Page 16 of Goaltender Interference

“Ohhhh,buddy.”

Aiden stared out into the long distance. There was a disconnect between his body, relaxed in a way it hadn’t been in a long time, and his head, cycling through all of the stupid things he’d done over the past week and all of the complicated feelings he’d had about them. Like he could see them clearly for the first time.

“I know it was a bad idea. A really bad idea. But I couldn’t let him go...”

“Soupy, you don’t have to explain yourself to me, I’m not trying to make you feel like shit. It’s just that I remember what it was like when you guys broke up the first time, and I don’t wanna have you going through that again while you’ve already got so much shit of your own going on, you know? Let’s climb one mountain at a time, buddy.”

“Yeah, well,” Aiden said, and laughed. “It’s too late for that now.”

Pears’ mouth tilted up in one of those lazy, rueful smiles. “Well, just remember, Soupy, whatever’s going on, you’re notalone.”

Aiden, strangely, did feel a little better. To get it out there in the universe. To hear that, even if it was ultimately a meaningless platitude, as useless as the mantras he’d used to help himself through his season. “Thanks, Pears. For being you.”

Pears smiled again, and said, “I’ll send you the playlist.”

They sat in silence, for a while, watching the sun go down.

Once Matt got on the ice, he felt a little better. He had been playing it pretty cool overall, being extremely normal about everything that had happened to him in the beginning of July. But he’d also played it cool when Aiden had broken up with him the first time, for a few months at least, and that had ended up as a disaster of epic proportions.

Either way. It was good to get back out to Brossard and push himself to his limit. Although there were a few other guys who were back in the city, only the Quebecers humored him and rolled out. The Morin twins, of course, although Matt liked them best in small doses even after all of these years. And Fourns, who would have lived and slept at the rink if the equipment managers had let him.

Matt warmed up by shooting some pucks on Fourns’ empty net, then went into a pretty brutal skate that took him the better part of thirty minutes. While he was doing it, he could see, out of the corner of his eyes, that Fourns had shoveled all of the pucks out of the back of the net, dumping them in a bucket beyond. By the time he had gotten into the crease, finishing his own warm-up and humoring his captain, Matt shot some more pucks in his direction.

Fourns gloved the last one and rose gracefully from the ice where he’d been on his knees. It was funny watching him move. He was a very different player than Aiden had been. Fourns was tall and stocky, with an explosive athleticism, while Aiden had dropped down draft rankings because even though he was tall, he was lanky as hell, and relied more on positioning.

But they had that same easy grace, the same flexibility.

Fourns pulled his helmet off and shook out his hair, then squinted at Matt, who was sweating heavily, his face red. Everything ached. He was in excellent shape, even in the offseason, but that kind of skate took it out of you.

“Cap,” Fourns said, “you like to tell me why you’re bag skating yourself already in motherfuckingJuly?”

“Who’s bag skating?” Matt asked, looking away guiltily.

Behind them, the Morins fired a series of rapid pucks on the net, thebangof the missed shots hitting the boards too loud in the mostly empty practice rink.

Fourns raised his heavy eyebrows and wrinkled his nose. He looked like a teaching assistant who never had enough coffee, a perpetual five-o’clock shadow on his cheeks no matter how often he shaved. “Cap,” he said, disapprovingly.

Fourns hadn’t been around for the aftermath of Aiden Campbell. He knew, generally, about Matt’s bisexuality and the divorce, but the roster from those years had kept Matt’s secrets for him. Even if Fournshadknown, Matt wasn’t ready to talk to anyone about that particular open wound.

“I just want to get back in the swing of the season. Make sure my knee’s going to hold up,” Matt lied, hoping that Fourns wouldn’t call him out on the obvious: pushing it that hard this early was a sure way to aggravate things. Thankfully the knee still felt mostly okay. He’d have to make sure he took extratime stretching and keep up with ibuprofen every morning and maybe see about Toradol shots later on, but for now, it was fine.

“Sure.” Fourns wriggled his hand out of his blocker; it looked comically tiny in his baggy sleeve before he raised it to brush the sweaty strands of hair away from his eyes. “But, man, Iwilltalk to the trainers if I have to shut you down.”

Aiden’s hair was longer than Fourns’ now, Matt realized with a little jolt. When they’d been younger, Aiden had always kept it mostly short and styled. By the time the playoffs came around, it brushed at the nape of his neck, shaggy enough for Matt to get a hand in there and really pull.

“Cap.”

“Sorry,” Matt said, shaking his head, like that alone would clear the cobwebs. “I’m a little distracted today, I guess.”

Fourns looked at Matt with his tired brown eyes. A level, searching look. He didn’t saydo you want to talkbecause he probably knew that Matt would never. That was part of being a captain of the Royal. You bore the weight of that mantle, and you couldn’t share it with your team, no matter how much you would have liked to sometimes.

Besides. This wasn’t anything like losing games and dealing with media shit. This was something beyond. It was funny: years ago, this was the kind of thing Matt would have turned to Aiden for, knowing Aiden would’ve had something to say, even if it was completely fucking stupid and off the wall, that would have made him feel better. And that was the problem, of course.

He couldn’t talk toAidenabout it. Aiden didn’t want to talk to him.

Couldn’t you?The traitor thought wormed its way into the back of his head.Couldn’t you talk to him?

No. No: he couldn’t talk to him. Aiden hadn’t let him. But Aiden had been like that before, sometimes, when he was too overwhelmed by the moment. He’d shut down, but it didn’tnecessarily mean that he didn’t want to... Maybe with a little distance, he wouldn’t push Matt away. Who the hell was he kidding? It was entirely wishful thinking. Idiocy.

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