I saw it back home, coming from a small town. The parents had kids young and before you knew it, the kid was being forced to live the parents' dream for them. I saw it with Joey, Andrew's best friend, but you didn't get that feeling with Evan and his family.
Judy went onto explain how Evan got started in hockey and his love for it; all things he had already explained to me in the hospital, but I loved hearing it again. It made me feel that much closer to him.
Throughout the night, Evan kept his promise and sent regular text messages asking if I was still there or if I ran away. I ignored them at first, well, aside from the obvious of practically mauling the phone to get to it every time the little fucker dinged with a message. But then the messages got flirty, and I couldn't help myself.
I ended up going to bed after that, exhausted from the long drive. I slept with the lights on. I had said I was healing, and emotionally, I thought I was doing pretty well, but I didn't like the dark. The dark was all I saw for months. I needed light.
Game 62 – New York Islanders
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
The next morning I stepped foot into the Masens' kitchen and saw Judy standing over the stove making pancakes and Evan's sister sitting at the table, legs pulled up into the chair with her phone in hand.
Clearing my throat, I said hello, and Caitlin turned around.
"Hi, I'm Caitlin, Evan's little sister. It's so nice to meet you!" Caitlin jumped up from her chair and ran over to me, wrapping her arms around me. She was definitely Evan's sister. They were both huggers. "I was tired of hearing about this girl Evan couldn't pry himself from but never meeting her."
I was so excited to finally meet Caitlin I wasn't sure how to respond to her. Evan thought highly of his younger sister, and through his frequent conversations about her, I felt like I knew her already.
"Nice to meet you, too!" I managed to get out, caught off guard by Evan's dad walking into the room with a bright smile. I understood where Evan got his looks and build—from Sam, his dad.
The same brown hair covered his head and identical piercing blue eyes gave his face that same boyish look Evan's had. Though they were easily twenty years apart, you knew exactly who his father was.
Sam put his arm around my shoulders, gazing down at me with a fatherly smile I hadn't seen in a long time.
I smiled, not knowing what else to do, and he rubbed his belly. "It's good to have you here Ami. Jud-bug here makes pancakes to die for."
Caitlin, who was still beside me, loped gracefully past me to put her phone on the counter and then reached for the plates in the cupboard. "Hey, Mom, can I go to Evan's game on Wednesday?"
The thought of seeing Evan play live was thrilling to me. He had told me I could come, when I was feeling better, because he would love for me to watch him.
"No, Caitlin, you have school. You can go to the one on Friday when they play Vancouver." Judy gave a nod to the calendar on the wall of the kitchen near the sliding glass door.
Their backyard caught my attention. Well, the landscaping did. When I got here last night it was dark, and I couldn't see much else other than their white house. Now, it was clear they were very much into gardening and the appearance of their property. The thought made me smile.
My mom was a landscaper. It started with her love for flowers and making floral arrangements for around the house and that turned into friends asking her to design their backyards for them. By the time I was fifteen, she had her own business and loved it.
My dad had a local repair shop and did mostly routine maintenance on cars and race cars. Our small town was known for a race track called Willamette Speedway, where he spent a good amount of time when he wasn't with Andrew at the field. Baseball was our sport, just like hockey was the Masens' family sport.
We sat down around the kitchen table, and over bites of syrupy goodness and sips of coffee, I explained what happened to my family and how Evan had come to see me nearly every day.
"He wasn't always such a good guy," Caitlin said. "Don't let him fool you. He can be an asshole."
"Caitlin…" Sam sighed, rolling his eyes at her use of words. I kind of giggled. It sounded exactly like the conversations at our table growing up.
The thought of what Evan was like before I met him had always lingered in the back of my mind since the first time I saw him. Was he himself around me?
"Well..." Caitlin tried to defend herself, "...what about the time he was stuck in Orlando and you had to go get him?"
Judy laughed. "Evan's gotten himself into his fair share of trouble, yes," she agreed and then went onto explain the reason behind Caitlin's remark. "When Evan was playing in the Major Juniors, some of the older boys on the team thought it would be funny to get Evan drunk. That was fine, but then he called me at three in the morning and said, 'Don't freak out but I may be lost.' So naturally I freaked out that my sixteen-year-old son was lost."
"Where was he?"
"Orlando."
"Oh, wow." I giggled. "So how did he end up in Orlando?"
"Well, he'd apparently had enough of the party scene and got in a cab intending on coming home."