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“Mi pobre esposa,” Bella coos. “She’s so delicate.”
“Not everyone can be blessed with an eternal tan,” she grumbles.
Bella gives an exaggerated sigh. “It is a gift.”
I can practically hear Mei rolling her eyes. “Anyway,” she says, addressing me again. “How long are you going to be stuck on the tarmac?”
“Pilot says another half hour, at least. Runway has ice they need to clear.”
“Wow, I bet you won’t miss that.”
“I don’t know. The snow has kind of grown on me.”
“But being back in Boston will be great, right? We barely got to see each other at the wedding with everything going on. You’ll have to come by the new house for dinner when we get back.”
“Sure, that will be great,” I tell her honestly.
“Don’t worry too much about those people online,” she tells me. “They’re just bored and need something to gossip about. It will die down.”
“We thought that last time, and I ended up in fucking Calgary.”
“You didn’t have to take the trade.”
I don’t argue with her, even knowing that isn’t entirely true. I grit my teeth, reciting the same approved reasonings I’ve given anytime my trade is mentioned.
“Every time the Druids played a game, the press would rather talk about my damned love life than how many goals we scored. It wasn’t fair to the team.”
“Your parents own the team! They could have done more. They should have.”
Again, I keep my mouth shut. It’s true; my grandfather owned the team first, passing ownership to my mother when he died, and subsequently to my father. It’s a legacy that has always hung heavy over my head growing up—being raised by a hockey great and the owner of an NHL team, meaning that every step I’ve taken in pursuit of the sport has been monitored, watched. Meaning that I had all the more eyes on me to fuck everything up.
“They did all they could,” I mutter, not knowing what else to say.
“But six years? Why didn’t you come back sooner?”
Another question I don’t know how to answer. I know that I could tell Mei everything, that she’d never repeat it to another soul—but I can’t bring myself to. It doesn’t feel like her burden to bear. Not after everything she’s already shouldering. Besides, deep down, I think a big part of the reason as to why I didn’t fight harder to come home for so long was what I knew was waiting for me. What secrets I left behind that were easier kept from a distance.
“I don’t know,” I answer her, not entirely lying. “But I’m thirty-three. I’ve only got a couple years left in me. I don’t want to retire in Calgary. I want to finish back home. So I guess my reasons aren’t important now.”
“Of course your reasons are important,” she says softly.
There are seconds of silence that stretch between us, and I know exactly what’s going through her head before she gives it a voice.
“You could just tell the truth, you know,” she tries gently.
I clench my jaw. “We both know that’s not an option.”
“It is though,” she presses. “You don’t owe it to anyone to bear everything on your own. What if you spoke to Abigail, and—”
“Mei,” I interrupt, a little more harshly than I intended.
Another beat of silence before, “I’m sorry.”
I let my head thunk back against the headrest, closing my eyes.
“Don’t be,” I sigh. “It’s not on you.”
“It’s not on you either,” she urges. “This is your life. Not mine, not your father’s, and certainly not Ab—”
