Somehow I knew

These familiar places

That I had been before
I thought I'd run, to escape feelings

That I had felt before
No one can take me anywhere like you
Nobody else is you.

And how will I live like this
With I everything I did
No one has ever made me feel like you
And how did we get this way
When everything seemed okay
No one could ever take the place of you

-Familiar 48, “Place of You”

            I wiped my eyes as I saw Isabella run into the room, then pulled her up onto my lap. At least my arms still worked. “Hi, Sweetie.”

            “Hi Daddy. I just saw Uncle Fishy, he told me to come and make you feel better,” she hugged me tightly. “Don’t cry, Daddy. It’ll be okay.”

            “Izzy…” I rubbed her back softly, my cheek against her hair. I saw Lisa walk in with Maria and Sophia, and Brendan smiled at them.

            “Thank you for calling, Brendan. I was worried about him,” she shook her head at me, “and with good reason, obviously.” She held up the car keys, “Let’s go home, huh? I want you to rest for a while, and then we’ll sit down and figure out a date for your surgery.”

            “Can you pick me up at the door? It’ll make it easier,” I said to her, “I’ll bring Izzy with me.”

            She nodded and ducked out of the room, then Brendan walked over to me. “I’m going to go now. Please let her take care of you, Steve; you need someone to watch out for you, and Jiri and I can only be there so much.”

            I smiled softly at the thought of Jiri, then remembered I had my daughter on my lap and felt like the worst husband and father in the world. “Tell him I said thank you, if you see him before I do. And thank you too, not only for coming today, but also for talking with me last week. I needed someone to just hear me out.”

            “What did he help you with last week?”

            Like I was going to tell my daughter that I was developing feelings—very strong feelings—for a guy she considered as close as an uncle. Or that Brendan had helped me deal with it…not a chance. “He knew I was scared about the way my knee hurts. He made me feel better.”

            She smiled up at Brendan like he’d rescued her kitten from a great big oak tree, “Thank you Uncle Brendie.”

            He grimaced at the name, but grinned at her anyway, “No problem, Iz. I kinda like your Dad, too.”

            Brendan helped me out of the building; my knee hurt too much to walk on my own, so he let me lean on him. I resolved right then that I was never going to push my workouts too far ever again. Lisa buckled Isabella in next to her sisters while I said goodbye to Brendan and got into the passenger seat.

            When we got home, I asked the girls if they would go and play in the backyard. With all that Lisa was doing for me, I needed to tell her the truth. It was making me crazy to know that I was keeping something from her. Once they were gone, I asked her to come and sit with me. I was lying on the couch, so I pulled her to sit on my lap. She still weighed next to nothing, so it didn’t hurt me.

            “You’re beautiful, you know that?” she nodded, blushing slightly. “And you know how much I love you and care about you and need you in my life, right?”

            This time she raised an eyebrow almost imperceptibly, “Of course, where’s this going, honey?”

            I took a deep breath and entwined my fingers with hers; “I have to talk to you about something. This problem with my knee isn’t the only thing that has been bothering me lately. There’s something else…it’s about, um. Well…you see, it actually has to do with…”

            “Jiri,” she finished, interrupting my stuttering.

            I blinked, “Um, yeah, actually. How’d you…? Well, yeah. It’s about Jiri. I’ve been spending a lot of time with him. And, well…the thing is…”

            She smiled softly, “You’re falling in love with him.”

            I jumped slightly, “No, not in love with him…not…not that serious. But I do have…feelings for him.”

            “Don’t argue with me,” she replied, “And don’t think I haven’t known you long enough to recognize it.”

            “How in the hell did you know?”

            She laughed softly, “What do you think, that after being married to you for 13 years, I wouldn’t know that look? I’ve seen it every time you look at me since the day we met. I think I would know it if I saw it.”

            I tried to speak, but no words would come out, “But it’s only been in the past few weeks…I’ve spent all of that time grimacing and whining and crying over my knee. How would you have time to see?”

            “Only a few weeks? You really are slow to accept these things aren’t you?” she rolled her eyes, “I’ll tell you exactly when I saw it first. June eleventh. He came over to the house, voice raw and eyes red from sobbing for hours; he’d just found out he wasn’t going to play in game five. You comforted him, held him, convinced him that, even if you guys did win the Cup that night, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t out there. He had earned the right to get his name on there. It was okay that he’d made a mistake; he was young, and he was still learning the league and getting used to playing in it. And you had that look in your eyes. That look that you gave me the night you dropped me off after our first date.”

            “Wait, no. That can’t be it, not that long ago. I didn’t notice…”

            “You were on painkillers constantly; you were in the middle of the Stanley Cup Finals; you were facing knee surgery that could have ended your career,” she counted off on her fingers. “You had so much going on already, you didn’t have time to realize it.”

            “But…if you knew, why didn’t you say anything?”

            She shrugged, “I had to get used to the idea. If you’d stopped caring for me, I would have been angry. You didn’t, though. You kept hugging me and giving me those cute little grins; you’d never stopped loving me, and I knew that. But it took a long time for me to accept the idea that you could love someone else too.”

            I was still confused; I would have been inconsolable if I thought she loved someone else. “But you never even showed that you knew…you spent all summer pretending like nothing was wrong.”

            One side of her mouth curled up, “Of course I did. We did a lot less ‘celebrating’ than in 97 or 98.”

            “But you said you wanted to save my knee…”

            She giggled, “Think back to February. Your knee was sore then too, remember? But we celebrated that gold medal pretty damn well. Hell, I could barely walk that week, and my knees are fine.”

            I smiled, “I don’t know what to think though, Lisa. What now? I can’t live without you. I love you as much as the day I asked you to spent your life with me. I still want you; I still think you’re incredibly perfect and sexy and desirable. But…I want Jiri, too.”

            “So you’ll have him.”

            I sat up, nearly bumping her head with my own. “What?”

            “Don’t tell me you’re going to be all moral and upstanding about this,” she said with a laugh, “I’m damn lucky already, Steve. You have been an object of lust for the female fans of this team…and other teams…since you were drafted. You have never cheated on me. I love Jiri, too. He’s good for you. I asked him to watch out for you because of that. He’s a good guy, and he thinks that you hang the stars. I’m willing to share.”

            I was still fumbling with the concept that she’d known for three months and hadn’t told me when another problem presented itself. “What about the girls?”

            “When they’re older and they can understand it, we’ll explain the entire situation to them. We have smart girls, and they’ve got more compassion than anyone else I know; they’ll be okay. Until then, we’ll just keep it quiet. No one else needs to know.”

            I slid my hand up to her cheek and cradled her face, “I love you, Lisa,” I told her simply, and then kissed her.

            She kissed back for a moment, then pulled away and smiled at me, “I know you do. And I love you too. So why don’t you…”

            The ringing of the phone stopped her mid-sentence, and I grabbed it quickly. “Hello?”

            “Steve, its me. When I got home, Cathy’s water had broken, we’re on the way to the hospital. William Beaumont.” Brendan said rapidly, then cursed to himself, “Jesus, Steve, it’s a month early. Can you come? Now?”

            I hung up the phone and almost immediately we had the next-door neighbor watching the girls and were on our way.