Page 113 of Cross Checking

“What time is it?” I ask, yawning. Propping myself up on a pillow, I make no attempt to stop staring at Erik’s bare, muscular back. Call me shameless, but my boyfriend is sofuckinghot. Sue me for appreciating him.

Erik freezes and turns around. “It’s only seven. Sorry, did I wake you up?”

I wave him off. “Nah, I need to be up anyway. I still need to work, and it’s an hour earlier here.”

“Ah, right. I have to lead morning practice soon, but I ordered breakfast for both of us.” As if on cue, there’s a knock on the door and Erik silently hurries to collect the breakfast bag.

We eat next to each other on the bed. I keep one hand on the blueberry muffin and the other on Erik’s thigh, tracing mindless, random patterns with my fingertips in his thin layer of leg hair. I want to stay like this for the whole day, being here with Erik and making up for all the hugs we missed out on over the last few months.

Both of us have work to do, though, and the phone I gave Erik beeps, which takes us out of our comfortable silence. Before leaving, he stands at the door, hair combed and stubble trimmed, managing to make a camp hoodie and hockey pants look neat.

“My coaching partner is leading drills between noon and three, so I’m free from lunch onward,” he says.

“Awesome, have a good day.” With that, I’m left alone in Erik’s room, a deep warmth settling low in my stomach. This is our first day living together as a couple, at least permanently, and I could get used to all this domestic stuff.

Is it bad that I’m already embracing my role as a professional hockey spouse?

Probably not—I’m all in for Erik. Sure, the hockey spouse lifestyle isn’t for everyone, with all the road trips and the perpetual risk of a trade constantly hanging overhead, but I’ll make it work.

We’llmake it work. I have the right job for all the flexibility I’ll need.

Oh, right.My job. The one that I have to do in order tonot lose it. Reluctantly, I open my laptop because it’s already past eight-thirty on the East Coast. Ajay’s calendar is empty, and he’salready online for some reason, so I send him a quick message asking to discuss my job transfer.

He calls me immediately, which I wasn’t expecting, and I scramble around my bag for my headphones.

“Hi, Ajay, how are things?” I say after picking up.

“Good, good. Hey, that’s a different room in the background. Are you somewhere else?”

“Yeah, I’m visiting my partner in Minnesota.”

Ajay’s face firms up, but only for a second. “Right, I forgot you’re also American. You’re good to work there.” He pauses. “What did you want to discuss?”

I smile. “I recently got French citizenship, so I’d like to make a formal request to transfer my employment base from Canada to Sweden.”

A low whistle emanates from the other end of the call. “How many passports do you have, Luke?” Ajay asks.

“Now it’s three,” I say, ignoring the fact that I haven’t applied for a French passport yet.

“Well, the CIA might want to have a word with you, but as long as you upload proof of citizenship to the HR portal, I’m good to make the transfer on my end. There’s no change to your job, and you’ll get paid the same amount as now, just in local currency.”

“Great, thanks so much.”

“And to be honest,” he continues, “you being six hours ahead will be a massive help when it comes to our reporting. It’ll be like having you start work at three in the morning!”

“On the flip side, I’ll log off at noon.”

“So we’ll both finish work at around the same time, then?”

Wait, what?“You finish working at noon?”

Ajay puts his index finger to his lips in a silent shush, and I blink out of surprise.

“Anyway,” he says. “I’ll leave you to upload the documents to the portal. See you!”

He hangs up, and I send a picture of my citizenship confirmation to my company email and upload it to the open transfer request. Minutes later, the status updates.

Luke Tremblay (10046112NY)

---