Another Goal, page 5
By the time I made it up to my place, I’d worked myself into a lather about the whole situation. It was only then that I realized I’d left my tacos in the truck. My stomach rumbled, but I had more pressing matters.
I knew nothing about kids, especially girls. I’d never planned to have a child of my own. Didn’t want one. Not after my childhood. My parents weren’t abusive or evil; they were eccentric. Or that’s what Alyssa called them, but I’d never understood them at all. They rolled along together simply because it caused less friction, but they never married and never seemed particularly interested in each other’s lives, let alone mine. They rarely attended my hockey games, nor did they make my high school graduation, my draft day, or any day of importance in my life. It hadn’t mattered to them because, as they’d told me for as long as I could remember, “We’re people, too, Luka. And we have our own lives.”
And their own lives rarely meshed with mine. We never sat down to family dinner at my house. I could probably count the number of times on one hand. My mom got me into hockey because the kids on the street played, and it meant she only had to drive the carpool once a week.
If I wanted a home-cooked meal and a caring hug, I headed down the street to Mike’s house and hoped his loud, swearing mom didn’t mind adding another place at the table. She hadn’t, and over time I became one of Alyssa Romeo’s favorite kids. She’d collected all of us from the neighborhood who hadn’t had enough supervision.
I loved her more than I ever could my mother, which is why I dug my phone from my pocket as I collapsed onto my long, plush sofa and called her.
“Ma, I got a problem,” I announced when she answered.
“You and seven other kids. Nice to hear from you, Luka. You played like shit last week. Is that what this is about? We talked about this. Cut faster—”
I stared up at the ceiling. “I played great this entire series.”
“Better, yeah.”
I hesitated. “I’m going to be a father.”
For the first time I could recall, Alyssa Romeo was speechless. I didn’t need to see her to know that in the silence, she inhaled from the cigarette that clung stubbornly to her lip and blew out a long exhale of smoke. Alyssa always had a cigarette, but rarely inhaled. It was an extension of her, like her cursing.
“You like this girl?” she asked. “I mean, really like her more than to—”
“Ma!”
“You screwed her, Luka. You should be able to talk about that. If not, maybe you aren’t as ready for the screwing as you’d like to think.”
I swallowed. Ma had a way of cutting through the bullshit. “I… Yeah, I like her. More than like her, really.”
“What’s her name?”
“Millie.”
“That’s a nice name. Old-fashioned and sweet. Is she a sweet girl? I wanna meet her. See if she’s good enough for you.”
I grimaced as a new emotion emerged. Longing. I hadn’t felt that in…forever. I’d learned early that my parents didn’t give a shit, and I made sure I didn’t care enough about anything or anyone to be hurt by missing out.
“I’d like you to, but that’s part of the problem,” I said.
“She’s a hooker?” Alyssa grunted. “Well, you’re not the first—”
“No! Ma, she’s a chemical engineer.”
Alyssa hummed. I could see her in my mind’s eye: lips pursed, eyes narrowed, dark, graying hair teased up in that weird puff look many older women seemed to like. She was wearing a pair of skinny jeans that sagged off her slight frame and one of my sweaters or Mikey’s baseball jersey.
Her son, Mike, and I had gone on to two different big leagues. Alyssa wanted everyone to know how proud she was, so she always wore one of our jerseys. Old-fashioned sneakers with those tiny white socks with a ball on the back likely completed her outfit.
“Well, now, that job sounds fancy,” she said. “Tell me more about Millie, the sweet chemical engineer.”
So I did. I relaxed on the couch as I talked. “She’s so smart, Ma. And when she talks, her whole face lights up. Her eyes—she has these thick glasses she wears sometimes, and I couldn’t see them the first night. But when she wears her contacts, her eyes are like jade, Ma. They’re pretty.”
Alyssa chuckled. “Smart and pretty. Got it. How did you meet?”
I described how Millie and I met, then flirted via texts and phone calls for a couple of weeks before we spent the night together…and how she left without saying goodbye.
“Ah,” Alyssa said.
“What does that mean?”
She let out a dry rumble that turned into a long, vicious bout of coughing. I’d begged her to quit smoking, but she refused. I’d begged her to go to the doctor, but she asked why—she knew she had lung cancer, and there wasn’t anything they could do to stop it.
“Mike and I have the money to get you treatment—”
“S-st-stop.”
I shut my mouth because this, too, was an old argument. Instead, I waited for Alyssa to get her breathing back under control.
“It…means…Millie…treated you…like you…treat them.”
Confusion settled over me, and my brows tugged low. “Them? Who?”
“The women you screw, Luka. Keep up!”
My ears and cheeks burned, and my mouth dropped open. I wasn’t that bad. I gave the women I slept with a delightful night. We had fun. We both orgasmed—multiple times for her, though I’d never turned down a thank-you blowie—and then I ghosted. I never gave those women my number. I never looked them up again.
“Shit, Ma! Shit! What if there are other little Lukas running around and I—”
“Calm your titties. There aren’t.”
“How do you know—”
“I know stuff, and I especially wanted to know about pregnancies that could be used against you.”
Of course she did. Ma was as no-nonsense as they came. She wouldn’t allow a puck bunny to derail my career.
“Now, focus on Millie. She dumped you, moved to Sri Lanka for work, and called to let you know she’s pregnant but expects nothing from you.”
“That pisses me off,” I admitted.
“Which bit?”
“The dumping, moving, and expecting nothing from me,” I mumbled.
“Why?” Alyssa asked. “Based on your past behavior—which I’m betting she knows about since it’s in all the tabloids—I would think you’d be happy not to have to deal with a child. The responsibility is awesome.”
I rubbed my hand up and down my neck. Jitters had replaced the earlier noodliness in my body. I needed to run or skate until I collapsed. I hopped off my couch and paced; my sneakers made a soft squeak on the hardwood. “I know that.”
“And you know that she knows about your reputation because everyone knows about it, Luka. You weren’t discreet.”
“I’m twenty-three!”
“And it’s already biting you in the ass, hard, which should tell you about all that partying.” She harrumphed.
“I…” What to say. How to explain. “Sex is simple for a professional athlete.”
“I know,” she groused.
“But it’s also meaningless.” I rubbed my chest as that horrible longing ripped through it again.
“Why’s that?” Alyssa asked.
“Because…” How to explain something I didn’t understand myself? “I want what you and Bob had, Ma.”
“Aaaaaaaaah.” She drew out the word. “I wondered.”
I frowned. “About what?”
“You were always so eager for hugs, for praise. It made you an incredible athlete, but you’ve been using those women to give you connection—a sense of belonging with and to someone else. Like I had with my Bob.”
“I… Yeah.”
“It’s okay to be affectionate, Luka. It’s okay to want a deep, lasting relationship—to know that other person’s gonna love you, be there for you, no matter what.”
I shook my head because I didn’t know how to get those things, but based on how achy my chest was and the sting in my eyes and nose, that was exactly what I wanted. I quit walking so fast, I tripped over my own feet. “With Millie, there was connection. We…clicked,” I choked out. “But I don’t know what to do.”
Damn, these emotions were big. Fucking scary—like my mind was battering my body from the inside, and I didn’t know what to do with these strange and terrible feelings.
“What do you know, kiddo?”
“That I like her.”
“Yeah.”
“That this is my kid.”
“Yeah.”
“Jeez, Ma, fine! I want to be involved. With the pregnancy and the parenting. I want this baby.”
“And Millie?”
I chewed my lower lip, considering. Alyssa waited, her wheezing less pronounced, which helped me calm down enough to think.
“Yeah, and Millie. I want them both in my life, in my house.”
“Well, now, that’s something!” Alyssa’s cackling turned back into that deep, hacking cough. “All right, bucko, let’s come up with a plan.”
“I can’t do anything—”
“Until the end of the season. I know. But you can put pieces in place now. First thing we need to do is understand where she’s coming from.”
Chapter 4
Luka
It took me nearly six weeks, but I was finally able to put the first step of my plan in place.
“I can’t believe you flew all this way for an appointment,” Millie said, awestruck. I wasn’t sure she’d blinked since she met me at the doors to the terminal.
I shook my head, trying to clear the fogginess of traveling for more than twenty-four hours. “I told you, this is important. Coach agreed.”
“You’re missing the game against the Avalanche tonight—”
“Just one game, which Coach approved because, depending how deep we go in the playoffs, I might not pull this off again for months.” I shot her a hopeful look. “Unless you want to come to Houston.”
Millie shook her head once, hard. “No.”
I sighed, but I tried not to get discouraged. I was much, much further along than a few weeks ago when Millie wouldn’t even take my calls. Today, this trip, was about building the foundation for more. We wobble and fall before we skate the full rink.
We talked every day now about the baby, her job, my job, and Colombo, which we were driving through at the moment. Sri Lanka’s capital was larger than I’d expected. It was just as muggy as Houston, and it smelled both exotic and familiar—of exhaust and local spices and sweat. The high rises clustered all the way to the water’s edge, reminding me a bit of Miami, but the roads, crowded with cars and mopeds and bicycles, were distinctly overcrowded and un-American in their traffic patterns. And then there was the way the pedestrians dressed and the signs over the shops and for the streets. I was in a strange new world, in so many ways.
The driver braked hard at the last moment, bringing us within millimeters of the bumper in front of us, much like a cabbie in Manhattan.
“You’re taking a flight out again this evening?” Millie asked.
“Well, like you said, I’m already missing a game…”
Coach had seemed pleased to shift my place with the second-line left winger, Reece Hopper. That guy had been itching to show what he could do. I might well lose my starting spot after this, something Coach and I had talked through after my call with Millie in Cormac’s office.
Coach had congratulated me on my impending fatherhood and helped me find flights. As I’d walked out, Gunnar Evaldson, the owner, had walked in—the second time we’d traded places in Coach’s office that way. There was something afoot with management, and it made me nervous. Something was going on in the organization, and I had enough ego to wonder if it had to do with me. No doubt it had been Coach’s plan to light a fire under my ass when he’d mentioned trades.
My agent claimed I was safe until the end of the season because the trade deadline had passed and I wouldn’t be allowed to suit up for another team’s playoff run, just as the new Wildcatter’s player taking my place wouldn’t be able to play.
But that was a worry for another day. Right now, I wanted to enjoy my sixteen hours with Millie before I headed back to Houston.
“So, I thought you’d like to take a shower and change before we walk over to my appointment,” Millie said, tucking her hair behind her ear.
I smiled at her thoughtfulness. “Sounds great.”
The driver opened the car door, and I helped her out, noting the slight curve to her belly. If I hadn’t known she was four-and-a-half months pregnant, I never would have guessed. I kept my hand clasped around her smaller one as I grabbed my backpack.
“Lead the way,” I said, still holding her hand.
She brought me in through an opulent lobby, dripping with chandeliers and polished marble floors. We took the elevator up to a seventh-floor condominium, which had a view of the ocean three blocks away. The water was a rich blue farther from the shoreline and a soft turquoise where it kissed the beige sand.
Her place was tidy. The darker wood floors popped against the white walls. The furniture was all new and had that soulless corporate ambiance that told me it had come standard with the place. Millie had added a couple of framed photos, one of her and Ida Jane and—I smiled, pleasure rippling through me—a candid shot of her and me together from the night we’d met. Well, that was a very good sign. Millie was infatuated with me, just as I was with her. She also had a large print of the periodic table above her couch…and that was the extent of her personalization.
Even my place, with its standard male furnishings, looked more lived in.
“You’ll have to use my bathroom,” she told me. “The powder room doesn’t have a shower.”
I nodded. “Think I can get some coffee?”
“I asked the concierge to send up a full breakfast,” Millie said.
Once I was showered and caffeinated, Millie and I walked to her doctor’s office. Again I was assaulted by a jumble of sounds and smells that my mind struggled to assimilate. Columbo was fascinating—so different from any place I’d been before. When a man on a motorbike sped too close to her, I tucked Millie against my side, moving her over next to the buildings. Horns honked and the ocean breeze drifted through the acres of concrete, easing the worst of the mugginess. She glanced up at me as I looked down at her, the sunlight peeking through the tall buildings and limning her silhouette, making her appear Madonna-like. I squeezed her fingers, and she leaned into me.
“Had any food cravings?” I asked.
She laughed, and then I listened to her talk about her current fascination with fish sauce as I took in the bursts of color and harsh blares of horns and the soft sea breeze tinted with decaying seaweed and fish.
It was different from the oppressiveness of a Houston spring day, yet not. I wondered if Millie had chosen the location because of its similar climate. Something told me she had, though she’d shown no interest in returning to her hometown. As close as she and Ida Jane seemed to be, I couldn’t understand Millie’s desire to be so far away.
We entered the cool of the building, and once Millie gave her name, they ushered us into an exam room.
“They seem very efficient,” I offered.
“They are. Much more on top of their schedule than my gynecologist back in Houston ever was.”
I wanted to ask her again about returning, but I’d sensed her hesitation before naming the city and felt the slight tremor in her hand when she did. I remembered, clearly, Ida Jane’s comment about Millie being hurt.
A knock sounded, and the doctor poked her graying head into the room. She smiled at the both of us and began the exam. Millie beckoned me over right before the doctor set a device to her belly.
A strange, fast whop-whop-whop filled the air.
“That’s her heartbeat,” Millie whispered.
My gaze sought hers and held.
“Sounds great,” the doctor said.
Two important truths hit me then: there was an actual baby inside of Millie, and Millie expected that tiny life to be a girl.
I blinked back tears. I wanted to blame it on travel exhaustion, but I knew my reaction stemmed from my stunted childhood. I never wanted our baby to go days, let alone weeks, without seeing my face, feeling my hugs, and hearing me tell her I loved her.
I had no clue how I was going to swing day-to-day involvement if Millie insisted on living in Colombo, but I’d have to figure something out.
Soon.
Maybe I didn’t need to play hockey.
The idea choked me, and fear settled in my guts.
What else would I do?
What else could I do?
There wasn’t a professional hockey league in Sri Lanka. And it wasn’t like I could just go down to the local ice rink and get a job as the ice manager. I didn’t even know what that job entailed. I just knew how to skate and score goals.
That was a very limited skill set. One that made me millions of dollars, but still, that was only into my thirties if I was lucky.
“So today’s the big day,” the doctor said with a smile. “I’m assuming Dad’s here to find out your baby’s gender.”
“Yes,” I crowed. “I’m excited.”
“He traveled from Houston to be here for this,” Millie added. She smiled up at me from the exam table.
The doctor whistled. “That’s a long flight. Well, let’s find out so you can celebrate.”
And start planning. I kept that thought to myself.
The doctor scooted back, and a lab technician rolled in a sonogram machine. She took about a million measurements, all of which told her whether our baby was growing well. Then, she said the four words that caused my emotions to squeeze my throat closed, even though I’d expected them: “Congratulations! It’s a girl!”
Millie met my gaze, her eyes shining with emotion. Before I could think better of it or stop myself, I kissed her. She made a startled sound even as her lips clung to mine.
“Thank you,” I murmured. “I can’t wait to introduce our daughter to the guys. They’ll love her.”
