“What do you have in mind?” I say, not really caring because I’ll go anywhere with him.
He drags me through the break in the fence into his backyard where the nets are still set up and a bucket of pucks and barrel of sticks sit in the corner of the porch.
“Take a wild guess. Pun intended.”
My laughter is shocking because it’s so real. “I’m taking shots first. You play the net.”
“No way. I can’t afford to damage this face. It’s my meal ticket. I have a shaving cream commercial coming up.” He grins and I’m not sure if he’s joking or serious. It could go either way. I roll my eyes and take a stick.
“No goalie. I’ll play defense.”
We play a rousing game of street hockey to twenty-one—he gets twenty-one and I get one. It’s because I’m tired, I insist. Gramps comes out and sits on the porch halfway through. It’s a glorious fall afternoon, with that crisp dead-leaf scent filling the air and a light breeze keeping us cool. The sun is setting and it’s close to five.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I say.
“Right here,” he says.
“You have the day off?”
“If you don’t count this morning’s skate.” I nod, feeling like there’s something unfinished. Because there is.
“It’s your turn now,” I say.
And I see on his face he knows exactly what I’m talking about without any explanation. It occurs to me now that he’s been procrastinating, hoping I’d forget about his promise to confess all, to unload his baggage and let me see inside his soul. Shuddering, because it’s a scary thing for me to contemplate hearing about, and I get what it must feel like for him.
“A deal’s a deal.” His smile is gone, but he doesn’t balk. We return the pucks and sticks to their places and Gramps accuses us of being wussies because we don’t play until the streetlights come on.
“We should eat,” I say, remembering that I haven’t had a thing since the donuts this morning. He slips his phone from his pocket and orders us steak bombs from a nearby sub shop and has them delivered.
“You know you didn’t need to do that. I have a refrigerator full of food courtesy of the neighborhood.”
“Send it over to my parents’ house. My brothers will eat it. I was in the mood to self-indulge, and if memory serves me, steak bombs are one of your favorite guilty pleasures too.”
“I’m not complaining.” I pour us some drinks, ice water for him, lemonade with tequila for me—a lazy version of a margarita. He turns on the TV and tunes it to the NHL Network.
“Glutton for punishment?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how these sports broadcasters gossip.” I smile. He laughs. Our delivery arrives and my gut churns because it’s almost time for Ryan, my unicorn, to confess his sins, or unload his baggage, and I’m not certain they’re not one and the same thing.
We sit at my childhood kitchen table—that’s how I’ve come to think of it in the past few days—still sturdy, if scuffed. My mom told me dad made the table. Said he could do anything.
“What do you want to know?” he says, then bites into the sub.
“I want to know why you turned me away that night over four years ago?” No hesitation and I’m not sure if this counts as his baggage or mine, but the need to know finally outweighs my fear. Crazy since he’s the last person, the one person, I can’t afford to lose now.
“It’s complicated, and it isn’t.” His eyes don’t waiver from mine. “The simple answer is, I made a promise to your brother.”
“A promise? To—what kind of promise?”
“I promised Jason if anything ever happened to him, I’d look out for you. To take his place as your big brother.”
He watches me as my mind spins, his sub forgotten on his plate, his hands still. He promised to be like my brother. Blood drains from my head. My brother was thinking of me, misguided as he was. He’d died six months before that hockey party at BC. The promise had to be fresh on Ryan’s mind.
“Oh my God. Wow.”
He nods.