"Dallas! Get your head in the game!" My new captain yelled at me for the millionth time. He yelled a lot; a lot more than I had ever yelled at my team.
I never even got to play, I was a classic benchwarmer. It wasn't like I had ever expected anything less in my first year though.
Maybe the last 3 months with Dylan had made me go soft, or maybe it was because I kept thinking about Cam and how horrible I had been to him when he was in this position. But I wasn't as tough as I used to be.
It's funny, how karma always finds a way to bite you in the ass.
At the end of practice all the guys rushed to the locker room. They were all talking about girls, dates, other teams, other players. Their laughter rang in my ears. Ugh, they could give me such a headache sometimes…
They were nothing like my team at Degrassi. We were a family. We won together, lost together, worked together, and bled together. We played for the love of the game. These guys seemed to only play for the money… and the whores that came with it. Though I pretended to care, everything they said just pissed me off.
But I had to stick through it. This job paid amazingly and I needed the money. Not only was I trying to help Maya out but… I had another life to support out of town. But that was another story…
"So Mike, you going to the party with us tonight?" Morrison asked me.
I shook my head. The girls that followed the team around, yeah they were hot, I couldn't deny that. But none of them appealed to me. I decided 3 months ago in that hospital that there was only one girl for me, Maya Matlin.
Alli and I had broken up when she left for MIT. And I thought I'd swear off relationships for a while, but things with Maya were different. I know, I sound like a freaking idiot. Things like this; they never work out for me.
And Maya… she had made it very clear that she didn't want anything like that, ever. And somehow I was cool with that.
We took care of each other; she relied on me, and I relied on her too. We told each other everything… well almost everything. There were secrets of my past that I didn't want her to know, secrets that she would probably understand more than anyone else. But I didn't want her to think that it was the reason I had been there for her. Maybe that was it at first but now it was so much more. I knew the time would come when I would be forced to tell her. But now was not the time.
Maya cried, all the time. The doctors told her she had some kind of depression that chicks get after having a baby. The baby cried just as much. All night, all day, every time I was over someone was crying. I'm not going to lie, sometimes it was me.
It sucked seeing Maya like that. She was so tired all the time, she had fallen behind in school, and she never played her cello anymore.
Her parents tried to help her, but they were still out of town a lot for her mom's illness. I tried to stay with her as much as I could when she was alone because she worried me.
They were out of town this weekend. So I drove to her as fast as I could. She came to the door before I could even knock. The dark circles under her eyes made them seem even more puffy, and red. I could hear Dylan whaling in the background.
"I can't get him to stop…" She cried. "I've changed him, fed him, burped him, but he just won't stop crying!"
She led the way to her bedroom. She could barely get the door open due to the mess inside. Diapers (clean and dirty), bottles, dirty clothes, rags, basically everything you could imagine was scattered across the floor. There was only a small path leading to little Dylan's crib.
I went over to it and picked the sad baby boy up. He was thrashing his arms around and tears stained his rosy cheeks.
I rocked him back and forth trying to soothe him. Maya had fallen back onto her bed and was sobbing herself, begging me to make him stop. She was definitely not helping.
So I took him away from her. I went outside and sat on the steps.
"Shh little guy, it's alright. It's okay I'm here." I whispered to him. He cried for a couple more minutes and then fell asleep. I breathed a sigh of relief and leaned back. I couldn't help but resent Maya for the way she was acting. Babies cry, that's what they do. You just have to ride it out. She was 15 years old now, she had a kid, it was time for her to grow up.
But that's not an easy thing to do when you're that young, I would know.
I won't let Maya down, if she can't do this… I'm going to help her through it.
I went back into the house and set Dylan down in his little play pen in the living room.
I found Maya right where I left her. She was curled up in a ball with her knees up to her chest.
"Maya," I whispered.
"What am I doing wrong?" She asked me sitting straight up. "Why can't I make him happy?!"
"Because Maya, you… you can't… Look babies cry but you have to try to be patient okay? If you start crying and getting frustrated it will make it worse." I tried to explain.
"What do you even know anyway?!" She screamed at me. "You have no idea what this is like!"
I was quiet for a while "Look Maya, you need some rest. I'll call Tori; maybe she can come over and help you clean up. In the meantime why don't you let me take Dylan over to my place? Its baby proofed."
She looked up at me with her puppy dog eyes. "No, no I can't. You…" she trailed off when I chuckled at her.
"He'll be fine, alright. Now try to get some sleep. I'll bring him back tomorrow morning all in one piece."
Without another protest she let me leave. I called Tori and waited until she got there. I did not want Maya to be all alone.
And then as I was loading Dylan into the car I realized what I had done. I had no freaking clue how to take care of a kid on my own. I mean before… I had always had my mom around, and then Maya was there. But now, this was all me.
No, hell no, this was a family matter and would be treated as such.
"What do we do with it?" Luke asked staring down at a sleeping Dylan.
"Nothing right now," I answered. "I mean we won't have a problem unless he starts…"
Dylan's eyes fluttered open and he hiccupped, then the tears came.
"Crying?" Owen finished.
"Yeah" I muttered.
"So do we like… have to change his diaper?" Luke's eyes were wide.
"I guess so… But umm… do either of you know how to?" Their blank expressions gave me my answer. "Okay, so I guess we don't exactly know whether or not he actually does needs a diaper change."
"Well how exactly are we supposed to know?" Owen asked rolling his eyes.
I lifted Dylan up and put his butt in front of Luke's face. "Smell it."
"Oh hell no!" Luke yelled.
I looked to Owen; he took a step back and put his hands up. So I closed my eyes and told myself I was making up for everything I had done in the past. I sniffed… oh thank god, no diaper change needed.
Then we moved on to feeding him.
"So wait, this actually came out of that little niner's tits?" Owen laughed looking at the bottle.
I just gave him that captain "shut up or I'll kill you" look.
"Right, sorry I forgot you're in love with her now."
"Owen, I'm not…" I sighed "Forget it, he's not hungry… So what is wrong with him?"
"Wait a minute, I think I know." Owen smirked and then he disappeared. He came back with a hockey puck.
"What exactly do you think that's going to do?" I asked irritated.
Owen handed the baby the hockey puck. "He's a freaking hockey star, that's why he's sad! He wants hockey! So…" He jumped over and switched on the TV which was already on the NHL channel. "Let's give him hockey!"
Dylan put the hockey puck in his mouth and sucked on it, pacifying his cries. I couldn't help but laugh a little bit. I brought him over to the couch and sat next to Owen; Luke followed and sat in the chair beside us.
Dylan's little blue eyes were fixated on the screen as the two teams battled it out.
"This seriously has to be the coolest thing I have ever seen." Luke stated amazed.
I couldn't agree more. And as I sat there, perfectly content with my family, I swear I felt someone there with us. There was an air of happiness and love. An air of a father watching over his child, and a feeling of gratitude from brother to brother.
AN: Haha! Just a little fluff for everyone. The whole Dallas being a dad thing threw me off there for a minute but I think I can use it to my advantage. Please review! Love you!