Page 89 of Two for Roughing

“What kind of herbal?” Damir asked.

“Um.”

Damir did them both a favor by pretending not to notice that Kilian had been previously unaware herbal tea came in different kinds. He did give Kilian a pointed look, but Kilian could live with that.

“Ask if she wants peppermint or fennel,” Damir said.

“’Kay.” Kilian grabbed a soda from the fridge. They had one sugar-free lemon soda left and a couple of the spicy ginger ones Kilian liked. Damir must have restocked them for him.

He brought the drink to the living room, dutifully repeated the question to his mom, and yelled, “Fennel!” in the direction of the kitchen when she’d decided.

And then there was nothing to do but sit on the couch next to his parents.

Dad cracked the soda and drank three quarters in one go.

“So,” Mom said. “You’re gay.”

“Yup.” Kilian ran his fingers over the fabric of the couch, watching as the motion changed the pattern on the suede subtly. “Did you, um… The team and I put out a statement today. You might have been in the air—”

“We saw,” Dad interrupted.

“Right. Cool.”

The kettle in the kitchen boiled.

“I should go get your tea—”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Mom’s voice was unbearably gentle, and when Kilian made the mistake of looking at her, so were her eyes.

Kilian subsided into the couch. “I didn’t know for a long time.” He swallowed. “Or, I mean, I didn’t let myself know. And when I figured it out, I guess I didn’t want to be any more of a disappointment than I already am.”

God, he wished he could get through tough conversations without tearing up. It was embarrassing to be a grown man and still get all shaky and unable to express his thoughts. He looked down at his knees, trying to hide the emotion building hot behind his eyes, but his nose was clogging up, and he had to sniffle a little.

Mom’s hand on his shoulder was as much of a balm as an admission of his childishness. “Sweetheart, whatever gave you the impression you were a disappointment?”

Under her touch, Kilian shrugged awkwardly. “The girls have their whole lives figured out, don’t they? And I got traded, and…and…I wasn’t playing well, and I’m supposed to be good at hockey, but I’m not.”

“You’re in the NHL,” Dad said. “Of course you’re good at hockey. You could be playing five minutes a night and you’d be better than 99 percent of the population.”

Kilian shook his head. “No, my skating sucks, and I spent all year working on my backcheck, and—”

“Your skating sucks for an NHL player.” There was that new wrinkle in Dad’s brow. “I mean, comparing you to Tom Crowler every night wasn’t doing you any favors, but you’re fine. You have years to learn technique for later, when you can’t call up the speed you can now. You’re twenty. And your backcheck is doing great.”

“But…” Kilian stared at him, willing it to make sense. “When I was twelve, you stopped doing extra training with me to make my skating better.”

Dad took another healthy swig of his drink. “Yeah, you were a shoo-in for the WHL draft, and your mom didn’t want you to be one of those athletes who barely passes high school.” He shrugged as if this had not been a concern for him.

Blinking rapidly, Kilian tried to parse this information. “I did fine in school.”

“Yes, exactly,” Mom said. “Your teachers always told us you were great at independent study and interested in a lot of different things. I wanted you to nourish those interests too. You can’t just live for your job, and the WHL schedule was hard enough without adding more skating on top of it. None of the other kids were doing it, and you performed so well anyway. I wanted you to be a kid for a little longer.”

“I…” In all the time he’d been in professional hockey, starting from his time in the WHL all the way up to the last year and a half in the NHL, Kilian had never viewed his own youth as something to preserve. It was an embarrassment he tried time and time again to cast off and rise above.

“And what is that nonsense about your sisters anyway?” Mom continued, leaning back into the cushions and shaking her head. “If I had a dollar for every time one of them sat at the kitchen table crying in the middle of the night when they were in their early twenties, I’d have…well, at least seven dollars.”

Seven meant at least twice per sister. Kilian wondered who had been there three times, or if one of them had only been once.

His money was on Josie for once.