Page 94 of Goaltender Interference

It took him a longer time than it should have, and by the time he was done, he was so fucking tired that his whole body ached. He wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep and not dream about Aiden. He couldn’t bring himself, somehow, to get into the bed.

Matt exhaled, slowly, and went into the living room, curled up alone on the couch. It wasn’t very comfortable, but it didn’t matter. He was asleep before he could think any more.

The thing was: Aiden was always going to be miserable, whether it was in New York or Montreal.

The thing was: Aiden could make the choice about whether he was going to drag Matt down with him or not.

The thing was: that didn’t make the next couple of weeks any easier to get through or make it any easier to stop thinking about Matt. Knowing he had done itforMatt didn’t make it any easier, either.

The thing was: it was always going to be this bad, and he had been stupid to think that he could change it just by running away from New York.

Aiden settled back into life alone in retirement like he’d never left.

He wasn’t expecting to hear from Matt, so it wasn’t a surprise when he didn’t. The Royal were still in the swing of the season, solidly in playoff contention. He did get emails from Ellie and felt even worse when he didn’t answer. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Couldn’t bring himself to even open them. He wondered whether Matt had told Miles, whether Miles had told Ellie and whether she was just ignoring it anyway. It was whathewould have done as a child. Heartbreak wouldn’t have meant a single damn thing to him. Not when he was locked in on pursuing a goal.

A week went by, and another week.

It was just as bad as it sounded.

Someone knocked on the door. When Aiden ignored it, the knock came again. For a brief, stupid moment while he fumbled for his phone, he thought that maybe it was Matt. Instead, on the screen, he saw something far more terrifying: his mother.

Even if she hadn’t been his mother, Shilpa Parekh cut an intimidating figure. All five feet two inches of her, shrunken even smaller on the phone screen. She said, into the camera, “Aiden Suresh Campbell, I know you’re in there. Let me in.”

“What are you doing in New York, Mammi?” Aiden asked, over the intercom. He winced: she had surprised him into saying it the way he’d used to call for her when he was a child.

“I’ll tell you when, and only when, you let me inside,” Mom said. Her voice had the tone that saidand I’m not going to argue with you any longer, young man, so Aiden gave up and buzzed her in.

He couldn’t hear or see her downstairs, but he knew that she would be doing the same thing she always did whenever she came into a home. Taking off her shoes, lining them up neatly by the door and hanging her coat up on the hook and taking the stairs two at a time like she was in a race to see who could get to the top of the landing first.

Aiden took a second to look around the room and determine whether there was anything he could do to avoid horrifying his mother once she got up here. She had always made sure that everyone in the family was pulling their weight to keep the home immaculate, and she was absolutely going to be horrified when she got up here and saw how he was living.

There wasn’t anything he could do in this short a time. Aiden took a deep breath and turned to face the music.

She paused at the top of the stairs as she took in the wreck of his home and his person. She’d always had good control over her facial expressions, so the fact that she couldn’t seem to prevent the look of horror and sadness probably said more about the sorry state he was in than anything about her own self-control. Aiden tried to remember the last time he’d taken a shower, and realized it was probably a couple of weeks ago.

“Beta,” she said, and held out her arms.

It was strange that even though he was approaching forty and he was over a foot taller than she was, it still felt like being a kid again. At once comforting and eviscerating. Aiden hadn’t cried in longer than he could remember, and he wasn’t about todo itnow, but his eyes were burning the longer Mom kept him trapped there.

“Mammi,” he said, after what seemed like ages and was probably only a minute or two, “I’m fine, Mom, you can let me go.”

She pulled back and gestured one hand at the living room and kitchen, at the dishes piled in the sink and the take-out containers overflowing in the trash can. “Are you really, Aiden?”

He exhaled. “Probably not.”

“Whathappened? He didn’t—”

“No. Um. It was me, again,” he managed. He couldn’t look her in the eye. “Please, Mom, I don’t—I can’t—”

“I didn’t come here to give you a lecture,” Mom said, and sighed. “Aiden, I’m here to help. Let’s clean up the dishes and the room, and then you can take a shower and I’ll make you something to eat. Have you actually been eating? You look like you lost weight.”

Aiden had been ordering takeout, but once it got there, he hadn’t had much of an appetite. Of course Mom would have been able to tell. He said, “It’s just been too overwhelming to start.”

“That’s why you have me,” she said, jaw set. It was the look opposing counsel saw in the courtroom, men who underestimated her because she was a woman, because she was small, and because she had an accent. “We’ll start on one side and work our way across. Come, it will go much faster with me here.”

The worst part was that she was right. It did go faster when she was here. Specifically: when she was here to tell Aiden what to do, to turn sharp and disapproving eyes on him when he flagged. After a little while he fell into the rhythm of it, scrubbing the dishes she handed him and loading the dishwasher in the careful way he’d learned as a child, a kindof Tetris-block of plates and pots. Mostly cups, if he was being quite honest.

Mom was in the thick of it, too. She’d rolled up her sleeves almost immediately and dived right in, her hair neatly clipped so it wouldn’t fall into her eyes. Aiden was briefly and violently grateful that she didn’t try to talk to him about anything while they were doing this, or at least, not anything real. The only words exchanged were questions about whether something could go into the trash bag she’d shaken open with asnapof plastic, and orders when he lagged behind.

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