Page 5
Matt sent him a smirking emoji in response.
Distractions aside, Aiden had to admit he was still not doing very well in retirement. He had made schedules to get through each day—down to the minute with chores, guitar playing, reading a book, even bathroom breaks—and he knew that it was probably a little crazy. Even for him. But if he kept to the schedules, at least he was doing something . At least he wasn’t just sitting around, staring at a wall.
He spent a lot of time avoiding calls and texts from his parents and Hannah, all increasingly worried about him. He spent a lot of time avoiding invitations to go out from Pears and Gabe.
Although his days were well regimented, Aiden was starting to realize that he could schedule his time down to the minute and it wouldn’t matter. If he didn’t do something else soon, something was going to break. Or he would. No matter how intensely he tried to fill his days, without the Routine, it was meaningless.
Slouching out of the gym toward his car, he thought, not for the first time, about his old mentor, Ward.
Hey, Wardo, he texted. Ward was almost fifty now, with an entire house full of kids and a steady job as an accountant. He was probably busy, but he never seemed to mind when Aiden bothered him. How’s Wisconsin?
Hey, Soupy. It’s going. How are you doing?
Aiden hesitated. He missed Wardo, missed the sense of security that came with having someone older and more responsible around to tell him to chill the fuck out when he was too deep in his head, missed the way Wardo used to look at him like he was very fond of Aiden but also very aware that Aiden was dumb as hell. It was reassuring to have someone around who knew your limitations and didn’t treat you like the savior of a city.
Oh, you know.
Everything OK?
Yeah. Sure. Can I ask how you knew what to do after you were done?
Well, I already had the business degree, it was just the next logical choice to figure out a way to use it. Just kind of fell back into accounting.
Aiden, who only had a high school diploma because his mother would have killed him if he didn’t, frowned. Thanks.
You know, you don’t have to figure out a career path right away. You can enjoy a hobby, or travel, or do pretty much anything you want. Why don’t you take some time to enjoy life?
But I don’t really have any hobbies except hockey. And the guitar, but there’s only so long during each day that you can play before your neighbors start complaining.
Oh, Soupy...look, there’s nothing to stop you from picking up a new one, you know. Go golfing. Learn to paint. The only limit is your imagination.
Imagination’s the problem, though. Wardo, I’m a hockey player.
You always had a warped sense of humor. But seriously, bud—don’t stress so much. You have the rest of your life to figure it out.
Thanks. Hope Wisconsin’s treating you okay.
They spent a few minutes chatting about Wardo’s wife and the kids, about Wardo’s accounting business, about their summer plans. Wardo was planning an extended fishing trip, which Aiden dutifully said sounded nice, even though he hated fishing.
Eventually, Wardo had to get back to work, and Aiden had to sit with the knowledge that there was a whole world of possibilities out there that he just could not, for whatever reason, see himself reaching for.
Matt was playing with fire, in danger of burning his hands every time he flirted with Aiden, every time he sent a gym selfie, every time he reached out at an odd hour of the night just to see if Aiden would respond. Even if Aiden was flirting back—Matt thought he was, anyway, sometimes it was hard to tell—even if Aiden was responding like he was waiting for it every time, Matt was playing with fire.
He tried to think about what his longest-serving winger, Aatos Saarinen, would have said if he were here to see it.
What are you actually hoping to accomplish, buddy?
No, don’t do it.
Don’t you remember how things were, how you fucking imploded?
Matti, you fucking idiot.
He deserved it.
He was a fucking idiot.
In his condo, alone, Matt went about his day-to-day. It had been their little inside joke, when he’d first hooked up with Aiden, that Matt couldn’t cook. Aiden used to tease him about it, used to delight in making him food, partially because Aiden had liked to take care of him but also just to rub his nose in it.
After they broke up, Matt had taught himself some basics over the years and thought about what Aiden would have said if he could have seen it. Probably some dry remark about how boring and easy the recipes were. It wasn’t like he was relying on a meal service, at least, even if he usually kept it simple and planned ahead so he would have leftovers.
He made his dinner.
He folded his laundry and put it away in the drawers immediately, even though he hated doing that.
He kept everything in order because if everything was in order, that meant his life was in order.
It was a quiet little existence.
Even with making sure all of the rookies were settling in properly, that the team was all on the same page about the upcoming training camp, and all of the responsibilities of the captaincy, Matt was starting to realize that his quiet little existence wasn’t just quiet. It was fucking lonely .
He ate by himself. He came home by himself. He got into bed by himself. He hadn’t really dated anyone seriously since the divorce. It hadn’t seemed worth it. Anyone coming back to the condo was just a one-night stand, or at most, a two-week stand. And in the end, he’d discovered that that was almost lonelier than just not hooking up.
He thought about Aiden, alone in New York.
He thought about Aiden saying, It’s really just not the same right now. Maybe you’ll understand what that means one day. I hope you don’t.
He thought about watching Aiden on the ice, the grace and power and beauty that made him immediately recognizable even if you couldn’t see his face under the cage. He thought about how, even now, he could remember exactly the way Aiden’s face looked when he woke up in the morning, the slow, sleepy smile that had only ever been Matt’s. He could remember the way Aiden’s pulse felt under his fingers pressing down on his throat, beating fast as a rabbit’s, the way his head tilted back in an invitation. He could remember the way Aiden’s face would get so fucking red when Matt slapped him, eyes watering, desperate for more. He could remember Aiden, sitting on a private beach and watching the sun set blood orange over the water, his shoulders hunched forward, a serious look on his face. His voice, equally serious: I don’t want to go home, Matty. Let’s stay here forever.
He could remember all of it, a million snapshot memories of Aiden he’d never been able to purge from his brain.
He thought about Saari saying, Matti, you fucking idiot.
Maybe so.
Aiden was taking his chicken out of the oven and prepping his salad and grains to go with it when Matt FaceTimed him. He propped his phone up against the toaster while he worked, watching Matt from the corner of his eye.
It hadn’t been a great day. Aiden had gone grocery shopping after the gym and his conversation with Ward and had gotten stopped several times on the way and in the store. He’d signed the autographs and hated it every time. It felt like committing fraud, somehow, even though they were legitimately fans of his, and he had done the things that had made them love him. He wasn’t that guy anymore, and the knowledge rattled around in his head, too loudly. Even the mantras couldn’t drown it out. The house seemed especially quiet when he got home and unpacked, and he’d jumped in both surprise and eagerness to answer when he heard the phone ring.
“What’s up?” Matt asked, during a lull in the conversation.
“I’m making dinner.”
“No, I mean...something’s up with you. You’re really jumpy tonight. Or sad. I don’t know.”
“I’ve just—” Aiden set the knife down. “Matt, I just don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with my life, you know? It’s been bad this week. Worse than usual. I even texted Ward for advice, and he told me that I don’t need to do anything.”
“I mean, do you really need to do anything? Maybe Ward’s right.”
“Matt... I do . I have to do something different. I’m fucking losing it. I really feel like I’m losing my mind, you know?”
“Come to Montreal,” Matt said, the words falling out all in a rush, like he needed to get them out before he could bite them back.
“What?”
Matt took a deep breath, and said, slower: “Come to Montreal.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. I don’t know, maybe a change of scenery would do you some good.”
“I... Matt... Montreal is kind of a... There’s a lot of people who would recognize me. And you.”
Matt’s face was inscrutable as he shrugged. “You need to get out of New York for a bit, I think. My life’s in Montreal right now. I have a spare bedroom and the rest of the summer. Come for as long as you want. We’ll figure the rest of it out.”
“This is a terrible idea,” Aiden said, slowly.
“When has that ever stopped us, Aiden?”
The arc of their relationship flashed behind his eyes, compressed to a ten-second movie, scenes he couldn’t have burned from his memory even if he’d wanted to. The first time they’d locked eyes in the handshake line. The first time he’d met Matt in an airport in the offseason and saw his entire serious face light up. The last time they’d slept together and Aiden had looked down at him and known it was the end and could feel the grief choking his throat. The last time Matt had shut a door in his face and said, Fuck you, Campbell , tired and so, so sad.
Aiden rubbed his hand over his eyes, suddenly very tired. Tired of his current life, of fighting it, of throwing himself against the walls. The weight of those quiet days, the lack of routine, the meaningless of it all crushed down on him. For a second, he couldn’t breathe. He had to close his eyes and think, again, There are no thoughts. There is no future. There are no thoughts. There is no future. The words, usually a comforting mantra, did nothing to quell the queasy tide of panic.
You have the rest of your life to figure it out, Ward had said.
He was so fucking tired. And here was Matt, offering him an out. It might have been a terrible idea, but—how was it any worse than what he was doing right now?
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll look at flights.”
Aiden bought a one-way ticket to Montreal. He packed a week’s worth of clothes and his travel kit.
want 2 get lunch tmrw? Gabe texted while Aiden was in a cab to the airport.
I’ll be out of town for a bit.
ok.
We can meet up when I get back, I just don’t know when that will be.
Gabe didn’t ask where he was going, and Aiden didn’t offer an answer.
It was raining in Montreal when his plane touched down that night, the kind of steady, misty drizzle that had the smell of hot concrete and asphalt lingering in the air for hours after. It was still raining by the time he caught a cab to Matt’s Mile End condo; it was still raining by the time the cab driver dropped him off a few blocks away, and it was still raining by the time Matt came down to collect him.
“Hey, you made it,” Matt said.
They stood there, frozen in place: even if there wasn’t a doorman watching, Aiden wouldn’t have known what to do. Whether he wanted to throw his arms around Matt and squeeze him until he could hear his bones crack or whether he wanted to punch him in the face.
“One useless houseguest, at your service,” Aiden said, finally.
Matt punched him hard in the shoulder. It stung, and that, at least, felt right. “None of that, Campbell.”
Aiden didn’t argue. He still felt strange, like he was moving in a dream. To be doing this after so long, like it was just easy to pick up and go, even if it was probably all going to blow up in his face.
He wondered what their lives could have been like if he’d done this sooner. But Matt had been married for most of that time, so it probably wouldn’t have happened anyway. He could only imagine what Emily would have thought if Aiden had shown up on their doorstep, some random hockey player from a rival team, bedraggled and soaked with rain.
They were quiet in the elevator up; quiet when Matt opened the door and Aiden followed him in. It had a similar vibe to his old place, a kind of lived-in clutter but still more put together than Aiden could ever have managed without assistance. It felt homier than Aiden’s house, despite all of the concrete and exposed pipes in the ceiling, because Matt had probably picked out everything himself instead of throwing a lot of money at someone and telling them to go nuts.
“Well, this is it,” Matt said, gesturing to the living area and kitchen. Aiden had seen them both in video chats before. “It’s nothing spectacular, but it’s mine. You can put your stuff down in the spare bedroom.”
“Thanks.”
Matt took the bag from him. “This is really all you brought?” he asked, eyebrows going up.
“I wasn’t—I didn’t want to presume—”
“I was just teasing.”
“Don’t? Fuck , Matt, it’s already as weird as hell without that.”
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Sorry.”
The second bedroom had a bed, shoved in next to Matt’s desk and a desktop computer, presumably doing double duty as an office. Like the main room, it was airy and comfortable even if it was small. Matt set the bag down on the bed and shrugged. “Well, that’s the grand condo tour. Very exciting, eh?”
“I like it. It feels like you.”
Instead of answering directly, Matt looked away. “Hey, you hungry? I’ll order dinner if you want to change into some dry clothes.”
“Sure. Whatever you want; I’ll leave it to you.”
While Matt went to take care of dinner, Aiden stripped off everything he was wearing, still damp from the walk to the apartment. He changed into house clothes: comfortable, worn athletic leggings and an equally beat-up T-shirt. He fluffed his hand through his hair, shaking the extra moisture out of it, looked at himself in the mirror and wondered, again, what the hell he was doing. His hair and beard were shaggy and longer than they’d ever been before. He hadn’t really seen much of a reason to keep them in line. There were dark circles under his eyes.
He looked, to put it bluntly, like shit. Nothing like the kid Matt had fallen in love with.
Nothing to do about that now.
They made awkward small talk about the flight, about Matt’s training. Aiden’s skin buzzed with the prickly awareness of what they’d done the last time they were in the same room together, his head buzzed with just being here, talking again, like maybe this wasn’t over. He was relieved when Matt went downstairs to get the food, exhaled a breath he had been holding in for some time.
The anxiety of not knowing what it was, of departing from the Routine, gripped him again. He took a few deep breaths and reminded himself that he was in fucking Montreal. He’d taken the Routine and dropped a bomb on it.
And despite the anxiety, he found that Matt had remembered his dietary preferences. He had ordered an assortment of dishes to share from a Lebanese restaurant in the neighborhood, and it was all without dairy. Matt had always been like that. Fucking thoughtful. Better to Aiden than he’d ever deserved.
The food was good, and they split it standing across from each other at the kitchen island. Aiden was careful as they talked, not wanting to say too much. Every time they reached for the same thing, or Matt’s fingers accidentally touched his, he could feel his entire body lock up.
“Thanks,” Aiden said, afterward, as he helped clear away the paper plates and take-out containers. “What do I owe you?”
“Man, nothing , this is a welcome-to-Montreal meal, okay?”
Aiden eyed him a little suspiciously but didn’t argue.
They spent the rest of the night watching a movie on either end of Matt’s living room couch, which was, Aiden admitted to himself, a lot more comfortable than his own. It was overstuffed soft leather, easy to sink into and prop your feet up on the coffee table.
Aiden was a little surprised how, in some ways, it was easy to slide back into Matt’s life like that, on the couch watching a movie like any other summer they had spent together. Except for the fact that he was hyperaware of his promise to himself that he wasn’t going to fuck this up and make it weird.
The thing was: Aiden was always going to make it weird.
It was impossible not to make it weird when you had almost five years of memories built up of someone, ten years on top of that to turn them over and over in your head until they were polished like sea glass. It was impossible not to make it weird when every time you looked at him, you noticed that when he laughed his eyes crinkled up and the one dimple emerged the same way they always had, or when you knew exactly the way he was going to finish a sentence.
Ten years had gone by, but Matt was still the same, and Aiden was always going to make it weird, because all he could think about was that he broke Matt’s heart and fucked things up for both of them. That Matt broke his too...well. That was incidental at this point to the monumental regret he felt, the knowledge he didn’t really deserve to be here. Shouldn’t really be here.
Aiden could barely pay attention to the movie, but finally, it was late enough that both of them were yawning and exhausted.
Matt said, “I have to get up to go to the gym early tomorrow, so I’m gonna crash. You can stay up and watch something if you want to, don’t worry about it.”
“Okay.”
Matt reached out and his hand rested against the side of Aiden’s face, thumb pressing lightly right below his jaw. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For taking the offer seriously.”
Aiden couldn’t quite look him in the eye, but there was nowhere else to look. It had always been hard to turn away from Matt when he got like this: so intense and so sincere it was overwhelming. “Yeah, well. A change of scenery, right?”
“Yeah,” Matt said, then patted him sharply on the cheek. “Okay. Uh. Good night.”
Matt’s spare bed was objectively comfortable, like everything else in his condo, but Aiden tossed and turned for an hour or so, staring at the ceiling. Tried one side of the bed and then the other. As nice as the bed was, it wasn’t right. He couldn’t get his body to calm down. Like any other night at home, it was loud as hell in his head, all of the thoughts he’d been able to meditate away during the seasons he played back in full force and at top volume. The same problem that had driven so much of his New York misery.
But he wasn’t in New York anymore.
Aiden sat up and got out of the bed. He walked to the other side of the condo and into Matt’s bedroom. Matt was asleep, sprawled out and taking up most of the bed like he always did, tangled in blankets he had mostly kicked off already.
Aiden took a deep breath and slipped into the bed next to him. Matt’s eyes half-opened, blearily. “...Aidy?”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, “couldn’t sleep.”
Without answering, Matt closed his eyes, threw an arm over Aiden’s side and shoved one of his knees between Aiden’s legs. He was broader and harder than he used to be, but he still smelled the same; his face still had the same soft look in sleep.
Aiden fell asleep like that, under the weight of Matt’s arm, listening to the sound of Matt breathing.
He didn’t dream.
Matt slowly opened his eyes, groggy and out of it, and for a second, he wondered at the fucked up dream he’d had yesterday. Aiden in Montreal. Aiden in his condo. Aiden climbing into bed with him.
And then he realized that it was real, and he was still in bed, curled up against Aiden’s warm back. His eyes flew open, and he sat up, slowly, so he wouldn’t disturb him. For a second, he couldn’t breathe.
In sleep, Aiden looked almost like Matt remembered him: serene in a way he never was awake. The long, proud line of his nose. The curve of his lip. The thick, black eyelashes against his cheek, the dark circles under his eyes. His hair hung into his face and his face rested on his arm. His mouth hung open a little and he was breathing the slow, even rhythm of sleep.
Matt stared down at him. It was fucking surreal. He’d woken up like this countless times over the years. Back then he would’ve woken Aiden up, too, with a blowie or a hand on his cock, enjoyed the sleepy way he always leaned into the touch. Matt wanted more than anything to touch him. Just to run his hand down Aiden’s arms, his back, the line of his face. Like if Matt could trace his entire body, somehow it would make it more solid, make it more real.
It was stupid. He was stupid. He had to be normal about this, because if he couldn’t, Aiden would flee again. That would be it. Matt would lose him for the second time, and there wouldn’t be any way in the universe that he could possibly fix that again. No: he just had to be patient. Let Aiden rest and recover and do whatever he needed to do to feel more like himself, and then—well, he’d worry about what came after that, when it happened.
He couldn’t help it. He leaned down and pressed his mouth against Aiden’s shoulder, the barest hint of a kiss. Aiden smiled in his sleep, shifted a little to turn over, tucked himself around Matt’s body.
Jesus.
It was a tempting thought. To stay in bed, to wake Aiden up with a deeper kiss, to see if he would be this needy when he wasn’t sleeping.
But also, Matt had his training: the gym, meetings with the coaching staff and specifically the skills coach and the head trainer to discuss his knee and how they were going to manage it over an eighty-two-game season. He didn’t have the time to stay in bed with his ex-boyfriend, however soft his hair was against Matt’s skin, however snuggly he was with his eyes closed.
Matt took a deep breath.
This whole idea had been insane. The fact that it had worked wasn’t the point. It could explode in his face, spectacularly, at any second. He was really treading the tightrope here, no net underneath. But he couldn’t regret what he’d done, even if things were—weird. Even if he was caught in this limbo of Aiden’s sad eyes and hesitance, and Aiden’s warm body in his bed at night.
He gently disentangled himself from the half-embrace and slid out of the bed. After a second, he pulled the blankets back up over Aiden, still asleep in the rumpled sheets. He squared his shoulders. He went to get dressed. He grabbed a receipt from the top of his bureau to scribble a note on the back.
He went to the gym.
Aiden woke up later than normal, unusually well-rested but alone in Matt’s bed. Blinking, he sat up to find that Matt had left him a handwritten note on the side table, next to a small brass key. It was the same sharp, slanted handwriting he’d always had. Aiden could picture it, the scrawled MS4 that made up his signature.
I’m at the gym. Be back around 11. There’s coffee, bread and cashew butter in the kitchen. If you want to go out there’s a spare key that’s yours too.
Aiden stared at the note, then set it back down on the table.
He drank some coffee and made his toast and wandered around the condo, like he could gather some kind of idea about Matt’s life through context clues. The fridge was covered in family pictures of Matt’s parents and his brother, Miles, and Miles’ wife and their two adorable children. Teammates from various events: Matt and the Royal during their first Cup celebration, Matt shirtless and drenched in beer in the locker room, screaming with triumphant joy, Aatos Saarinen riding on Matt’s broad shoulders.
There was some art hanging on the walls, but Aiden couldn’t tell if he liked it or not. It was modern and minimalist and reminded him, a little, of the times they’d gone to the MoMA together. Even now, those were bittersweet memories, ones he wasn’t sure if he wanted to revisit. He poked around in the kitchen, and it seemed like Matt wasn’t lying about learning to cook—even if he was, there was a good variety of equipment.
By the time Matt made it home, sweaty and disheveled from the gym, Aiden had unpacked his clothes. He had showered and trimmed his beard back into something resembling normal length, the closer shave he wore during his later playing seasons. It didn’t make him feel any better, really, but it did make Matt smile when he saw it.
“Got tired of the mountain man look?”
“Just wanted to feel a little more human.”
“Good.”
While Matt showered, Aiden put together a lunch for both of them, mostly leftovers. It struck him again how this was something he’d done a hundred times over the summer in the past, without even thinking about it. Even though Matt could’ve eaten at the practice facilities, he had always liked that Aiden cared enough to feed him at home. He looked down at the plates, frowning, and wondered what the hell he was trying to accomplish here.
It turned out that what Matt was trying to accomplish, at least, was to distract Aiden. To some extent, it worked. Although he was still training for the season, he folded Aiden into his life seamlessly with a guest pass to the gym owned by his personal trainer and a standing invitation to work out together.
After a day or two of balancing his concerns about the Montreal media and stir-craziness from being stuck inside, Aiden gave in and went. That would end, of course, once Matt started going back to Brossard full-time when the season started. But it would do for now. It felt good to lift again, felt good to have his muscles aching. As far as he could tell, no one really noticed him there, which was a relief. But he was so awfully aware of Matt that it was also the opposite of a relief.
Every time he spotted Matt on the bench, or waited to trade off on the deadlift platform, Aiden had to try not to look at the way the muscles shifted under Matt’s skin, the frown of intense concentration he had when he was reaching the end of a set and hitting his limits and forcing his way through them. Every time Matt gave him that same heated look, from the corner of his eye, Aiden had to pretend it didn’t affect him.
Don’t make it fucking weird, Aiden admonished himself, repeatedly, and every time, he made it weird. His thoughts rattling around inside his own head, screaming.
Aiden tried to find ways to keep himself busy. While Matt was on a call with his agent, Aiden went out and wandered around the neighborhood, found a grocery store and picked up a few things for the fridge and pantry.
He made Matt dinner, pan-seared salmon and farro and vegetables, ignoring the teasing wow, is this five meals you can do now? It was an earned jibe: during their first relationship, Aiden had taught himself to cook, but had often eaten the same thing, over and over again. It had been easier. Comforting. Matt, of course, hadn’t seen it that way, but he’d accepted it the same way he’d accepted all of Aiden’s little quirks. Because Aiden had always been luckier than he’d deserved.
The situation in Montreal was sometimes nice. Aiden could pretend his life wasn’t a disaster, at least for small segments of the day. The other times he was just as aware of the mess he had made of it as ever. It was worse because he wanted to touch Matt so badly he almost felt nauseous about it. Wanted to shake him and ask, what are you thinking, what do you want from me so badly that he could scream it.
Aiden started to settle into a holding pattern of life in Montreal. He got tired of repeatedly having to wash his one or two shirts and bought some more clothes, which ended up in Matt’s closet instead of the guest room. Matt glanced sideways at him when he hung the first shirt but didn’t say anything.
Aiden finished reading the books he’d intended to read before his attention span vacated the premises. He cooked and cleaned. His body started to feel like it used to right before a season started, rested and exercised and ready for anything, except there was nowhere to turn that energy toward .
In the beginning, before anything had gone wrong, Aiden had found the long silences he shared with Matt comforting. They hadn’t needed to say anything; it was enough to know Matt was there and if they wanted to speak, there would be the time to do it. It was enough to spend time in the same space together and know neither of them felt like they had to fill it. The same pauses now just made him anxious, fidgety. Wondering what the hell he was doing here.
Sometimes he caught Matt watching him, during those silences, from the corner of his eye.
“What?” Aiden asked one night as he washed the dishes from dinner.
“It’s you—you’re just different.”
“Yeah, well, that happens when you get old.” Aiden put the bowl he’d been washing into the rack to dry. He wiped his hands on the towel.
“That’s not what I meant. You’re just more... I don’t know.”
Aiden sighed, the force of his breath flipping a hanging strand of hair up into the air. “Well, you haven’t changed at all. Still trying to figure me out?”
Matt looked away. There was a flush of red on his cheekbones. “I could never figure you out. I spent years trying, and it wasn’t—Jesus, never mind.”