34. Kai
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
KAI
We sit side by side on the couch, each of us backed up against an arm. Oskar has his hands clenched in his lap. When I meet his eyes, he nods, telling me to start.
Fuck me, because I can’t think of what to say. “I…” He stays quiet, so I try again. “It’s been… Ozzy, I…”
“I’ll go first,” he says. “This week was very hard for me, starting with you canceling our plans last Saturday. I don’t know why you did that.”
“You do. I told you…”
“Your friends invited you to something, and you agreed to go. You broke a date with me to spend time with people you were going to see all week. But you have not said why.”
“I didn’t think it through.”
His expression is static—not angry, not smiling. “That’s what you said, but it still doesn’t tell me why.”
“I won’t do that again.”
“Okay, but we’re still not saying what we need to.
” He looks at the window, and when he turns back, his eyes are shiny.
“What happened this week, Kai? I did not hear from you much. When I did, you said the right things, but something was wrong. I was reaching for you but only getting part of you back.”
Fuck me.
He gulps air and goes on. “Sometimes, I wondered if you wanted to talk to me at all. I felt like you were doing the least you could do and still say you kept in touch. It hurt.”
“Come on, I…” A lump in my throat cuts me off, and I have to swallow before I can continue. “I had things on my mind, Ozzy, but we were busy. It was a long trip. The games were hard, and logistics kept getting messed up. Waiting in hotels, getting our luggage delivered to the wrong rooms, guys…”
This isn’t good enough, and I know it. I don’t know how to put things together so they’ll make sense to him.
“Something is happening inside you that you’re not telling me,” he says. “Maybe it’s unfair for me to be upset over that, because there are things I haven’t told you either.”
My mouth goes dry. Is this it? He’s about to leave?
He looks into my eyes. “I do not believe what happened this week was about hockey. I think you are hurting, and I wish you’d tell me why.” He pauses. “I have been hurt too.”
Does he mean by me? Fucking shit. I scoot down the couch until our legs are touching. “What is it, Ozzy?”
He looks unsure.
“You can tell me,” I say.
“I’ve lost people. You know about my friend Gunnar. I told you a little about him that day we went to Strawberry Fields.”
I nod. “You said he died.”
Ozzy’s eyes go distant, seeing something I can’t.
“Gunnar was my best friend. We grew up together, two houses apart on the same street. As soon as we could walk, we were on skates. Played hockey, got in trouble sometimes. We did everything together.” He lets out a sad laugh.
“It was the kind of friendship you think only happens in books. We loved each other like brothers. We were brothers, just not by blood.”
“He must have been an amazing guy.” The words are so lame I wish I could take them back.
“We made a plan to come to America and play in the HFNA. It was a big dream, but we were convinced we could do it.” He looks at me, the pain in his eyes hard to see. “Now I am here, and he is not.”
My chest aches as I reach for his hand. “What happened? If you don’t mind talking about it.”
He takes a shaky breath, and his voice is rougher when he says, “It started with headaches. He didn’t feel well, wasn’t himself. One day at practice, he had a seizure. The doctors found a brain tumor.”
“Fuck, Ozzy.”
“They did surgery, chemo, all of it. For a while, he got better. We started having fun again. He was serious about this girl, Sofia, and they moved in together. We all thought he’d beaten it.”
“Shit,” I whisper, knowing what’s coming and not wanting to hear it.
“The tumor came back, and it was much worse. The treatments did not work. He was gone in only a couple of months. It’s been two years now, and I still catch myself thinking I should text him. Tell him something funny that’s happened.” Ozzy looks into my eyes. “Tell him about you.”
I would have been worth that?
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I wish there was something I could do.”
But I can’t, so I sit here holding his hand and wishing he hadn’t had to go through such an awful thing.
“I’m still sad about Gunnar, but what would it say about our friendship if I wasn’t? Life goes on.”
“It hurts to lose someone, though.”
He lets my hand go and stares out the window again. “Sadness is not limited to having people die. There are other kinds of losses. The romantic kind.”
A shiver runs through me. I’m barely breathing, afraid to move.
“There was someone,” he says. “Before I came here. Her name was Astrid.”
A woman?
He watches my face. “I’ve been attracted to men and women.”
My mind stumbles, not because him being bi matters, but because it never crossed my mind. “Okay,” I say. “Doesn’t make any difference to me. Want to tell me about her?”
“We were close. Not in love, but she was a wonderful girl. We had a lot in common and started talking about the future. Not ‘let’s get married,’ but more like, ‘What will happen if we make this work?’”
“That sounds good.” I mean it. Dreams of the future are…
Dreams? This is where I…
“Things were going well,” he says. “We saw each other when I wasn’t on the road, kept in touch when I was gone. Had a lot of fun.”
“What happened?”
“One night, she wanted to talk about us. When I told her we seemed great together, she said I had to rethink playing hockey.”
“Wait, what?”
“She couldn’t deal with it. Said I was gone too much, and hockey took the focus off our relationship.”
“God.” Hearing this is making me queasy. “What did she want you to do?”
“If we were going to have a future, she wanted a normal life. A husband who went to an office in the morning and came home every night. It was either that or she couldn’t go on.”
“That’s so unfair.”
He tips a hand back and forth. “Maybe. She had a right to want what she did, but so did I. Neither of us could compromise because there wasn’t a middle way that would work, so we ended it.
It was a mutual decision, but it felt like the death of a future I wanted, spending my life with someone who loved me. ”
The death of a future I wanted.
And here I canceled a date because my head got too loud, and then spent a week wrapped up in a bubble. Shame burns hot under my skin.
I reach for his hand again. “I’m sorry about everything you’ve been through. Sorry for not asking about your past.”
He nods.
“I pulled away,” I tell him, staring at our hands. “That wasn’t fair to you. My head is full of things I haven’t figured out how to say, but I don’t want to lose what we have. I’ll tell you soon.”
I raise my head. He still doesn’t look happy, but his shoulders relax.
“Okay, baby,” he says softly. “But please don’t take too long.”