Page 85 of Goaltender Interference

When Matt was home, it was fine. They went for walks and watched movies and fucked and just existed in the same space. Aiden worked his way through yoga in the morning, and Matt watched him with huge eyes the whole time. Aiden made them dinner and Matt cleaned. Aiden made him laugh with dumb observations and stupid little jokes. Aiden accompanied him on walks in the park, shoulders bumping. Aiden went shopping for some new clothes and Matt teased him the whole time, offering a running commentary about how hot he looked in everything, just to make him blush. After Matt made it back from l’Arène after games or Brossard after practice, Aiden worked out the aches in his knee and legs and back for him.

All of it was—nice. Almost domestic. The kind of shit he’d been missing for so long it still felt like an aching wound inside. Aiden started to relax, a little, to let himselfenjoyit. During those times, Aiden felt like his old self again, like a kid with the whole world in front of him, a life with a man who loved him so fucking much.

And then Mattleft. And all of it—everything he was trying to ignore, everything he was trying not to look at directly—came rushing back in. Each time Matt left, it felt even worse.

He kept going to see Dr. Gauthier. It was just harder to pick apart his feelings when she asked him what he felt, because more often than not these days, it was like there was too much going on in his head, and to pull one bad feeling out of the knot of them was impossible.

“Hey,” Matt said, “you’ve been kinda—not yourself tonight. What’s up?”

Aiden said, “Nothing.”

They’d had some form of that conversation several times over the last few weeks, and today wasn’t any different. Matt sometimes wished that he could see into Aiden’s head, that he could cut it open and put it under a microscope so he could figure out what the hell was going on in there. Trying to figure Aiden out had been a lifelong study, from the very beginning of their relationship to now, learning the code to crack when even Aiden didn’t necessarily understand why he was reacting the way that he was. Matt had been good at it, during their first relationship, but the yawning gulf of years between them had obscured things, and he was still relearning Aiden from the inside out.

So he knew something was wrong, just not what it was.

They were sitting on the couch, watching a movie, the kind of quiet night that Matt had always treasured. The kind of night they hadn’t had many of the first time around, when most of the year was spent apart. Aiden’s head rested on Matt’s thigh, and Matt had his hand twined in Aiden’s hair. On a normal night, it would have been comforting, quiet and pleasant, the warmth of Aiden’s body so close to him. The distance between was quiet, but palpable. Something was going on in Aiden’s head, and Matt didn’t know what it was.

He was curled in on himself, tense and miserable, and Matt couldn’t reach him. He stared at the TV screen, but the movie wasn’t really sinking in. It was a little like watching in a foreign language, even though it was all in English.

“Aiden?” he said, after a few longer moments of silence.

“What, Matt?”

“What have you been doing while I’m gone? Besides, like, the laundry and the cleaning and cooking, which I appreciate but—”

“It’s a thank-you for letting me freeload in your apartment,” Aiden mumbled into Matt’s thigh. He didn’t lift his head up to look at him.

“Youaren’tfreeloading. You’re here because—”You’re here because I love you. You’re here because I never want to live without you again.“You’re here because we both want you to be here. Right?”

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” Aiden said, although even Matt could pick the irony out of that.

“Is there anything you’d rather be doing? Do you want to look into skating again? Do you want suggestions about where to go? Aino said you guys have been hanging out a little, would that help if...?”

Aiden sat up, slowly. He’d been eating better since he’d been staying with Matt, but his hair was still wild and shaggy, and he still had that haunted prey animal look in his eyes sometimes, like he was only a few steps away from bolting. “That’s the problem, Matty... I just don’t know what to do with myself, still. I’m trying. I’mreallytrying. But I just... I go through each day just waiting for you. You coming back here after games is the only thing that makes me feelanything.”

Matt stared at him, unsure of what to say.

“It’s bad, right? But I don’t know how to fix it. It’s just... I’m just fucked up, Matt, and I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know what else to do that I haven’t already tried. It feels pretty hopeless, sometimes, and at some point, you’re going to realize—” He cut himself off there, and his eyes shuttered, all of the light in them dimmed.

“I’m going to realizewhat?” Matt asked.

Aiden didn’t answer, or maybe couldn’t answer. He ducked his head and wormed his way back into Matt’s arms, an embrace that felt suddenly fragile. He didn’t say anything, just let Matt hold him, and breathed in and out. It was the kind of rhythm that Matt recognized well, even all of these years later: he was doing a meditative breathing exercise, the kind of mindfulness practice that had helped propel him to incredibly successfulheights as a goalie. The kind of blank acceptance of the present and exclusion of everything else that had destroyed their life together.

“Matty, please, I don’t want to talk about it,” Aiden mumbled into his shoulder.

“You know we can’t just not talk about things forever, right?”

“I know. Iknow. But can you just...hold me? For now?”

“Yes,” Matt said, although the sense of impending doom didn’t abate, even when Aiden melted into his arms, almost shaking with relief that they weren’t talking about it.

Sometimes Aiden was better at pretending than other times. Those days were better overall. If you could fake it until you made it, it was almost the same thing.

“Seriously, Aiden. What’s going on? I thought we were doing better. I thoughtyouwere doing better, but you’ve just—”

“Everything’s fine, Matty.”

Matt eyed him suspiciously but didn’t press.

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