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…