Page 34 of Goaltender Interference

“Stop,” Aiden said, embarrassed, and finally pulled himself free. “Come on. Let me show you what I’ve done.”

It was difficult to let him go, but somehow Matt managed.

They spent a lot of their spare time exploring Montreal. It wasn’t as big a city as New York, but there was still a lot to see. In a way it felt like making up for lost time. Although Aiden had spent some time during the summers with Matt there, they hadn’t gone out much. Both of them had been too paranoid about the Montreal media fishbowl sniffing out a story. He still felt a little paranoid, but no one seemed to have paid him any attention so far and it wasn’t like he had a career to worry about anymore.

“Come on,” Matt said, one afternoon. “You loved that mountain near New York, right? Come see Mont-Royal with me.”

And Aiden agreed.

It wasn’t quite the same kind of place as Storm King; there were no dirt hiking trails or rocky creeks. It was a hill. But there was an abundance of green trees, and there were paths through them. It was only about a twenty-minute walk from home to the Park Avenue entrance. They mostly walked in silence, up the trails through the green-canopied trees to the summit. It was a beautiful day, and the trails were crowded with pedestrians and tourists and families, and Aiden was pretty sure that more than a few people had recognized Matt.

No one bothered them, which was nice.

They made their way up to the summit, mostly in silence, and Aiden looked up at the huge LED cross, lights out, then out over the city spread below them, the way it stretched out into the distance across the river. Matt stood next to him as they observed in silence, watching below them as more people climbed toward the summit.

“Let’s go to the lake,” Matt said. “There’s skating on the rink in the winter, but—”

“Yeah, even if it wasn’t the middle of August I, ah, haven’t skated since the last game. You know.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that now.”

Aiden watched a kid below them, throwing a ball off the edge of the summit and crying when it vanished into the distance.

“It won’t be too long before winter,” he said, but what he meant was:it won’t be too long until the season starts.He didn’t want to think too long about that, what he would do when Matt was playing, what Aiden would do when he would normally be back on the ice.

From the time he started playing hockey, there was never a September he didn’t lace up his skates.You can still skate,he argued with himself, but he responded,It won’t be the same.

Matt’s hand on his arm, shaking him out of it. “Come on,” he said, and Aiden sighed and followed him.

It was a clover-shaped artificial lake, but that didn’t mean there weren’t hundreds of people sitting around it on picnic blankets or sprawled in the grass, piled onto boats, running and kicking soccer balls, flying kites. Aiden and Matt found a spot that didn’t seem as crowded and sat. Matt leaned back and lay down on the hill, his hands resting under his head as he looked up at the sky.

At first, they didn’t really talk, just people-watched. Aiden ran a hand through the soft grass, absentmindedly pulling at individual strands until he had a small pile. Frowning, he brushed his fingers off on his shorts and looked out at the water again.

“It’s weird,” Matt said, finally, “doing this again with you. Being here with you.” He was still looking anywhere but Aiden, his eyes focused on the fluffy clouds drifting over them. “Kind of doing my head in, a little. You know?”

Aiden blew a breath out of his nose. “Yeah... I don’t really know what I’m doing, either.”

“I just never thought we’d ever have the chance again. I thought about you a lot, over the years. Not all of the time, but sometimes it would hit me, and I’d wonder how you were doing.What you were doing. If you were happy. Whether you were dating.”

Aiden’s shoulders hunched forward. He didn’t look sideways. Didn’t want to see what Matt’s face looked like right now. Matt was usually the only person he never minded looking at directly, but he couldn’t do it. “I thought about you, too. But it was my fault, so. I didn’t feel like I had the right. You never...you never said you still...”

“Icouldn’t. I was married, and even before Emily, it wouldn’t have been a good thing for me.”

There was a long, quiet pause. Aiden turned the words over and over again in his head. “What do you mean?”

Matt made a noise that wasn’t quite a laugh, although it had the outline of one. “There’s a lot you don’t know about my life. We have a lot of catching up to do, you know?”

“What did you mean, though, that it wouldn’t have been a good thing for you?”

Matt’s face, so familiar and so different at the same time, was carefully expressionless. He was still looking up at the sky, squinting as the sun shifted. “Had a bad couple of years after things...you know. I did the player assistance program the summer after.”

“You what?”

“Yeah. I don’t think...well, I couldn’t have talked to you. Not for a long time, even if I always thought about what I’d want to say if we did.”

“Matt, I’m—Jesus. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t. It wasn’t your problem,” Matt said, without rancor. He was still on his back, perfectly motionless, like a statue toppled into the green. “It’s fine. I got my shit sorted. Had a pretty good run of it since.”

---