Header (Open Play #1)

Prologue Tobík

The phone is still warm against my ear when I say it again.

“Drafted, Mami. They drafted me.”

She’s crying. Not the quiet kind. The full kind, the kind she’ll deny tomorrow when I tease her about it. I can hear my grandfather in the background asking her to repeat what I said.

“I heard you the first time, Tobiá?, I heard you,” she says, laughing through it. “Tell me everything. Did you speak to them?”

“The call came and I didn’t move for ten seconds. Tomá? had to shove me.”

“He shoved you?”

“He said answer the phone, idiot, they’re offering you a career.”

She laughs that bright, gasping laugh she does when Tomá? is being Tomá?. “And? What did you say?”

“I said thank you. About nine times. My English wasn’t good, Mami. I think I told them I was very honor.”

“Oh, Tobiá?.”

“I think they understood.”

“Of course they understood. You could have said nothing and they would have been lucky to have you.” Her voice shifts lower. “Your father would have been the loudest one at that party. You know that.”

“I know, Mami.” I feel a lump in my throat thinking what it would have been like if my father were still alive.

“Have you eaten?”

“I’ve eaten.”

“Real food?”

“There were pierogies. I think they were pierogies. Tomá? made them or someone made them. They were pierogie-adjacent.”

“Tobiá?.”

“They had filling and were warm. I’m not asking more questions.”

She laughs. My grandfather says something in the background, and she relays it. “He says he’s not crying.”

“Tell him I can hear him not crying.”

“He says go celebrate. Call tomorrow. Call every day.”

“I will.”

“You’re going to be wonderful.”

“I love you, Mami.”

I close my eyes and lean against the hallway wall. Drafted. The word keeps tasting new. I say it again, and I can feel the shape of my life changing.

I walk back into the living room and Damián’s there.

He must have arrived while I was on the phone.

He’s standing in the doorway with ?íma and two other guys from the national team, beer in hand.

When I come around the corner, he glances at me, and I see the double-take.

He hasn’t seen me in a couple of years. Years when I have grown taller and bigger.

He lifts his beer toward me. Not a toast. Just acknowledgment, but his eyes stay on me a beat longer than the gesture requires.

Then Tomá? grabs me.

He lifts me off the ground. Not a hug. A lift. My feet leave the floor. The room cheers. I’m laughing, the kind where my ribs hurt. For a second, I’m twelve again and he’s seventeen and the tallest person in the world.

“Put me down,” I say, smacking his shoulder.

“My brother. My brother got drafted.” He’s carrying on as if he was the one that got drafted, but I can’t help the smile attached to my face.

“You’ve announced it to everyone. You even told the neighbors.”

“They needed to know. It’s important civic information.”

“Tomá?.”

“In America.” He shakes his head. “You believe this?”

“I keep saying it and it keeps surprising me.”

He puts me down but keeps his hands on my shoulders. He looks at me the way he does when he’s being serious, which is rare and too much when it happens.

“Dad would have…” He stops. Swallows. “He would have loved this.”

“I know.”

He nods once, squeezes my shoulders, then lets go. Then ?íma is in front of me, pressing a fresh beer into my hand.

“Hájek. They actually draft hockey players?”

“There’s a whole league, ?íma.”

“The one on ice? With the sticks?”

“With the sticks.” He knows this. We go through this every time I see him, and he says it like it’s the first time he’s making this statement.

“And you can do, what…One pull-up?”

“He can only do one pull-up,” Tomá? says from behind me, as if he’s been waiting for this moment.

“One is enough.”

“Going to America on one pull-up.” ?íma shakes his head, grinning. He clinks his bottle against mine. “The ice will be very impressed.”

“I’ll tell the ice. It’s been waiting.”

The next hour is noise and light. People keep finding me, grabbing my shoulders, saying the word back to me like a gift they’re returning.

Drafted. I hear it from people I haven’t spoken to since primary school.

I hear it from neighbors. I hear it from Tomá?‘s football friends, who don’t know what a second round means but know it means something, and that’s enough.

Damián goes to the kitchen for another beer, and I follow. The kitchen is quieter with the door half-shut behind us.

He pulls a beer from the refrigerator and offers me one. I grab it and take a quick sip. He leans back against the counter and watches me.

“Are you nervous?”

“Yes,” I say, because it’s true and because I don’t know how to not tell him the truth.

“Good. The nervous ones last. The ones who walk in like they already own it burn out in two years.”

“Were you nervous? Going to Germany?”

“Terrified.” He says it simply, like it costs nothing now. “First week, I couldn’t eat. The food was wrong, the language was wrong. Everything was louder and faster and I kept thinking they’d made a mistake.”

“But they hadn’t.”

“No. I guess they hadn’t.”

We stay like that for a minute. Across from each other. He’s watching me as if he is trying to reconcile Tomá?’ younger brother he knew years ago with the version standing in front of him. I can’t tear my eyes away from his watching.

From the other room, Tomá? calls out. “Tobík! Get back here, Ková? wants to make a toast.”

Damián tilts his head toward the door. “Go. It’s your night.”

“It’s Ková?. He’ll talk for twenty minutes.”

Damián laughs. Short, surprised. “Go anyway.”

I go. But I carry the sound of that laugh with me like something I stole.

Ková? does talk for twenty minutes.

I stand with Tomá?‘s arm heavy across my shoulders, a beer going warm in my hand, while a man I barely know tells the room I’m going to do great things. He compares me to a player I’ve never heard of and to himself. He compares me to a horse, which nobody understands, and Ková? doesn’t explain it.

My eyes move over the room while Ková? speaks. Damián is looking at me. Not at Ková?. Not at the beer in his hand. At me.

I look away but I feel him watching. I listen to the toast. I laugh when Tomá? claims he taught me to skate, which isn’t how it happened, but I let him have it.

When I dare to look up again, Damián is still watching.

His beer is at his mouth, his eyes on me over the rim.

He doesn’t look away when I catch him. He just takes a slow sip and lowers the bottle.

Later, I’m telling ?íma and a few others about the draft call. The part where I said “very honor” instead of “very honored” and the scout paused for three full seconds on the line. The room is laughing at my story. I’m laughing.

I look up and Damián is not laughing. He’s leaning against the far wall with his arms crossed, watching me with an expression I can’t read. Not amused. Not distant. Focused. Like I’m speaking a language he’s trying to learn.

Later I use the bathroom that’s down the hallway. The bass gets quieter the deeper I go. I use the bathroom, wash my hands, and come out.

In the hall opposite, Tomá?‘s bedroom door remains open with a light on. Damián is standing by the bookshelf with his back to me, looking at the photos. Tomá? has them lined up along the shelf in mismatched frames. The two of us at six and eleven on the outdoor rink behind our grandfather’s house.

At a football match, Tomá? grinning, me squinting into the sun.

Me at fourteen in gear that was too big, holding a stick taller than I was.

“That’s a terrible photo,” I say from the doorway.

He turns but doesn’t look startled. He looks like he was waiting for someone, and I was the person who came.

“You were small.”

“I was fourteen.”

“You were tiny.” He picks up the frame, the one of me at fourteen. “Tomá? used to show me this. Tobík’s going to make it, watch.”

“That sounds like Tomá?.”

“He was right, though.” He puts the frame back on the shelf. “He talked about you all the time. His little brother who reads too much and skates too fast.” He pauses. “His little brother. That’s how he described you. Still describes you. Like you are still this kid in gear that outweighs him.”

He looks at me in the doorway. His gaze travels from my face, down my body, then back up.

“But you’re not really that young and small anymore, are you?” He whispers this, almost to himself.

I move into the room. I don’t decide to. My legs make the decision and the rest of me follows. He sits on the edge of Tomá?‘s bed, and I sit next to him. The mattress dips under our weight. We’re close. Closer than the room requires.

The last time I was this close to him was on Tomá?‘s balcony the summer I was sixteen. The church spire across the rooftops was lit with gold. He was telling me something about a match and I wasn’t aware of the words, only the shape of his mouth saying them.

That was the night I understood what I was feeling.

That I was attracted to men, and more specifically this man.

“Damián…” I say, and stop, not sure what I was about to say. I turn to look at him and he’s watching me again. Brows furrowed, and an intent gaze trying to puzzle me out.

“Yeah.” His voice is lower than it was in the kitchen. Lower than it was moments ago across the room. “Yeah, Tobík.”

He’s turned toward me on the bed, and his eyes drop to my mouth and stay. My breath stops. I can feel his breath on my face. Beer, and underneath the beer, the soap I memorized the name of three years ago. This is the closest I’ve ever been to getting what I want.

In the living room, Tomá? roars with laughter. The kind that carries through walls, down a hallway, through a bedroom door that isn’t quite shut.

Damián flinches. His whole body flinches, like the sound hit him physically and jerked him out of a trance. His hand goes to his own knee and his eyes come up to mine. Whatever he sees on my face makes him look away.

“I should…” He doesn’t finish. He stands abruptly and walks past me, out through the doorway. I hear the party take him back. I hear Tomá? say his name.

I sit there for a count of ten. Maybe twenty. Long enough to feel the warmth where he was go cooler under my hand. I can sit here for the rest of the night and it won’t come back.

The not-knowing what just happened with Damián is going to be a thing I carry.

Fine. I’ll carry it. I have carried heavy things before.

Tomá? taught me how. You hold it in one hand and keep moving the other hand.

You don’t put it down because there’s nowhere to put it down.

You walk back into the room. You let people celebrate with you.

And you don’t think about something that might have been.

Tomá? sees me and shouts my name and a beer appears in my hand from somewhere. ?íma is in the middle of claiming to someone I can do zero pull-ups now. The neighbors are still here. Ková? is starting another toast. Damián is on the other side of the room and doesn’t look up.