Page 24 of The Call-Up
“Ryan,” Coach Chris says. “Perfect timing. Your linemate is worried about getting too cocky.”
“He could never.” I laugh. “He’s not Ander.”
Brandon lights up at this and the whole group laughs.
“I gotta tell you,” Coach Chris says with another clap to Brandon’s shoulder. “If he hadn’t spent every free moment he had with me at the Olympics talking about you, I never would have guessed you two were brothers. You’re very different young men.”
“You have no idea,” Ryan says. “I lived with him and Ander for a season. They couldn’t be more different if they tried.”
Michelle looks at me, curious. “So you two already knew each other?”
I nod my head yes. “Yeah, I billeted with the Bouchards when I played juniors.”
She hums then takes a sip of her drink. “That explains the chemistry between you two. It’s not as instant as it seems.”
“We never played together, though,” Brandon says. “I mean, unless you count street hockey in our driveway?—”
“Or all the days we’d lace up and hit one of the nearby ponds during the winter,” I say. “Honestly, we played together quite a bit. We’ve just never been teammates.”
“I miss those pond hockey days,” Coach Chris says. “Nothing better than a pickup game with the bare minimum of resources.”
“That’s what growing up in Green Bay was like every day,” Brandon says.
I take a sip of my beer and reminisce about my time with Brandon and his family. Looking back, everything about that time felt like discovering a magic I never knew existed. A warm, friendly, occasionally too loud house. Spontaneous neighborhood hockey games. Ander organizing team parties. Brandon tagging along everywhere we went.
At times, living with them felt like a Christmas movie, too good to be true. They were always doing things as a family and encouragingeveryone around to join in. Whether it was organizing outdoor games, or teaching local kids how to skate, or having bake sales to help fund a team that needed a leg-up. Everything they did was for the community. And not just the hockey community. It felt like all of Green Bay. It was overwhelming at times and unfortunately, I wasn’t in the head space to appreciate it properly. It felt like too much. I’d always thought people like the Bouchards were fictional.
My entire experience up until I met them was made up of people who didn’t care about anyone other than themselves, including their own child. My father always hated me. My mother, after years of fighting with him over me, resented me. My sisters, who I fall between, were used against me. And for why? All because my dad couldn’t stand the truth about me. A truth my mother kept hidden from me until I was shipped away.
Swallowing my drink, I rid myself of thoughts of them and try to stave away the guilt I’m feeling for not appreciating the Bouchards the way I should have. I wish I could go back to that year and experience it all over again under a new lens. I wish that at the time I was in a place to understand what the Bouchards were offering me that season. Belonging. A loving home. An existence completely different than the one I left when I went up there to play.
I look at Brandon and a rush of fondness for him and his family washes over me. Maybe I can have all that again. Maybe having Brandon around is exactly what I have needed not just on the ice, but off it as well.
“I bet Green Bay was a lot different from Dallas,” Michelle says to me, pulling me out of my spiral.
I turn on the charm as I face her. “Yeah,” I say. “To start, they had a winning football team.” The joke makes everyone laugh. “But for real, moving to Green Bay was an extreme culture shock to a Texas boy like me. Frozen lakes and ponds weren’t easy to come across in Texas.”
Brandon
Everyone else might have missed it but I saw the look of melancholy that flashed across Ryan’s beautifully handsome face before he settled back into his usual teasing, happy-go-lucky self.
“No,” Coach Chris says. “I wouldn’t expect Dallas to be a pond hockey mecca.”
“It’s still a popular sport down there,” Michelle says. “They have a flourishing youth hockey program.”
“They do,” Ryan agrees. “I was a part of it.”
“How did you end up playing juniors in Green Bay, then?” Michelle asks.
“Well…” Ryan says slowly. “That’s kind of a long story.”
Interesting. Now that I think about it, I never knew how or why Ryan ended up playing for the Hodags. In theory, it isn’t an unlikely scenario. It’s not as if the players my family have billeted over the years were locals. That would defeat the purpose. But most of them were at least from the surrounding states. Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois. Never some place as far away as Texas. He was the first, and now that I think about it, the only billet who wasn’t dropped off at our house by his parents. He arrived by plane. We picked him up as a family at the airport. My mother made us hold signs in the terminal with his name and number on them to welcome him to Green Bay.
“I don’t think any of us make it to the league without one of those,” Coach Chris says to him. It’s a very graceful way to end the conversation, but I still want to know more. So much more.
ELEVEN
GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN—EIGHT YEARS AGO
