Page 10 of True North
Curtis’s eyebrows went up. “Okay, sure.”
“You know that bear that’s been coming around my place,” JT said, and Curtis nodded. “Well, he’s shifted for me a couple of times now. Into his human form, I mean. And yesterday he even came into my house,andI figured out that he’s Russian, and we were able to use my phone to talk a little.”
“Uh, wow.” Curtis leaned back on his hands. “You let him into your house? Am I going to see you on the news soon?”
JT rolled his eyes. “He’s not going tomurderme. He’s really skittish. He seems really scared, you know? I’m just happy I can help him a little.”
Curtis snorted. “Since when are you some fucking do-gooder?”
“I do charity work,” JT protested. “I spend a lot of time at the children’s hospital. I like to help people.”
“This is a little different from going to visit sick kids. What if he’s some kind of con artist?”
“Come on. I don’t think that’s too likely.” This was why he shouldn’t ever tell anyone his business. “The guy just needs a friend.”
“Fine, you know what you’re doing.” Curtis shrugged. “As long as you feel good about the situation. Sounds like he’ll be living in the guest room in no time.”
JT hadn’t been thinking that far ahead, but it wasn’t a bad idea. He had plenty of room in his house. The trick would be convincing Misha.
“That was a joke,” Curtis said, narrowing his eyes as he watched JT’s face, but he didn’t have time to say anything else before Alex’s SUV pulled into the lot and Alex came spilling out of the driver’s side door, apologizing for being late. He was a big blond cheerful bruiser of a guy, kind of like the human version of a yellow Lab, and JT couldn’t help laughing as Alex launched into a ridiculous story about the old guy in Timmies who was the cause of his lateness.
“Drinking coffeebeforea workout?” Curtis said mock-sternly, which sent Alex off onto a whole tangent about how caffeine improved athletic performance, and he went on in that vein all through their warmup. There was no more discussion of the bear.
JT went to lunch with Alex and Curtis after they were done training and put Misha out of his mind while they ate, but his thoughts went right back in that direction as he drove home. With the windows rolled down and the wind drying the last sweat out of his hair, he thought of Misha ambling through the forest, sleeping in a pile of leaves, eating god only knew what. Seemed like a mighty lonely life, but Misha had chosen it. Only now, he was letting JT reach out to him; he was choosing to shift forms and eat at JT’s picnic table.
JT’s brain served up the image of Misha standing in the kitchen after his shower, totally naked, dark-eyed and narrow-hipped, and he crushed that train of thought immediately. He wasn’t going to be fucking creepy. He wanted Misha to trust him.
There was no sign of Misha at the house. JT told himself he wasn’t disappointed. He showered and changed and puttered around downstairs for a while, peering out the windows from time to time to see if Misha had come back. He gave up eventually and drove back into town to run some errands. As he pushed his cart through the produce section at the grocery store, he found himself lingering by the fresh berries, wondering which kind Misha might like best. Bears loved berries, right? He put a couple of containers of blueberries in the cart.
JT didn’t have much interest in navel-gazing and often acted without deeply inspecting his motives. Curtis was right, though: he wasn’t a do-gooder. He didn’t have any experience or qualifications. He would be going back to Toronto at the end of the summer, so Misha living with him wasn’t a long-term solution. He should call Lenny, or a homeless shelter, or both, and find something else to do with his time.
If he was honest with himself, none of this was about Misha at all. He was still trying to prove Marcus wrong. Hedidcare about people other than himself. Hedidcare about things other than hockey.
He hadn’t spoken to Marcus in more than a year, not since the horrible night when Marcus came to get his things from JT’s condo and unloaded his true thoughts about JT’s deficiencies as a person and boyfriend. Marcus would never know what he was doing with Misha and wouldn’t care even if he did.
And yet.
Marcus had gotten under his skin. And maybe he had begun to wonder, a little, if Marcus was right. He would be thirty soon, and what did he have to show for it? No Cups. No partner. Plenty of friends, but no one he could really share his innermost self with.
When he was a kid, all he had wanted was to play in the NHL, and now he did; he captained one of the oldest teams in the league. But so what? He was beginning to realize that maybe there was more to life than hockey, and trying to help Misha made him feel like there was something to look forward to beyond working out and cooking. Like his life had some meaning.
He steered his cart toward the frozen food aisle. Thinking about this made his head hurt. He needed some ice cream.
Five
Misha pushed through the underbrush. The woods were dense with summer foliage, which meant there was a lot for him to eat, but if he wandered off the deer paths he quickly became mired in a tangle of leafy branches. But the best food was off the beaten track, as it were, and he smelled berries.
The birds had gotten most of them already, but he ate what remained: less than he had hoped, and not enough to make a decent meal. He nosed around the bush a little, hoping more berries would appear. But of course none did.
He was hungry. He was always hungry, and leaves didn’t do much to fill the empty pit of his belly.
JT would feed him. Misha was sure of it. He could show up at JT’s kitchen door and JT would let him in and cook him something delicious. And they would talk again, with JT’s phone speaking its odd Russian, the first human conversation Misha had had in far too long.
Misha could tell himself any number of half-truths or outright lies, but the fact of the matter was, he kept going back to JT’s house for a reason, and it didn’t seem likely that he was going to stop. Dressing in JT’s clothes that smelled like JT’s laundry detergent had lit a fire in him, or maybe added more kindling to the first bright sparks. JT’s blue eyes and crooked smile weren’t any good for Misha’s peace of mind.
He wasn’t far from JT’s house. An hour of ambling through the woods brought him to the edge of JT’s property. JT’s pickup was parked in the driveway, and as Misha came around to the side of the house facing the lake, he saw JT sitting in a chair out on the dock, fishing pole in hand. He was wearing sweatpants and a gray T-shirt that looked a little small for him, stretched taut over the breadth of his shoulders. His feet were bare on the sun-dappled planks of the dock.
Three days had passed since their shared pizza: not a long time at all, but it felt to Misha like a long time because he had spent every waking moment since then thinking about their meal. He couldn’t figure out why JT kept being so nice to him and was worried that JT’s kindness was some form of trick or trap, but he couldn’t imagine what. Misha had no money and no connections—nothing JT could exploit.