20. Best Game Ever
20
BEST GAME EVER
Gabriel
My irrepressible good humor is legendary. But since Elisabeth's call on the cruise, it's as if a black cloud is following me wherever I go. I’m in such a constant bad mood that I don’t even recognize myself.
The hockey season restarted three weeks ago, and on the ice at least, things are going like clockwork. My teammates have taken the news about my sexuality in their strides. There are always a few stupid jokes in the locker room, but that's just normal banter. I should be relieved. Glad even. But I'm in a bad mood. All the time.
After our press conference, I flew back to Sweden. I just couldn't take L.A. anymore. Its constant sunshine annoyed me, and being around two happy couples was worse.
As soon as I got home, I threw myself into training and did everything I could to block out the last few weeks. I focused on a new fitness program that I’d wanted to try for ages.
All my time and energy was spent on researching, optimizing, and swapping ideas with my coaches and colleagues. I also watched several hours of footage of each of the opposing teams in our league. I don't think there's a single player in the entire Swedish top division whose strengths and weaknesses I can't recite off the top of my head.
It’s paid off. If I thought I was at the top of my game last season, that's nothing to what I'm delivering this season. Except with one exception. The strength it takes to suppress all other thoughts, especially those of the cruise, is taking its toll.
I may once have been a locker room joker, a happy-go-lucky guy who no one could push over the edge, the approachable guy who held the team together — a true team player and captain — but I’m not now. I'm the biggest grump you can imagine.
Some of the new players who’ve joined us from the junior league are afraid of me, I think. And I really don't want that! But I just can't help it. In fact, I’m getting on my own nerves! But I have no idea what to do about it. If I were to open the lid on everything I’m keeping bottled up … It would kill me.
I collapse onto my locker room seat. Today’s game was exhausting but successful. We fought hard and were rewarded with a win. That makes our winning streak seven games in a row — if you count the games from the pre-season, and I certainly do!
My cell phone vibrates, and since it's in my metal locker, the sound grates my nerves. I hate it when it does that! I go grab it and stare contemptuously at the screen.
Susan's name is at the top of the notification, and I have no hesitation in chucking the phone back inside the locker. Since I left the cruise ship just over three months ago, I've kept as much distance as possible not only from Susan, but from my parents, too. And Daniel and Nico. And Elisabeth and Benjamin. I was a total hermit for weeks, only maintaining enough contact so that none of them launched an intervention. I've managed this balance quite well so far.
What I have not managed to do, no matter what I’ve tried, is to forget the guy whose name I can’t bring myself to even think about. We’ve had no contact since that disastrous last evening on the ship. Susan messaged me his number at some point, so I assume she gave him mine, but he hasn’t contacted me. And I don’t blame him. It’s not as if I could bring myself to do it either. The wound was too raw, and to be honest, still is.
Anyway, what else is there to say? He showed pretty clearly that he doesn’t want me. At the first sign of a problem, he cold-shouldered me, both on the ship and through his radio silence since. That doesn’t stop it hurting, but I try to respect his choice, or suppress the whole thing. Whichever works.
Neither works, but what else can I do?
Since the start of the season, I've been forcing myself to go out. There's no point sitting at home and moping over a guy who doesn't want me. So, after each win, I go out to celebrate with the rest of the team. I’ve picked someone up each time — a woman, that is. Luckily, there are plenty of ice hockey fans in Sweden, so it's hardly a challenge to get an attractive young woman into bed.
One thing I couldn’t suppress, though, was that I also noticed just as many attractive guys in the bars. Magnus changed something in me. Maybe I’d always found both sexes attractive and had just buried it until now. But why? It’s not as if I’ve ever had a problem with anyone’s sexuality. If anything, I've always supported the LGBTQIA+ community — apart from those few stupid words I flung out as a kid.
Daniel, one of my oldest friends, is bi. And while I didn't know about it, I’m happy for him. So why is it so hard when it’s personal? Why can’t I be more honest about myself?
And I don’t want to answer the next logical question: What’s Magnus got that’s made me take my head out of the sand after all these years?
About a week after I came back from L.A., I Googled the word the reporter used at the press conference — pansexual. And the longer I think about it, the more the term fits me. A person’s gender doesn’t matter.
So I was telling the truth in that press conference after all and didn’t know it. Sometimes you do just meet someone and hit it off — everything clicks, just like it did with Magnus and me. But knowing this doesn't solve the problem — just the opposite!
Magnus
Why did I think it would be a good idea to study molecular biology?
I stare at the diagram in my textbook and try to remember which amino acid it is — serine or cysteine. I can never tell the two apart! And at which place in the protein can they form a hydrogen bond? Ah! I hate structural chemistry!
The doorbell rings. But before I can get up from my chair, I hear a key being inserted into the lock. Damn it! There’s only one other person who has a key to my apartment — Susan. I love my best friend, but I need to study!
Susan is through the door and standing in front of me, grinning broadly before I can blink. She’s wearing some weird stuff. On her head is an astonishingly elegant tiara — for something made out of plastic, anyway — and she has a whistle in her mouth and is wearing the black and white jersey of the L.A. Kings.
"What are you up to today?" I ask her with a laugh.
"We're going out!" she announces firmly.
"Absolutely not," I reply, pointing to the open textbook in front of me.
Susan waves my concerns aside. "The exam isn't until Wednesday. We have plenty of time to study. Besides, how often is an NHL Global Series game played in Terenberg?"
That's true. At the beginning of each hockey season, the NHL, the National Hockey League, hosts a handful of games in Europe, usually in Sweden, Switzerland, the Czech Republic or Germany. However, it’s a first for Terengia.
For weeks, the city has been plastered with flyers advertising tonight's game between the L.A. Kings and the Boston Bruins. Terengia is an ice hockey-loving country, but the last few days have felt like a national holiday. The only downside is the tickets are so damned expensive that students like me could never afford them.
"I'll watch it on TV," I counter, because luckily, TRF 1, the Terengian public TV station, is broadcasting the game live.
Susan has been trying for days to persuade me to go to one of the public viewing options in town, but I don't feel like being around so many people.
"You won't, though!" Susan says flatly.
My head sinks onto the textbook and groan loudly. Not this again! Will I ever get my own way? Although, it’s my own fault. I do what Susan says too much. First, she has such good ideas — not that I’d ever tell her — and second, I can’t be bothered to argue.
Today, though, the thought of sitting in an over-crowded sports bar isn’t doing it for me. I’ve got some beer and chips and am looking forward to stretching out on my couch.
"Susan," I mumble, my head still resting on the book, "you're welcome to watch the game here with me, but I'm not leaving this apartment today!"
"That's too bad," she replies smugly. "Then I guess I'll have to find someone else to go to the stadium with me."
Stadium?
My head snaps up. Susan is waving two tickets in front of my nose. I snatch them out of her hand and inspect them. They are indeed tickets for today's game — damn good ones at that — on third row, right behind the L.A. Kings' bench.
"How did you get these?" I ask Susan incredulously.
"Daniel owes me a few favors from all times I covered for him when he skipped school to work out," she explains with a grin.
It takes me a moment for the penny to drop. Susan told me a few months ago that she knows Daniel Miller, the nation's hockey star, but it seems she also kept how well she knew him from me too. Just like she kept her brother’s identity from me.
A suspicion starts to form, and I look her in the eye to ask, "And it just so happens that your brother will be there, too, right?"
Susan throws her hands up in despair. "You two are impossible," she shouts, and her genuine anger startles me. "No, it's not an attempt to set you up. I doubt my brother would take time out of his own championship season to fly to Terengia. Anyway, he doesn't like chatting to me much anymore, so I have no idea what he's up to.”
“He won’t be at the arena?”
“What is this, twenty questions? You’d think I was dragging you to a firing squad instead of a hockey match that I got spectacularly hard-to-find tickets for.”
When she puts it that way, I feel a little ashamed until I realize that Susan didn’t answer my question.
“Thanks for getting the tickets. I’m sure it’ll be cool. But I didn’t miss you dodging my question.”
“I don’t know.” Susan sounds exasperated. “I really don’t know if Gabriel is going. As I said, I don’t think so, and Daniel didn’t mention inviting him.”
My heart starts drumming while my brain turns over whether I’m happy about that or not.
Gabriel
Daniel and Elisabeth have done so much for me, and I owe them big time. But right now, I could kill them both.
The start of a new season was stressful enough. Now they’re insisting I fly to Terengia this weekend. Daniel's L.A. Kings are playing a game in our home country, and Elisabeth thought it would be good for the public to see Daniel, Nico, and me together again.
Why now, though? I have way too much on my plate right now.
That's not really why you don't want to go, is it? my subconscious sings sweetly, not letting me get away with the little lie.
I don’t want to admit it, but I'm afraid. Afraid of meeting Magnus. I’m not sure I could play it cool. What do you say to someone who’s ripped your heart out? How would I cope being in the same room with him?
The past few weeks have made me face a truth. I’m not into meaningless sex anymore. It was my favorite hobby for a while, but now it just feels empty and pointless.
I fooled myself into believing that Magnus was just a silly vacation fling — until I took the first woman home after our first victory of the season. That's when I realized that what Magnus and I had was different — from the very beginning. And that had nothing to do with him being a man — we just clicked. I’d never experienced anything like it before, and I'm worried I never will again. Every time I took another woman home, that realization deepened.
Now, the only thing keeping me going is ice hockey. It’s the perfect distraction. I train more than ever before. I'm more focused on my performance this season than I’ve ever been. And now my best friends want to take that away from me? I curse the fact my team has a playing break this weekend and I can’t think of a plausible reason why I can't fly to Terengia.
A break in the season schedule is supposed to give players a rest. But neither Elisabeth nor Daniel will buy that excuse, even if it’s true. My coach won't be thrilled when he hears that I took a flight home this weekend!
I haven't told my parents or Susan that I'll be in Terengia for the game. I won’t be in the country long enough to see them, and anyway, keeping my visit incognito also reduces the chances that I'll run into a certain man.
Mom will wring my neck if a picture of me at the game ends up in press, but with any luck I’ll be safely back in Sweden by then. And luckily, Elisabeth has rented one of the boxes at the top of the stadium, so hopefully we'll have a bit more privacy than we would have in main arena surrounded by fans.
That sounds terrible, I know. Normally, I love my fans. But right now, I haven’t got the patience for anything or anyone — not even for myself.
My hope for privacy is immediately dashed as soon as I enter the box. A good twenty people are milling around. Many of them are Elisabeth's clients, plus a few potential ones, if I interpret the uncertain smiles of two mid-teens correctly.
"Verieux!"
Nico strides toward me, a broad smile lighting up his face. He looks younger — almost the boy we were at school with, as strange as that may sound. As long as I’ve known him, he’s always been so serious, so much the loner. Now, he seems happy and relaxed.
Surprisingly, he hugs me tightly. We were never friends. At least, until L.A., a few months ago when he and Daniel saved my ass. Still, I'm caught off guard by his warmth.
"Being out of the game is good for you," I tease him.
He playfully thumps my upper arm. Then he glances around to check no one’s paying much attention to us and says in a low voice, "Daniel is good for me!"
A confession like this from such a reserved guy pulls the rug out from under me. For Hovenberg, ice hockey was life. He was even more obsessed than Daniel and me. So, for him to offer me a piece of his soul in exchange for my flippant remark is unbelievable.
He’s really changed.
I decide to grow a set and be less of the asshole I've been for the past few months.
"How are you guys doing?" I ask, realizing that I’m actually quite invested in his answer. I don't have any queer people in my circle of friends — something I should change. Because I can’t pretend I’m not part of that community myself any longer.
"Good, good!" Nico beams. Sadly, he doesn't go into more detail before asking a question of his own. "And what about your love life? Back to dating women?"
My face immediately contorts into a grimace, much against my will.
"Want to talk about it?" Nico whispers. The deep understanding in his eyes takes my breath away.
"I screwed up!" I blurt out a truth that I haven’t even acknowledged myself.
"You know Susan is here today," Nico says quietly.
Panicked, my gaze wanders around the box. I can't imagine not spotting my own sister — the room’s not that big.
"No, not here in the box," Nico clarifies. "She called Daniel a few days ago and begged him for some tickets to tonight's game."
I look at Nico wide-eyed. "How many tickets?"
"Two."
Two. She's not here alone. She probably brought Klaus. Then my heart leaps when I remember a little detail from the family chat I somehow picked up. Klaus isn’t in Terengia at the moment. He's doing a clinical internship at a university hospital in Paris.
There’s only one other person Susan would bring with her tonight.
Shit!