Page 51 of Goaltender Interference

Matt hadn’t even known hewasqueer yet, and still remembered how weirdly, inappropriately crushed he’d been by the sudden end of something that hadn’t even really started, something he couldn’t have even begun to label. How relieved he’d been when Aiden approached him at the All-Star Game a few months later and told him,it’s not working, not talking to you, I’mstilldistracted.

“You were better than you think, baby. We made it work for almost five years, huh? And Gabe clearly loves the shit out of you.”

“Gabe looks up to me as a mentor,” Aiden mumbled into Matt’s hair. “The same way your rookies look up to you. But outside of the rink, it’s just been...since you, I haven’t really hadanyone. Not the same way. Eventually it was just easier to stop trying to look for that.”

Matt’s head was spinning. That they’d each spent all of this time suffering, and now that Aiden was here again, in his arms, he couldn’t help wondering if they could have avoided all of this altogether. Was it insane to think that maybe Aiden was just meant for him, that all of this time apart had just been time they’d spent growing up, so they could find their way back to each other?

He had to get it together.

“What are you thinking about doing once the season starts?”

“I... I don’t know,” Aiden mumbled. “I don’t want to think about it now, Matty. Please?”

Matt sighed—this was just pushing off the inevitable, the same way they’d done back when they were trying to figure out what the future looked like for them. But Aiden was so fragile, he just didn’t know how else to handle it. “Whatever you need, Aiden.”

“Thank you,” Aiden said, and looked down at him with those big brown eyes, and Matt realized he was still just as much of a fool as he’d ever been.

The end of August came to Aiden with a series of punches to the gut.

“Let’s try something else,” Dr. Gauthier said, “let’s not even consider your profession. If you could have any life that you wanted, right now, what would it look like?”

“I’d be playing—”

“If youweren’tplaying.”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Why do you think you can’t picture even this? Is it that you aren’t comfortable admitting to yourself the things you do want? Or do you feel that you don’t deserve them?”

His mouth felt dry. “I don’t know.”

“You can think about it,” Dr. Gauthier said, firmly, and Aiden knew he probably spent the rest of the appointment both unable to participate the same way he had been, and unable to look Dr. Gauthier in the eye. Instead, he spent it staring at a spot on the wall a few feet to the left of her head, and mumbled stuff like,I don’t knowandI don’t really have anything else to say about this today.

Later that day, Ellie emailed him. The message was a little difficult to parse, between a five-year-old’s spelling and what was presumably Jessica’s autocorrect, but Ellie told him that she had been allowed to pick out her pads and try the position if that was what she really wanted. Would Aiden still be interested in talking to her and answering questions?

He wrote back,of course, whenever you’d like, and Ellie replied with a smiley-face emoji.

The Royal’s training camp was due to open soon.

Aiden woke up early so he could run from Matt’s condo to the summit of Mont-Royal and back. It wasn’t the most challenging run, but it was long enough to clear his head a little before they went to the gym together. Sometimes Matt was awake by the time he got back, and he came home to find coffee and toast already made; sometimes he wasn’t and then Aiden could get back into bed and laugh at Matt’s sleepy, disgusted protests when Aiden got sweat all over him, spooning up against his back.

Aiden went running.

His hair was long enough now that he had to pull it up in an awkward ponytail or topknot, so it didn’t stick to his face once it got sweaty. His feet pounding the pavement felt good. A tangibleaccomplishment. The park, this early, before the sun had even come up, was quiet and peaceful. No tourists, no families, just Aiden’s sneakers on the asphalt and the completely empty feeling in his head. He could pretend he was the only man in the entire world. He could forget anything except the burn in his lungs.

At the summit, he paused to catch his breath and look down at Montreal. The building lights were still on, picking out the windows like stars against the midnight blue sky. Matt was in one of those houses, probably still tangled up in the blankets and sprawled out over three-fourths of the bed where Aiden had left him.

Aiden exhaled. If he was being honest with himself, alone in the thin sliver of time when night hadn’t quite shifted into sunrise, this was the scaffolding of his ideal life. However he thought about it, it ended up coming back to this: Matt waiting for him when he ran home.

Aiden still didn’t know what he could really do with that, especially with the season starting, especially when there was only so long he was going to be able to fool Matt into believing Aiden was getting his shit together.

Aiden ran from the summit.

Training camp was right around the corner, and Matt’s teammates were finally all back in one place. The group chat buzzed as guys made plans to catch up, talked about how their summers had been, compared personal records they’d hit in the gym. It was nice to see it, even if he was distracted and distant himself. He’d built a good culture here over the years, and if this was the last season, it was a good legacy to leave behind.

Instead of texting, Saari called him the way he always did. It wasn’t a request: “Get lunch with me.”

“Sure, when?”

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