Page 5 of Goaltender Interference

Aiden looked away. Pulled a hundred-dollar bill out of his wallet, handed it to the bartender. “No change, please.” He turned and walked quickly through the crowd, his shoulders hunched and his head down, like that alone could make the rest of this, somehow, go away.

Outside, he tried to get air into his lungs. It was a summer night, thick and humid, so the actual air didn’t do anything to help. He tried anyway. Distantly, he could hear Gabe.

“Soupy? Are you okay? What thefuckwas that?”

Aiden didn’t answer, just kept walking west down the street, ocean roaring in his ears.

“Hey!” Gabe said, grabbing his arm. “Soupy, please, you’re kind of scaring me, man. What’s happening? What’s wrong?”

Aiden didn’t know what his face looked like when he shook Gabe off, but he wasn’t far gone enough not to feel bad when Gabe flinched.

“Gabe, I’m sorry, I...” Aiden groped for something to say, anything to explain. “I’m sorry. I have to go home. I can’t. I can’t do this.”

“Soupy...” Gabe looked up at him, eyes wide, face flushed. He reached out to touch Aiden again. His hands were warm and soft. “Soupy, just tell me you’re okay.”

Aiden shook his head. Carefully disentangled his arm. He walked home, leaving Gabe behind.

Aiden walked into the empty living room of his empty house. He needed to scream. A curse, a cry,fuck, anything, rose up in histhroat, but he choked it back. There wasn’t anyone to hear him; a display like that wouldn’t help anything.

He tried to get himself under control. He poured a glass of water from the pitcher in the fridge. He drank the water. He rested his head against the cold metal of the freezer. It was past midnight and he was drunk; yoga and meditation were both probably out of the question. He could drink more, or he could just go upstairs and try to sleep. But that seemed like a stretch goal.

Aiden had been fairly responsible since his retirement, but this was an emergency. He tried not to feel too guilty for pouring himself a generous glass of whiskey. He drank the whiskey. He didn’t feel better. He didn’t even feel more drunk.

The doorbell rang and Aiden ignored it. The doorbell rang again and again and again and again, and Aiden set the glass down on his counter, turned to go to the door and fling it open and tell Gabe that he needed tomind his own fucking business.

“Gabe, you need to gohome—”

Matt was standing on Aiden’s front stoop.

Matt was fucking standing on Aiden’s front stoop, handsome and furious and lost. He looked at Aiden like he was drowning, like he wanted to be anywhere but here, like he hated that he was. He said, roughly, “Let me in.”

Aiden instinctively took a step back as Matt stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind him. “How did—how did you—?”

“I just asked Duncs.”

Aiden’s former teammate. Matt’s juniors buddy. A lump rose in Aiden’s throat the size of Mount Everest. Aiden couldn’t say anything, or move.

It didn’t matter. Matt moved for him. In two steps he closed the space between them and took Aiden’s face in both of his hands. Aiden had a brief moment of eye contact, staring directlyat Matt: his pupils dilated and expression wild, entirely unlike him. He pressed his mouth against Aiden’s. It felt exactly the way Aiden remembered, the way he’d tortured himself remembering, warm and demanding and a little mean. Aiden opened instinctively, a muscle memory. But then he reallywasresponding, tongue learning the new line of Matt’s teeth, the gap where one of them was missing. Rediscovering the way he tasted. Like whiskey, like salt.

Matt made a strangled noise, or maybe it was Aiden.

Aiden’s hands flew up to grab his wrists. At first, he wanted to push Matt away, but he couldn’t do it. Instead he ran his hands down Matt’s shoulders, his sides, half wondering at the now-unfamiliar lines of his body, half unable to believe he was here, real and solid under Aiden’s touch. Matt’s tongue, slick against Aiden’s. Matt’s hands, thumb stroking Aiden’s cheek, tracing the line of Aiden’s beard, his jaw, tangling into his hair. When he wrapped his fingers there and tugged, Aiden made an awful whimper, and finally pulled back to gasp for air.

“Matt, Matt—what—”

“Please,” Matt said, and his eyes were huge and so, so dark, “can we—not talk right now?”

This was a terrible decision.

It was the worst decision he’d ever made.

Aiden didn’t need to tell himself that.

He allowed Matt to push him backward and crowd him against the door, still kissing him furiously, desperately, like he’d die if they stopped. He allowed Matt to worm his hand under Aiden’s shirt, splay his fingers against Aiden’s abs, tracing the line of each ridge of muscle, a muffled noise of frustration when he realized that Aiden had the same definition he’d always had. He allowed Matt to trail from his mouth down the line of his jaw to his neck, eyes closing when Matt’s teeth dug into the particularly sensitive spot right below his ear.

Aiden felt like he had completely lost his mind, like this was some kind of fever dream. His hands were all over Matt, his hair, his biceps, his face, his ass, fingers digging into the muscle of it. No rhyme or reason to where he touched. Couldn’t decide what he wanted to touch first, wanted to touch all of him at once, wanted to cut him open and crawl inside.

Matt was still sucking a mark onto Aiden’s neck, hard enough that he gasped. Matt pushed up against him, hard enough that the friction made him squirm. Matt’s hands tugged Aiden’s pants down, and Aiden wanted to sayno, stop, this is a terrible ideaand Aiden wanted to sayI missed you, I missed this, please, please,please.

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