Chapter 10 #2
He was right.
The Magnificent Mile wore white in December, thousands of tiny lights.
Storefronts were dark behind plate glass.
What remained was the infrastructure of celebration: wire-framed angels and light-wrapped trees.
The sidewalk salt crunched under our shoes, and the wind off the lake had a late-December bite.
We crossed the bridge heading south toward the Loop. Below, the river moved slowly, inky black. The reflection of the Wrigley Building's white terra-cotta rippled in the current.
Heath stopped at the midpoint. Leaned his forearms on the railing. "My mom would love this."
"The bridge?"
"The view. She's never been to Chicago. She's seen pictures, but it's different standing here."
"You should bring her."
"Yeah. When the numbers work."
He said When, not if, betting on the future.
"You stare at water a lot," Heath said.
"Occupational interest."
"You don't have a water occupation."
"A future one, when the ice melts."
He turned his head. Nose red from the cold. The wind flattened his hair against his forehead.
"You really want out," he said.
"I want to choose what I'm in. There's a difference. If I leave because I hate hockey, that's a reaction. If I leave because I've found something I want more, that's a plan."
"So you need the pull to be stronger than the push."
He'd compressed three years of circling into one sentence.
"Yeah. That's it."
Heath nodded. Looked back at the water. "Must be nice. Having something to run toward."
He said it gently, without resentment. Still, there was a gap between a man with graduate school applications and a man whose mortgage depended on whether a GM he'd never met decided to keep him.
On the walk back, he reached for my hand inside my coat pocket. His icy fingers wove together with mine. He didn't slow his pace, and he didn't give any sign he'd just done something that would have ended both our careers if the wrong person had been standing at the next crosswalk.
Nobody was. That was the miracle of the city at 11:00 PM on December 27th. We were two figures in dark coats, anonymous, moving along a sidewalk scraped clean by salt trucks and wind.
Later that night, with the dishes half-done and the TV on mute, we sat on the couch together. Heath was at the far end, and I was in the middle.
I spoke up. "Can I ask you something kind of personal?"
"You already know how much money I have and how bad my cable is. Hard to get more personal than that."
"Your name."
"I have one."
"Heathcliff," I said.
It sounded different when I said it instead of hearing it blasted over a PA system. No echo or crowd noise.
"It's not an accident, right?"
He leaned back against the armrest. "No," he said. "It's not an accident."
I waited for him to continue.
"My mom was nineteen when she had me. Working nights at a nursing home in Rhinelander.
Cleaning. Laundry. Minimum wage, no benefits.
" He didn't rush the story, letting it carry its own weight.
"The break room had one of those shelves where people leave books.
That's how she found Wuthering Heights."
"Your mom read Bronte on her breaks?"
"She did." He smiled. "No cell phone or internet. She had bad coffee and a shelf of books nobody wanted."
The radiator ticked.
"She said Heathcliff was a person you couldn't look away from even if you wanted to. Angry. Unwanted. Feral. Everything about him was wrong, and none of that stopped him." Heath swept fingers through his hair. "He was still there after everything that should've erased him."
I didn't speak.
"She told me once, when I was fifteen, 'I wanted you to have a name that people couldn't ignore. Something that said you were still here, even when the world tried to leave you behind.'"
He reached out for my hand.
"I think she was scared I'd disappear. So she gave me a name that doesn't."
I inherited my name from a grandfather. Heath's mother chose his. Mine said you come from something. His said you will survive it.
"That's kind of incredible," I said.
"Yeah." He looked at me directly, holding steady. "Turns out Mom named me to be a survivor. Not a winner."
"Your system," I said.
"Works every time."
I moved closer and leaned back against him.
"Thank you," I said.
"For what?"
"Telling me."
"It's just a name."
"No. It isn't."
He leaned in and kissed me. His lips were warm from hot tea.
I settled my head against his shoulder. He kissed the top of my ear.
After five days in Heath's apartment, the practice facility hit like a plunge tank. Fluorescent light after days of gray winter windows. My skates bit the ice after a week on linoleum and sidewalks.
The building filled back up in layers. Rook first, as though he'd materialized from the foundations. Pratt arrived with Tupperware full of Christmas cookies. Varga came in seventeen minutes late with a sunburn from a mysterious holiday destination.
Markel ran contact drills for an hour. The rust showed. He wanted the hesitation worked out of us before the schedule resumed.
After practice, I was in the hallway between the rink and the training room. Four steps from the exit, I heard footsteps behind me.
"Mathers."
It was Coach.
He walked toward me with his hands in his jacket pockets.
"Contract's still open," he said.
"I'm aware."
"Thompson's patient. Ownership's less so. The window's real, Kieran." He used my first name. "I'm not telling you what to decide. I'm telling you that not deciding is also a decision, and it's one other people will make for you if you let them."
"I understand."
He checked his watch.
"The team looks different with you on it," he said. "Both of you."
He held my gaze one beat past comfortable.
"Be smart."
Coach Markel walked away. Four strides and a turn through the training room door. Gone.
Be smart.
We spent New Year's Eve at the Northbound, celebrating the memory of a night months ago. It was half-empty. We took a back booth with a sightline to Melvin's tank.
The Oscar was active, slow circuits along the glass, pausing to track any nearby movement.
Heath waved at him.
"He likes me," Heath said.
"He's maintaining visual contact with a perceived food source."
"He likes me."
We didn't order champagne. We sat with our beers and comfortable ease between us.
The countdown to the East Coast ball drop started on the television above the bar. The bartender turned the volume up a single notch.
Ten. Nine. Eight.
Heath's knee pressed against mine under the table.
Four. Three. Two.
He stared across the table at me.
One.
Heath rose partway and leaned across the booth to kiss me. Unhurried. His mouth was on mine like it was the next logical thing in a sequence that had been building all week.
He pulled back two inches. "Happy New Year."
"Happy New Year."
We stayed until past midnight Chicago time. Then we walked back to Heath's apartment through streets that smelled like smoke and the sulfur ghosts of fireworks set off in alleys.
I was unlacing my shoes in the hallway when my phone buzzed.
I knew before I looked. My father texted at strategic intervals: after wins, before meetings, and on dates the calendar marked as significant.
Dad: Happy New Year. Let's finalize things in January. Proud of you.
Happy New Year for warmth. Let's finalize for direction. Proud of you for closure. A message engineered to feel like affection while functioning as a summons.
Let's finalize things.
The extension. A signature on a contract that would make me an Ironhawk through my mid-twenties and close the application windows at Scripps, Miami, and URI with the quiet, permanent click of a deadline passing.
Heath was in the kitchen, filling the kettle for the tea we drank before bed now. We had a routine.
"Tea's almost ready," Heath called.
I shoved the phone in my pocket.
"Coming," I said.
I walked into the kitchen and took the mug he offered. Our fingers overlapped on the ceramic. His were still cold from the walk.
I knew what staying cost. I'd calculated it in grad school deadlines and a personal statement I'd revised eleven times, describing a future I'd been constructing since I was nineteen.
Now I knew what leaving cost, too. Both options were unbearable.
In the bedroom, we undressed without ceremony. Heath sprawled, and I curled toward the wall. We met somewhere in the middle, his back against my chest, and my arm across his ribs.
His breathing slowed, and he was soon asleep.
I was still awake.
I couldn't hold the present and the future in the same hand. They were different shapes. One required me to be here. The other required me to be gone.
Heath shifted in his sleep. Pulled my arm tighter.