Page 99 of Here We Go Again

I won’t tell her. Not until I know she’s ready to hear it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think it every time she walks into the room.

“Okay, mushrooms are done, and the salad is fully prepped,” Becca says as she steps onto the patio. She slips an arm around my waist and tucks herself into my side, looking down at the ribeyes sizzling on the grill. “They smell amazing.”

“They’re just about finished,” I say. “Another thirty seconds or so.”

“When did you become such a grill master?”

“Miles taught me, actually,” I say.

“Your team captain?”

“Yeah. He loves to grill. The man can talk for hours about the science of temperature control. If you’re ever invited to eat ribs at his house, definitely say yes.”

“I think what you mean to say is the next time you’re invited to eat ribs at his house, you’ll definitely take me with you.”

I look down at her and smile, then press a quick kiss to her lips. “It’s a date,” I say. I tilt my head to the prep station next to the grill. “Grab that platter?”

She reaches for it, holding it with both hands while I load it up with our steaks.

It was my idea to grill ribeyes for dinner, and I offered to do the whole meal myself. But Becca insisted she help, so we spent the afternoon chopping vegetables and slicing mushrooms and making a lemon pound cake using her grandmother’s recipe.

The whole afternoon has been very domestic, triggering a new kind of craving, sharp and distinct, for a life that isn’t just about hockey.

That feeling isn’t new—it’s a lot of why I started therapy. I realized I needed to get myself figured out so I could have the more I clearly felt like I was lacking.

But spending time with Becca this week has given me a small taste of exactly what that life could be like. And I can’t get enough.

I follow Becca into the kitchen and set the platter onto the table. Mom is already pouring the wine, and Cassie has helped herself to a thick slice of bread from the farmer’s market, slathered with Irish butter Becca swears makes everything taste better. Becca brings the salad over, and then we’re ready to eat.

Conversation is easy as we eat, but that’s no surprise. It has been all week. For all the potential awkwardness of spending time with Becca and both our moms, especially when they clearly had an agenda, it’s honestly been great. I’m sure it helps that what they wanted—for Becca and me to give each other another chance—they got.

Across the table, Mom tells a story about Carter and me, something about a hockey game when we were nine or ten, playing with kids two and three years older than we were.

“Okay, but you had to have had some idea,” Becca says to Mom. “When did you start looking at them and thinking they might make it to the NHL?”

Mom’s expression turns thoughtful. “I think by the time they were ten or eleven, we had an inkling. Scouts were already looking at them, even at that age. Of course, fewer make it than don’t, so we tried not to think about it too much. But every time I watched them play, I would find myself looking around at other parents, wondering if they saw what I saw. Did I think my boys looked so much better because they were mine, or were they really that good?”

Becca turns to me, reaching under the table to drop a hand on my knee. “What about you? When did you realize you were good enough to go all the way?”

“I was thirteen,” I say, and Becca’s eyebrows lift. Like she wasn’t expecting such a specific answer. But I remember the moment vividly. I find her hand under the table and thread our fingers together. “We’d just played a game and lost really badly,” I say. “Something like eight to one. Back in the locker room, the other guys were moaning and complaining about the refs and the other team and how unfair it all was. Like we’d lost the game for every reason except that the other team was better. Which felt so dumb to me. So I looked at Carter and said, ‘They played better defense than we did.’ He nodded, because it was true, then we spent the next hour breaking down everything that made the other team’s defense better than ours. That’s when I realized it was always going to be different for us. It wasn’t just about winning. It was about understanding the game.”

“Your pickleball research makes so much more sense now,” Becca says, and I grin.

But Mom doesn’t seem amused. Instead, she gives me a pointed look, the kind she always gave me when I failed to do something she needed me to do and became disappointed as a result. I got a lot more of those looks than Carter ever did. “Hmm,” she says. “Analyzing a loss, learning instead of assigning blame … those sound like the qualities of a good team captain.”

I swallow a sigh. That’s the second time Mom has mentioned the captain thing this week, which is ridiculous. I have no idea what Carter told her, but I have nothing to do with the decision regarding who is alternate captain. It’s not like they asked and I said no. Carter mentioned it as a possibility. That’s it.

Becca squeezes my hand, shooting me a questioning look, and I squeeze hers right back. I’m okay, but there’s nothing to truly say here. “I should get started on the dishes,” I say. I push back from the table and stand, and Becca pops up beside me.

“I’ll come too,” she says.

“You should let us do the dishes,” Cassie says. “You two cooked.”

Becca quickly shakes her head. “You need to stay off your feet,” she says to her mother. “And don’t try to fight me on that. If you do, I’ll just call Dad.”

Earlier today, Cassie had a negative reaction to the heat, a symptom of her MS, and Becca has been watching her closely ever since. “I’m fine,” her mom says. “It was just a tiny reaction. As soon as I cooled down, I was better.”

“And you’ll be even better tomorrow if you rest tonight,” Becca says.