Chapter Sixteen

brYAN

S he says it matter-of-factly. Not asking me any questions, just making an observation.

So why do I feel the need to tell her everything?

Katya’s never asked me too much about myself. I can’t tell if it’s because she senses I don’t like talking about it. I’m probably inflating my ego, though. She probably just doesn’t care.

“I don’t,” I say.

Katya glances back at me, then nods once. Not asking for explanations. Not poking or prying or asking for more. Which just makes me, ever the oversharer, want to spill my guts.

“I’ve always kind of had a weird relationship with them. They were always around, unless you count Mom always working, but it was more of like…an emotional absence than anything else.” God, I sound so stupid. She doesn’t want to hear any of this. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to make you my therapist. I have a not-being-able-to-shut-up problem, as you know.”

I’m expecting her to crack a smirk or make a snide comment or something, but her expression doesn’t shift an inch. She’s just listening.

“You can talk if you want,” she says quietly. And maybe it’s the second-language of it all, but somehow she takes a sentence that would make me want to shoot myself if it came from anyone else and turns it into an invitation that I might accept.

“Are you sure?” I don’t know why my voice comes out so strange. I don’t know why my palms are sweaty . It’s just a conversation, Bryan. She’s asking you about yourself like a normal partner. It really isn’t that deep. I really shouldn’t be so—what? Touched? Forget the fact that I can’t remember the last time someone asked me something about myself and wasn’t looking for a bullshit answer to satisfy them. It might be saying something about my life that it’s coming from Katya of all people.

But I should really stop complaining. Because I’d just lie, anyway, so does it even matter?

Her voice is so soft I barely hear it. “Are you?”

This shouldn’t feel so…I don’t know. She’s just asking me a question about my family. It shouldn’t feel like she’s asking me to kill someone for her. Maybe because the answer to both questions would be yes.

I clear my throat and try to ignore the insanity of that thought, which I have no desire to unpack right now “Mom’s a fourth-grade teacher, and nights she does accounting for one of the resorts on the mountain. She’s not usually home, never really has been, because my dad’s medical bills are insane and there’s no other way to pay for the insurance.”

Katya half-smiles. “I wouldn’t know about the American healthcare system yet, outside of your little incident, unfortunately.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way.” The last thing we need right now is for her to end up in a boot, too. “Anyway, Mom’s always been zoned out. I usually had to watch Alex when we were little because of it. And Dad can’t really work. I mean, he started teaching virtual courses for the community college a couple of years ago, but it’s hard for him to travel, so he’s hardly left the house in over ten years other than for seeing the doctors.”

I can practically see the question she’s not asking; like she knows it’s not easy for me. And after so many years of awkward conversations about this, it makes me grateful—but at this point, I might as well. “You want to know what happened to him, don't you?”

Katya hesitates before nodding.

“My dad, he, uh,” I smile. “He’s…complicated. Seriously, if you think I am, he’s on another level.” It was supposed to be a joke. Maybe. “He used to be an architect, a really good one. Went to MIT, then came home and got married and opened a firm. One day he’s surveying one of his sites, and there was this beam that just fell out of nowhere. A crane was lifting it and it slipped out. Total freak accident, but it left him paralyzed from the waist down.”

She pales. I can already hear it. I’m so sorry, Bryan. That’s so sad, Bryan. You poor son of a bitch . “That’s…awful.”

Well, there’s worse things she could have said, I guess. Actually, I definitely know, because I’ve heard it all. All the dumb things people say to someone when they find out their dad’s in a wheelchair.

That’s horrible. Flashes of x-rays flare in my memory—shattered bones, surgical scars, the pill bottles cluttering the nightstand, the doctor flat-out refusing to give him refills. He was lucky they didn’t just amputate, not that anyone dared to tell him that. Not when they saw the look in his eyes.

I shrug. “Yeah. I was really little, like seven or eight. The only thing I can really remember was that he couldn’t play hockey with us anymore.”

That’s not exactly true. I mean, it’s not an outright lie, but it’s definitely not the truth, either. Because I can also remember the nights there was muffled crying floating down the hallway from my parents’ bedroom while Mom was out, trying to block it out with a pillow over my head and praying Alexandra wouldn’t wake up to hear it. The months I had to take off skating because of the medical bills—though Miss Lou always let me in for free behind my mom’s back so I wouldn’t get rusty—while my parents fought for compensation from the construction company and from the insurance. The frustration radiating off him, things falling all the time at first when he would accidentally ram into tables, and the hole in the wall he punched one time so he wouldn’t hit me. Watching my dad become a different person almost overnight. Watching him eat himself alive. Watching the man who raised me, who I wanted to be just like when I was older, turning into a stranger full of hate that for some reason always seemed to be directed at me.

But she doesn’t want to know that. I don’t want her to know that.

“Anyway, he wasn’t too happy about it, as you can imagine. I guess he felt like everyone was treating him differently. Which is true, but we were trying to help.” I don’t mention that it pissed me off monumentally sometimes, which just pissed him off even more, to the point that even before I moved out I was practically living with Oliver and Nina’s family to get out of the house, claiming it was more convenient since we were all heading to the same place every day anyways. I don’t mention how I don’t think my parents were ever in love, not even before the accident changed both of them. Or how Dad would always dig at the fact that I’m in a “traditionally feminine sport,” whatever the fuck that means.

I don’t mention that we would push at each other, back and forth, a little farther each time, until the lines that had seemed so blurry finally got marked the second one of us stepped over them. I don’t mention the time I shot back that he should try it sometime without thinking. That it was the closest to crying I’d ever pushed him to. That I couldn’t face him for weeks.

I don’t mention five years ago, either, the night that marked the before and after. The night that almost killed me.

I look back up at her, meet her cloudy eyes, see the strange, searching look written on her face like a poem, like she’s trying to read me. I force myself to look away.

“You should probably get those groceries. Store closes early during playoffs.”