The Wall of Winnipeg and Me

The big guy leaned his bottom against the dresser. “My grandfather enrolled me in it for a few seasons when I was younger, but it didn’t click for me, you didn’t know that?” I shook my head. “My high school’s hockey coach tried recruiting me to play for him in grade 10. I was already six feet tall. I weighed two hundred pounds, but I told him I wasn’t interested.”

While I recognized the differences between football and hockey were vast, I still couldn’t comprehend what he was trying to hint at. “What didn’t you like about it?”

“I didn’t like it. It’s that simple.” His tongue poked at the inside of his cheek and the big guy didn’t make any theatrics about what he said. “My dad used to beat the shit out of me because he could, once a week at least until I hit puberty. I’ve gotten into enough fights in my life; I’ll fight somebody if there’s a good reason, but not for a game.”

I never tried to throw myself too much of a pity party over what I’d grown up with. Over not being loved enough by my mom. Over not being important enough for whoever my dad was to stick around or at least attempt to meet me. While I definitely wasn’t as messed up as my sisters, I had a temper. I got angry easily. But I had made myself learn how to control it. I had decided early on that I wasn’t going to let that emotion define me.

I wanted to be better. I wanted to be a good person. I wanted to be someone—not necessarily someone great or someone important—but someone I could live with.

My little brother didn’t drink at all, and I knew it was because of our mom’s drinking problem. While he was four years younger than me and had spent less time in that household than I had, he remembered enough. How could he not? But I didn’t want to avoid alcohol because I was scared of what it could do to me. I didn’t want to demonize it. I wanted to prove to myself that it wasn’t a monster that destroyed lives unless you let it.

Life was all about choices. You chose what to make out of what you had. And I wasn’t going to let it make me its bitch. I could be a mature adult who knew her limits. I could be a good person. Maybe not all the time, but enough.

So Aiden’s explanation, and the fact that his motherfucking asshole dad used to pick on him, pricked at the soft, tender pieces of this place that went deeper than my heart. I knew what it was like to not want to fall into a hole that had been dug for you before you even had a chance to fill it up. It made my eyes sting.

I made myself look down so he wouldn’t see what had to be eighty different unwanted emotions written all over my face.

And maybe Aiden felt as unbalanced as I did because he set the subject back into place, and moved on to a safer one. “I was playing lacrosse before that anyway.”

The rest of the story I was familiar with, and I told it while my gaze was still on the muted beige carpet. “Then Leslie talked you into trying football,” I relayed back to him the information he’d shared with others a hundred times before. According to the story, he’d never played football before and he’d been interested. The rest was history. Except now I knew a fragment of the story I didn’t before—he’d known Leslie for a long time. He’d been his grandfather’s best friend. Leslie believed he’d asked him at the right moment. It had been a split second decision that had changed the entire course of his life.

That summer between grade 10 and 11, he gained twenty pounds of muscle and practiced with Leslie several times a week. By the middle of his last year of high school, several schools in Canada and the U.S. had already begun trying to get in on the Aiden Graves pie. He was a phenomenon. A natural. His talent and hard work was etched so deeply into him, it was impossible to ignore the diamond in the rough.

“Leslie asked me to play for him the day after my grandfather caught me with a girl in his backseat, and told me I needed to find something more productive to do with my time or he would.”

How about that. He really wasn’t a virgin. Huh. My mouth twitched and I raised my gaze up to meet his. “Well, I think it’s really admirable that you only get into fights with people who deserve to get the shit kicked out of them. If no one else ever tells you, it’s really noble. Very superhero-y.”

My comment had the big guy rolling his eyes, uncomfortable with my compliment. Well, he was uncomfortable with every compliment ever hurled his way. I didn’t know why I found it so attractive, and I didn’t really want to, but it was impossible to feel otherwise. How could someone be so arrogant but so humble at the same time?

“I’m not even close to being some kind of hero,” he argued.

A burst of affection filled my chest. “You came to save me last week when I needed you. You can be an off-white knight in shining armor,” I told him before I could think twice about what I was saying.

His chin seemed to jerk back and those irises focused on me. His jaw went tight.

I’d already said enough, and I didn’t want to push too much. At the rate I was going, I’d end up complimenting his butt next. “Okay, I know it’s close to your bedtime, and I just wanted to say thank you for my gift. I’ll wear it with pride, but just don’t tell Zac I left his at home.”

The big guy nodded, standing straight. He shook out his hands at his sides. “Good night, Van.”

I took a step back and grabbed the doorknob, smiling as I closed the door on my way out. “Night, night.”

Meet me in the family room, the note, written in neat print on the back of a grocery store receipt, read; I’d only been expecting my ticket, not the pass to get me through security that had been inside along with it.

The pass burned as a constant reminder inside my pocket the entire game—a game they lost. I’d kept touching it to make sure it hadn’t fallen out, trying to wrap my head around why he would ask me to meet him afterward. I mean, I’d met him afterward a few times, but it had always been because he needed something from me when I worked for him.

I had to ask a few of the stadium’s employees where to go, because when I used to meet up with Aiden in the past, I would usually drive straight over and go through the entrance allocated for family members.

I wasn’t looking forward to going to the family room, mainly because it would be the first time I’d see everyone since last season. I wouldn’t call any of the wives I’d been friendly with ‘friends,’ but I didn’t think they’d forgotten about me in a year. Back then, I’d been the only woman in Aiden’s life, and for a little while, I’d been ‘the new girl’ because most of them hadn’t been convinced I was his assistant and our relationship was solely a business one.

And now…

Well, now I looked like a lying schmuck when there really hadn’t been anything going on between Aiden and me in the past. But it wasn’t like anyone was going to believe that now, even if I hadn’t seen them since his injury last October.

If I wanted to be honest with myself, I was dreading it a little.

Okay, more than a little.

I had to really reach down into my spine and pump some steel into it, reminding myself that I knew I hadn’t lied to anyone. As long as I knew that, it was all I would need. I was there for Aiden, not anyone else. In my head, I kept repeating those words as I marched through security checkpoint after security checkpoint with my pass and ID in my back pocket ready to get put to good use.

The ‘family room’ was really just a glorified area on the way toward the players’ parking lot, with a few couches and circular tables, clear away from the media. I took my time walking over, but it came too quickly anyway. With one last security check, I raised my chin up high and walked into the room like it was no big deal, like I had nothing to feel bad about.

The room was packed. Packed with kids and women and men of all ages. It was stuffed full of Three Hundreds’ apparel. The first “Oh, honey, congratulations!” smacked me right between the shoulder blades, and while I wasn’t any sort of actress, I didn’t like being a rude asshole when it was me being deceptive.

So I turned around and tried to give the woman talking a bright expression.

What followed was probably one of the most painful thirty minutes I’d ever spent, and that was saying a lot considering my last trip to El Paso had sucked complete ass.

“I am so happy for you!”

“You two are meant for each other!”

“Are you expecting?”

“You have to make sure to always support your man.”

“Make sure to plan the baby for the offseason!”

Meant for each other? My man? A fucking baby?

I wasn’t sure how I didn’t throw up. Honestly. Then there were all the subtle comments about how an NFO player’s wife, especially a player for the Three Hundreds, was supposed to act. The players were supposed to be the center of the universe. Families were preferably not seen and not heard. ‘We’ were the invisible support systems.

I didn’t know a lot about the women, but I knew enough about the guys from the bits and pieces that Zac occasionally shared with me, and only a few of them were impressive. And if a guy was a piece of crap, what was his girlfriend or significant other like?

It was when I was in the middle of thinking about things like that, that I remembered I was married to the person who was considered by many to be the biggest asshole on the team. At least according to what Zac had told me in the past. He wasn’t friendly, much less open, and he put zero effort into establishing friendships with anyone, much less the spouses and families of the people he played alongside with. He’d said it time and time again, he didn’t have time for friendships or relationships.

What did that say about me? I was a lying asshole and a prostitute, depending on how you analyzed the facts.

I was in the middle of trying to lie to one of the vets’ wives that I’d already had a Thanksgiving meal when players began trickling into the room. Apparently, her husband was one of them because she patted my arm almost immediately after peeking over my shoulder. “I’ll have to get your phone number next game. We should get together, babe.”

On top of being an asshole and a prostitute, I was an imposter. Here were these women who were trying to be nice and include me—though a portion of them were those who had turned me off from hanging out in the family box—and here was I. A fake wife. I was a person who would be out of their lives in a few years, if not sooner depending on whatever Aiden decided in the near future.

Maybe this whole hanging-out-in-the-family-room thing hadn’t been a good idea.

The good thing was, the regular season was already more than halfway over.