Open Arms

Chapter 4

We walked down to the parking lot, to Tyson's car.

Tyson looked at me and raised his eyebrows, smiling, mentally giving me thumbs up, even though Hunter and me were simply just friends.

"Who's this", Tyson asked as the rest of his friends whistled at me.

"Hunter. Hunter Worthington", he introduced himself and respectfully reached out his hand to shake Tyson's.

"Nice to meet you, Hunter", said Tyson, shaking his hand, "You new here? I've never seen you before".

"Just moved from Toronto, about two weeks ago", explained Hunter.

"Nice", smiled Tyson, "Well, hop in".

All six of us got into the Mercedes Benz GL Class SUV Tyson had been as his car to drive the kids of the family to and from practices, etc. Tyson's dad, my Uncle Ed, short for Eduardo, owned, founded, and worked for Vancouver's biggest law-firm, Moretti Bros. & Co. He was my dad's brother.

My dad's family had come to Canada from Italy in the early 90s. My dad has 10 siblings, 9 brothers and one sister. My Uncle Ed and Aunt Emily have basically raised me since I was 4 years old. When I was four years old, my mom was diagnosed with stage 2-breast cancer. She underwent seven months of chemo and was in remission for four months. When I was five, she was diagnosed with stage 4-IBC breast cancer.

Her cancer had spread to her lungs and lymph nodes. At this point there wasn't much that they could do. Over the next two years, she fought until she had nothing left. She tried everything; Chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormonal therapy, etc. On the day of my seventh birthday, also her 27th birthday, we took her off of life support. She had fought so hard, for so long. So we let her go. It wouldn't have been fair to leave her like that. So we let her go home, to heaven. And that day, heaven was given an angel. My dad was always away overseas, and even when he was home, he never really paid any attention to me. Before my mom's diagnosis, my dad had been my best friend. We had been inseparable. Whenever he was home. I idolized him, looked up to him. I wanted be to be just like him.

After my mother died, we had her funeral and my dad took the first plane out to Kandahar right after the service. My dad started his service in the army the year we found out about my mom's cancer. He left me, to watch my mother suffer alone, he left me, a four-year-old child, to try to cope and understand the fact that my mother was dying.

My dad had come home about four or five times a year, when my mom was sick. We came home to let her off of life support, stayed for the funeral and then left again, and I have only seen him about 4 times in the past years.

I hated my dad, because of the crap he put me through. And my cousins and aunts and uncles, etc., understand this, because they don't blame me at all.

Growing up, my dad had been the "golden boy". Ridiculously amazing at every sport he played, super smart, handsome, charming, basically the whole package. But when my mom got sick, he shut everybody out, including his own child, and changed into a completely unrecognizable man. Something inside of Tony Moretti Jr., died when she got sick.

The drive to Booster Juice wasn't awkward at all, which I had imagined it would be. Hunter talked and connected with all the guys so well. Since it was only late September, football season had already started but they were only two games in. Tyson was the captain of the Oak Ridge High Senior Football team, but also played for the U17 British Columbia Provincial High Performance Hockey Team. Ever since he was young, he was always told that he would make it in hockey, he was that good.

"So do you play", asked Tyson.

"Yeah, actually I played a bit back in Ontario", said Hunter a bit shyly.

"Oh come on man. A guy your size plays more than a bit", joked Tyson.

"Yeah man, what team did you play for", said Marcus, Tyson's best friend since kindergarten.

"I told you guys, I didn't play much", said Hunter.

"Yeah whatever big guy", said Tyson with a smile, "You're playing for us whether you like it or not. Come to practice tomorrow at 2:45 and we'll let you tryout".

"Fine", agreed Hunter.

"And if you don't show up, we'll go to your house a whip your oh-so scrawny ass", said Dylan, Tyson's friend.

Everyone in the car burst out laughing because of the fact that Hunter's butt wasn't very hard to miss. Let's just say that you could definitely tell he played sports...lots of them.