Page 38 of Hard Check
“And the apartment? You said you were going to send me pictures.”
“I’ll send pictures.”
“Because your father and I were talking, and if you need furniture?—”
“I have furniture.” He opened the fridge and pulled out the chicken thighs he’d bought that morning, setting them on the counter next to the cutting board he’d picked up at Second Period Thrift two weeks ago. “The guys helped me move in, remember? I told you.”
“You told me strangers brought you a used couch.”
“They’re not strangers. They’re my teammates.”
“That couch could have anything in it, Leo. Bedbugs, mold?—”
“It doesn’t have bedbugs.”
“How would you know? You can’t see bedbugs. That’s what makes them dangerous.”
Leo closed his eyes and leaned against the counter. He loved his mother. He did. And she loved him in the only way she knew how, which was to manage every aspect of his life until there was nothing left for him to handle himself. She hated that he was in Wisconsin. She hated that she couldn’t fix it.
And the worst part was that six months ago, he would have let her try. He would have waited for her to bully Phil into getting him a spot on a higher profile team, the way he’d been doing since he was sixteen and she’d called his junior coach to argue about his time on the ice. Somewhere between the trade and tonight, he’d stopped wanting to be rescued.
“The couch is fine. The apartment’s fine. I have to go. I’m cooking.”
“Cooking what?”
“Chicken.”
“For who?”
“A friend.”
“Which friend?”
“Mom. I have to go.”
She let him off with the usual litany of demands:call Phil, send pictures, eat something green.Leo stood in his kitchen with thedead screen in his palm and the tiredness settling behind his eyes.
He set the phone face-down on the counter and got to work.
Dawson showedup at six with a six-pack of beer. Leo buzzed him in and left the door cracked while he went back to the stove. The chicken was in the oven and the rice was simmering. He was slicing a mango for the salsa when he heard the stairs creak and then the soft knock of knuckles on wood.
“It’s open.”
Dawson pushed through the door and stopped. He looked down at his boots, then at Leo’s floor. “Should I?—”
“Yeah, by the door’s fine.”
Dawson toed them off and lined them against the wall. Leo watched him from the kitchen, caught the way Dawson’s eyes found him first before they moved to anything else in the room. Then the fridge, the magnets on it—the Stags logo, a bottle opener shaped like Wisconsin that Jonesy had left, the home game schedule card. Dawson’s gaze held on the schedule card for a second before coming back to Leo.
“Smells good.”
“It’ll taste good, too. This is one of my grandma’s recipes.” Leo pointed the knife at him. “Sit down. Don’t touch anything.”
“Wasn’t going to.” Dawson pulled out a chair and sat at the kitchen table, four feet from where Leo was working.
“What are you making?” Dawson’s voice was easy. Unhurried. He leaned back in the chair and stretched his legs out, socked feet crossing at the ankle. His eyes drifted to the bookshelf against the wall, and Leo saw him clock the detective series he’d lent Leo, lined up next to a few paperbacks from Second Period.
“Mojo chicken. Rice. Mango salsa.” Leo crushed a garlic clove with the flat of the knife and swept it off the cutting board. “Recipe I learned years ago. The rice is wrong, but I work with what I’ve got.”
