Page 100 of Studs Up
I really, really didn’t want to ask, but I had to.
“You haven’t told anyone, have you?”
She paused and turned to me, waving a hot spatula coated in wax at me.
“Do you think,” she said in a dangerous and level tone. When I was little, and she talked like that, I knew it was time to run. I had that instinct now, and I was a grown ass man almost a foot taller than she was. “I would ruin the best thing to ever happen to you?”
I opened my mouth and didn’t know what to say, so I closed it. He was the best thing that ever happened to me. She was right.
“Besides, he’s having a massive season,” she returned to her dipping. Hot wax to cold water. A candle stick started to form, layer by layer. “Wouldn’t want to ruin that either.”
“No,” I agreed quietly.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she prompted.
“He’s fine,” I said. She stopped again.
“Just fine?”
“He lives with a lot of fear.”
She nodded solemnly, like this was the news she expected but hoped she wouldn’t have to hear.
“Poor boy,” she muttered and continued dipping. “You know, I never saw his family at the games.”
“What do you mean?”
Deciding that the batch had the right amount of wax, she carefully hung them on a string for drying, picked up another set of wicks, and started the process over again.
“Your father and I went to every game we could,” she said. They were always there, rain, sleet, wind, it didn’t matter. If they could be there, I could always find them in the stadium. “You played him in Portland several times, never saw anyone come to find him after a game.”
There could be a lot of reasons. Some families worked several jobs to get their kids through academies and hired private Coaches to get the advantage. Or, the more devastating thought, they didn’t support him at all. He never spoke about them. I had brought Ma up several times and even shared pictures.
When he didn’t respond with stories or pictures of his own, I decided not to ask.
“Nolan,” she called, and I blinked at her.
“Lost in that head of yours again?”
“Yeah,” I said. “There’s something he keeps to himself and haunts him. Gives him nightmares. He hasn’t trusted me, and I wonder if it’s his family.”
“Well,” she sighed. “All I can tell you is keep doing what you’re doing. I don’t imagine he trusts easily. Poor baby.”
“Yeah.”
“I want to meet him,” she said.
“Let’s wait for the off-season.” She rolled her eyes as though that was an unreasonable request.
“That boy needs a family. I may be one, but that won’t stop me.” She pointed the wax-coated spatula at me again. I wanted them to meet, I did. But I could already tell he was going to be the favorite.
…
We flew to Cincinnati the next morning. I spent the entire flight reviewing all of the footage I had saved on my tablet all the way back to our first game. Ma was right. The cameras didn’t cover everything, but many players were captured meeting families at the end of games, and Holden could be found alone in the background.
Maybe that was it. Except I didn’t know how to go about asking if he didn’t want to talk about it, I needed to respect that. On the other hand, he was quietly suffering, and that drove a cold knife into my heart.
We landed, dropped our gear, and went for a team walk. It was a publicity thing, cameras, pictures, blah blah blah.
