Page 68 of Out Of Time

“I don’t know what you remember about her,” Max said.

“Not much to be honest. Me and her were never a love match. She was from money, and I was young, dumb, and drunk most nights. You weren’t something we planned for.”

“A mistake,” Max said under his breath.

“That’s one way of putting it,” his father agreed.

Remi ran her hand over Max’s thigh before pressing it firmly against his knee that had begun to bounce anxiously, trying to calm his nerves.

“So, when you met my mom, was your vision already going?” Max asked.

His father took a long drink from his can of beer with a chuckle. “We’re diving right into the vision stuff then?” his dad teased.

“With all due respect, I am twenty-six years old and going blind. I think diving in this late in my life is the least you can do to help me understand what the fuck is about to happen to me.”

“Well, son,” the man started.

“I’m not your son,” Max bit back.

The man let out a gruff laugh. “Well, technically you are, but if you’d rather I didn’t call you that…”

“I’d rather you didn’t call me that,” Max said, cutting in. He wasn’t usually this aggressive, but something about this man in front of him, with his brown lab at his side, another lab at his feet, and two small dogs on a dog bed under the table; it made Max angry.

“Well then, to answer your question, when I met your mom, I was already noticing signs, but I chalked it up to being drunk, hungover, or hungry. I was young, dumb, and in denial.”

“When did you finally find out you had… it?” Max asked, avoiding calling a spade a spade.

“I found out I hadit,” his father said, also avoiding using the proper medical term, and Max couldn’t tell if he did so to mock him or out of respect for him. He didn’t know the man and didn’t expect to understand his humor after five minutes with him. “I found out when I was twenty-three. I couldn’t see at night by that point, and if it wasn’t up against my nose, it would be blurry. I thought I just needed glasses, but instead, it landed me with a walking cane.”

“How long?” Max asked.

“How long what? How long do you have left in the game? Until you can’t drive? How long do you have left to watch a movie, a sunset or to see your own two feet?”

Max’s hands curled into fists.

“How long until I’m blind?” Max said, because that was what this all came down to. He would lose everything, but the end game was losing his vision completely, and Max needed to know how long he had to enjoy what he had left.

“Mine went completely by thirty. You could be different. Not everyone loses it entirely, but genetics say you might.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Max asked.

“Sooner?” his father asked.

“At all. Why didn’t you tell my mom? I spent my whole fucking life training for this sport, this fucking game. Chasingthe Cup that one day I won’t be able to see. If you had told me sooner, maybe I wouldn’t be here. Maybe I wouldn’t want it so bad or love it so much.”

Max felt his eyes grow hot with tears. He didn’t want to cry, not in front of Remi, not in front of his father and his wife and their nineteen fucking stray dogs.

“If you had known sooner you never would have made it this far with the NHL, because you would have given up before you made it. Wouldn’t you rather have had a taste of it, than to never have experienced it at all?”

“No. Because no loss in this lifetime will ever be as great as this one. I’m going to suffer when I tell my team this is my final year. I’ll have to announce my retirement. I’ll eventually skate onto that ice knowing it will be my last time. Nothing will ever hurt worse than giving up that fucking net.”

“I think you’re wrong, Max.”

“Well, you don’t fucking know me, so you don’t get to think anything about me.”

His father cleared his throat and went on. “I think you're wrong in thinking the biggest loss of your life is losing this sport. The biggest loss of your life would have been to never have gotten to play it. You’re a goalie for the NHL, you know how many young men dream of that? Andyouachieved it. It’s not about how long you got to do it, but that you got to. I know I wasn’t a father to you. Your mom didn’t make it easy, and I’d be lying if I said I tried. The truth is, I passed on some shitty genetics, and for that, I’ll always be sorry, but I’ll never apologize for not telling you this sooner, because you would have started living in the future and forgot to live in the present.”

Max felt his stomach drop.

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