Pucked Up (Pucked 2)

I find a cleanish pair of shorts and a shirt on the floor. There’s a knock a minute later. I open the door. Skye stands there with her arms wide. Then her smile freezes, along with the rest of her. My dad gives me the raised-eyebrow onceover.

Vi’s holding a tray of fast-food ice cream sundaes. Her nose crinkles. “Oh. Wow. Breakup does not look good on you.”

I ignore her. I’m not that bad, I don’t think. “Hey, family. Come on in. The place is a mess.” I step aside and gesture to my living room. The coffee table is covered in pizza boxes and Styrofoam containers of wing bones. Empty soda cans litter the floor.

“Oh, Buck!” Skye unfreezes and hugs me. She and Vi are almost exactly the same, from the way they look to the way they act, except Skye’s in her forties rather than her twenties. “I’m so sorry about you and Sunny.”

I pat her on the back. “Yeah, me, too.”

After she lets me go, my dad gives me a back pat. “You could’ve called. Even if I’m out of the country, I’m always here.”

“Yeah, I know. Things were cool until a couple of days ago. I wanted some time to myself.” My dad and I are close, but more in a hockey-talk way than deep feelings.

“Please tell me you didn’t eat all of this on your own.” Vi motions to the coffee table. “Never mind. Based on the smell in this place, I’m thinking yes. First things first: you need a shower. You smell like an actual yeti, if yetis were real. Then we’re staging an intervention.”

“An intervention?” I run my hand through my hair. It feels greasy.

“Yeah. You’ve had two full days of moping. That’s all you get.”

“Didn’t you mope for weeks after you and Waters broke up?”

“He has a first name, Buck. It’s Alex. And yes, I did. But I’m a girl. We get way more moping time than guys.” She searches through my kitchen until she finds a huge black garbage bag. “You.” She points at me. “Go shower. We’ll clean this up.”

“How are you even here right now? Don’t you have to work?”

“I have an emergency business meeting with a client. Go shower.”

I’d argue, but I’m pretty ripe.

Twenty minutes later I’m clean, but still unshaven, in clothes that don’t smell like stale food, and my living room doesn’t look like a pizza bomb went off anymore. All my windows are open, and Vi’s made coffee.

“Let’s sit on the balcony.”

My dad and Skye humor me by telling me about their cruise. I know it’s not what they’re here for. They don’t make me talk about Sunny, which is good. After a while, Skye and Vi decide I need groceries since all I have in the fridge is soda and a jug of milk that’s gone off, so they leave me and my dad alone.

“You and Alex gonna be able to manage yourselves on the ice when the season starts?” he asks.

I shrug. “I sure hope so. He threatened to go to the manager and have me traded if I fucked Sunny over.”

“Well, you didn’t, so there’s no reason for him to.”

“I don’t know that he sees it the same way you do.”

“Vi’s talked to him, and so have I.”

“When did you do that? And why would you do that?”

“This morning, after Vi came over, before we came here.” He laces his hands behind his head. “He’s going to be part of this family. And I did it because when my kids are unhappy, so is my wife, and none of that works for me.”

“What did you say to him?”

“That I get that he’s worried about Sunny, but punching you out over it isn’t going to solve any problems, or make his relationship with Violet any easier. She’s struggling with this, although she won’t say it out loud. She already ate a damn sundae at our place and killed the bathroom.”

“Wow. She must be worried then. Are things okay between the two of them?” Her messages over the last two days seemed upbeat, but she hasn’t mentioned Waters at all, or Sunny.

“She talks to Skye more than me, but she’s stressed. She wants things to be okay with you and Alex. You know how she is.” He stares out at the skyline. “Sometimes I feel like I didn’t do the best job preparing you for relationships.”

“Hockey was my girlfriend.”

My dad laughs. “You and me both. I know Skye’s been good to you, but before that . . .”

“We’re good, Dad. You did a great job. Look at this.” I motion to the skyline. From my balcony I can see the city and waterfront in the distance. It’s a great location—close to the buzz, but not in it. “My life is good.”

“It’s nice to have someone to share it with, though, Miller.”