Page 76 of Goaltender Interference

Hi?

Sorry, I should have introduced myself first!! This is Aino Saarinen, Aatos’s wife.

Nice to meet you?

Nice to meet you too!! Now that things are a little more official, I wanted to reach out and on behalf of the rest of us, welcome you to Montreal!!

Aiden stared at his phone and tried to remember if he’d ever seen a picture of Aino Saarinen. He couldn’t bring her face to mind. Right now, he was mostly picturing the smiley-face emoji,which she used almost like another form of punctuation. He wondered if she’d asked Matt for his number, or if Saarinen still had it saved from the last time.Thanks,he said,that’s very kind.

Please feel free to ask me if you need anything! Or if you’d like to hang out!

Thanks? I’m okay, though. Mostly settled in.

Okay, well, the offer stands! And you should come and watch a game with me!! We can get to know each other, we have pretty good seats reserved for the girls!! And I promise you I don’t bite!!

Aiden stared at the phone again. He drafted several potential texts in his head, but ultimately said,That sounds nice. Thank you.

Great!!! Let’s pick a home game sometime soon! Can’t wait! I’ll add you to the group!

Aiden sighed and put his phone back into his pocket. He looked at the condo. There wasn’t much to do at this point in the day, so he wasted a few hours reading the book about Jacques Plante he had downloaded on his phone last week, and then got up to start getting dinner together. When Matt was on the road, Aiden reverted to his old habits of making the same thing for every meal. This week it was bison burgers, but the sooner he could eat, the sooner he didn’t have to think about it anymore. Just another monotonous detail in the day.

Matt FaceTimed him later, after Aiden had eaten and cleaned up, in the middle of doing hundreds of push-ups in the living room. The repetitive physical activity was painful but mindless and it kept him occupied, at the very least. There was no game tonight between Matt’s games in Florida and Texas. Aiden flopped down out of the position and answered the phone.

“Hey, Aidy,” Matt said, eyes flicking from Aiden’s face to his sweaty hair and back down. He looked vaguely amused. “You working out?”

“I was bored, so I just did some push-ups. How’s the trip going?”

“Just lost three hundred to the rookies in a poker game,” Matt said, grinning a little sheepishly. “I couldn’t take their money, so...that’s about how it’s going.”

“You lost on purpose? Oh, Matty, nowthat’ssome captain shit, eh?”

“Ah, shut up. You really think I’d take some kid’s ELC money? But they’re never going to let me live it down.”

“That’s why you don’t play poker with the rookies,” Aiden said, the smile fading as he remembered that he didn’t have rookies anymore. “You can’t win, no matter what you do.”

“Yeah, well. Too late for that now, eh? But enough about that...what’ve you been doing today?”

Aiden sighed. It was a gustier sigh than he was intending. “I kind of got invited to sit with the WAGs for a game.”

A variety of expressions shifted over Matt’s face in the five seconds it took him to get it under control, most of them somewhere on the spectrum between amusement and horror. He smoothed it out into a carefully expressionless mask. “You...what?”

“Saarinen’s wife said we should watch a game together and get to know each other.”

“Oh, Jesus. She’s very friendly, and I’m sure she didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I’m not offended, I mean... I kind of...well, it’s not totally off base right now, is it?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Are you going to take her up on it?”

Aiden sighed again. “I think I kind of have to, don’t I?”

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“She was really nice about it. I don’t want to be an asshole, you know?”

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