Hopefully, he gets some help with his problems, but he probably won’t. I guess he could write a book: How I Blew-Up My NHL Career in One Dirty Game, by Bryce Barrymore. I wouldn’t read it though. He’s dead to me and, I won’t waste any more thoughts on him or time dwelling on what’s over and done with. I’m just grateful the fucker didn’t end my NHL career along with his. My eye has healed perfectly. Thank God.
What has amazed me though? The extraordinary and unmitigated support from the team, Max Terry included. I didn’t exactly impress him with my loyalty on our first meet, but he surprised me with his visits and messages of support when I was in hospital and then during rehab. Impressive. I felt a part of the Crush family, something unexpected and welcome.
In the locker room, I shower and dress quickly, eager to get home to my guitar so I can start learning Billie’s song for real, not just in my head—
Evan catches me before I can get out the door.
“Hey, Cal, you doing okay lately? You don’t seem like yourself.”
“Sorry, man.” I lean against the wall of lockers with a sigh. “I’ll be fine when I get back on the ice. Coach just talked to me. Said I’ve been cleared for right after the break.”
“Not talking about your injury, my guy. You’re just a little out of it.”
Chewing on my bottom lip, Billie’s face comes to mind. I’m not into spilling my feelings, especially not to my captain, but I’ve heard from Dale during one of his gossip-slash-therapy sessions how Evan and his wife, Holly, had a pretty bumpy road to what seems like a happy relationship now.
“I—I made a mistake…with someone I love.” Once I start, the words do come. Evan has always been easy to talk to. “It’s been hard to concentrate.”
“Your girlfriend?”
“Billie, yeah. The woman I met doing that PR thing at the Crush Foundation Music Workshop. We’ve been…well, things were good. But she’s in a band and so crazy talented. They’ve been in LA doing music for a movie and now an album and I’m just not comfortable with change. So, I got scared and pushed her away. Told her if she left, we were done. But I think—”
“It was a bonehead thing to do?”
“Yeah.” I know it was.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “It probably was.”
“She sent me a long email and a song she wrote, and it’s amazing. And I can’t get her out of my head.”
“That’s how you know it’s right, mate,” he says, clapping me on the shoulder and giving it a squeeze with his big mitt. “Believe me. I have been there.”
“I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do next. I need to tell her how I feel, but I am not good at sharing feelings. Not at all, yeah?”
“Yeeeaaah.” Evan lets out a chuckle and then a slow shake of his head. “Well, here’s the thing, a lot of the guys—and that’s most of them in this locker room—who have any kind of relationship worth something has had his head up his arse at one point or another. And to add to that, there’s a fun tradition around here of making sloppy, grand gestures once we get our heads right. Maybe you can think of something that would tell her, with no hesitation, that she is the one for you.”
I thank him and head out, walking home with Billie’s song still on constant repeat in my head.
And wracking my brain for what “grand gesture” I could possibly come up with that would be something worthy enough for the woman I love.
Studying the words in Billie’s song more intensely, I realize these lyrics are all about me. I did get that vibe the very first time I heard the song, but I just thought the lyrics more applied to me, not that the song was written specifically about me.
She nailed it. Nailed everything. Even the title of the song.
Even the title of the fucking song.
It’s all about not liking me at first. About seeing into my heart and changing her mind about me. About falling in love and making love and wanting to be with me so much, her heart might burst. It’s also about being disappointed. And being terribly hurt and then having her heart broken…but still wanting nothing more than to have my eyes on her and to keep me. Her “keeper.”
Wow.
The Keeper
Music and Lyrics by Billie Hirsch
You were always beautiful to me
Even when I didn’t want you
Even when you made no sense to me
Even when you were wrong for me
A beautiful keeper…to me
To me…but so, so, so, so wrong
But then I saw
Something inside you
Something inside your beating heart
Something for keeping close
Your heart was beautiful, too
Beautiful, too…as beautiful as you
I want to live in your eyes
I want them on me…in me
I want them where you can see me
Keep you inside me
Keep your heart loving me
Loving me…until my heart breaks through
I’m watching you love me
I’m watching me hate you
I’m watching us battle for something
I should’ve told you you’re worth keeping
We’re something worth keeping
A love so worth keeping
You’re the keeper I wanna keep
A keeper worth loving
A keeper always beautiful to me
I should’ve told you we’re worth keeping
We’re something worth keeping
Love so worth keeping
Wish you would keep me…
If I could give you anything
I’d want to live in your eyes
I want them on me…in me
I want them where you can see me
I should’ve told you you’re the one
Because my body remembers yours
Even with my heart a hurting
I still wanna keep you
Because my body remembers yours
I still want you to be waiting for me
I should’ve told you you’re the one
I should’ve told you you’re my keeper…
I should’ve told you you’re my keeper…
I should’ve told you you’re my…
Keep-er
Five hours later.
“You were a natural at hockey from day one, Calum. But you didn’t start out a superstar goalie. That took years of hard work, of finding your weaknesses and working hard to overcome them. If you can do that, there is absolutely no reason why you can’t apply the same logic, the same perseverance to your emotional intelligence as well. And Billie sounds like just the person who will love you as you try. As you practice. As you learn to offer her your heart as well.” My mom’s soothing words settle over me as I mull them over.
“Thanks Mom, for the wise words. Appreciate you talking to me.”
“I know you do, son. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
I hang up and flop back onto my bed, mentally exhausted but with my mind still stirring.