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Chapter Twenty-Six

Maya

I’m not prepared for the relationship talk. I thought we’d discuss living together. But I guess that was somewhat naïve. How can we discuss one without the other?

“What do you mean?” I ask slowly.

“I have a very good idea where I’ll be a year from now. I could get traded, that’s always possible, but barring a career-ending injury, I know exactly what I’ll be doing. Whether it’s here or some other team, the only thing that changes is potentially my location, but I signed a five-year contract to come here, so chances are, nothing changes for me for five years. What about you?”

“I never know my schedule that far in advance,” she says slowly. “Does that matter to you? Knowing what I’ll be doing next year or in five years?”

“It doesn’t matter how much I like you, but it might matter in our future. What if we decide to have kids?”

“I’m nowhere near ready for that.”

“I know, but you want them eventually, right?”

“Sure. Maybe in my early thirties. I’ve got too much I want to do right now.” She hesitates. “Are you ready for kids?”

“No. God, no. I’ve just been thinking about things.”

“About how Shandy put her career before your relationship.”

My girl isn’t stupid and I won’t lie to her.

“Yeah, that’s part of it.”

“Here’s the thing—and I don’t know Shandy at all except by reputation—she either didn’t love you or she was a terrible human being. Being apart doesn’t make you cheat. Period. You will never convince me otherwise. Does it make things harder? Absolutely. Does it require us to be more cognizant of our needs? For sure. But it’s never going to make me cheat. If I’m unhappy, you’re going to know. That’s just who I am. If you hurt my feelings by forgetting my birthday, I’m not going to sit on it for months and then go revenge fuck some other guy. Right around midnight, when my birthday is technically over, I’m going to call or text or whatever, and be like, hey, what the fuck?”

I chuckle. “I’ll never forget your birthday, baby. But I see what you’re saying. So, if I fuck up, I’m going to know. You’re not going to let it fester into something huge.”

“Exactly. If for whatever reason, I realized I was falling out of love with you, I would suggest counseling or therapy or something. I wouldn’t just give up and turn to someone else. But that’s me. I don’t know what your marriage was like.”

“After the honeymoon was over, both literally and figuratively, things went downhill quickly. We got married in August, went on a three-week honeymoon, and then training camp started about two weeks later. She left for Vancouver to start shooting a movie, and I did what I’ve always done during hockey season—focused on hockey. In retrospect, I think she expected me to change.”

“Did you expect her to change?”

“No, but I expected us to compromise.”

“But you can’t. Not really.”

“Not with my schedule, but I can compromise with other things. How I spend my down time. Instead of working out and watching video, I could be doing something with her. With you. You know what I mean. Hockey is very important, no doubt about that, but so are relationships.”

“Okay, so what’s the question? Do you want to discuss compromise? Something else?”

“I want to discuss what a serious, long-term relationship looks like. For us.”

“I have a lot more flexibility than you do, so I would be the one making those kinds of compromises. It would make sense for me to schedule my travel when you’re away. It wouldn’t be perfect, like if I’m gearing up to start doing costumes or whatever for a new project. Beyond that, I can do my sketches from anywhere. I do need a sewing room wherever I live because it takes up a lot of space when I start creating the physical pieces of clothing, but again, I have flexibility.”

He seems to be mulling that over. “What about the off-season? That turned into a big thing in my marriage. She just wanted me to follow her around from movie set to fashion show to whatever she was doing. And some of that is fun, no doubt, but also—I spend nine months of the year beating my body to hell. I’d like to spend at least part of the summer doing nothing. Laying on a beach somewhere. Going on vacation. Not having to schedule a time to make love.”

I frown. “Wait—you had to schedule sexy times?”

He nods. “Not always, but she’d say something like—there’s no time on the calendar for sex. I have to get ten hours of sleep every night. Shit like that.”

“Jesus. That’s never going to be a thing for me. Maybe short-term, like, if I’m on a deadline to create the costumes for the movie and I need them by Friday... I might tell you I can’t think about anything until I’m done, but that would be situational. Just like if one of us was sick.”

“Totally understandable. I just don’t want to be in a situation where I’m practically begging my wife to make love with me.”