The last thing Keane expected when he stopped by the rink for lunch was competition. He’d picked up a couple of spuckie sandwiches for himself and the kid, since the food they served in the rink’s cafeteria sucked ass. But when he arrived, he found Max already eating in the bleachers with another blast from the past. One Keane, recognized, even though he had replaced his school uniform and ten-dollar haircut with a silk bomber jacket covered in tigers, designer jeans, and a pompadour.
“Is that Band Nerd?” he asked, coming up to stare beside Con, who was standing at his usual post, glaring at them, instead of eating his own lunch.
“Yeah, I told him the kids weren’t allowed outside lunches.”
“Then why’s he in the stands having a fucking picnic with my kid?” Keane demanded. Never mind that he had been planning on doing the exact same thing.
“Because your kid ran over and thanked his uncle for bringing over some special Indian dish, because technically he couldn’t eat the food in the cafeteria. Then he told me he’d be eating it in the stands, so that other kids wouldn’t think he was getting special treatment. Then he went off with Vihaan. Like it was all decided. The kid’s a fucking bulldozer, just like you, Keane. And that uncle of his…”
Con smacked a fist into his palm, like he was dying to take this back to high school and beat the crap out of Band Nerd.
“I’ll take care of it,” Keane assured him.
“You better,” Con answered. “I don’t want that guy coming around here.”
Keane scrunched his forehead. “Careful there, or I’m going to have to send Bono in to give you another one of those why you can’t discriminate speeches. Plus, you know that one player, I’m trying to poach from the Trail Wolves AAA team has got two dads…”
“It’s not because he’s gay! I don’t give a fuck about that,” Con answered with a lot more vehemence than he was used to seeing from his friend.
Keane threw him a quizzical look, “Then what’s your problem with him?”
“Hey, Keane! Keane! Come meet my Uncle Vihaan,” Max called from the stands before Con could answer.
Which was how Keane found himself sharing lunch with the band nerd he used to bully and the kid who didn’t know he was really his.
“I have a project in the critical stages of testing and I cannot spare a weekend away this month. Please find a way to explain to Max why I will not be visiting next weekend.”
Lena sighed, but she couldn’t say she was surprised to receive her ex-husband’s text message just as she was about to get out of the car at her father’s house. Rohan barely got back to the coast to visit his own mother. She didn’t know what made her think he’d prioritize his only son—at least on paper.
Rohan had not only forgiven her after she’d confessed to being pregnant by another man, he had unexpectedly proposed, offering to raise her baby as his. For months, years even, she’d felt so lucky. It had been easy to forgive Rohan his faults and peccadilloes when he’d sacrificed his pride for her, just like her father.
But after Max turned eight, she’d figured out that there’d been a caveat to his seemingly selfless offer. He’d be a father to Max, but only if Max behaved exactly like the perfect child he wanted. When Max had refused to do that, Rohan became emotionally abusive toward their son, and had even resorted to physical violence once before Lena intervened and got between them. That was when she demanded a divorce.
Rohan had agreed, and had even offered to visit occasionally “for appearance sake.”
But he’d been “too busy” to see Max since the official divorce. And now he was backing out of coming to Boston, like he said he would.
She wouldn’t miss him, like at all. But Max still loved his father, and she knew this latest withholding of approval would hit him hard.
And that wasn’t the only hard conversation she’d have to have tonight.
She heaved herself out of the car she’d rented for the summer, and let herself into the house. Hopefully the biryani and keema aloo from her dad’s favorite restaurant would soften him up before she broke the news that one—she’d divorced his beloved son-in-law and two…had just moved her and Max in with three…his real father—a hockey player she’d gone out of her way to not let him know she was dating eleven years ago.
Yep…no doubt about it. She was definitely off her dad’s big plan.
But as it turned out, he wasn’t in the house when she arrived.
“Where are you?” she typed, sending off a quick text after calling out to him with no answer.
“At the store,” he answered.
She frowned because she’d spent her lunch hour overseeing the hand off of the rest of the store fixtures and driving the last of the boxes back to the house.
“I thought you were going to take a T home after you finished locking up. I brought us dinner.”
“Eat without me. I already ordered beer and pizza from next door to eat in front of the TV.”
Now, she really frowned. Ordering a pizza to eat between shifts in front of the TV in the little backroom he slept in had been his long-time routine. But he no longer had a store to get back to. Also, he never drank.
“Dad” she started to type.
Only to get interrupted by another text. “I do not have much longer with her. Please understand. She has been all I had since you moved to California.”
Strangely she did understand. In the end her father had been too old and worn down to hang on to the store after being offered such a great price for it. But that didn’t mean the transition into retirement didn’t come with some share of grief. He’d only been a med student for a couple of years. And an Uber driver for even shorter after his tendency to lecture his backseat passenger tanked his rating. But he’d been with his little convenience store for longer than most people stayed married.
“Okay, I’ll swing by at lunch tomorrow,” she answered, before re-pocketing the phone.
No, today wouldn’t be a good day to tell her father about Rohan, Max, and Keane, she decided before getting back in the car.
But that still left Max…
After a car ride spent worrying about how to tell her son, his supposed father wouldn’t be visiting this summer, she found Max laughing and yelling with his birth father in the downstairs hockey rink.
Apparently, Keane had done more than take and pick Max up from hockey camp like he informed her he would do this morning when he’d intercepted them just as they were about to leave out the door after breakfast. They were playing a game of keep away in the insanely large hockey rink at the bottom of Keane’s house.
Looking exactly like what they really were. A father and his son.
She made a feeble attempt not to compare him to Rohan, but how could she not?
One guy had shown up for Max and was actively encouraging his love of hockey. The other hadn’t bothered to come visit in six months, even though they lived in the same state.
100 fucks…
The proposition nudged at her. So hard, it felt like she was swatting at it when she came up to the section of the rink with no Plexiglas and called out, “Max, time to eat!” interrupting all the father-son fun. “I’ve got lamb biryani and keema aloo set up in the dining room upstairs.”
“Yes! My favorite!” Max said, skating over and sliding to a hockey stop right in front of her. “Can Keane eat with us?”
“Nah, that’s okay. Already had Indian food for lunch,” Keane pointed out.
“That was a curry,” Max pointed out right back. “Dad says that’s like saying no to steak because you already had hamburgers for lunch.”
The mention of the dad who wasn’t really Max’s father only made the mood tenser, and though Max couldn’t see it, Keane was glaring at her over his head.
“I ordered it really spicy anyway,” Lena said. “Keane probably couldn’t handle it.”
That was totally not meant to be an innuendo, but she heard it when Keane’s eyes flared at her words.
100 fucks…the proposition once again whispered through her head.
Luckily, Max was there to draw Keane out of their stare off. “If I wake up early can I practice with you again?” he asked, turning back around to face his hero.
Keane’s face broke into a pride-filled smile that belied his casual tone as he said, “Sure, kid. See you at five.”
“Yes!” Max said again, this time pumping his fist. “Just need to get my skates off, Mom, then I’ll be right up.”
“Thanks, honey,” Lena answered, grateful that he was at least wearing jeans and wouldn’t have to change beyond throwing on a pair of shoes. “I’ll set up everything in the dining room.”
But just as she was making her getaway, Keane said, “Hey, Lena.”
She turned back around to look at Keane. Unlike Max, he wasn’t wearing a helmet, she noticed with an internal cluck. Or a shirt. Just a pair of loose workout shorts and the same all-black custom prosthetic as the “What’s Stopping You?” billboard ad.
Who does that? she wondered. Who in the world would be arrogant enough to skate without any protective gear whatsoever on ice after losing his leg in a car accident?
Keane, that was who. She just wished she could keep her eyes from drifting over all that rippling muscle and the face which was apparently hell-bent on proving the theory that men really do get better with age.
“Tonight.”
The single word cut off her ogle, confusion replacing her compulsion to stare. “What?” she asked.
“That thing we talked about yesterday. I need your answer tonight.”
Oh, that. She replied with a stiff nod, as if those words hadn’t been ringing through her head all day.
100 fucks…
The words continued to echo in her head. They chased her up the stairs, badgering her and asking the obvious.
If she hated Keane so much, if she wanted him to have nothing to do with her or her son. Why hadn’t she just said no?