Page 54 of Absolutely Not in Love
She smiles warmly as we finally sit down to eat. “This is a really beautiful meal, Felix. Who taught you to cook?”
“Would you believe it was the same grandmother who taught me to love classical music?”
“Sounds like she was a really big part of your life.”
“She was,” I answer before taking a bite of spaghetti. “She didn’t live with us, but she was close by, and she made a point to see me a few times a week. And she was always intentional about the time we spent together. Looking back, I think she had a pretty specific agenda. She recognized the privilege I was growing up with—more than she’d had growing up, even more than my dad had. I think she worried I would become spoiled or entitled, especially since my own parents didn’t seem all that worried about it. They were all about living a life of luxury. I think my grandmother wanted me to understand it might not always be that way. And she wanted me to know how to function if it wasn’t.”
Gracie scoops some salad onto her plate. “So she taught you to cook.”
“And to shovel snow,” I say with a chuckle as Gracie passes me the salad. “To make myself a sandwich whenever I was hungry even if there was a chef in the kitchen willing to make it for me. To do my own laundry.”
“Those are things you wouldn’t have done without her influence?” Gracie asks. “You lived in a house where people would have done your laundry and made you sandwiches?”
I wince. “Trust me. I like the life I’ve built here a lot more.”
She takes a bite of spaghetti, and her eyes close for the briefest moment. “Oh my word, that’s really delicious.”
Warmth spills from my midsection out to my limbs, which is silly. I made food, and she likes it. Why does that feel so good?
“When did you start playing hockey?” she asks after taking another bite.
I take a long sip of wine. “In middle school. My parents pushed me into it because they thought it would make me more social, help me get better at interacting with kids my age instead of hanging out with my grandma all the time.”
“Did you like it?” Gracie asks.
“Not at first. But then I figured out if I was the goalie, I didn’t have to talk to anybody.”
She chuckles. “How convenient. I bet your parents loved that.”
I grin. “That’s when the sport really clicked for me. I think my parents actually regretted signing me up at that point because suddenly, it was all I wanted to do.”
She huffs. “Yeah. I know a little something about how obsessive hockey players can be.”
I lift my eyebrows. “Tell me more.”
As Gracie starts to talk, I begin to understand a little more of where she’s coming from. She told me before that she grew up watching her brother play hockey, and that had something to do with her aversion to the sport. But at her house, hockey was a lot more than just the sport her brother happened toplay.
“So like, the entire room is dedicated to hockey?” I ask through a bite of spaghetti.
She nods. “One half is Carolina Hurricanes everything—red, black, and gray everywhere. The other half is dedicated to the Appies.”
“That sounds like a lot of bold colors in one room.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” she says. “There are also puck-shaped coasters, hockey sticks mounted in a giant X above the fireplace, framed team posters that they update every year, and a signed Cam Ward jersey mounted inside a special shadow box that Dad keeps locked.”
“And this is your parents’living room?”
“Not the garage or the man cave or the den. The actual living room where they welcome guests into their house. If you can believe it, my mom was the one who did all the decorating. Dad is the more loyal Appies fan, but I think Mom would literally crawl naked across a highway to see the Hurricanes play in person.”
“That’s some serious fandom.”
She’s quiet for a beat before she says, “It’s not that Ihatethe sport, you know? I used to really like watching it, especially when Josh was playing. But now, it just…I don’t know. It defined my existence for so long, I just wanted to get away from it all. To occupy a space where dinner conversation wasn’t always about shooting percentages or the draft lottery or even the quality of the hotdogs they serve at the Summit. I’m not kidding you, Felix. It is literally all they talk about.”
The hotdogs they serve at the Summit are particularly good, but that feels like a horrible thing to point outnow.I understand Gracie’s frustration. It might be different for me because hockey is my job, but even as much as I love it, I also love having a space where I don’t have to think about it. Where I can leave it behind and read books and listen to music and cook and relax and just be Felix, without being Felix Jamison, Appies goalie.
I can’t imagine living so completely immersed in the hockey world, especially if it kept Gracie from exploring her own interests.
“What did your parents think about your music?” I ask.
