

The lights dimmed. The crowd found their seats.

His dad walked onto the stage without fanfare or preamble, only the quiet assumption that the room would meet him where he was. He wore a dark suit, no tie, which for his dad counted as rebellious. He set a single notecard on the podium, looked out at the room, and started talking.

Asher had heard his father speak before, at award ceremonies and charity dinners, once at a commencement address at a university in Wisconsin. His dad was good at this. Controlled, prepared, precise. But he wasn’t trying to motivate anyone tonight. He was telling his truth.

His dad talked about the early years. The interviews, the careful answers, the pronouns he’d swap before they left his mouth. Then he gripped the sides of the podium and looked out at the room.

“I sat in my car in the stadium parking lot for forty-five minutes after a game once,” he said. “My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. All I could think was that if the wrong person found out, everything I’d built would be gone by morning.”

The room went still. People stopped reaching for their water glasses. Asher glanced around, noticing some of the men squirming uncomfortably. They were being confronted with their past behavior, and it wasn’t sitting well.

Good. Even though his dads had paved the way for guys like him, he hated that it had been such an issue back when they were playing.

“I didn’t choose to come out,” his dad said. “That choice was made for us, for me and my husband, in front of cameras and a room full of reporters. And the weeks after were exactly as bad as I’d spent my career being afraid they would be.” He paused. “I’m not going to stand up here and dress that up for you. It was bad. But I had something most people in my position don’t. I had someone beside me who refused to let either of us go through it alone.”

His dad’s voice didn’t waver. It never did. But his hand moved from the podium to his jacket pocket and back, the only tell Asher had ever learned to read on him.

“That was the difference. Having someone who made hiding feel worse than whatever came next.” He looked down at the notecard he hadn’t read from once. “We’ve been married nineteen years. Most of them have been boring. Ordinary. Two guys raising a kid, arguing about countertops, watching baseball.” A low ripple of laughter moved through the room. His dad waited for it to pass. “Those years matter more than the press conference. More than the headlines. Because they proved that surviving isn’t the ceiling. And the young athletes this foundation supports deserve to know that.”

He stepped back from the podium. Then forward again, as if he’d forgotten something.

“The bravest person I know told me once that you can’t wait until you’re ready because ready doesn’t come. You just go, and you figure out the rest on the way down.”

He didn’t say who. He didn’t need to.

Asher looked at Pops. Three seats to his left, angled toward the stage, water glass untouched. His jaw was set. His eyes were bright. His hand rested on the table, fingers loosely curled, and he wasn’t smiling. He was watching his dad the way people look at someone when they think no one can see them.

Without meaning to, Asher thought, that’s what love looks like.

His dad gave a small nod, walked offstage, and the room broke into applause. Pops blinked, straightened, and started clapping with the rest of them. Asher clapped too. The sound filled the ballroom, and his dad gave a small nod and walked offstage. The lights came up. The energy shifted back to social, and the room started breathing again.

Asher excused himself from the table. He needed a minute. Not because the speech had wrecked him, but because part of it had landed somewhere he couldn’t name yet. He wanted to stand with a drink in his hand and let it settle before he went back to being social.