Page 55 of Goaltender Interference

I mean, I think there’s probably going to be an article no matter what I do. So I wanted to do it first. And I guess I wanted to tell you first.

oh...so this IS about safaryan then.

Aiden stared at his phone. He always had trouble interpreting tone, and it was worse when it came to text messages.Yes. Indirectly.

Gabe took a while to respond, but finally said,lmk if u want advice on how to *handle* it.ive been doing this for like 7 years.

Thanks, Gabe.

yeah. ur welcome. tell safaryan he better not fuck this up.

I’m not sure what there is to fuck up. The season’s starting soon and I don’t think he’ll want me to stick around, so I’ll probably be back in New York by then anyway.

soupyyyyyyyyyyy...jesus fucking christ man

Aiden didn’t know how to answer that. So he didn’t.

The phone call with Allison wasn’t as awkward as he thought it would be. Unlike some of the Libs’ old beat reporters, she’d always had a way of phrasing her questions that didn’t sound antagonistic, and she knew when to stop pushing when it was too much.

Aiden was honest about living in Montreal with Matt, although he was vague about their actual relationship. He still didn’t know what to call it, and the last thing he needed was to humiliate himself in the local paper. He said something like, “Now that I’m retired, it’s a good opportunity to see friends I haven’t caught up with in a while and warn them off of retirement, you know?”

“You’refriendswith Safaryan? I wouldn’t have guessed.”

Aiden hesitated. “We started off on the wrong foot, back in that first playoff series, but we’ve been good friends for a long time. He was at my first Cup day.”

Allison paused but didn’t push back too hard against that explanation. They chatted a little bit about Montreal, about various things Matt and Aiden had done and seen together, how much he liked running in Mont-Royal and the Lebanese bakery. About skating again. They talked about retirement, and how it was difficult to feel like you had a purpose, and that Aiden still didn’t know what he was going to do with the next chapter of his life. The entire conversation only lasted about half an hour.

Aiden felt jittery during the whole thing, wondering if and when it would come up, but it didn’t. He could probably just let it go, end up with a puff piece about how he was spending his retirement puttering uselessly around Montreal, doing the sad major junior reunion tour with various buddies from the past.

He thought about how tired Matt had looked when he’d said,The puck’s always been in your zone.

Nobody cares. Nothing really matters. We’re all going to die.

“Uh, Allison...”

“Yes?”

“So there is something else, uh, I should probably tell you.”

He’d done this a number of times throughout the years. First to one of his teammates, accidentally; then to his parents and Hannah, on purpose; then to various other teammates, as the need arose. He hadn’t realized, when he was a kid, that it was going to be such a continual process. And when he’d started coming out, he’d thought it would get easier each time, but that hadn’t been the case at all. Sometimes it was pretty easy but mostly it justsucked. This was one of those times. He’d always hated being the center of attention, even though by nature of his position, he ended up there anyway.

Aiden cleared his throat. He could feel his leg practically vibrating, the hand that wasn’t holding his phone clenched in a fist, his fingers twisting together. “Because I’m retired now, and I’m kind of tired of, you know, keeping that aspect of my life secret, especially since I’m fairly sure that it’s why you reached out to me about this in the first place.” Allison, true to form, waited for him to continue. “I’m gay, and, ah, if you want to include that in your article, you can.”

“Thank you for sharing that with me,” Allison said, in her pleasant, nonjudgmental reporter voice, and immediately pivoted into follow-up questions.

Aiden wiped his sweaty palms on his shorts and did his best to answer them.

She didn’t ask for details about his relationship with Matt, and he didn’t offer any. People could assume what they wanted to assume. And they probably would.

II. FALL

Chapter Five

September

Matt had known Aiden had done the interview, but he didn’t realize when it was published until a September morning right before camp was due to start, when both of them were woken up by Aiden’s phone buzzing nonstop. Even after Aiden turned off the notifications and sound, they both knew they were still coming.

Matt gave him some space to answer the ones he needed to—telling his parents no one had forced him to do it, responding to congratulations from Gabe—but hung around as long as he could, just in case.

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