31. Bohdan
Bohdan
I’m on my seventeenth lap around the ice—the same number I wore my entire life until I wasn’t in the business of wearing numbers anymore—when I hear the banging of a hand on a plexiglass board.
It’s not a sound most people could recognize instantly, but it’s as intimately familiar to me as Sloan’s voice is.
Talon whistles loudly, a smile painting his face, popping both his dimples, and he bangs on the boards again when I stop, sending a spray of ice towards them.
Jay gives a jerk of his head before holding out both his arms to me. “Jesus Christ, you’re still so fucking fast, man.”
A brow lifts on my forehead. “Doesn’t really do me any good anymore, though.”
I hug him anyway, Talon joins in, and the same way it did with Sloan out on this ice earlier—it feels a bit like I’m back in time.
“Once-in-a-generation kind of talent,” Talon offers, pulling back in consideration. “Could skate away from a serial killer pretty fucking quick, if you needed.”
“When would he need?” Jay presses his tongue to his cheek.
Talon doesn’t answer and glances towards the desk, hooking a thumb towards me and the somehow still empty ice. “Can we join him?”
“Knock yourselves out.” Enrique waves a hand, eyes glued to his phone and feet propped back up on the desk again, before his gaze snaps to us. “Not literally. That’s a lot of paperwork.”
Talon claps both his hands around my shoulders, giving me a small shake. “Don’t worry, he’s pretty familiar with that concept, don’t think he’ll be giving a repeat performance.”
“Rough,” I tell him flatly.
“Brutal.” Jay nods.
Enrique doesn’t bother asking if they need help with the skates.
Talon takes way too long deciding on his, weighing the merits of a pair of CCMs that look like they’ve seen better days and a pair of Bauer’s that look like they haven’t been broken in.
Jay grabs a pair at random, even though out of the three of us, he should take the most care, and we’ve done two lazy laps around the ice by the time Talon hops over the boards and takes off like it’s a race.
It does turn into one.
It turns into multiple.
It turns into stupid drills and jumping over pylons on the ice and generally more dicking around than Jay should probably be doing. His legs are still worth something, after all.
Some families come in, looking at the rink like they might want to use it or test it out for their kids, take one look at us—three grown men behaving like the eighteen-year-olds we were once upon a time—and they change their minds.
I don’t really have it in me to feel bad.
It’s one of the only times I’ve felt free in over three years.
It’s not possible for me to forget what happened with Sloan earlier—every single interaction I’ve ever had with her is categorized neatly in my brain. The absolutely fucking mind-blowing, the wonderful, the good, the mundane, the painful, and the outright bad.
I’d somehow file what happened earlier under two categories, diametrically opposed in their definitions: wonderful and painful.
It both makes me smile and makes me feel like I’m being fucking stabbed to think about it while I’m out here again.
I came straight here when she lied for the second time in as many seconds and said she wanted to be alone, when really I felt like dropping to my knees and telling her every truth I’ve ever known to get her to believe me again.
But that’s in no one’s best interest.
I can’t give her what she wants, at least not in a way that’s going to make sense to a brain like hers—as wonderful as I think it is, it does a pretty great job of hurting her—and I was a selfish piece of shit when I asked for more days of her time when she’s already wasted so many on me.
Jay pulls up to a quick stop beside me, runs a hand through his hair, the shadows of all his tattoos stark from the sun. The gold on his rings glints, and he tugs absentmindedly on the chain that’s slipped out from underneath his shirt.
“How do you feel?” he asks quietly, staring and thoughtful.
I nod slowly, considering. “A bit great, a bit pretty shit.”
He tips his chin and his eyes find the scar, hidden behind damp hair, matted to my forehead. “Head alright? That’s a lot of exertion.”
“Nah. Head’s fine.” I’m still operating under the good graces of a triptan. I run a hand through my hair out of habit. “Has more to do with the first time I was out here today.”
Jay cocks his head, and he looks like he’s about to ask when Talon coats us with a spray of ice.
“I’m telling you, we should really do a podcast. We could do YouTube and have some of our episodes on the ice!” Talon pants, slightly out of breath with damp hair curling around his ears, before he blinks, asking, “You skated without us?”
“With Sloan,” I clarify.
And it might seem dumb, but it’s a necessary clarification, because I can see why they’d want to do it together.
She’s the only exception.
Talon nods, slowly, looking for once in his life like he’s chewing over his words, when Jay exhales, asking with a shrug, “And how’d the re-creation of your first date go?”
I give him a flat look. “Well, I was out here alone, wasn’t I?”
“Not good, then.” Jay nods thoughtfully, bottom lip extending.
But Talon shakes his head, pointing at me. “Quit fucking her around.”
“I’m not fucking her around,” I say, irritated. “I might be a piece of shit, Talon, but I wouldn’t do that to her.”
“You’re not a piece of shit,” Jay mutters, but he scrubs his face like he’s exasperated.
Talon raises one hand, shrugging. “Bringing her skating isn’t fucking her around?”
“It wasn’t my idea!” My voice raises with my hands, and I catch Enrique looking up from his phone over at the desk, but one sideways glance from Talon and he’s back to pretending to be busy again.
“We were walking around the ship because we made this stupid deal to pretend we were, I don’t know, practically strangers, and neither of us could keep up with our end—”
“Wonder why.” Jay raises a brow.
I feel a bit like flipping him off, but I cut him a look instead. “And we said we’d just . . . not pretend not to know each other. I asked her for the next few days, and I told her I’d give her everything she wanted before we got off the fucking ship—”
“Things you won’t even explain to us, good thinking!” Talon flashes me a sarcastic thumbs-up.
I do flip Talon off before continuing, “And she saw the rink. It was her idea to come in. It was all going fine until I said I was sorry things didn’t work out.”
Talon’s lips pull back, and Jay looks towards the ceiling, groaning.
“Didn’t work out?” Talon’s eyes sharpen before he exhales a scoff. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Aside from the obvious?” I push my hair back with one hand and point at the scar with the other.
He waves a hand, like he’s swatting the whole thing away. “Nah, that was like three years ago. I’m fucking sick of that. Quit using it as an excuse not to find happiness. You’re not fucking up just your life, Bohdan. It’s hers, too.”
“Maybe I don’t deserve happiness.” I tug on the ends of my hair. I don’t, not for the way I treated her and the person I became. “Maybe I don’t deserve her.”
Jay sighs. “No one, and I repeat no one, has ever loved someone the way you loved her.”
Jay’s only ever had one real love: hockey. He loves us, and he loves his dads, but it’s not the same and I don’t expect him to understand what it’s like to love someone and to watch them be torn apart at your hands.
I shake my head. “I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, and that’ll be the last time. Neither of you lived in that house. You sure as shit didn’t live in my brain. I was not good to her. I couldn’t take care of her. I couldn’t take care of myself.”
The lines of Talon’s face change when he shakes his head, all contempt. “My sister said she found your name by the word masochist, but I’d bet my last endorsement deal you’d find it beside the word martyr, too.”
In a weird turn of events, Jay takes the final shot, and it’s a stupidly simple way of putting it, but I’m not sure it matters, the damage is done.
He’s got this weird air of maddening patience about him, and he claps my shoulder. “What would you say to Sloan if she told you she felt like she was an unfit partner because her brain worked a bit differently from everyone else’s?”
I don’t say anything, and he widens his eyes, angling his head forward in wait.
“That I wouldn’t want her to have a different brain. That it’s what makes her exactly the way I love her.”
I’m sure it’s what she would have said to me, if I’d ever given her the chance.
Talon taps the centre of my forehead. “You’ve got a different brain now. But it’s still yours, at the end of the day.”
Pulling back—he’s going to give me another migraine if he keeps tapping like that—I mutter, “Jesus, maybe you really should think about that talk show.”
“It’s the retirement, I’m telling you.” Talon smiles, running a hand through sweat-damp hair. “Maybe some of it can rub off on you.”
“Uh—are you guys almost done?”
We glance over to the boards. Enrique’s hanging over them before he points towards the end of the rink where another attendant waits with a small ice resurfacer. “The performers need to warm up for the show tonight and you carved up their ice.”
“Fuck yeah, we did.” Talon claps both of our shoulders. “Let’s go grab a drink, it’s disco night.”
“I actually have just the outfit.” Jay smiles when he skates off, dropping to the bench to undo his laces.
“I’ll bet you do.” Talon’s eyes find the chain hanging around Jay’s neck before he glances at me, a bit of remorse living in the sad bend of his smile. “We okay?”
I tug on my laces, look at him, and nod. “Yeah, we’re okay.”
And we are—okay. I’d categorize the time skating with my best friends, something I never thought I’d have again, the same way I do almost everything related to hockey, skating, and Sloan now.
Maybe that’s just my life now.
Wonderful, but fucking painful.