Page 211 of The Off Limits Captain
For once, I am not twelve at his dining room table trying to earn the right answer.
“Take the job,” he says. “Come home. Write about real teams. Let the hockey player finish his season without dragging you down with him.”
An hour ago Gil told me the same thing in better faith. No captain. My father says it to keep me small. Gil said it to keep me employed. Two men who could not be more different, handing me the identical sentence.
The sentence does not care who says it. It only wants Ryan gone.
“Ryan is not dragging me anywhere.”
“No. You are following willingly, which is worse.”
The old bruise lights up. The one that says love makes a person foolish, help makes her weak, and family means debt.
I put a twenty on the table for water I barely touched.
“I am staying in Texas.”
“For him.”
“For me.” I stand. “I like who I am here. I like the work I am doing. I like not needing my last name to open a door. And yes, I love him. That is not the embarrassing part.”
His mouth tightens.
“The embarrassing part,” I say, “is how long I let you make me think being loved meant being managed.”
The bar goes too quiet.
Maybe that is only in my head.
For a second, before he rebuilds the face, something else moves under it. Not anger. Closer to the look Bill wore in a hospital hallway months ago, except my father never learned what to do with his.
“I don’t know how to help you without running it,” he says. Quiet. Almost to himself. “I never did.”
It is the most honest thing he has handed me in years, and I can see he hates that it got out.
I lean down and kiss his cheek, the same performance he gave me when I arrived.
“Have a safe flight.”
Outside, the air smells like rain that has not fallen.
I refused him. I meant all of it.
And none of it gave me back my story.
I can stay in Texas and love Ryan out loud and turn down every job he dangles, and the piece I came here to write is still dead in a drafts folder — killed by a frame I cannot punch, because there is nothing to punch. Just my last name. Just a man I will not stop loving. Just a source who took back the only true thing he had left.
I stand at the curb and do the math one more time, hoping it comes out different.
No captain.
It comes out the same.
Ryan
The clip is on every screen in the players’ lounge by the time I come off the ice.
Not the goal. Not the series. The owner’s box, third period, Peyton’s father two seats from Bob, and under it a banner asking whether the reporter who wrote me up is compromised.
