Comeback (3 page)

Since he was around all the time, I was able to see the man he was when he was clean and sober, and damn it all if I didn’t really
like
that man. He had a big heart. He was genuine, he was incredibly funny in a self-deprecating way, and he never let his fame go to his head. For that matter, he didn’t let it get him down when that very fame turned on him and allowed the world to see things he might rather keep hidden. It was easy to forget that he was an addict.

Too easy.

Being friends with him would be one of the simplest things I could ever do, but it was something I couldn’t allow. Not for my own sanity, at least. Right now, I had to consciously bring his disease back to mind again and again, or else I was liable to let my walls down. I had to keep this professional, to maintain the boundaries I’d built to protect myself. I could be friendly toward him without being his friend, couldn’t I? So I’d asked how long he’d been clean and I’d told him I was proud of him, establishing a typical addict-counselor relationship. I wasn’t exactly a counselor, and I definitely wasn’t his, but it seemed easier to take that tack.

I just didn’t have it in me to care—to really, truly care—for another addict beyond the scope of my job. One more might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Nicky shifted on the bench next to me, an almost unnoticeable movement. I doubted I would have recognized it if it wasn’t so still and silent in the rock garden. When I turned, it was to find him staring at me in a way that left me unnerved. His eyes were on me intently, making me feel as though he could see straight inside my head and hear every thought. I couldn’t tell what was going on inside his head, only that there was a lot of it, whatever it was.

“Have a good time signing?” I asked, trying to shake the odd sensation.

“Huh,” he said, giving an ironic nod of his head with his brow raised. But then he only said, “It was fine.”

Fine
. It hadn’t really been, and I knew it. Torturous might be more apt, and if I’d taken even half a second to think before speaking, I would have asked him any number of things that would have less obvious answers. I’d dropped in a couple of times during the signing, and every other table had had long lines of fans waiting to get a jersey or a shirt or a hat or an arm signed. Even the rookies and the guys new to the Storm this year had been kept fairly busy. But not Nicky. There had only been a few bodies in front of him at any point in time. But at least he’d made good use of that by having a real conversation with the few who came to see him.

I decided to shut my trap at that point from here on out. Lately, he always seemed to seek out the quiet, anyway, so I doubted he would mind much.

But then he shifted again, and his right pinky finger brushed against my left pinky finger.

He jerked his hand away. “Sorry,” he said, shrugging and giving me a sheepish expression.

“Something on your mind?” I asked.

“I’ve been thinking.”

From what I’d noticed, he was always thinking. Nicky was maybe the most cerebral man I’d ever met. Even when he was just staring off into nothing, it was easy to see the wheels turning behind his eyes. No matter how still his body might be, I never doubted there was a tennis match going on in his brain.

“Thinking?” I prodded after a moment, since he’d just left it hanging there.

“Thinking about what I can do,” he said, clearing up absolutely nothing.

“I think you’ve proven there are a lot of things you can do,” I noted.

“No, I…” He laughed, dropping his head in a way that made it seem self-effacing. Then he brought his gaze back up to mine, those brown eyes that seemed to always be laughing, even in the most difficult times, boring into me again. “I meant what I can do for Light the Lamp.”

Nicky Ericsson already did more for Light the Lamp than any of the volunteers. I couldn’t imagine what else he thought he needed to do.

“You already do a lot.”

“I know, I just— Maybe I don’t mean what I can do
for
Light the Lamp. Maybe I mean what I can do
through
Light the Lamp. To make a difference.”

“I’m listening.” I was always open to new ideas, and having worked for charitable organizations my entire career, I knew better than to turn anything down out of hand. There was always a greater need than supply, no matter the cause or the efforts put into effecting change.

“I may not have the celebrity status I had a few years ago, but I still have some. Especially around Portland. I thought maybe I could…” His voice trailed off.

I looked over to find him staring out at the rocks again, only now his smile was gone.

“Maybe you could what?”

“Nothing. It’s stupid.”

“I doubt that.” Everything I knew about him screamed just the opposite. “Maybe you could what?” I prodded again.

“Maybe I could talk to people,” he finally said after hemming and hawing around it for several moments. “You know, tell them about my experiences. Use what little status I have for something good.”

I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting him to say, but it definitely wasn’t this. “That would mean you’d have to admit to the world that you’re an addict, Nicky.” I’d lowered my voice, even though no one was anywhere near us to overhear.

There was so much shame involved in addiction, so much secrecy. The NHL, the Storm—they’d never come out and said what was going on with him over the last several years. They couldn’t. Players were granted privacy when it came to issues like this. Healthcare workers couldn’t talk about it. Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and other programs like them kept their membership rolls private. Even at Light the Lamp, we insisted on confidentiality.

People—fans and media—might
suspect
that Nicky had an addiction, and there was certainly a lot of speculation running rampant about him, but no one could come out and say that he did.

No one but him.

What he was suggesting was enormous.

“I know that,” he said, shifting on the bench again. “I know what it would mean.”

“People would look at you differently.”

“You’re not telling me anything earth-shattering here, you know.” He was laughing again. I definitely preferred it when he laughed. That was the Nicky I knew, not this anxious, antsy man beside me. But the truth was he was probably all of the above and so much more. I thought I knew pretty him well, but based on what he’d just suggested, I knew there was a heck of a lot more to him that I didn’t have the first clue about.

I wasn’t sure what to do with him at the moment. He wasn’t making it easy to keep him in any boxes, that was for sure.

“Why?” I finally asked. I wasn’t opposed to the idea of Nicky becoming a public speaker, of sorts—at least not at first blush. But if he wanted it for the wrong reasons then allowing him to go ahead with it might cause more harm than good, at least for him. He hadn’t been clean all that long in the grand scheme of things. If he was looking for more fame, for adulation for the wrong reasons, it could come back to bite him in the butt. Not that Nicky seemed like the sort to do that, but experience had taught me to be wary of anyone with a history of addiction.

I might not want to be close enough to let him in as a good friend, but I didn’t want him to cause himself a setback.

Nicky took his time answering, staring at the bright burst of orange leaves coming from the cherry blossom across from us. But then his shoulders lifted in an infinitesimal shrug and he turned his head to me, looking directly in my eyes in that fervent way he had. “I just think there’s a reason for everything. I’ve been given a lot of gifts in terms of athletic ability and my career, and I’ve struggled with addiction. I think there’s a reason for all of that, and I think I should use everything I’ve been given.”

There wasn’t even the slightest hint of irony in his words. No sense that he was hoping to further himself or make a spectacle of himself.

I took a breath, the crisp fall air flirting with my senses. “Have you run any of this by Jim Sutter yet?”

“Not yet. I thought I’d talk to you about it first.”

Jim wouldn’t try to dissuade him, anyway. He’d encourage it. The same as I should. There wasn’t any good reason for me to be hesitant about this, beyond the possibility that it would test the strength of my protective walls. He wasn’t just asking me if I thought he should become a motivational speaker. Nicky was asking to do it through my foundation, to be even more intricately involved in the work I did than he already was. But this wasn’t an opportunity I could pass up. It had the potential to do a world of good.

“Talk to Jim,” I said, digging my fingernails into the underside of the bench so hard it was painful—a reminder to myself that I had to keep my distance. “Once you get the go-ahead, let me know and we’ll figure something out.”

He nodded, and he moved slightly toward me. There was a glimmer in his eye that made me think he was going to try to pull me into a hug. I thrust out my hand to shake. That glimmer fled as fast as it had come, and he shook my hand as I stood.

“I should—” I started.
I should calm the heck down is what I should do
. I felt breathless and panicky, and there was no good reason for it. None at all. I dusted my hands over my slacks, brushing away any bits of the outdoors that might have found a home there. “I should head back and get ready for the…the event.”

Ever polite, Nicky didn’t say anything about how flustered I suddenly was. He just nodded and smiled, and made me wish that the glimmer would come back into his eyes. Because that glimmer meant life. It meant hope. It meant there was something worth fighting for to keep him clean. The ones who had that bit of life in their eyes were the ones I didn’t worry about so much. They were the ones who had a chance.

His smile wasn’t enough to bring that brightness back, though. It didn’t reach his eyes. “You should go, then. I’ll see you after a while.”

I nodded and turned to leave. Halfway up the stone steps, I looked back over my shoulder to find him looking at the rocks exactly as he had been when I’d first come upon him. Or maybe not exactly the same way. Because I’d just taken one of the bricks from my protective wall and placed it on his. I hadn’t even handed it to him to let him do as he would with it. I’d just placed it there, helping him close himself off when I should be doing the opposite.

YOU’VE GOT TO
earn their trust off the ice if you’re ever going to get it back on the ice
, Jim had said to me just before the team left for our week of team building and bonding at Mount St. Helens. Damn if I didn’t already know that, but this week was making it clear just how deep a hole I’d dug for myself. Rock climbing, hiking, fishing, horseback riding, ropes courses, zip-lining—it was supposed to be a week of the guys hanging out together and everyone getting to know—and hopefully, like—one another. In many ways, that’s what it had been to this point. But in other ways, it was proving to me just how far I still had to go in terms of reclaiming my teammates’ trust.

The guys still
liked
me, at least as much as teams ever really liked a goaltender. Goalies could be an odd sort, standing alone so often in the midst of a team sport, but most skaters on a team at least put up with our quirks. My friendship with the boys had never really been in question, though, so far as it went. The issue at hand was so much more complex than that.

As a goalie, I was an island of one, but I was also supposed to be the backbone of the team. The last line of defense. The foundation of it all was built around me.

It wasn’t egotistical. The fact of the matter was that Jim had been building this team with me and a couple of the other guys in mind as its core.
Start with something solid in net and work your way out.
That was the mantra he’d been following, right up until the point when my life and my game had gone to hell in a handbasket.

The guys had had no problem with laughing and talking and joking around with me this week. The trouble came when the coaches asked them to trust me during some of the exercises. That hadn’t gone so well so far. Every time I was asked to do something, another guy or three came along to help, supposedly to show me support, but they weren’t doing that with anyone else. It just proved that they believed I wasn’t going to be able to carry my weight. They believed, deep down, that I would disappoint them, regardless of what they might say about it. We were due to take our bus home to Portland this afternoon, but we had one final exercise to complete first.