Page 4 of Goaltender Interference

“Another one?” Aiden asked, rubbing his eyes. He drank anyway. Gabe watched him do it. “Aren’t you training? Don’t you have to go to the gym tomorrow? Aren’t you going to regret this?”

“Well, yeah,” Gabe said, flashing his dimples. “But I don’t really get hangovers, at least probably not like you do, because you’re ol—you’re, you know, retired. So it’ll be fine, probably. Anyway, I can suffer a little tomorrow to cheer up my favorite goalie tonight.”

“I thoughtyouwere your favorite goalie.”

“You’re my other favorite goalie.” Gabe patted Aiden’s hand reassuringly. “And besides... I wouldn’t be half the goalie I am without you. Like. You know.” He looked away, suddenly shy in a way that was very out of character. “I owe you a lot, okay? So I really don’t wanna see you so sad all of the time.”

“I’m notsad.”

“Oh, right, Soupy, you were just hiding in your house for weeks and weeks not talking to any of us for no reason. Just some casual hermiting.”

“It wasn’tweeks. Gabe...come on, have mercy on an old man.”

“Nah, no mercy,” Gabe said, beaming, and then, “You arenotdrunk enough right now, and I told you we’re going to have a good time—hey, lemme grab the bartender—”

Aiden loved Gabe, but he wassoyoung. He wondered, vaguely, whether any of his teammates had felt the same way talking to Aiden back in the day as he felt talking to Gabe now. That choking combination of fond protectiveness, absolute confusion, amusement and vague horror at the entropy of the universe in relation to himself.

Gabe, clueless, chattered on about anything and everything. “And then I told Richie that I’m going to work on my lateral movement, but I have a lot more explosiveness than they thought, they’re underestimating me, so...”

Aiden was drunk, but not drunk enough. He could feel himself fidgeting, the uncontrollable way his body moved sometimes, when he was overwhelmed and couldn’t handle it. Aiden’s leg jiggled, bouncing; the table on its uneven leg shook even worse. He didn’t want to be a dick, so he bit down his exhaustion and nodded and offered encouraging remarks at the appropriate times. Gabe bloomed under the attention, smiling and intent, kept touching Aiden’s arm to punctuate his points.

“Excuse me, Gabe,” he said, lurching to his feet. “I’m going to go get us a pitcher of water.”

“Oh—um, okay.”

Aiden took a deep breath as he wove his way through the crowd, fishing for his wallet so he could settle the tab, too. He leaned against the bar, waiting to catch the bartender’s attention. And then he looked up and the universe punched him in the face.

“Oh,” Aiden said, before he could stop himself.

Matthew Safaryan, the captain of the Montreal Royal, stood at the bar, apparently just as shocked to see Aiden. They hadn’t been this close off of the ice in over a decade. Seeing him, here in New York City, out of hockey pads and close enough to touch, almost took Aiden’s knees out.

Matt was still a few inches shorter than Aiden, but he’d filled out since his early twenties, broad and solid and muscular. His sharp, owlish features had aged well: laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and his mouth, flecks of gray in his black hair. A scar still cut through one of his eyebrows.

It had been an errant skate blade; Aiden remembered watching the replay after the game and wincing as they triedto stop the bleeding before he vanished down the tunnel for stitches, then wincing again when Matt had gone back on the ice for the next period. Winced a third time seeing the blood still smeared on his forehead behind the cage.

The patchy beard Matt used to have was fully grown in now. His dark brown eyes fixed on Aiden’s face, but Aiden couldn’t read the expression in them anymore. Matt wasn’t wearing his wedding ring. Somehow, he was even more attractive than he had been when they were kids, all of the raw material he had weathered by time.

Aiden should say something. Hehadto say something. His throat felt like he’d swallowed a bowl full of glass shards.

Gabe stumbled up behind him and threw his arm over Aiden’s shoulders in a way that Aiden was really going to have to talk to him about later. When his heart wasn’t pounding so loudly.

“Safaryan?” Gabe said. “What areyoudoing here?”

“Not really your business, Walker.” Matt’s voice even sounded the same, calm and level, and he looked from Aiden to Gabe and back with something like disdain.

“Matt, what—?” Miles Safaryan, Matt’s little brother, appeared from the crowd behind Matt’s shoulder. His eyes narrowed when he saw Aiden. “Oh. Campbell. Jesus Christ, of course. Okay. Okay. This is—I can handle this. All right. Campbell.Youneed to leave.”

“Uh, excuse me,” Gabe cut in, “this is totally unnecessary, okay?”

“Oh, cute. You got a kid fighting your battles now?” Miles’ lip curled in a sneer. “Seriously, Campbell, fuck off and get the hell away from my brother.”

“I’m not—I wasn’t—” Aiden tried to work his way through a silent mantra, a breathing exercise,anything, but all he had was the yawning grief in his chest. “We’ll go. I was just settling the tab.”

“Soup—”

“I’m settling the tab, Gabe. Night’s over, buddy.”

The barest hint of a flinch flickered over Matt’s face. He hadn’t spoken since that first time.

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