Page 75 of True North
Adeola seemed unconcerned about their damp clothes on her office furniture as she directed them to sit. “JT, I know you have places to be, so I’ll keep this short. The Toronto team is going to meet with the witness this afternoon, and Misha, they asked me to review my notes with you ahead of time. I thought it would be better to do this in person than over the phone. I’m sorry for the early morning.”
Misha shrugged. “No, it’s good reason. It’s hard for me talking in English on the phone.” He chewed on his lip for a moment. “They talk with Kirill today?”
“That’s right. Get his version of events, ask him some questions. Make it clear to him that you’re still alive and in danger of being wrongly convicted.” She reached into her purse and took out her phone. “Speaking of which. Let’s get a picture of you holding a piece of paper with the date written on it. Hard evidence.”
Misha agreeably sat and held a legal pad as Adeola photographed him. JT looked at his damp, matted-down hair with his big ears sticking out and could hardly believe that this was really happening: that Misha in all his liveliness and curiosity might actually go to prison, possibly for the rest of his life. He couldn’t think about that too hard. Adeola seemed to think Misha was going to be cleared, and JT had to trust that she was right.
“What’s the end game here?” he asked as Adeola flipped through a folder looking for her notes. “Kirill admits he gave a false confession? Couldn’t he do jail time for that? Or is that only on TV?”
“What his uncle tried to do is arguably a hate crime,” Adeola said. “Kirill is a victim, too. He also isn’t a native speaker, and he wasn’t offered a translator when he was first interviewed by the police. I’m not sure how good his English is—”
“Better than mine,” Misha said.
“Hmm, well. We can still try that angle. But I don’t think this will be a problem. If he’s willing to provide a version of events that lines up with Misha’s, the prosecutor won’t have a case, and I doubt they’ll see Kirill’s false statement as being worth their time to pursue. We’ll do some negotiating.”
JT kept his mouth shut as Adeola reviewed her notes with Misha, clarifying minor details about what had happened the night he fled from Toronto. Some of it JT hadn’t heard before: the uncle’s name (Vasily), how Misha and Kirill knew each other (coworkers), how long they had been ‘involved,’ as Adeola delicately put it (three months). The rest of it he knew already. Adeola was thorough, circling back to rephrase her questions when Misha was unclear or seemed to contradict himself. She was a small-town lawyer, but JT understood why Gary had recommended her. She knew her stuff.
“All right,” Adeola said, still scribbling something in her notes. “That should do it. Thank you, Misha. The interview is this afternoon at one o’clock. I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything. I’m hoping we’ll have all of this resolved in short order.”
She shook both of their hands and walked them to the door. Outside, the rain had slowed to a drizzle, although Misha ran and yelped just as much as he had before, and then grinned through the mist as JT laughed at him, pleased with himself for making JT laugh.
“I thought bears were waterproof,” JT said, hitting his key fob to unlock the truck.
“I’m not bear now,” Misha said. He scrambled into the cab and brushed his hands over the tiny droplets clinging to his hair. “You pretend you’re not bother, but I see you touch your hair the whole time I talk with Adeola. Fuss, fuss, oh it’s not right.”
“It’s curly, it gets frizzy,” JT said, laughing again at Misha’s dramatically judgmental expression. “Buckle your seatbelt. Let’s get out of here. Are you cool with hanging out at the rink while I skate? I don’t have time to take you home and come back into town. I could drop you off at a coffee shop or something.”
Misha considered him. “Your friends are at the rink.”
“Alex and Curtis, yeah. Is that cool? Do you want to meet them? You don’t have to.” JT hadn’t really thought this through or planned for Misha to meet those guys anytime soon, but if Misha was okay with it, there was no reason not to bring him. Everyone was going to find out about him soon enough.
Misha set his jaw and nodded. “Okay. If you think it’s okay, let’s go.”
JT’s heart swelled with a sweet mixture of pride and tenderness. Misha was trying so hard to be brave. He reached across the gearshift to take Misha’s hand. “They’re good guys. I’ll do all the talking.”
“Then you buy me lunch,” Misha said, with an unsteady but earnest smile.
“You got it.” JT squeezed his hand. “Misha, I want you to know. No matter what happens—I want you to know how glad I am that we’ve had this time together. It’s been the best summer of my life.”
Misha squeezed him back. His eyes looked so warm in the gray light. “Mine, too. The best everything for me.”
“Yeah. Well.” JT cleared his throat and blinked hard a few times.
Misha laughed and released him. “Come on, hockey man. Let’s go.”
* * *
JT’s friends were about what Misha had expected. Hockey players weren’t tall like basketball players or massive like football linebackers; aside from the ass and the thighs, JT didn’t look much different from a regular guy who had a dedicated gym habit. Alex and Curtis weren’t physically imposing, and they were dressed in ordinary clothing, and they shook Misha’s hand like they were pleased enough to meet him. There was no reason for him to feel shy or intimidated.
Still, he didn’t have much to say to Curtis as they sat near the ice to watch JT and Alex skate. The building was cooled to keep the ice from melting, and Misha was grateful for the sweatshirt JT had dug out of his equipment bag but self-conscious about wearing JT’s clothing in front of his friends. What if they could tell? What if they could sense how pleased Misha was to be snuggled inside something that belonged to and smelled like JT?
So what if they could? If Misha moved back to Toronto, if he lived with JT in JT’s really nice condo, everyone would figure out that they were more than friends. Maybe the general public and the media would buy a story about roommates, but anyone who knew JT well would know that his relationship with Misha wasn’t platonic. Then they would all know about Misha, too: that Misha was gay.
“You ever play hockey?” Curtis asked, breaking into Misha’s thoughts.
Misha regarded him. He was wearing a zip-up sweater, which reassured Misha that he wasn’t failing some unspoken litmus test of masculinity. “No. I skated sometimes, as a kid. Mostly we played soccer. But I’m not so good at sports.”
Curtis laughed. “Honesty. I like it.” He had a bright shock of red hair, almost the same color as one of Misha’s cousins. “JT will make sure you know how to skate in a straight line, at least. That’s about all I can do, to be honest with you.”