Room for More

by Beth Ehemann

  “Speaking of getting themselves in and out of trouble…” I looked up at her as she nodded down the hallway. I followed her gaze and saw Zach walking toward us.

  “Hey, guys.” He waved as he walked up. “Kacie, can I talk to you?”

  I nodded and offered him a polite smile. “Sure.” I turned toward Darla and whispered quietly, “I’ll be right back. Cover for me, okay?”

  “You got it,” Darla said as I followed Zach down the hall to a waiting area.

  We sat across from each other in itchy sage green hospital chairs with wooden arms. It was uncomfortable but private. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his chin resting on his folded hands. Yellow and purple bruises stained his cheeks.

  “You okay?” I asked, leaning to the side to get a better view of his face.

  “Yeah. I had an x-ray. Not broken, thank God.”

  “I’m… uh… Sorry about that,” I stammered, not sure the apology was fitting coming from me. I’m not sure that he deserved an apology, period.

  “Don’t. Please don’t apologize. It just makes this harder.” Before he started speaking again, he sighed. “Listen, Kacie. I have no idea what to say except I’m sorry. I’ve been replaying the other night in my head over and over and I can’t figure out why I did what I did.”

  “First things first—why did you drink?” I searched his face, looking for a sincere answer.

  “Honestly?” He looked up at me. “I don’t know. Something about hanging with the girls at the park just set me off. I was sitting around feeling sorry for myself when my friend Brett called. Before I knew it, we were in a bar and I was throwing back rum and Cokes like I just came in from the desert.”

  I studied his face as he stared down at his hands, clearly ashamed.

  “What does this mean? Ya know, for your sobriety?” I asked, genuinely concerned.

  “I’m still taking everything day by day. I’m just going to check in more often with my sponsor, and instead of going to meetings a couple times a week, I’m going to go every day for awhile. I’m not worried about that part. I’m worried about the damage I did… to you.”

  “Yeah, that part sucked, but it wasn’t completely your fault.” I took a deep breath. “Had I told Brody that you were back and we’d talked, he wouldn’t have reacted the way he did.”

  “It wasn’t your fault I got drunk and came over uninvited.” He shook his head.

  “That’s true. It’s over and done with, though; nothing either of us can do about it. Now I just have to try and figure out how to fix things with him.”

  “That’s actually why I wanted to talk to you,” he said slowly. His eyes caught mine and my stomach sank.

  “That first time I saw you here, at work, I felt like there was a reason we were put together at the same hospital at the same time. I mean, what are the odds? Out of all the hospitals in our area, out of all the departments you could have been placed in, out of all the shifts between the two of us… we ended up in the same room at the exact same time.”

  “I would call that dumb luck on your part. From my end, it was terrifying.” I didn’t mean to sound like a total bitch, but I was being honest.

  “I realize that. For me, it seemed like maybe a second chance at what I’d missed out on five years ago.”

  I started to roll my eyes and he reached forward and grabbed my hands. “Hear me out. Time has gone on and, as one pissed-off hockey player reminded me, I threw you and the girls away. I didn’t miss out on anything.”

  When had Brody told him that? Ugh. That damn truck ride.

  “That’s right, you did,” I said quietly.

  “That’s my point. I’ve always, in my head, twisted everything to feel like I was a victim of my disease. I’m not. And the decisions I made during the height of my addiction were just that—my decisions. I have to own them and that’s what I plan on doing, starting now.” He let go of my hand and sat back in the chair. “Life is about choices. Every day we make them. From things as minor as what we should eat for breakfast to major things like if we should leave our family today. Well, I made a bad choice. I tell myself that I left to protect you guys and I suppose in some ways, that’s true. But mostly, I left because I was selfish.”

  “Where are you going with all this?” My eyes were damp with tears. I was sick of him rehashing our past every time we saw each other. I just wanted to be happy again.

  “I’ve made another choice and I pray to God it’s finally the right one. I’ve been selfish my whole life when it comes to you, so for once I’m doing the exact opposite. I’m going to walk away, again. Except this time, it really is for you and the girls.”

  My mind raced in a hundred different directions.

  He’s walking away again? We’d just gotten to the point where I could be in the same room with him and not want to kill him. I’d been thinking about how I’d tell Lucy and Piper their real dad was back and wanted to see them. And now he wanted to go?

  “I don’t understand.” I blinked and my eyes darted around his face.

  “Selfishly, I would give anything for another chance with you, but I can see that your life was pretty awesome before I came barging back into it. Me being around has caused you nothing but stress, so I’m going to disappear. The girls didn’t know who I was, so it’s no loss to them. You seem really into Brody, and he’s obviously very into you and protective of my daughters. I really couldn’t ask for any better for them or you.”

  I dropped my head into my hands and rubbed my eyes, desperately trying to digest all that he’d just said to me. My own dad took off when I was ten years old and I hadn’t seen or heard from him since. When I was in high school, I often wondered how different my life would’ve been if he’d stuck around. Naturally, I wanted a better life for Lucy and Piper than I’d had and if that meant asking their biological father not to walk away, so be it.

  “Kacie?” he questioned quietly after a minute.

  My head snapped up to face him and I took a deep breath. “I don’t want you to go.”

  He pulled his brows in tight and cocked his head to the side. “You don’t?”

  “No. I don’t. I never imagined myself saying this, but we lost you once, Zach. I don’t want to lose you again. You’ve been through a lot and you’re right, you made some shitty decisions. But you’ve shown me more change in the weeks we’ve been in contact than in the whole three years we were together before.”

  A shy smile spread across his face and he looked down, fidgeting with his phone.

  “You were right about one thing, though,” I continued. “Romantically, there’s no chance for us. My heart belongs to Brody and it always will.”

  “I understand.” He nodded.

  “I’m going to try like hell to get things back on track with him, and in time we’ll see about introducing you to Lucy and Piper. Like I said a few weeks ago, though, my trust for you is pretty broken. It’s going to take a long time and a lot of work to fix. And no more drinking. Period. That’s a deal breaker.”

  “As long as it takes. You’re in charge. And you have my word about the drinking. I’ll never touch the stuff again.” He smiled slowly as his shoulders relaxed.

  Relief rolled across his posture and I was jealous. I could only feel that kind of relief with contact from one person right now, and he wanted nothing to do with me.

  Diesel’s cold nose pressed against my cheek, waking me out of a sound sleep.

  “Morning, buddy. You gotta piss?” I asked without opening my eyes.

  I lifted the pillow and shoved my head under it, trying to block out the sunlight.

  We got back really late the night before from our road trip and I came home and collapsed. My body and my brain were exhausted. I was playing like shit and thinking about Kacie nonstop, but I couldn’t bring myself to call her. Not yet.

  She wasn’t the only one trying to reach me. My mom had called me so many times, I was surprised she hadn’t sent out a search party for me yet.
/>   My phone rang again and I knew that I couldn’t ignore her much longer.

  “Hello, Mom.” I said flatly as I answered.

  “Brody! How are you?” She sounded relieved.

  “Fine.”

  “That’s good.” She tried hard to sound like everything was normal. “I’ve been worried about you. You haven’t been returning my calls.”

  “I know.” I took a deep breath and held it for a second. “Listen, Mom. I owe you an apology for the way I stormed out the other night.”

  “Stop right there. I know what you’re going to say and I don’t want you to say it. You don’t owe me any apologies.”

  “Yes, I do,” I argued.

  “No. There’s no handbook to life, Brody. No rules on how you’re supposed to handle situations,” she said softly. “You were given news that was upsetting and you reacted. You’re allowed to react. I didn’t expect you to be happy about our divorce.”

  “I know, Mom, but I shouldn’t have flown off the handle the way I did.”

  “It’s okay. Really,” she assured me.

  “So, how are you with all this, Mom? Really?” I wanted to get her opinion on things without my dad sitting next to us.

  She paused for a second and I was worried that I’d pissed her off. “I’m good, Brody.” She sounded perkier than I was prepared for. “I’m actually totally at peace with it. It’s for the best, it really is.”

  “Seriously?” I exclaimed. “I just don’t get that. Thirty years, Mom.”

  “I know how long I’ve been married. Things have just changed. It’s no one’s fault. We just have to learn to roll with the punches.”

  She was sounding a little happier about her current situation than I would have been, though she had already known about this for a year. Apparently she’d adjusted well.

  “Is Dad around?”

  “Uh, yeah. I think he’s out in the workshop. Let me take him the phone.”

  A few seconds later, I heard scratching on the phone—like someone was holding it against their shirt—muffled talking, and then my father’s gruff voice.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hey, Son. How are you?”

  “Pretty shitty. How are you?”

  “Hanging in there.” He’d shown almost no emotion as far back as I could remember. I don’t know why I thought now would be different.

  “I wanted to talk to you for a minute and tell you that I’m sorry for the way I left the other night. That whole conversation with you and Mom was a shock, but I shouldn’t have freaked out the way I did.” I took a deep breath and swallowed my pride. “I’m most sorry for accusing you of cheating on Mom and calling you a bad dad. It was reprehensible and I’m so sorry.”

  “Water under the bridge, Son. Don’t sweat it.” I could hear light hammering in the background and Dad’s AM radio station. That workshop was the best thing that ever happened to him. He spent hours and hours out there.

  “I’d feel a lot better if you’d call me an asshole or something.”

  “Fine. It’s water under the bridge, asshole.” Dad laughed. “Really, don’t give it a second thought.”

  There were unanswered questions I had from the other night, and I don’t know why, but they just started flying out of my mouth. “So what happened, Dad? Where did this all come from?”

  A hefty sigh filled the phone line. “Honestly, I don’t know. One night last summer, she made my favorite: barbecued pork sandwiches. We were two bites in and she told me she wanted a divorce.”

  What?

  “Wait. This wasn’t a mutual thing?” I was shocked by what he’d just said.

  “Far from it, Brody. I love your mother. Love her just as much today as the day I married her, probably more.”

  “So what the hell? Why aren’t you fighting her on this?”

  “She’s made her decision, Brody. I can either be mad about it and push her away completely, or I can accept it and still have a best friend.”

  “So you’re just gonna give up?” I was getting pissed again. If he still loved her, he needed to grow a set and fight.

  “I don’t look at it as giving up, Son. I look at it as… she’s unhappy. I love her so much, I’m willing to let her go and be happy.”

  I didn’t respond. I let what Dad said roll around inside my brain for a minute. All these years I thought my father was a simple, cold man. He was simple, but he was far from cold. Turns out he was so in love with my mom, even after thirty years, that he was willing to sacrifice his own happiness for hers. From that point on, I would never look at my dad the same way again. He was the most selfless, humble man I would ever know in my whole life, and I’d never felt like I had more in common with him than at that exact moment.

  I hung up with my parents, still feeling annoyed and unsettled, but we weren’t getting anywhere and it was pointless to continue. I didn’t want to think about my mom and dad’s situation anymore. The only problem was that if I wasn’t thinking about that, I was thinking about Kacie.

  It’d been six days since I’d heard her voice. Six days since I’d driven away and left her crying on the grass. Six days since I was sure I could kill someone with just my fists.

  Like clockwork, my cell phone chirped. Kacie had texted me every single morning at the same time and they were getting harder and harder to ignore.

  K: ARE YOU DONE WITH ME?

  My chest tightened with the thought of how shitty she must be feeling to send that text. I was angry and needed some space but didn’t want her feeling like that. I had to send her something back.

  WE’LL TALK SOON. I MISS YOU.

  It wasn’t much, but it was all I could give up at that moment. There were so many things running through my head to say to her, none of which I wanted to share over a text message.

  I dragged myself out of bed and tossed on a baseball hat.

  “Come on, D. Let’s go.”

  Diesel perked his head up at my call and dove off my bed, sprinting to the front door as he heard the jingling of the metal leash.

  The last week had easily been the worst of my life. First I thought there was something wrong with my mom’s cancer scans. I find out those are fine, but less than an hour later find out my parents are divorcing. You would think at twenty-seven years old, I would be able to process their separation logically, but my world crashed with that news. And a couple hours after that, I find out the one person I thought I could go to for comfort had been lying to me for weeks. I just didn’t know what to do. Everything was spinning out of control and my one true constant—hockey—was suffering because of it. We lost three out of five games on the road and I knew my teammates were looking to me for guidance. Collins had asked me twice if there was anything going on that he needed to know about, but I continued lying. There was a home game tonight and I was bound and determined to play like myself.

  I hurried Diesel along so that I could scarf down some breakfast and head to the stadium early to work out. The workout would distract me, and hopefully it would score some extra credit with Collins.

  One quick text that I’d been meaning to send and I was off…

  A few hours later, I finished up a light workout before the game and was feeling charged, despite my rough morning at home. The good vibes coming from the crowd when we took the ice were a huge jolt to my already pumping adrenaline. It probably helped that we were playing the Vancouver Canucks, one of our biggest rivals. They were in the Pacific Division, and we were in the Central, so it wasn’t a division rivalry, more of a personal one between teams. For some reason, more blood was shed on the ice when we played them than any team in the whole league. We looked for reasons to fight each other and I didn’t expect that game to be any different.

  The first period was exciting but nerve-wracking. The score bounced back and forth. First, Viper scored a goal for us; then they scored against me. Then Big Mike scored for us and they scored again almost immediately.

  We were skating of
f the ice for intermission after the first period and I got cut off by Edgar Shepard, one of the biggest assholes in all of professional hockey. He stood a couple inches taller than me with a shiny bald head. A huge scar went from one side of his cheek to the other, a souvenir from where he got sliced up by a skate years ago. He also had a loud mouth and no skills on the ice—a terrible combination. We had jarred with each other before, so him spouting off was nothing new.

  “Sorry, Murphy. Did I get in your way?” he sneered as he skated right in front of me, almost making me fall flat on my ass.

  “Fuck off, Shepard,” I bit out continuing past him.

  After a quick team talk from Collins, we all went back out with renewed determination. I took my spot on the ice and started cleaning the crease. It was always too slick after the Zamboni made its run during intermission.

  Players from both teams were scattering about and taking their places when Shepard skated behind my net.

  “What’s with you, Murphy? You’ve been playing like shit for days. Getting old?”

  I ignored him, determined not to let him get to me. The game was close and it was obvious he was attempting to rattle me to gain an edge.

  The second period was brutal, fast-paced, and intense. There were three fistfights, and Viper sat in the penalty box nearly the entire time. Despite all the shenanigans, the score didn’t change. Still tied 2-2.

  We took the ice at the beginning of the third period and I rolled my eyes as Shepard skated my way again. He skidded to a stop about three feet from me and grinned, without saying a word.

  “What do you want?” I snarled, still refusing to make eye contact with him.

  “Jensen? Is that Kacie’s last name?”

  My skin tingled with adrenaline as my head snapped toward him. I clenched my jaw and lifted my helmet up so I could look him straight in the eyes.

  “I don’t know what the fuck this game of yours is, Shepard, but you just took it to a whole other level. Back the fuck off.”