Page 53 of Goaltender Interference

“So,” Aiden agreed.

“Here we are.”

“Yes.”

“Sorry about the concussion.”

“Water under the bridge,” Aiden said, although he had an immediate flash of memory at the words. Saarinen crashing the net and into him; opening his eyes and realizing he was on the ice and had lost at least a couple of seconds unconscious. “Sorry about knocking you out of the playoffs four times.”

“Water under bridges.” They both glanced down at their hands. Then Saarinen looked up at him slyly. “You going for the peikko look, buddy? You don’t have the Amirov charisma to really pull it off.”

Aiden didn’t know what a peikko was, but he could guess from context. His old teammate had had the wild hair and beard of a mountain recluse, a little like some sort of supernatural forest demon. Aiden managed to keep from touching his own hair, although he was suddenly conscious of it in a way he usually wasn’t. The table was shaking a little, the plates and glasses rattling in time with his bouncing knee.

“I haven’t had time to get it cut,” he lied. He had nothing but time.

Saarinen glanced over at Matt at the bar and sighed. His English was fluent at this point in his life, barely a hint of an accent. “Look, I’m just gonna ask you, Campbell, like, whatever you’re doing here, to please don’t fuck it up for Safy. This is maybe his last season here, and I want to make it a good one.”

“I’m not—I’m not trying to fuck it up. I’m going to be gone by the time the season starts, anyway. He’ll be fine.”

Saarinen’s eyebrows shot up and his mouth opened, but whatever he was about to say was cut off when Matt came back, a pint glass in each hand and another one balanced precariously in the crook of his arm.

“Safy,” Saarinen said brightly, “what you drinking?”

“Oh, I don’t know, whatever Dieu du ciel they had on tap.” Matt set the glasses down on the table. He looked from Saarinen to Aiden, who both looked back at him, studiously expressionless. “How’re you boys doing?”

“One hundred percent,” Saarinen said. “Totally sick.”

Aiden wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but he didn’t argue. He took a deep breath and settled in for at least an hour of trying to act normal for Matt’s sake, smiling when he didn’t feel like smiling, and trying not to think about the fact that Saarinen probably hated him.

As they walked home later that afternoon, Matt said, “It was really good to see Saari again.” It wasn’t a short walk, but Montreal summers weren’t as humid as New York, and it wasn’t uncomfortable. “Makes the season feel real, you know?”

“Yeah,” Aiden mumbled.

They were both full from lunch and a little buzzed: Saarinen had had a lot to say about training in Lappeenranta over the summer. He and Matt had almost sixteen years’ worth of history and in-jokes built up between them. Aiden had felt strangewatching them talk, the easy way Matt smiled, the way they had that casual trust and camaraderie a captain and his alternate had. Lunch took them almost to dinner, drinking the whole time.

It hadn’t been as awkward as Aiden had thought, although he would sometimes catch Saarinen looking at him when he thought Aiden wasn’t paying attention, like he was trying really hard to figure something out.

Aiden was quiet on the walk home, thinking about Matt going back to camp, with his team, with purpose, and how it was going to feel on that plane ride home.

“What’s up?”

“Just thinking,” Aiden said.

“Don’t do that, come on.”

Maybe it was just because they were both a little drunk, but Matt reached out and brushed a strand of hair away from Aiden’s eyes, and Aiden didn’t stop him. After a second, Matt dropped his hand like Aiden burned him, and started walking a little faster. “Come on. It’s getting late.”

“Right behind you.”

Aiden blinked when he received a text from Allison Kuhn, the Libs’ beat reporter at theTimes.She wasn’t so bad as far as reporters went, but he hadn’t spoken to her since she had done the long piece on his retirement.

It had been a career-spanning retrospective interview that was so difficult to get through he’d had to excuse himself in the middle of their conversation, go into the restaurant bathroom and puke up the lunch they’d been sharing. Stared at himself in the mirror for a long time before tilting his mouth down to the sink to try to rinse the taste out before going back out.

He unlocked his phone to see what she wanted.

Hello, Aiden, I hope retirement is treating you well. Do you have a moment?

I’ve got nothing but moments.

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