Chapter Fourteen #2
She wanted to say that he did not owe anyone access simply because they were family, but the statement felt too large coming from someone who had known him only several months. She knew enough about Matvei to understand that unsolicited reassurance could feel like intrusion.
Instead, she asked, “Does your mother watch every game?”
“Yes.”
“Even with the time difference?”
“Yes.”
“And you know she’s watching?”
“Yes.”
“Does that make you nervous?”
Matvei laughed once without humor.
“I play in front of twenty thousand people.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He studied her.
“Yes,” he said finally. “More when she watches.”
“Why?”
“If I play bad, fans are angry. Coach angry. I am angry.” He looked down at the vodka. “She is sad.”
Tessa had never considered that distinction.
“She knows it’s only a game.”
“No mother thinks only game when child is there.”
His English became more stripped down when emotion entered it. Tessa no longer heard simplicity in those constructions. She heard the effort required to say anything at all.
“Does she call afterward?”
“If good.”
“And if bad?”
“She waits.”
“For you?”
“Yes.”
Tessa smiled faintly. “That sounds like she knows you.”
“Too much.”
He lifted the glass and finished the vodka.
Tessa’s drink was only half gone.
The conversation had moved farther into his life than she expected when they entered. Nothing about the setting required him to answer. No recorder sat on the table. No story waited at the end.
He had chosen to tell her.
That choice felt more intimate than his arm around her shoulders.
Matvei signaled toward the bartender.
Tessa looked at his empty glass. “One drink.”
“You still have.”
“You’re ordering another.”
“Yes.”
“That makes two.”
“For me.”
“And I’m supposed to sit here while you drink?”
“You drink slow.”
“I’m jet-lagged and have been working for two days.”
“Excuse.”
Tessa looked at the remaining long drink.
She should finish it and leave.
Instead, when the bartender approached, she ordered another.
Matvei’s eyes warmed with amusement.
“One drink,” he said.
“Shut up.”
The bartender returned with another vodka and another long drink.
They stayed.
Tessa told him about Prince Edward Island.
Not the version she usually offered when someone asked where she was from, reduced to beaches, red soil and summers that looked better in photographs than they felt during tourist season.
She told him about the small town where her parents still lived and the house that had seemed enormous when she was a child but felt surprisingly narrow whenever she returned.
Her father worked in insurance. Her mother taught elementary school for more than thirty years and had begun discussing retirement as though it were something other people did.
“They’re still together,” Tessa said. “Happily, I think.”
“You think?”
“They don’t talk to me about their marriage.”
“Good.”
“Probably.”
“And brother?”
“You remembered I have one?”
“You said.”
Tessa had mentioned him only once, during the first drink. Matvei retained details with the same intensity he applied to game film.
“His name is Andrew. He’s three years younger.”
“What he does?”
“He works for an environmental consulting company in Charlottetown.”
Matvei’s expression suggested the words had not produced meaning.
“He checks whether companies are following environmental laws.”
“He likes?”
“I think so.”
“You think many things about family.”
The observation was not unkind.
Tessa looked down at the ice shifting inside her glass.
“We’re fine.”
Matvei waited.
She almost laughed.
“You do that on purpose.”
“What?”
“Stay quiet until people tell you more.”
“You are reporter.”
“That does not mean I like being interviewed.”
“No recorder.”
“That is not the point.”
His eyes held hers.
Tessa sighed.
“We’re not especially close.”
“Why?”
“There wasn’t some dramatic fight. We just grew into different people.
” She searched for a version that did not make the relationship sound colder than it was.
“My parents like routines. They like knowing what everyone is doing and when they’re coming home.
I left for university, then took jobs that made every schedule unpredictable.
They don’t really understand why I would choose that. ”
“They do not like job?”
“They’re proud of me.”
“But?”
“But they think I make my life harder than it needs to be.”
Matvei’s mouth shifted. “Maybe true.”
“Thank you.”
“You work Christmas.”
“So do you.”
“I have tournament.”
“I have tournament.”
He accepted that with a nod.
Tessa took another sip.
“They worry,” she said. “That I work too much. That I’m alone. That I’m going to wake up at forty and realize I forgot to build a life.”
“Do you worry?”
The question reached her before she could prepare an answer.
“Sometimes.”
Matvei leaned back slightly.
“What life?”
“What?”
“What they want you build?”
Tessa smiled. “You know. Husband. Children. House with a dining room nobody uses.”
“You want?”
“I don’t know.”
“You say this often.”
“Because people keep asking questions I haven’t answered for myself.”
Matvei looked at her for a long moment.
“You want job.”
“Yes.”
“That is life.”
The simplicity of the statement affected her more than it should have.
“Most people don’t see it that way.”
“They are wrong.”
“You say that because hockey is your life.”
“Yes.”
“Most people would tell you that’s unhealthy.”
“They are wrong too.”
Tessa laughed and shook her head.
“What?” Matvei asked.
“You make everything sound incredibly simple.”
“It is.”
“It isn’t.”
“You want job. You have. Good.”
“And when the job takes everything else?”
“Then decide if everything else matters.”
“That is a terrible philosophy.”
“You still work.”
She could not argue.
Matvei looked toward her laptop bag beside the table.
“You bring work to bar.”
“I came from the arena.”
“You could leave at hotel.”
“You asked before I got there.”
“So I save you.”
“From carrying it across the street?”
“From working.”
Tessa smiled.
The bartender passed nearby and collected an empty glass from another table. Matvei’s second vodka had disappeared. Tessa had made less progress on her second drink.
He glanced toward the bar.
“No.”
Matvei looked back at her.
“We said one.”
“We say many things.”
“I have to cover Canada and Sweden tomorrow before your game.”
“You can sleep after.”
“I need to write.”
“You can write after.”
“That is not how deadlines work.”
“Bad system.”
“It’s the same system that publishes stories about you.”
“Exactly.”
Tessa should have stopped at two.
When Matvei ordered a third vodka, she told herself she was ordering another long drink only because the bartender had already come to the table. The drink was light enough that she did not feel drunk, though warmth had spread through her body and softened the edge of every decision.
The bar had emptied slightly around them. The older couple near the front had left. The men watching hockey moved to another table, leaving the television to show highlights without an audience.
Tessa checked the time and discovered they had been there nearly two hours.
“What did you think of me?” Matvei asked.
The question arrived without warning.
She set down the glass.
“When?”
“First day.”
“You know.”
“I want hear.”
Matvei had answered her questions all evening. Refusing now would feel cowardly.
“I thought you were an asshole.”
He nodded as though she had confirmed a reasonable assessment.
“You?”
“I thought you were reporter.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Yes.”
“What did that mean?”
“Same as others.”
Tessa leaned back. “That is more insulting than asshole.”
“I know.”
“And after the story?”
Matvei’s eyes moved toward the table.
“Confused.”
“Because it was fair?”
“Yes.”
“That must have been difficult for you.”
“Very.”
She smiled.
“When did you stop thinking I was like everyone else?” she asked.
“I do not stop.”
The answer pinched before she could hide the reaction.
Matvei saw it.
“Not all,” he added. “You are reporter. You do same job.”
“I know.”
“But different.”
“In what way?”
He considered the question with the seriousness he usually reserved for hockey.
“You listen when answer is not words.”
Tessa did not move.
Matvei looked toward her recorder-shaped absence on the table, then back at her.
“You know when not ask.”
The compliment felt more personal than calling her a good writer.
“Not always,” she said.
“More than others.”
“High praise.”
“It is.”
She smiled faintly.
“And you?” he asked.
“What about me?”
“When stop thinking asshole?”
“I didn’t say I stopped.”
Matvei leaned back.
Tessa laughed.
“Less often,” she admitted.
“Progress.”
His knee touched hers beneath the table.
This time, neither moved.
For several seconds, Tessa assumed the contact was accidental. The table was narrow, and Matvei’s legs had nowhere reasonable to go. Then his hand lowered from the edge of the table and brushed against the outside of her thigh.
The touch was brief.
Barely more than the backs of his fingers passing along the fabric of her trousers before his hand returned to his own knee.
Tessa’s breath caught.
Matvei reached for his glass without looking down.
Had he done it deliberately?
The placement made an accident possible. His arm could have slipped while he adjusted in the chair. His fingers could have found her leg only because the space between them had narrowed during the conversation.
But he had not apologized.
And Matvei noticed everything.
Tessa took a drink she did not need.
When she lowered the glass, his eyes were on her.
She could not read his expression.
That had once been the most frustrating thing about him.
Now it felt like part of the game.
Her knee remained against his.
She did not move it.
The scar along his jaw became more visible as the evening continued.
Tessa had noticed it before, a pale line beginning beneath his left ear and extending toward his chin. Under the bright locker-room lights, it disappeared into the angles of his face. The bar’s side lighting caught it differently.
She realized she had been looking when Matvei touched the spot with two fingers.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You stare.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were.”