Page 41 of Passing the Red Line
While I threw her a wink, she rolls her eyes at me. “Whatever. Answer the question. Did your mom only say yes because you annoyed the hell out of her?”
I let out a small laugh. “You would think, but no. At least that’s what she told me when I asked her years ago. She said that she let me play because she saw how excited I was talking about it. She wanted to see if that excitement was real or if it was all talk. So, she and my dad looked into the few youth hockey leagues that this part of the state has to offer. They found that the Sharks have a youth program where they offered skating classes and hockey lessons. They signed me up and in no time, I was a Junior Shark.
“I stayed in the program all through high school, won a NorCal Championship, and when I was eighteen decided to try my hand at the draft. Like you said the league is dominated with white players, no way was anyone going to draft the brown kid from an agricultural town that hasn’t been living and breathing hockey since he was in diapers. But I took the chance and to my surprise, the team that built me into the player I was decided I was good enough to take a chance on. I was surprised as fuck, but I was thankful. My parents were too.”
Elaina shifts until she is sitting up and her legs are no longer on my lap. She surprises me though, I thought that she was going to just sit next to me, but instead she brings her body closer to mine until there is no space between us and leans her head against my shoulder.
“I looked you up once. I was watching TV and flipping through the channels when I came across a Knights game. You guys were playing the Sharks a few weeks after you got traded and the commentators were talking about how they wished you had stayed with the Sharks. They wanted their hometown player back.”
I lean my head to rest on top of hers. “Yeah, my first year in Chicago, I wanted to go back too. I loved being a Shark. They’d been my favorite team since I was six. I thought I was going to wear Pacific Teal all of my career. I was so damn close in asking your dad and our GM at the time to trade me.”
“Why didn’t you?” she asks, her voice filled with curiosity.
“Because I realized that I wasn’t made to be the hometown player that everyone wanted me to be. With the Sharks, I would have always had the title. Everyone was going to know my name, would want a piece of me. I would always have to be the perfect player that I knew for a fact that I wasn’t. I didn’t want that and it took me a whole season with the Knights to realize just good I had it there. I missed my old team, sure, but I was good where I was. The Knights never have wanted me to be anything but who I am, grumpy and all and they’ve stood behind me when shit got tough.”
“So, you’re planning to be a Dark Knight for life?” Eliana asks, nudging my arm with my head to be able to lift it and place it around her shoulders. I don’t hesitate in bringing her body closer to mine.
“If I have a choice, yeah that’s the goal, but who knows. I might end up in Arizona or something.”
“Ew. Arizona is way too hot. At least go to Seattle or New York.” I’m not looking at her, but I know that she is wrinkling her nose, like she does when she doesn’t like something.
“Why? Are you planning on visiting?”
“Please. You’ll be an afterthought if you ever leave the Knights.” She says through a laugh.
Why is it that I wanted her to say the opposite?
Fuck, am I getting attached this woman?
Maybe I am.
“What about you? Why photography?” I ask, trying to shift my thoughts in a different direction than me possibly developing feelings for this woman. We’re sleeping together, that's it.
Then why is she in your arms right now as if you two were a couple?
Because it’s cold outside.
Eliana is silent for a minute or two. For a second, I start thinking that she didn’t hear me, when she finally says something.
“I wasn't as young as you when I discovered my love for taking pictures,” she starts off, cuddling deeper into my side. “It was actually something I discovered when I was eighteen. The summer I graduated high school I went to Europe with a group. Before I left, mom gave me a camera and she told me look at this trip through the lens of a camera and not through the lens of your phone. I had brushed it off as something she probably saw on an inspirational sign or something, but I still grabbed the camera, and I took it with me.
“As we went through France and Spain, I started taking more and more pictures with the camera than with my phone. It was when we were in Greece, I think, when I realized that I loved looking at things through the lens of a camera. I fell in love with taking pictures on that trip and I couldn’t wait to get home and see how they would develop. After that I started taking photography classes wherever I could and saved up for almost a year for a professional grade camera. I was going through a tough time with a few personal things, so taking pictures started to become my escape. I even started planning a trip around the world with my mom to thank her for giving me the chance to explore this new passion, but of course things didn’t work out.”
“Why not?” I find myself asking, enthralled in her life story.
“My mom died before we were able to go anywhere. Lupus.”
Fuck.
I knew that Coach Anderson was married before and that he was now divorce, but I never thought about what had happened to his wife. Eliana had mentioned that her mom wasn’t here anymore a time or two before, but I never thought to ask. It might have been years ago, but I can hear it in her voice that losing her mom still affects her.
“So you never went on that trip?” I ask, feeling my own voice wanting to crack.
“No, I did. I just had to lose my mind a bit before I was able to convince myself to go. To be able to pick up the camera again. I ended up going about a year after she died. I took that trip for her. At first it was about capturing everything that I wanted her to see. At the beginning the trip was for her but it ended up being for me. If I hadn’t gone on that trip, I never would have picked up a camera again. But I did, for my mom. At eighteen, I never thought that I would love photography so much and now I can’t live without it. I may have lost my mom, but she gave me something that gives me so much back in return.”
Not being able to resist myself, I turn so that I can place a finger under Eliana’s chin and make her look up at me.
There are tears in her eyes that she is trying so hard not to let fall.
