Page 21 of The Overtime Persuasive

Do you guys think they’re ready for my talent?

Jokes guys, I know I’m lucky.

Dad

Please. THEY are lucky. And yes they’re ready for your talent. It’s about time is all I can say. That’s my girl!

Honestly, you’re all just soaring so high these days.

I smile, thumb already moving to reply, when the next text lands before I can.

Dad

I’m so proud of my kids. Stepping up in Europe and being called to the Premier League

…

Now it’s your turn, Liam.

I read it once. Then again, slower, like the second pass might reveal it said something different than it did.

Five words, and not one of them is unkind nor mean. If anything, it’s the opposite. The text is warm, it’s easy, and it’s exactly the kind of thing a proud father says without thinking twice. He’s not disappointed in me or anything. In fact, I’m willing to bet he’s not even really thinking about me right now one bit; he’s thinking about Lucy, still riding whatever high he’s on from her news, and since Gavin landed the coaching job in Berlin—with a German club connected to the LA Kings, no less—my parents are basically living on Cloud Nine. Their kids are slowly pulling it together. I’d be proud and secretly pretty stoked too.

So, to me, that message shouldn’t mean as much as it does. I guess I just happened to be the next name that occurred to him.

When I think about it that way, it’s almost worse, somehow. If he meant it as pressure, I could be annoyed at him for it. I could roll my eyes and text back something sarcastic and then, maybe, we let it go.

I shake my head, listening to my internal thoughts. Funny how family can spin you out, isn’t it? One text. One. He means it the way you’d say “good luck” or “you’ve got this.” A throwaway line of encouragement from a man who was a captain himself, whose brothers are still out there being legends in their own right, who doesn’t know that “it’s your turn” isn’t encouragement to me right now. It’s a scoreboard I’ve been staring at since I was seventeen years old, watching Lucy chase her spot on this same kind of roster, watching my uncles get their names called for things I hadn’t even come close to yet.

He doesn’t know Coach announced the open alternate spots a few days ago. He doesn’t know there’s a guy named Tripp Mercer already treating the whole thing like he was brought here to accept just that role.

No, my dad doesn’t know any of that, because I haven’t told him, because some stubborn part of me still wants to be able to hand him the letter already sewn on before he ever has to ask about it.

Working on it.

That’s it. That is all I’ve got in me right now.

Dad

That’s my boy!

I set the phone down again, slower this time, and stand there in my kitchen that doesn’t feel quite so quiet anymore.

The quest for the A. To be seen. I’ve been telling myself that it’s a hockey thing, or a performance thing…something I can control this part of my life with enough reps and enough discipline and enough showing up steady when it counts. However, sitting here with my coffee going cold and my dad’s text still glowing on the screen, I know that’s not the whole truth.

In this family, stepping up has never just meant playing well. It means something specific. It’s public, not performative. It’s a letter on a jersey, a captain’s whistle, a name people say when they talk about who you’re supposed to watch and keep stats on. Dad had it. My uncles had it, one way or another, on the ice and off it. Gavin has it, and Lucy’s about to have her own version of it, on a big ol’ stage that she has earned every right to grace.

And somewhere out there, this morning, there’s a pretty blonde finding out the same news I did, probably grinning the same way I was two minutes ago, and she’s probably already typing something ridiculous to Lucy about how she’s going to brag about this for the rest of her life.

I think about texting her anyway. You know, just to see.

But instead, I finish my coffee, cold as it is, and go find something to do with my hands before I do something I can’t take back.

CHAPTER 6

EVA

It only takes me about half an hour and two cups of coffee—yes, made illegally on my machine, do not tell anyone—mixed with some high-octane George Michael in the background, but I have turned the back room of Side B into the perfect, and most professional, subscription-box assembly line.