Chapter 11
Aaron
I’ve been back three days. First week of September, first week of senior year.
Moved back into the house with Cooper and Robertson on Saturday and immediately fell into the rhythm — gym at dawn, campus library in the afternoon, preseason skates in the evening.
In a few weeks the trees will be changing color here in Hartley, Massachusetts.
Last year. The year I make valedictorian and prove to everyone that transferring home was worth every dollar of debt.
I’m on my fourth set of bench press, two twenty-five, which is twenty pounds heavier than I was pressing in May.
Three months of hauling flagstone and ripping out retaining walls will do that.
Two guys from the lacrosse team are in the far corner — headphones in, grinding through cable pulls, dead to the world.
I rack the bar and sit up. Grab my water bottle. Wipe my face with the hem of my shirt.
The gym door opens.
And my whole summer of being fine — totally fine, didn’t think about it, didn’t check my phone, didn’t lie awake wondering what time it was in Omsk — goes up in smoke.
Sasha.
His hair is longer. That’s the first thing — hitting his shoulders now, sun-lightened, pushed back off his face like he couldn’t be bothered to cut it all summer.
The rest of him hits a second later. Tanned.
Stubble thicker than usual. A cutoff that shows the full length of his arms and basketball shorts that hang low on his hips.
My grip tightens on the water bottle.
He scans the room. The lacrosse guys don’t look up. His eyes find me and that grin breaks across his face — slow, wide, like I’m exactly what he came here for.
“Aaron Kelly.” He drops his gym bag by the door and walks toward me. “You look like you’ve been in prison.”
“What?”
“The muscles.” He gestures at me. All of me. “You’re enormous. What happened to the lean hockey player I left in June?”
“I hauled rocks all summer. I told you that.” My face is already getting warm. I take a drink of water just to have something to do.
“You told me. You didn’t tell me it would turn you into this.
” He stops in front of my bench. He’s close.
Close enough that I can smell his cologne and the natural smell of his clean skin underneath it.
His eyes drop to my arms, my chest, the sweat-soaked fabric clinging to my stomach.
He’s not subtle about it. He’s never subtle.
He showered and came straight here. To the gym. At 5:20 in the morning.
My pulse kicks up and warmth floods down my spine.
He came to find me.
“How was Russia?” I ask, because if he keeps looking at me like that I’m going to do something stupid, like impulsively hug him in front of the lacrosse guys.
“It sucked.” He pulls the cutoff over his head and tosses it onto his bag and my brain stalls for a full second.
He’s in a white tank now, thin enough to be useless, and the lines of his shoulders and chest are right there.
“My old teammates and classmates — nobody is that friendly when they realize you get to go back to America and make money smiling for the cameras while they’re stuck in Siberia. ”
“That bad?”
He straddles the bench across from me. Our knees almost touch. He picks up the twenty-five-pound dumbbell from the rack beside us and starts curling it like it weighs nothing, watching me the whole time.
“The friends, yes.” He switches hands. “The family was actually not terrible. My brother is getting so tall I almost didn’t recognize him. And my sister wanted to know all about American celebrities. I told her I hadn’t run into any yet, but I’d try to look harder next time I’m in New York.”
He grins. I can picture him saying it to her — dead serious, completely full of shit.
“And your mom?”
“Olga is always work.” He shrugs. “But she didn’t seem to hate me as much as last time. Something must be making her a little less miserable these days. And of course she’s happy to see me in advertising, because she knows that means more money.”
“Your turn,” he says. “How was hauling rocks?”
“Great, actually. My dad’s doing better. We finished three big installs and he landed two more contracts for the fall. And the sponsorship money finally covered the last of his medical bills.”
“Good.” He says it quiet. Then: “And your arms got very large.” He curls the dumbbell one more time, slow, watching me. “I approve.”
“I didn’t do it for your approval.”
“No? That’s disappointing.” He sets the dumbbell down and nods toward the row of treadmills along the window. “First to ten miles. Let’s go.”
“Ten miles? We have preseason skates coming up.”
“So you’re scared.”
“I’m being smart about —”
“Scared.” He’s already walking toward the treadmills. He picks two side by side and steps onto the left one. Looks back at me over his shoulder. “I won’t tell anyone you backed down.”
I get on the treadmill next to his.
And I’m smiling. I can feel it on my face — real, wide, the kind I haven’t made all summer — and I don’t bother trying to kill it.
He grins. Punches his speed up to 7.5. I match it. The belts whir and our feet start hitting in rhythm — his stride slightly longer than mine, my cadence slightly faster, the sound of our breathing filling the space between us.
“Rules,” he says. “No slowing below seven. First to ten miles. Loser buys coffee.”
“Fine.”
“And no holding the rails. That’s cheating.”
“I know how to run on a treadmill, Sasha.”
“Good.” He bumps his speed to eight. “Then keep up.”
Mile one is easy. We’re side by side, shoulders nearly touching, the mirrors on the opposite wall reflecting us back — two athletes in a dead sprint at five thirty in the morning.
The lacrosse guys are racking their weights now, done with their session, headphones still in.
One of them glances our way. Neither of us looks back.
Mile two, Sasha pushes to 8.5. I match it. My quads are warming up, that deep burn that means the workout is actually starting. Sweat is forming along my hairline and I can hear Sasha’s breathing change — harder, faster, his chest rising and falling in my peripheral vision.
“So,” he says, not looking at me. Staring straight ahead at the mirror. “Did you keep up with your studies this summer?”
“Finished two online courses.” I’m already slightly breathless. “I’m on track for valedictorian if I keep it together this semester.”
“Look at you.” He bumps to nine. His stride lengthens and the treadmill belt screams under his feet. “Hockey star. Valedictorian. America’s golden boy. Keeping pace with the Russian bad boy.”
I push to nine. Side by side again. My lungs are starting to complain. “It’s a lot of work. But it matters to my parents. Especially with the debt —”
“Of course.” His voice softens for half a second. Then: “So you spent the summer hauling rocks and doing homework. Very exciting. No social life at all?”
“I hung out with my brothers. Went to Sean’s for a barbecue a few times. Went camping with Meghan and some old high school friends, met her new boyfriend. It was fine.”
“Fine.” He says it like he’s tasting the word. “And did you see anyone? Any of your old friends set you up?”
My stomach tightens. “No. I was busy.”
“Mmm.” He wipes sweat from his temple with the back of his hand without breaking stride. “Busy hauling rocks.”
“What about you?” I keep my voice even. Casual. Hard to sound casual when you’re sucking air at nine miles an hour. “Any Russian girls while you were home?”
He doesn’t answer right away. The treadmills pound in sync. Sweat is running down my neck and my shirt is soaked through. His tank is clinging to his chest, the white fabric gone transparent in patches, and I’m staring straight ahead at the mirror because if I turn my head I’ll see all of it.
“Maybe,” he says.
My foot hits wrong. I catch myself on the next stride but the stumble is there — small, stupid, obvious.
“Maybe?” My voice comes out too tight.
“There are beautiful girls in Omsk. Tall. Blonde. Very persistent.” He shrugs without breaking his pace. “I hit up the clubs most weekends. You know how I like to dance. One of Masha’s friends was very interested.”
“Great.” I push to 9.5. Punishing. My lungs are screaming. “That’s — yeah. Good for you.”
“But they just aren’t what I’m looking for these days.”
His accent wraps around the words and I feel it all the way down my spine. God, I missed that accent. I missed the way his voice drops when he’s being serious, the way the consonants land harder than an American would put them.
I don’t push higher. My hands are clenched at my sides and my jaw is tight and I am running at 9.5 miles per hour and my heart rate has nothing to do with the treadmill.
“No?” I manage.
“No.” He matches my 9.5. I can feel him looking at me in the mirror. Those blue eyes, steady and sure. “Not what I want.”
The tightness in my chest cracks open. Relief floods in so fast it almost takes my legs out from under me, which would be a problem at 9.5 miles per hour.
He didn’t. He didn’t and he’s here and he’s looking at me like that.
Mile six. My thighs are burning. My shirt is plastered to me. Beside me, Sasha is drenched — hair dark with sweat, tank basically see-through, neck and chest flushed.
I stare at the mile counter. Six point four. Six point five.
“I was thinking about this season,” I say. “We’ve got Michigan, BC, Minnesota — the schedule is brutal. And I’ve got organic chemistry and two lab courses on top of it. This year is going to be intense.”
“Aaron.” He pushes to ten. Ten miles an hour. A dead sprint.
I push to ten. My legs are on fire. The belts are screaming.
“— and if we want a shot at the conference title, we need to —”
“Aaron Kelly.” He’s barely winded. How is he barely winded. “You changed the subject.”
“I didn’t change the subject. I’m talking about —”
“You changed the subject because I said something real and you got scared.”
“I’m not scared. I’m running at ten miles an hour.”
“You can be both.”