Page 13 of Coaching Prince Charming

“You’re underestimating your old man, kid,” Nate said.

“Don’t patronize me, please,” I said in a tone that wasn’t asking for conflict. It was a step detached from begging. “Not you.” I looked at him with all the honesty clear on my face. He had to treat me like an adult. I couldn’t always be the kid. And if he expected me to embarrass him or tell him I knew his secret, he had to see I wasn’t going to.

“Alright,” Nate said simply. “I’m sorry, Carter.” He used my name, not my surname. That had to mean some barrier was down. “I know this is partly Dana’s ambition, Carter, but I also know you love hockey.”

Do I still love it? I wondered. A long time ago, I loved it like nothing else. But then, the pressure began piling up. “I’m not so sure anymore. I’m not sure when his ambition became stronger than my love for it.”

Nate was quiet for a long while. I almost believed he wouldn’t speak. But then, he sucked a shallow breath of air through his teeth. “I see that you’re not kidding. It’s as tough as it gets, Carter.”

“Nate?” I asked, expecting him to give me a scolding look for using his first name in his office. He didn’t. He was the same guy that used to entertain me in Dad’s pool. He was the guy that got me roller skates for Christmas because he assumed Dad would want to buy the ice skates. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

I could swear I saw beads of sweat breaking over his brow. The pained expression he shot me was a clear plea not to ask. “If you must.” His deep voice was guarded, emotionless.

“Why did you accept this job?” I said, cutting the torture short. I wasn’t so cruel or so stupid. He didn’t want to talk about Grindr. That much was clear from two weeks of us not crossing paths, even though we had been running into one another so often in the days before. “Sometimes, you look like you’d rather be doing anything else.”

Nate narrowed his eyes suspiciously, sharing a moment of discreet honesty with me. He came so close to smirking that a laugh tore free from my lips. “What else was I supposed to do?” he asked, his somber tone winning over our little moment of lightness. I’m nearing forty with nowhere else to turn.”

“I dunno. There’s always pottery,” I said.

He chuckled, but his heart wasn’t in it. “Murray asked it as a favor to the team he spent his life coaching. When he retired, another coach was supposed to take over, but he was delayed for personal reasons, and Murray came to me. I was a mess, Carter. You have to understand. They’d just asked me to retire because the pressure was growing too high. I lost my purpose.”

I winced.

“Yeah,” Nate said, nodding toward me. “I hope you never know what it’s like.” After a brief silence, he continued. “Murray knew I would need something to keep me busy, and his word carries weight here.”

“Being one of the most popular hockey players of our time probably helps, too,” I said.

“Don’t get cheeky with me,” he teased. We shared a short laugh. “So now I coach you because pottery’s not my kind of a gig.”

I inhaled a deep breath of air and looked at the floor between us. Though it was only a couple of paces of distance, it felt like miles separated us. It felt like there was an insurmountable wall between us, and hope flickered out of me. How could I ever imagine him settling for some wimpy kid like me? Those words sounded like my dad to the point that I wanted to laugh. “I think,” I said, lifting my gaze slowly along his muscled legs. He wore black sweatpants that didn’t do such a great job of concealing the bulge, but I didn’t dare let my gaze linger there despite every fiber of my being wanting to. “I think you’re wrong.”

Nate lifted his eyebrows in mild surprise.

“You think there’s nothing left to live for because you retired a year sooner than you planned. I get it. It sucks to see your name next to all the speculation about aging.” I snorted at that. “But did you really let that get to you?”

Nate said nothing. He looked at me, his eyes deep like pools of infinite hurt with only glimmers of hope drowning at the bottom.

“You were named the sexiest man alive three years ago. And that was your fourth,” I said, my voice growing louder to emphasize that point. “Do you really think your life ends with retirement? Purpose…that’s just another way of saying your habits got disrupted.” I challenged myself to take a step toward him with no rewards in mind. “Think about it. We all want to do something we enjoy, right? And if we get to do that often enough, we call it a purpose. But there’s nobody in the world who only likes this one thing, who’s good at one single thing. I meant it when I said you were a great coach, but if you’re miserable…” I shrugged, realizing that we both now knew I was talking about myself as much as I was talking about him. “Maybe it’s not worth it wasting your life on it.” I looked away.

Nate was sitting on the edge of his desk in total silence. I wondered how he did it. Even his breathing was so quiet that I didn’t really hear it. “When did you become so wise, Carter?” The amusement in his voice tickled me, but I focused on staying serious.

I lifted my gaze to meet his. Those glowing chestnuts he had for eyes… “I’m not a kid anymore.”

“No, you’re not,” he agreed, never taking his gaze from my face. “I see that.”

It was hard to describe or even understand the relief I felt when I walked out of his office. It wasn’t the relief at parting ways. If anything, I wished we could spend all evening talking like this. The relief came from the very particular feeling of adulthood and recognition. Nate saw me as an equal. He had known already I was no longer a child, but I didn’t think it had penetrated all the way into his skull until now that we were two adults. He might be my coach and my dad’s friend, but he knew that I was more than a confused college freshman.

That night, for a change, I didn’t stew in jealousy until I passed out. Instead, I struggled to keep the smile off my face.

FIVE

Nate

For days, Carter’s words followed me. Everything I did, I wondered if it meant anything. I questioned all my actions against the idea of purpose. In theory, the kid — the young man! I couldn’t get advice from him on how to live my life and still call him a kid — the young man should have been right.

Collecting stamps crossed my mind, and I wondered if that would give me any less purpose than coaching. I wondered if I could find something to keep me busy without it perpetually poking me where it hurt the most.

The ugly truth was that watching these young men in the rink filled me with envy. I hated being that person, but I couldn’t rid myself of that horrible, oily feeling. They got to do something I couldn’t. And it was especially pronounced on the night of our first friendly game against Blizzard Breakers, the rival team in the city. Their ranks were filled with talented players, and their captain’s energy matched my nephew’s. In some ways, young Grayson Reed was a more appropriate fit for the captaincy than Beckett. He had a way of motivating his team simply by his presence. Of course, I didn’t know the internal mechanics among them the way I knew how the Arctic Titans functioned. Beckett kept a clean house. It would be hard to pick one over the other if I were to choose, as both captains had unique qualities and weaknesses.

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