Page 66 of Game Misconduct

“So...why not?”

“Two reasons: first, we didn’t think you’d be playing this long, so there was no point in investing the effort to learn the game.”

“Jesus, Mom.”

“Second, we didn’t think you were playing with your full heart, and we didn’t want to encourage that kind of behavior. But it seems that something has changed this year, and we’d like to support you.”

“What the fuck, Mom?”

“Michael, don’t curse at me.”

“You thought I wasn’t—trying?”

“It didn’t appear that way, Michael. We always knew you were capable of more. Both your father and I are pleased you’re finally showing it.”

“Sit wherever you fucking want to,” Mike said, and hung up.

He wished he had time to go to the gym, or that Danny was here, because he really felt like getting punched in the face. It was the better alternative to what he felt now by at least a mile. He walked back and forth in the apartment and thought about calling Danny, except Danny was probably on a plane right now too. He thought about picking a fight with the biggest fucking guy on the ice his first shift in Los Angeles. He thought about the way it had been years of this, but they were still his parents and he still loved them so much. He thought about a lot of things.

He thought about telling Bee the shit he’d been carrying in his chest for years and how much better he’d felt after it. Maybe there was something to be said for actually telling people shit?

He couldn’t call his mom back, though. She would eviscerate him politely, and he would deserve it.

Instead, he flipped open his phone and typed,Mom, I’m sorry I cursed at you. I was ALWAYS playing with everything I had. I just didn’t know I could do better. Hockey’s my life. It’s all I ever wanted to do. I know I’m not successful like Natalie or Bryan or Samantha, but I’m trying and I always have been.

As he got onto the bus to go to the airport, his phone vibrated.

Michael, I’m sorry that I misinterpreted things. Your father and I haven’t always understood your path, but we’ll try to be better in the future. I’m looking forward to watching you play tonight.

Mike stared at the phone for a long time and wondered, not for the first time, how thefuckpeople did this shit every day. It didn’t fix anything, but it was something. Maybe.

“You okay, buddy?” Singer asked, as he made his way down the aisle to where Reed was waiting in the back.

“Yeah,” Mike said, and caught himself smiling, like a fucking weirdo. “I’m actually pretty good.”

Singer pressed his knuckles against Mike’s skull and dug them in, the briefest of seconds. “That’s what I like to hear.”

“Ugh,” Mike said, texted Danny,you’d be proud of me I think, then decided he was going to take a nap because being a mature fucking adult was exhausting and passed out in self-defense.

Mike wasn’t actually sure how he was going to handle playing a game, knowing his parents would be out in the crowd. Everyone else was used to it: some of the guys on the team had parents whose full-time jobs seemed to be coming to games. Everyone else’s parents at least came to the ones within driving distance.

They’d come to see him, only the third time they’d ever made the trip, when he was playing on the Harriers. It had been over winter break. Neither Dad, at high school, nor Mom, at college, had work the next day, so they’d flown up to Portland for a home game. Mike had been sixteen. He’d gotten his knuckle tattoos the year before and Mom had looked like she was going to pass out when she noticed them. He’d gotten more tattoos that year but he’d hidden them. That had worked, but the game itself was a complete disaster.

He’d gotten into a fight with a kid who’d laid a dirty hit on the Harriers’ captain, gotten his nose broken, KO’d the guy he’d been fighting, and gotten a game misconduct. His parents had still been in the stands when he limped his way into the dressing room.

Mom and Dad had just looked at him afterward, the kind of look that said,we’re so disappointed in you, and Mom had said, “We didn’t let you come to Portland for this,” and Mike hadn’t known if she’d meant the fighting, or the tattoos, or the shit he was doing late at night when his billet parents were asleep, which hopefully she didn’t know about.

Mike had tried to explain to them that you couldn’t just do that to the captain, that his job was to make sure the other team knew that even if the refs missed the call, but it was like when Mom tried to explain physics to him. Words were being spoken, but they meant nothing.

They hadn’t come to another after that.

“You’re going to be fine, Michael,” Bee said, after the pregame soccer match.

He only half heard her. “I can’t fight. I really can’t fight today.”

“You neverhaveto fight.”

“I mean—sometimes I do. I just—Jesus, Bee, if I fight today, they’re never going to come to a game again.”

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