Page 7
“You what?”
“Yeah. I don’t think...well, I couldn’t have talked to you. Not for a long time, even if I always thought about what I’d want to say if we did.”
“Matt, I’m— Jesus . I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t. It wasn’t your problem,” Matt said, without rancor. He was still on his back, perfectly motionless, like a statue toppled into the green. “It’s fine. I got my shit sorted. Had a pretty good run of it since.”
“It wasn’t my...but I...”
“Aiden, it’s really...well, it’s not fine , but I get it, man. You were right. No, don’t look at me like that, you were. It wasn’t the right time. I don’t blame you for not wanting to be the first ones to come out, especially not that way, especially when it wasn’t like either of us were leaving our teams anytime soon.”
“I never wanted to hurt you. I just wanted to do the right thing.”
“Yeah, well. You did. You did hurt me. But I don’t know. I’ve thought about it a lot. Maybe it’s better things ended when they did. Before we really started hating each other.”
“I thought I did hate you. I hated you for a long time, after I saw the wedding photos.”
“I thought I hated you, too,” Matt said. The corner of his mouth tipped up in one of those familiar smiles, one of the ones that showed the dimple. “Not the best reason to get married, but I had a decent run of that, too.”
“I don’t hate you, though. I haven’t—”
“I know, Aidy. I know.”
They sat in silence for a while and Aiden watched two kites tangled in the air, owners trying to tug them apart as they fell. “What happened? With Emily?”
“Same thing that always happens when you marry someone for the wrong reasons, I guess. One day she got tired of the fact that we had nothing in common and she couldn’t come up with a good enough reason to stick around. The money only goes so far when you’re that lonely.”
He was smiling, again, rueful, and so sad that Aiden wanted to reach out to touch him, but stopped when he noticed a small kid coming toward them, snapback in one hand and a pen in the other. “Ah—you got a fan,” he said, pointing.
Matt sat up and signed the hat. Smiled his warm smile, made small talk, told the kid he’d have a great season in mites, while Aiden pretended that he didn’t exist, imagined melting into the grass and disappearing.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Matt, whether player assistance had been for alcohol or drugs or mental health, or any combination of the three. Whether Aiden had done that to him, even unintentionally. He didn’t know how to feel about it. Like many of the other things he’d felt the last six months, it was too fluid to get his hands around.
Instead of boxing it up, this time, he let it wash over him. Like he used to do, except it was so much larger a feeling than he’d had in a long time.
“How about you?” Matt asked, as they watched the kid running back to his parents, eagerly waving the hat. “Has there been anyone in your life?”
“A few,” Aiden said. He shrugged. “Kind of a serial monogamist, I guess. Never more than a year or two, though. Nothing that really lasted. I wasn’t what they wanted, I think. I couldn’t ever...really be that.”
“Yes.”
What Aiden didn’t say was you ruined me for other men .
They sat in silence for an interminable amount of time; Aiden didn’t want to check his phone to put a boundary on it. All around them, kids ran and screamed and played. Couples made out on picnic blankets. Boaters on the lake cut through the water. Artists painted the crowd. An entire park’s worth of people streamed around them, going about their lives, unaware that something in Aiden’s chest had eased, minutely, for the first time in a decade.
“Oh, I missed this,” Matt said, laughing, startling Aiden out of his thoughts.
“What?”
“That good old Aiden Campbell dissociation face, the one where you go hang out in your mind palace in the middle of a sentence.”
Aiden made a face at him. “You’re lucky we’re in public, or—”
“Or what?”
He leaned sideways to whisper in Matt’s ear, in itemized detail, the things he would do.
“Oh,” Matt said, after taking a moment to process them. His face slowly flushed red, from the neck up. Aiden kept going and he said, “Well. Oh. ”
On the walk back home, Aiden thought again about the therapist. It had been five or six sessions now, and he’d watched her long enough to recognize her habit of looking at him like she could see right through him or saying, “Oh, ouais?” in her soft voice. It made him shift uneasily, especially when he was specifically trying not to answer a direct question she had asked him right before that.
There were certain things she kept bringing up that he didn’t want to talk about at all, like the way he could consider beginning to separate his own personal identity from his role or function to a team or pointing out that some of the explanations he provided to her regarding his behavior—which he felt were reasonable, even logical—were rationalizing maladaptive actions.
He was really trying to take it seriously, but there were more than a few sessions where he was so frustrated and uneasy about trying to put into words all of the shit that had been knocking around in his head for years that he considered not going back.
He kept going back, anyway, and every week, Dr. Gauthier smiled like he had done something admirable and said, “Welcome back, Aiden.”
It shouldn’t have felt so encouraging, but there he was, still crossing the threshold. And here he was, still walking shoulder to shoulder with Matt.
Later that day, Pears sent him a link to an Instagram story. It was some random girl’s profile, a little video of Aiden and Matt sitting by the lake in Mont-Royal. In it, Aiden leaned forward, right at the end of their time there, when he’d rendered Matt speechless. Aiden stared at it before it minimized back into the chat window.
He could barely recognize himself in the picture, with the hair and beard and sunglasses. Jesus, he needed a haircut.
Pears added, Soup, what the fuck are you doing?
I needed a change of scenery.
You really think this is a good idea?
No, but it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had, either.
It’s pretty close, buddy.
Yeah. Probably. But I’m here.
You okay? Do I need to get my passport and come up there and give him a talk about your tender feelings?
No. It’s been a little weird, but it’s fine.
OK.
I know you’re worried.
You’re an adult, Soup. You gotta do what’s best for you. But I’m your friend, so I’ll be here to pick up the pieces.
Thanks, Pears.
And just know that I will kick his ass if I have to.
You don’t have to.
OK.
Every time Matt thought that he was starting to get used to having Aiden back in his life, something happened to throw him off and remind him that actually, it was a precarious position, and that any second the house of cards could come tumbling down. This time it came in the form of a phone call from his mother after dinner.
He’d been mostly avoiding his family since he got home from the trip. It was cowardly, but he hadn’t really wanted to try to explain Aiden to them. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Aiden that he’d had a bad couple of years after their breakup. If anything, he’d been downplaying what had actually happened. He’d shut his parents out then, too, until he couldn’t anymore. They hadn’t judged, they’d done all of the right things, but it had been almost as hard for them to see him in that state.
He’d been avoiding the phone calls, mostly, but there was a limit to the number of concerned voice mails he could scroll through transcripts for and ignore. Eventually, he had to pick up. “Uh, hey, Mom.”
“What’s going on, Matthew?” she demanded, blunt as always.
“What do you mean, what’s going on?”
“It’s not like you to avoid us like this. What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said, which wasn’t entirely a lie.
There was a delicate silence, like she was trying to decide how to phrase it. “Matthew, be honest with me. Miles told me about what happened in New York.”
“Jesus, Mom. It’s no one’s business but mine.”
“Is it?” she said. “It’s the same as it was back then. The secrecy. The lies. I know you’re a grown man and you can make your own decisions, but I’m your mother. I was there when you were struggling. And I have to look out for your best interests, too. And I have to tell you that whatever you think you’re doing is a terrible idea.”
Matt counted to ten and exhaled a deep breath. Years ago, when he’d seen a therapist regularly, they’d done a lot of work about boundaries and controlling your reactions to things people said. They’d done a lot of work about boundaries and controlling your reactions to things your parents said. There was only so much he could do about the way his parents saw his life, especially because he still wanted them in his life. The options were limited.
“Mom, maybe you could back up to knowing that I’m a grown man who can make his own decisions, huh?”
Mom snorted. “I knew this wouldn’t go well. You’ve always been stubborn, especially about that...” She trailed off, like she wanted to say something worse. “About that man.”
“His name is Aiden, Mom.”
“I know what his name is. That doesn’t mean I have to...acknowledge him.”
Matt rubbed his fingers over his eyes. If things kept going the way they’d gone, he’d have to figure out what he was going to do about his family and the way they felt about Aiden. It was still early to force things, but he couldn’t put that off forever, either. “Look, Mom. I hear you. I understand your concerns. You just have to trust me that I know what I’m doing and that things are different this time. I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
“Fine,” Mom said, but she wasn’t happy about it, and he knew it wasn’t going to be the end.
The rest of the conversation was strained and stilted: she pretended to have an interest in the way his training was going and how his knee was feeling, but the fact was that she had only really called because of Aiden. When they hung up, it was with the uneasy feeling of issues unresolved.
And Matt, left with the uneasy knowledge that even as he was approaching middle age, his parents still treated him like a child. Maybe it was deserved. The bad years had been really fucking bad, and he’d almost lost everything because of it. It had been nearly a decade since, and he’d changed. But he wasn’t sure if his family realized it.
It was hard to describe the feelings. The frustration and the unease and the worry. All of it was knocking around in his head like a maelstrom. Matt needed to get his fucking head on straight, get it calm before the season started. He couldn’t afford to fuck things up for the boys. He’d dealt with this over the years, learned how to force himself to be even-keeled even when he didn’t feel it.
The difference now was that Aiden was here, and Aiden looked up when Matt came out of the bedroom with a concerned expression.
“Matt? Are you all right?”
Matt thought about telling him, but he didn’t want to burden Aiden further by reminding him of the negative opinions of his family. Aiden had enough on his shoulders. Instead, he sat down on the couch next to Aiden and leaned forward. Aiden’s mouth melted under Matt’s, and he gasped, the sweetest little noise of surprise that Matt swallowed down.
He wasn’t sure if he’d ever get used to this.
It had always been like this between them, that electric chemistry, like their bodies knew how to communicate better than their mouths ever had. Even now, Aiden’s big hands were gripping his biceps, an anchor. Even now, Aiden’s body against his was a comforting weight.
“What’s wrong, hey?” Aiden mumbled into Matt’s mouth. He had shifted so he straddled Matt’s thighs. “You’ve been acting weird since that phone call.”
Matt looked up at him, the familiar face that had morphed into something unfamiliar and was slowly shifting back to something he knew intimately again. He lifted his hand, cupped it around Aiden’s cheek. Let Aiden turn his head into the touch. His beard was so soft under Matt’s fingers. “You know. It was my mom.”
“And...?”
“My parents, ah, they’ve been a little worried about me. Just in general. It’s just, it’s just, it makes me feel pretty shitty sometimes.”
“Do you want to...talk about it?”
“No. God, no.”
Aiden’s eyes crinkled in a smile, one of the few Matt had been able to coax out of him recently. “Okay. So we don’t have to talk about it. But what can I do?”
“Fuck me,” Matt said, before he could stop himself. “Fuck me until I can stop thinking about this.”
Aiden laughed and kissed Matt’s forehead, one of those affectionate little gestures he’d done so casually a decade ago, and Matt’s heart clenched a little when he did it now. “I can do that, Matty.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” Aiden said, and slid off of his lap. He held out his hand, and Matt took it.
Aiden thought that Matt was probably going to drive him completely insane, one of these days. It was like he had regressed to a younger version of himself, a raw kid with an obscene refractory period and the desire to just fuck Matt up and be fucked up in turn, constantly, continually.
Like if he was otherwise occupied, Matt wouldn’t stop to think too long about whether Aiden should still be there, taking up space and time in his life, an ugly shadow lurking at the edges of his neat existence. It was hard not to feel at least a little shitty about it, when he was still consumed with the uncertainty of what exactly he was doing in Montreal.
But that didn’t mean he was going to stop.
Aiden, on his knees, pulled back to take a deep breath and look down at his work. Matt sprawled on his back, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath, blotchy red and damp with sweat and his own come. He still looked a little dazed as Aiden reached out to rub his thumb under the head of his dick, shuddering and flinching away from the touch.
“Aiden, I’m not twenty-one anymore, I can’t —”
“Let me try?”
“I—I can go down on you, I just, I don’t think I can come again.”
Aiden leaned forward and scraped Matt’s thigh with his teeth, lips pressing against the same spot. Kissed his way farther up Matt’s torso, licking the come off of his stomach. His hand twisted and Matt groaned, shivering underneath him.
“Let me,” Aiden begged, not even sure exactly what he wanted to do, just wanted to—needed to—wreck him. “Matty.”
Matt didn’t answer immediately. His eyes were closed, and his mouth hung open as Aiden stroked his finger over Matt’s rim, still wet from his tongue. Matt’s entire body jolted as Aiden slid his finger back in, but his legs fell open, sensitive but unresisting, at least for the moment.
He clutched at Aiden’s hair, grip tightening as Aiden teased him with his fingers, ignoring the gasps and the trembling of Matt’s thighs when Aiden twisted them up, the yelp when Aiden licked his way up the length of Matt’s cock. Aiden could barely think, half of his attention focused on making Matt feel as insane as Aiden felt right now, half on holding himself back.
“Aiden,” Matt managed. “It’s too much.”
He pulled away. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No, no, please—”
Aiden lost track of time, of how long they’d been doing this, subsumed in the feedback loop of the ragged noises Matt made and the way he felt when Matt made them. Matt shook underneath him, alternating between trying to push himself onto Aiden’s fingers and squirm away. His eyes were still screwed shut and his hair plastered sweatily on his forehead, and he was hot and achingly hard again in Aiden’s hand.
“Matt,” Aiden said, and his voice sounded like he was the one who’d been getting fucked this whole time. Matt had come twice already and looked and sounded like it and Aiden was holding himself back. It felt like his entire body was one tingling nerve, so intense it hurt. “Matt, what, what do you want?”
Matt didn’t really answer right away, just kept rolling his hips up and grabbing blindly at Aiden’s head and shoulders. He gasped, “ Anything. ”
Aiden gently pushed his hands away, shifted farther up the bed so he could settle between Matt’s legs, push them apart and line himself up. He couldn’t remember when exactly they stopped using condoms again or why and it wasn’t really anything to get poetic about, but the heat and friction of it almost ended him right there. Aiden already felt raw and exposed, and fucking Matt like this made him feel like he’d ripped his skin off.
Matt said, “Oh,” very quietly, when Aiden was fully inside and still mindlessly trying to push deeper. Matt’s eyes finally opened to look up, although they were still hazy and unfocused, almost dreamy, and Aiden thought, I did that, that’s because of me, I made him feel like that.
Aiden moved, a slow, agonizing motion first, and then faster, harder.
He didn’t want to think anymore, so he didn’t.
“Shit,” Matt said, much later. He kept trying to sit up and not quite managing it. Eventually, he gave up, lay back in the crevice between the disarrayed pillows. “Where the fuck did that come from?”
“Fuck off,” Aiden mumbled, sprawled on his stomach next to him.
“Seriously, what’s—what the hell got into you?”
Aiden looked over at him, sticky and sweaty, his body marked with the imprints of Aiden’s mouth and teeth, his face bemused, dark eyes flicking from Aiden’s face to his lips, and thought, I’m still in love with you.
He said, instead, “Well, I can rule out ‘you,’ huh?”
Matt managed to punch him in the arm, and in response, Aiden waggled his eyebrows, and then Matt was rolling on top of him pinning him down and trying to kiss him, even though the angle was awkward. Aiden managed a squawk of shock before Matt’s insistence killed his token protest.
Later, while Matt was in the shower, Aiden buried his face in the pillow and wondered whether he could just smother himself that way and end it all.
I’m still in love with you.
He’d never really stopped.
It didn’t feel any better, admitting it.
It wasn’t like Aiden was going to stop fucking him. It just felt worse to know that the end of the summer was coming, and Matt was going to be back on the road, and Aiden was going back to New York, doing absolutely nothing with his life, still in love with his ex, like a fucking idiot.
Dr. Gauthier asked why he found it so hard to envision a future for himself.
“It’s just that I’ve never done anything except hockey. I’ve never wanted to do anything except hockey. And now I don’t have hockey anymore.”
“You don’t do anything except hockey, or you won’t let yourself do anything except hockey?”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Not really, Aiden.”
Some of the stuff he was supposed to work on at home was making lists of things he could see himself doing with the rest of his life, but he usually spent most of the time he forced himself to do it staring at a blank piece of paper, pen in hand.
“What are you doing?” Matt asked him, one night, as he glared in frustration at the empty page, screaming internally at his equally empty brain.
“Trying to—think of shit to do with the rest of my life. Something that doesn’t have anything to do with hockey.”
Matt sat down on the couch next to him, shifted closer so he could force his arm behind Aiden’s back, set his hand on Aiden’s waist, rested his chin on Aiden’s shoulder. It shouldn’t have felt as comforting as it did. He shouldn’t lean back into it. He did anyway.
“Why can’t it involve hockey?” Matt asked, so close Aiden could feel the heat of Matt’s breath against his ear.
“It just—I don’t know. I can’t play for a living anymore and I don’t want to keep looking at what I can’t have, every day. It, uh, it just hurts too much.” The words were falling out of his mouth before he could stop them. His neck felt red and hot, his hands clammy, because it wasn’t just hockey, it wasn’t just—
Matt’s hand on the side of his face, turning Aiden’s head toward him. “Baby,” he said, kissing the corner of Aiden’s mouth, “it’s okay, it’s okay.”
It wasn’t, of course, but Aiden let himself pretend for another night.
He woke up at midnight and checked his phone to find a text from Hannah. Aiden, please answer me this time. I’m really worried about you.
I’m fine, Hannah. You can tell Mom and Dad too.
Are you coming home for Raksha Bandhan?
Probably not. I’ve been busy. I’m sorry. I’ll mail you a check.
I don’t want a check, asshole, I want to tie a rakhi on my brother. I want to actually see you for a change.
I’m sorry, Hannah. Things have just been a little hectic.
ARE you in Montreal?
Yeah. I have been for a few weeks now.
Aiden, seriously? Are you sure that this is a good idea?
Can you please stop asking? I wish you guys wouldn’t keep treating me like I’m a little kid who needs his hand held.
It’s just if this doesn’t work out, how are you going to handle it? I was there for the aftermath of the first time, you know.
I KNOW, Hannah.
You were such a mess for such a long time.
Aiden thought about telling her what a disaster his retirement had been, in general, even without Matt, that Matt was the only thing that had made him feel much of anything since he hung up his skates, but he didn’t think Hannah would appreciate hearing that. Especially not when they had been trying so hard to be supportive, trying so hard to bring him back home.
Instead, he said, I know. Thank you for being there for me.
And I know you’re an adult.
You should’ve been the older sibling.
Yeah, well. Life happens. I’m not.
How are Ankit and the kids?
Everyone’s fine. We miss you.
I miss you too.
Come visit soon, okay?
I will.
He must have been shifting around too much because he woke Matt, who blinked at him for a second before reaching for his own phone. He opened up the Notes app and said, “Okay, look, if you can’t think of anything, I’m just going to keep a running list for you.”
“I don’t—”
Matt ignored him. “Bean counter?”
“That’s Ward...”
“Bean farmer?”
“ Matt. ”
“Juggler? You are pretty good at that; you could always take it on the road.”
“Matt—”
“Mime?” Matt typed the words with his thumb, without looking at the screen; his full attention was on Aiden, torn between horror and laughter. “Mime could work, you’re handsome enough people would probably give you a pass for being creepy.”
“Oh my god—”
“Yoga teacher?”
Aiden actually thought about that one for a second. “I mean, I could .”
“You walked my inflexible ass through it, you could probably teach anyone.”
“I don’t think I, uh, want to do that with anyone else, you know...” Aiden had a momentary mental image of how yoga with Matt had usually ended—in bed or on the floor—and of the kinds of people who’d be in a yoga class he taught, the way he’d had to turn down people’s numbers in the yoga classes he attended on his own throughout the years. He shuddered.
“Sex therapist?”
“ Excuse me? ”
“It was just a thought,” Matt said, the corner of his mouth tipped up. “Again, it works for me...”
“ No. ”
“Personal trainer?”
“I mean, same problem with yoga, really.”
“Real estate?”
“I hate talking to people I don’t know—”
“Phlebotomist?”
“Is that even a real word?”
Matt set the phone down, took Aiden’s face in both hands and said, “Baby, that’s the person who draws your blood.”
“I didn’t—uh—” Aiden started to say, but then Matt licked his lower lip, sucked it gently into his mouth, and Aiden stopped arguing. Matt’s mouth was so soft under his, so fucking tender that it almost killed him. Matt’s eyelashes fluttered, eyes closing. After a few minutes, though, he pressed his hand against Matt’s chest, pushing him back. “I...thanks, you know?”
“For what?”
“For not treating me like I’m fucking dying, or with kid gloves. I don’t know. Thank you. This is the first time I could laugh about this, even a little bit.”
“Gonna be right there with you in a few years, bud,” Matt said, patting Aiden’s thigh. “Better we both figure it out now. Come on...it’s late as hell. Try to sleep, huh?”
None of the suggestions were any good. It didn’t matter. Aiden settled himself back down into the bed. They fell asleep not long after, and Aiden didn’t dream.