Page 62 of Playing it Safe

Chapter 25

Cameron

I wake up in my childhood bedroom and stare at the wallpaper I memorized as I imagine my future.

The cracks are the same. The water stain in the corner is the same. The twin bed barely fits me — my feet hang off the end, just as they did in high school when I shot up past six feet. Nothing changes here. I used to find that comforting.

Puck is asleep on the pillow beside me. He's been surprisingly calm in this house — I think the constant noise and motion give him something to supervise. He's spent most of the visit parked on the kitchen table, watching the family move around. I believe he thinks they are the squirrels outside my house in Pittsburgh and is waiting for his chance to hunt them.

I check my phone. Briar texted me goodnight last night after her game.

I smile. But something nags at me. Briar was off during the game — I know her well enough by now to tell. She hesitated on a few reads and got caught flat-footed on a rush she normally eats alive. Boston won, and Briar barely looked at me afterward. She said she was tired, kissed me quickly, and disappeared into the team bus.

I told myself she needed rest. A night alone at the hotel, without me keeping her up until two in the morning, was probably exactly what her body needed before game 3 later tonight. Professional athletes don't perform well on three hours of sleep and a bruised cervix, no matter how many O’s came with it.

But the look on her face when she said good night was troubling, just as the lack of change in my childhood home is troubling.

Unsettled, I begin to wonder if this is what Odin means when he says I need to sit with my feelings when they emerge, instead of stuffing them down to deal with later. Later is now, I guess.

Instead of working on that, I get up and pad to the kitchen. Ma is already there, making coffee and listening to talk radio. Pop reads the Globe at the table, his reading glasses perched on his nose. The kitchen smells of bacon and toast. The scene is just like every morning for the past forty years, but it no longer settles me.

"Morning, sweetheart." Ma sets a mug in front of me. "How'd you sleep?"

“Eh. Feet hanging off the bed."

"I keep telling your father we should get someone to build a platform at the end… and put some cushions on it.”

"Why bother?" Pop says, not looking up from the paper. "He'll be home soon enough, and he can buy his own damn bed."

There it is. The casual assumption that lives in the foundation of this house: Cameron is returning home for good. I never questioned it. They need me here. They sacrificed to get me to the pros, with the understanding that I would return to the place I inked onto my body.

I drink my coffee and pull out my phone. The contractor sent photos last night — my roof is framed, the plasterwork has started, and the bathroom is gutted and ready for the new vanity. I scroll through images of my house coming back to life. The original trim is preserved. The hardwood is being refinished. The radiant heat pipes are laid under the subfloor.

"Hey, Ma. Want to see how the renovation is going?" I hold my phone toward her.

She glances at the screen. "Oh, that's nice, honey." She turns back to the stove. "Bacon?"

"Pop?"

He looks over his glasses, squints at the phone. "They matching the plaster?"

"Yeah. Full restoration."

"A lot of money for a rental." He goes back to his paper.

It's not a rental. It's my house, and … I like it. But I don't say this because, in my father's mind — in my mother's, in Patrick's, David's, Ian's, and Nicky's — my Pittsburgh house is a temporary address. A place where I sleep during hockey season. Not a home.

The home is here. They haven’t sent me property listings in a few months, but they will. They’re always looking for a house nearby, where I can keep an eye on my dad and straighten out messes. I realize that’s the return on their investment in me and my hockey career.

My penance.

I swipe through the mudroom plans. The helmet shelves. The stick racks. Two sets of hooks. I look at the screen and think about Briar's gear bag by the door of her townhouse, Puck sitting on the windowsill watching the street, and the sound of her key in the lock.

I close the photos.

"Cameron." Ma sits across from me, mug in hand, her apron still on. The radio plays softly behind her. "I want to talk to you about something."

"Okay."