2. Cameron
TWO
CAMERON
Cameron Vesper adjusted the volume in his SUV, his own music coming from his phone. His car usually connected to Zacky’s phone before his, as Zacky was the self-appointed passenger princess/DJ. The passenger seat was loudly empty, when it was usually just loud. Zacky was more reserved than Cameron, especially around groups of people—he joked Cameron was his emotional support animal—but he was never reserved in Cameron’s passenger seat, belting out Whitney Houston or Garth Brooks or One Direction.
Cameron missed his favorite driving hazard.
His anxiety buzzed down his arms and he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of the random song playing. Cameron’s ring finger had been bare his entire life, but suddenly it was catching his attention. Zacky hit his head alarmingly hard. And now he thought they were…married?
On some level, it made sense. If they were anything, they were life partners. The idea swirled around Cameron as he worried about leaving someone with that level of head injury alone for any amount of time. But Zacky promised to call 911 if how he was feeling changed at all.
Cameron wasn’t used to doing many things alone. Especially not hockey. He and Zacky had a routine coming into the practice building that involved changing, getting warmed up, and suiting up. He’d played hockey without Zacky before, but the absence of him was in every crevice of the cement block arena. Cameron had been gone for less than an hour, and he was worried. Should Zacky have a babysitter? Should he call him to check in? He didn’t want to wake him up from a nap.
“Hey, V, how’s your boy doing?” Elliott Maynor, a forward who sometimes played on the fourth line with him and Zacky, asked across the locker room as they tied their skates. The only thing that was going through Cameron’s mind was how loud it was when Zacky’s head hit the ice the night before. He was grateful that their practice rink was in a separate location from the arena they played games in. He wasn’t ready to be back there yet.
“He’s pretty concussed. But other than that, he’s okay. He’s going to be bored soon.” He kept Zacky’s confusion to himself.
“Does he have a timeline?”
Cameron yanked on his laces, tying his skates as tight as he could. When he was a kid, his dad used to tie them tight enough that he could barely feel his feet. “He’s going to be out for a while, it sounds like.”
“Fuck.”
“You’re telling me.”
“I’m sorry, man. I know that Z being hurt feels like you’re hurt.”
Elliott had been in the Texas YellowJackets system with him and Zacky for a few years. If anyone knew how obsessed the two of them were with each other, it was Elliott.
Cameron and Zacky had a unique hockey story. They had been drafted to the same OHL team as teenagers, and from the time they were sixteen, they had always been on the same team. Even through the NHL draft, where Cameron went toward the end of the first round and Zacky went in the third round, both to the Texas YellowJackets. They played on the YellowJackets’ AHL team, the Allen Killer Bees, together, and while there were a few months where the two of them got called up and sent down without each other, so far, they had managed to stay together. Everyone else he knew had best friends across the league and in Europe, hockey taking them far and wide. There wasn’t a day Cameron woke up without gratitude toward whatever good graces he was currently in with the universe. Zacky had a lump on his head, but they were still together.
He stretched his legs out when he got onto the ice and skated in long strides, pushing his knees through their full range of motion. He would always have to be careful with his left knee after an injury a few years previous, but he was doing okay now.
The memory of his own injury kicked his mind right back to Zacky. The thud as his head bounced off the ice. His helmet clattering too far away from him. The wobbly attempt to stay upright as he came off the ice. Cameron watching him get helped down the tunnel by medical staff and pulled into an exam room while Cameron still had to play. It had felt like his heart had been ripped out of his chest, having to stay on the ice for the rest of the third period.
They lost the game. By the time Zacky got into that fight, they were already down by three, with eight minutes left. They weren’t coming back from that.
Cameron ran through drills with Shane on the other wing from him instead of Zacky, but he couldn’t assign full blame to not having his other half out there. He was not only out of sync, he was distracted.
He kept thinking about how adamantly Zacky believed they were married. Or, that he was married to an alternate-universe version of Cameron. He didn’t believe that Zacky was from an alternate universe. He believed that Zacky hit his head harder than any head should be hit, and he was dealing with memory loss that took the form of…replaced memories? He’d been unconscious for nearly a minute after he hit his head. Maybe in that minute his brain pushed out how they were lineys and figured the equivalent was marriage.
If Cameron woke up married to Zacky…
“Vesper, keep your head up,” Coach shouted at him as he missed another pass. Javier crunched him into the boards. No one was going easy on him or anyone else after a loss like the night before. The Jackets were hanging in a wild card spot, and they were about at the halfway mark of the season. They had to keep their fight up. And losing to New York, who was in last place, was frankly embarrassing.
After practice was over and he’d changed back into regular clothes, Cameron drove to Chipotle without thinking about it, where he grabbed his own regular order along with Zacky’s. It wasn’t until he was pulling into the parking garage that he realized that the memories Zacky’s brain conjured up out of nowhere might include new Chipotle preferences.