Page 6 of Unlovable Player

At Alyssa’s name, my mouth gets dry.

“Oh? How is she?”

“Fine. She was asking about you.”

I pick up on the tone. Try to ignore it.

“I told her you’re doing good.”

“Good.”

“She’s graduating this year, with you.”

Not ‘with’ me.I have to lean against a wall.

“Ma-”

“I know, I’m keeping my nose out of it and leaving you kids to it, she just asked me to let you know she was asking about you, that’s all.”

“Okay.”

“She’s a nice girl.”

“I know she is.”

“Does it bother you, me talking to her?”

“Course not, talk to whoever you want.”

“You guys didn’t end on bad terms right?”

“Right Ma, I want you to talk to her, it’s fine.”

“Okay, I gotta run, talk soon yeah? And don’t hit that Yale kid.”

That makes me smile at least. “I’ll try.”

I hang up and try not to think about my ma on her feet for hours at the diner. At least she gets to work less now college is sorted and all my hockey gear and accommodation is taken care of by my hockey scholarship. She must have really been able to breathe a sigh of relief when that happened.

I feel like my whole childhood was lived out on the ice and at the diner, drawing in a coloring book and nursing a milkshake while Ma bussed tables. I always had everything I needed. Not just hockey gear, but books, new shoes for school, pencil cases, folders, even shit I didn’t really need like highlighters and those pencils with the funny erasers on the end. When my coach in juniors gave her a nutrition plan for me to follow that didn’t include free diner cheeseburgers and tater tots, she made sure I got it.

When I moved into student accommodation my first year at college, she looked up the list of recommended items on the website and got everything, from shower shoes to a mattress protector. She even got all the optional shit, like a fan - which actually came in handy - and a portable iron - which I never used. That first year, I lived in a high-rise apartment block on the side of the I-90, where the fire alarm woke me up at three am every weekend, but I did it with a fan and a portable iron.

I didn’t always know how she did it, but whatever I needed, she always made it appear. And now I want to pay her back. Every last cent. I can’t give her all those hours of her life back. The ones she spent slaving away in a diner when she should have been doing what she loves. But I can, and will, stop her wasting any more.

I have a business class and a sport’s nutrition class right after, so I head straight to Chipotle and grab a burrito bowl to fuel up. It’s quiet and the guys must have left by now to take a nap or go to class. I practically inhale the food with my earphones in, listening to an old playlist of country songs I’ve liked since I was a kid. Johnny Cash, June Carter and Patsy Cline. I thought everyone’s ma could sing like mine until I got older and realized they couldn’t. It took me a few more years to realize she should have been doing that on a stage somewhere instead of wiping tables down in a diner and scraping by on tips. And that it was my fault she wasn’t.

I’d like to take a nap after that practise and all the food I just ate, but I have classes, and even though I don’t like them, they’re important. My back-up plan, in case it doesn’t work out. In case the team that called my name in the draft almost two years ago decide not to sign me to the NHL after all.

When I get to class,Sebastian Huntington is sitting in the best part of the classroom at my favorite table by the window. Just close enough to the board to get a good view, but far enough away that you can sneakily check your phone without the professor catching you.

His head snaps up and that shit-eating grin spreads across his face. It takes everything in me to keep my expression neutral.

“No way,” he says. “Are you in this class too?”

I want to ignore him and go and sit somewhere else, but people are looking and they’re gonna find out at some point that he’s on the hockey team. How would it look if the captain shunned one of his teammates in public?

I take a deep breath and sit in the chair beside him.

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