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Chapter Ten

January

Even before player assistance, Matt had never been a big partier. It wasn’t that he was shy, or even introverted—he was just quiet, and he liked to be in control of himself at all times. Hockey culture wasn’t very friendly to that kind of personality, because most of the team bonding events involved alcohol or coke or both. There had been a time when he’d forced himself to participate. During the height of the worst of it, he hadn’t been partying so much as trying to numb everything . And after it, he was usually pretty careful about how much he was drinking or why.

He was still careful, even though it had been a long time since he had had what he considered a problem . So normally, even on a New Year’s, out with the team, Matt was pacing himself and keeping an eye on things. The last night he’d gone out with Aiden and the team—that had been the first time he’d really let himself loose, the first time he’d really relaxed in longer than he could remember. And now Aiden was gone, and Matt was...

Matt was out at a club in Vieux-Montreal, trying to put a stoic face on things. Matt was in the middle of the party, chatting with Cormier about how he’d had to take a few face-offs after Koski got kicked out of the circle last night, giving him a few tips about ways to shift his weight so that he had a better chance of muscling the opposing center off of the puck. Matt was acting as a wingman for Jammer, who was chatting up the bartender. Matt was nursing drinks for longer than he really should have been, and Matt was maybe a little drunk, but nowhere near as drunk as he should have been, for a night like this.

“Happy New Year!” Jammer yelled in his face, and when the clock chimed, said, “Excuse me,” to the bartender, and kissed Matt on the lips. It wasn’t a real kiss: not with tongue, friendly and joking more than anything else. Jammer was a big guy, at least five inches taller than Matt, and having his hands on either side of Matt’s face had only reminded Matt of all of the times Aiden had leaned down to kiss him like that.

Matt, blinking, said, “Happy New Year, Jams,” as soon as he could breathe again, and then, “I’m gonna go outside for some fresh air.”

It was a beautiful night, cold and clear, and for a second Matt wished that he could smoke. Something to do with his hands, something to burn the clenching pain out of his lungs. He leaned, instead, against the stone wall of the building and inhaled the crisp night air. He wondered what Aiden was doing and immediately shoved the thought ruthlessly down.

Whatever Aiden was doing, it had nothing to do with him. Not anymore.

That didn’t make it any easier to bear. His knee was aching, too, so Matt sat down on the stairs leading up to the bar and put his head in his hands. It was stupid: his whole team was in there, having a fantastic time. The kids he’d been carefully watching through this whole year. The veterans who’d had his back for many long seasons. Matt knew he should go back in there and enjoy it. This could potentially be his last New Year’s in Montreal, and if he didn’t enjoy it, if he let Aiden ruin this for him too, he’d probably regret it forever. But somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Behind him, he heard the door open, soft footsteps on the stone. He didn’t look up as someone sat down next to him and said, “Safy?”

“Hello, Jack,” Matt said, with his head still in his hands.

“What are you doing out here?” Jack asked. He often sounded sarcastic, even when he was being serious. Tonight wasn’t one of those nights. He sat down next to Matt, his lanky legs stretched out in front of him. “The party’s inside, Cap.”

“Yeah, well, I just... I don’t know. I didn’t want to bring down the mood.”

They sat in silence for a while, although the streets were anything but. Montreal loved a party, especially in the winter, and the streets echoed with the sounds of music and fireworks and people laughing and yelling. It was probably a difficult thing to be so miserable in a city like Montreal on New Year’s, but by god, Matt was managing.

It was kind of Jack to come out here. He had been having a strong rookie season so far, considering. He wasn’t exactly a lock for the Rookie of the Year award, but he was in the conversation. He had a more than respectable forty-one points so far, and if he could avoid getting injured, would probably hit the sixty-point mark in his first season. His defensive numbers definitely could’ve used some work, but that would come as he put on a little more muscle. He was already going to be the 1C next year, whether Matt was there or not.

“What’s the deal?” Jack said, after the silence started to get a little awkward.

Matt still hadn’t picked his head up out of his hands. He wondered, if he looked hard enough at the ground, whether he could bore through the stone and escape into the sewers. It was something that might’ve happened in those stupid comic books Aiden was always reading. Jesus, he had to stop thinking about Aiden. “We’ve talked about the captaincy, right?”

“Right...”

“It’s a lot. I don’t know. Don’t make the mistakes I did. There’s a lot of things I haven’t talked about and a lot of things I can’t talk about. But... I don’t know. Don’t find yourself at thirty- six wondering what the hell you’re going to do with your life after hockey. Don’t let someone...”

He couldn’t bring himself to look up, but he could feel Jack staring at him like he’d grown three heads. The kid really didn’t look like a hockey player at all, out of his pads. He was tall and lanky and weedy, and his features were almost delicate, the kind of face that made him very popular with teenaged fans. The kind of face he’d have to grow into, the kind of face that definitely drew more than a little chirping on the ice.

“Don’t let someone what ?” Jack asked, mystified.

“Don’t listen to me. I don’t know. It’s late, and I’m old as fuck, and I’m being...morose.”

“Got it,” Jack said, and Matt could see him from the corner of his eye, making a check mark gesture. “Don’t be morose. But Safy...why are you telling me this stuff?”

“I just... I’ve been here a long time, Jack. I’ve been the captain a long time. And I have a feeling that you’re going to be the captain. Maybe not the next captain, if I’m gone next season, but at some point very soon.”

Jack rocked back like Matt had slapped him. “What? No! You’re not going anywhere. You can’t.”

“It might not be in my control.” He finally picked his head up out of his hands. He wasn’t drunk, but he almost felt like it, overwhelmed with the melancholy of the evening, of the weight of the legacy that he knew he’d have to pass on soon.

“You’re not going anywhere , Safy,” Jack said again, his eyes huge. He looked nothing like Aiden, and somehow, Matt was still reminded of him anyway, the same way that everything reminded him of Aiden, lately. Jesus, he had to get it together. Jack was saying, holding out his hand, “Come on, Cap. You can’t just sit out here being sad all night. Not on New Year’s.”

“See?” Matt said, a little dry, but as seriously as he could manage it. “This is why you’re going to be the captain one day.”

Jack abruptly let go of his arm as he was pulling Matt to his feet, and Matt stumbled and caught himself. “Stop saying that,” he said, as they both walked toward the door. “Seriously, Safy. We still need you here. I need you here. What am I going to do when we only have like one other line that’s a real threat? I’m going to get murdered out there.”

“You’ll figure it out.” Matt squared his shoulders, looking at the door. It might have been his last New Year’s with the team, it might not have. But he had to make the best of it. He had to be there for the team. “You’ll gain the muscle, and you’ll figure out how to deal with being the focus of everyone’s checks, and you’re gonna be fucking great, kid.”

Jack was looking at him again, serious and strangely sad. “It means a lot to me that you think that. But also, if you keep being this sincere, I’m going to... I don’t know. Come on, Safy, let’s find Rémi. I bet he’s hiding in a corner somewhere.”

“Good plan,” Matt said, and then he was once again enveloped by the noise of the club.

By the time he got home, it was almost three a.m. and Matt was a little drunk. Some of the guys had been planning to keep the party going at Manny’s place, but Matt had begged off and caught a cab home. He’d considered walking, seeing whether the cold night air could knock some sense into him, but it would have taken him an hour and he was already exhausted. He was so fucking thankful that the driver didn’t ask him any questions, but probably whatever Matt’s face looked like had scared him off. He wasn’t sure what that was , but considering the way he felt right now, it probably wasn’t good. It didn’t help that the driver had cranked the heat up all of the way, and Matt’s face felt hot, his stomach nauseous.

The chill, as Matt stumbled from the steamy car to the stoop of his building, didn’t help. Nor did taking the stairs instead of the elevator. He put one foot in front of the other, trying not to think about the rest of the team, probably having a great time without him; trying not to think about Aiden at all.

He shut the door of the condo behind him and leaned back against it, eyes closed. It had been a long time since he’d cried, and he wasn’t going to do it now, but emotions were rising in his chest with the kind of intensity and fury that he wasn’t used to anymore, after years of therapy and studied stoicism. It was just—it was so fucking quiet in here, so fucking lonely, and he hadn’t even realized how much until Aiden had come back into his life and left it again.

Aiden. Aiden. Aiden, echoed in his head, over and over again, a cruel and mocking song. The empty rooms held a million stupid reminders of him. Aiden in the kitchen, melting into an embrace before half-heartedly pushing him away because a timer was going off. Aiden on the couch, curled up against Matt’s side while they watched a movie. Aiden in the bedroom, naked and vulnerable and begging. What the fuck was wrong with him, that he couldn’t accept that this was over ?

His feet were moving without his brain’s input, into the bedroom, where Aiden had taken over his closet and dressers. Before he could think about what he was doing, Matt was ripping Aiden’s clothes off of their hangers, throwing them on the floor in a haphazard pile. He didn’t know what he was going to do with them, and he didn’t care. All he knew was that it was unbearable having them there.

He yanked open the drawers and banged his knuckles painfully on the edge of wood, abrading the skin, all of the things Aiden had left behind flying through the air. He didn’t know why he was doing it or what he was hoping to accomplish, only that he was furious and felt the loss like a physical ache, and there was nowhere else for any of those feelings to go. But he could remove the remainders of Aiden—from the room. Even if he couldn’t forget.

When he was done, he was breathing hard, shaking like he’d run a marathon. He was holding a singular sweater, a dark green cable-knit that made Aiden look like a lonely fisherman. Matt buried his face in it: it still smelled like Aiden, faintly but unmistakably, the sense memory like a punch to the side of Matt’s head. He took another deep breath and the fury he’d felt bled slowly out of him, and all he was now was deeply sad and more than a little embarrassed at a display no one had even seen.

That was the thing: Matt would always know it happened. Matt was aware of his weakness, his grief.

Matt set Aiden’s sweater down on his bed. He hadn’t changed the sheets since Aiden had left. He would do the laundry tomorrow. That would be admitting that it was over, but maybe that was what he needed to do to grieve, to move on . Right now, he knelt on the floor and, slowly, started the process of folding the clothes, stacking them carefully. It didn’t quite make up for the tantrum, but it made him feel a little more like himself, to put his life back in order.

It took him a longer time than it should have, and by the time he was done, he was so fucking tired that his whole body ached. He wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep and not dream about Aiden. He couldn’t bring himself, somehow, to get into the bed.

Matt exhaled, slowly, and went into the living room, curled up alone on the couch. It wasn’t very comfortable, but it didn’t matter. He was asleep before he could think any more.

The thing was: Aiden was always going to be miserable, whether it was in New York or Montreal.

The thing was: Aiden could make the choice about whether he was going to drag Matt down with him or not.

The thing was: that didn’t make the next couple of weeks any easier to get through or make it any easier to stop thinking about Matt. Knowing he had done it for Matt didn’t make it any easier, either.

The thing was: it was always going to be this bad, and he had been stupid to think that he could change it just by running away from New York.

Aiden settled back into life alone in retirement like he’d never left.

He wasn’t expecting to hear from Matt, so it wasn’t a surprise when he didn’t. The Royal were still in the swing of the season, solidly in playoff contention. He did get emails from Ellie and felt even worse when he didn’t answer. He just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Couldn’t bring himself to even open them. He wondered whether Matt had told Miles, whether Miles had told Ellie and whether she was just ignoring it anyway. It was what he would have done as a child. Heartbreak wouldn’t have meant a single damn thing to him. Not when he was locked in on pursuing a goal.

A week went by, and another week.

It was just as bad as it sounded.

Someone knocked on the door. When Aiden ignored it, the knock came again. For a brief, stupid moment while he fumbled for his phone, he thought that maybe it was Matt. Instead, on the screen, he saw something far more terrifying: his mother.

Even if she hadn’t been his mother, Shilpa Parekh cut an intimidating figure. All five feet two inches of her, shrunken even smaller on the phone screen. She said, into the camera, “ Aiden Suresh Campbell , I know you’re in there. Let me in.”

“What are you doing in New York, Mammi?” Aiden asked, over the intercom. He winced: she had surprised him into saying it the way he’d used to call for her when he was a child.

“I’ll tell you when, and only when, you let me inside,” Mom said. Her voice had the tone that said and I’m not going to argue with you any longer, young man , so Aiden gave up and buzzed her in.

He couldn’t hear or see her downstairs, but he knew that she would be doing the same thing she always did whenever she came into a home. Taking off her shoes, lining them up neatly by the door and hanging her coat up on the hook and taking the stairs two at a time like she was in a race to see who could get to the top of the landing first.

Aiden took a second to look around the room and determine whether there was anything he could do to avoid horrifying his mother once she got up here. She had always made sure that everyone in the family was pulling their weight to keep the home immaculate, and she was absolutely going to be horrified when she got up here and saw how he was living.

There wasn’t anything he could do in this short a time. Aiden took a deep breath and turned to face the music.

She paused at the top of the stairs as she took in the wreck of his home and his person. She’d always had good control over her facial expressions, so the fact that she couldn’t seem to prevent the look of horror and sadness probably said more about the sorry state he was in than anything about her own self-control. Aiden tried to remember the last time he’d taken a shower, and realized it was probably a couple of weeks ago.

“Beta,” she said, and held out her arms.

It was strange that even though he was approaching forty and he was over a foot taller than she was, it still felt like being a kid again. At once comforting and eviscerating. Aiden hadn’t cried in longer than he could remember, and he wasn’t about to do it now , but his eyes were burning the longer Mom kept him trapped there.

“Mammi,” he said, after what seemed like ages and was probably only a minute or two, “I’m fine, Mom, you can let me go.”

She pulled back and gestured one hand at the living room and kitchen, at the dishes piled in the sink and the take-out containers overflowing in the trash can. “Are you really, Aiden?”

He exhaled. “Probably not.”

“What happened ? He didn’t—”

“No. Um. It was me, again,” he managed. He couldn’t look her in the eye. “Please, Mom, I don’t—I can’t—”

“I didn’t come here to give you a lecture,” Mom said, and sighed. “Aiden, I’m here to help. Let’s clean up the dishes and the room, and then you can take a shower and I’ll make you something to eat. Have you actually been eating? You look like you lost weight.”

Aiden had been ordering takeout, but once it got there, he hadn’t had much of an appetite. Of course Mom would have been able to tell. He said, “It’s just been too overwhelming to start.”

“That’s why you have me,” she said, jaw set. It was the look opposing counsel saw in the courtroom, men who underestimated her because she was a woman, because she was small, and because she had an accent. “We’ll start on one side and work our way across. Come, it will go much faster with me here.”

The worst part was that she was right. It did go faster when she was here. Specifically: when she was here to tell Aiden what to do, to turn sharp and disapproving eyes on him when he flagged. After a little while he fell into the rhythm of it, scrubbing the dishes she handed him and loading the dishwasher in the careful way he’d learned as a child, a kind of Tetris-block of plates and pots. Mostly cups, if he was being quite honest.

Mom was in the thick of it, too. She’d rolled up her sleeves almost immediately and dived right in, her hair neatly clipped so it wouldn’t fall into her eyes. Aiden was briefly and violently grateful that she didn’t try to talk to him about anything while they were doing this, or at least, not anything real. The only words exchanged were questions about whether something could go into the trash bag she’d shaken open with a snap of plastic, and orders when he lagged behind.

It seemed like hours that they worked, but when Aiden looked at the microwave clock, it had only been about ninety minutes. He still felt exhausted, but his living room and kitchen looked habitable for the first time in months. He tried not to look at the couch, leaned instead against the kitchen island.

“Go upstairs and take a shower,” Mom said, her voice a little softer. She looked at him, dark brown eyes warm and concerned instead of stern. “I’ll be down here deep cleaning.”

“I can help—”

“Aiden,” she said firmly. “Go and take a shower. You desperately need it.”

He opened his mouth to argue, but she was shifting toward the other end of the comforting/stern continuum, so he decided to cut his losses and do what she told him. He nodded silently and retreated up the stairs.

It was ridiculous, really, that sometimes something as simple as taking a shower seemed so insurmountable. He had been taking showers in a professional setting, multiple times a day, for years of his life. He had taken them frequently at home, too, because his brain had all kinds of weird rules about what was clean and what wasn’t, what was an outside piece of clothing and what was safe. But sometimes there were periods, like this one, where it seemed like even trying to muster up the energy to throw his dirty clothes in the laundry or stand under the warm spray of water just seemed impossible to consider.

He stood there now, naked, and shivered. He probably wouldn’t be doing this if he’d been any less frightened of his mother’s disapproval. But now that he was here, he was going to have to see it through. Mechanically, he scrubbed his body; mechanically, he washed his hair. It was getting really long now, and it had been so tangled and greasy that even the conditioner was kind of a job to get done. It took so much energy, and he was exhausted by the time he was finished. He took a deep breath and wondered what the hell was wrong with him.

Finally clean, he went back into his bedroom to get dressed. He chose one of the dresser drawers full of identical sweatpants and hoodies, all in varying shades of gray or black. It had been a long time since life had had color in it, really. It hadn’t again since Montreal.

By the time he came back downstairs, Mom was already heating up oat milk for cha. He’d had the spices and the tea at home, but he rarely made it for himself, because it was never as good as she made it. Seeing her in his kitchen, aggressively grating ginger and unpacking a Tupperware container of handvo from her tote bag, made him feel for a second like maybe everything might be okay after all. And then he remembered why he was feeling like this and sighed. It wasn’t.

She looked up at the noise, her serious face still concerned. She had a permanent frown line creasing her forehead, the way she worried about him and Hannah. Not that she needed to worry about Hannah, who’d never done anything once in her life to need to be worried about. “Aiden,” she said, “you’re feeling a little better, yes?”

“Yeah,” he said. It wasn’t entirely a lie. Physically, anyway, the shower had helped. Wearing clean clothes had helped. The rest of it? There wasn’t a solution for that.

“Take a plate. The cha will be done soon. And then we will talk. You still have moong dal and rice? Yogurt in the fridge? I’ll make you khichdi and kadhi for dinner.”

“Yes, Mom,” Aiden said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. There were certain pantry staples that he always had in bulk. And even though he was barely leaving the house these days, some things went automatically on the delivery list. She’d drilled that into his head from a young age, too. He took the plate anyway and went over to the table, pulled out one of the chairs and slid into it.

“I can see you’re not feeling too bad if you can still take an attitude with me,” she said dryly, and poured the cha through a strainer into the mug she’d taken down from the shelf.

“I’m really fine,” he tried to insist, poking at the handvo with a fork. Handvo was a light but satisfying meal, and his mother’s version of it was spicy but not overwhelmingly so, and it took his stomach twisting unpleasantly at the thought of it to realize just how bad not eating had fucked him up.

She didn’t even dignify that with an answer. Instead, she poured her own cup, and took the seat directly across from him at the table. “All right. Now you’re going to tell me what, exactly, is going on over here.”

“Well,” Aiden said, a little lamely. “You know Matt and I reconnected over the summer.”

“Yes,” Mom said, drawing the word out long enough that, if Matt had been in the room, he probably would have been preemptively ducking for cover.

“Don’t be upset with him. It wasn’t his fault. I just—well, things were going well, overall, but the longer the season went the more I just... I wasn’t getting any better. In my head, Mom. It’s been a mess in there since I retired, and I wasn’t getting any better. I was trying, but I just... I wasn’t. And I didn’t want to drag him down with me. I didn’t want to ruin his life, not for the second time.”

“Aiden...”

“It’s just like since I retired, everything is so fucked up. I don’t have hockey. I don’t have my routine. I don’t have a purpose. I don’t have me . Not really.”

She just looked at him, contemplative and sad. She extended her arm and took Aiden’s hands in her own. His fingers felt like ice, and hers were warm. “My poor boy,” she said, after a moment. “It’s never been easy for you, has it?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, and his tongue felt too thick in his mouth.

“I don’t know how much you remember about your childhood,” Mom said, “but you were always...we always knew that you were a little different from the other children. You never wanted to play the same kinds of games that they did. Your favorite thing to do as a toddler was to sort things into even stacks. You were so particular about what you ate and how it was prepared. And then when you decided that you wanted to play hockey, that’s all you thought about after. It was almost like the other children didn’t really exist to you, except in relation to the team.”

Aiden didn’t remember, really . He had vague memories of other children, mostly in hockey rinks, but he’d been so focused on being the best at hockey, first at skating, and then when he’d finally convinced Dad to let him play goalie, he was shifted off into a whole other world by himself. It hadn’t really mattered—what had mattered was learning how to play goalie. Learning how to be the best .

It wasn’t until later on that a coach had taken him aside and told him that if he wanted the boys to play for him— really play for him—he couldn’t be a mountain, or a world apart. He’d made a conscious effort at that too, running a little mental checklist where he’d force himself to talk or to make jokes with the other players a certain amount of times per practice. After a certain point, it became a little more natural, but he still often had to remind himself how to act or how often he needed to speak to someone to keep up a relationship. After his retirement, it was like all of that had fallen apart, too.

“You were always different, and that’s just one of the reasons we loved Matthew so much, when he was around the first time. It was so clear that he saw that about you and loved it. Loved you for it . For a while, the worry I’d had about you being lonely, well. I could set it aside. I understood why things ended. I understood why it was so hard for you. But Aiden...it’s so hard to watch you struggling like this. What can I do to help?”

Aiden realized he was gripping her hands too hard, hard enough that he’d probably hurt her, even if her face never reflected it. Neither Mom or Dad had ever made him feel weird or different as a kid. They’d never taken him to a doctor. They’d just let him put his head down and focus on goaltending with the kind of single-minded drive that had taken him to a probable Hall of Fame career. But they’d always known... “Mom, why didn’t you do anything about this? About me?”

She looked, for the first time, a little guilty. “What would we have done about you? You always seemed happy, or whatever happy meant for you, and you were so successful, we never wanted to upset things. I wonder now whether we shouldn’t have...but you’re almost middle-aged now, and it’s far beyond second-guessing that.”

Aiden let go of her hands. His own palms and fingers felt disgustingly sweaty, and he wiped them on his pants. “I was seeing a therapist in Montreal. Before I left.”