Chapter 24 #2
Nikolai Kotov has been on the team with me for the last fifteen years.
He’s a few years younger than me and is known as “Koto” to the team and most fans, but to me he’s always just been Niko.
He’s met my family a handful of times and I’ve even been to Russia to visit his twice.
He’s quiet and loyal, a lover of Italian food and ice fishing, an extremely talented right winger, and one of the only people that I think loves hockey as much as I do.
He has a slight Russian lilt when he talks and annoyingly perceptive light blue eyes that are currently narrowed at me in… skepticism.
Here we go.
He grunts and walks by me, headed to the kitchen to put the food down, I assume. I follow and go to untie one of the bags, but Niko pushes it away.
“Nope. Talk first. Then we can eat,” he says.
I roll my eyes and walk over to the couch to sit. Niko follows me and leans against the side of the fireplace with his arms crossed. I don’t love the power position he’s aiming for here, but I can tell he’s annoyed I’ve been keeping him in the dark about something.
I clear my throat. “About practice today—” I begin.
“Fuck practice. It’s been weeks. Spit it out,” Niko gripes.
I look at the corner of the room where I was picturing Ellie decorating a tree. I’m still staring at the made-up image when I catch movement in my periphery. Niko enters my line of sight and sits adjacent to me on the couch, slightly blocking my view of the tree corner.
I finally focus on him and nod my head behind him in the direction of my imaginary Ellie tree.
“I was picturing her decorating our Christmas tree in that corner before you got here,” I say.
Niko looks to the corner and back to me.
Back to the corner. He slowly faces me again with a furrowed brow before speaking.
“Okay.” He draws out the y as his brows lower farther over his eyes.
“So you’re in love? You’re thirty-six, it’s about time you settle down, no?
When can I meet her? What’s her name? Why have you been such a secretive little bitch about it?
” His uncharacteristic, rapid-fire questions catch me off guard.
“I’m not in—” I cut myself off at the sudden realization that feels like a lie. “Shit.”
I look at that corner spot again and remember the tight feeling in my chest at the image I came up with.
And the helpless feeling from this morning.
My earlier fantasizing about fucking wallpaper is making sense.
I scrub my hands over my face. When I look back at Niko, I see him giving me a reserved smile.
“What’s the problem, man?” he asks. “This is good, yeah?”
I roll the word around in my head. Seems accurate. Different than before though. This feels…bigger. Maybe it wasn’t real in my relationships before? I cared about them a lot though. My mind is telling me it just wasn’t right before.
I’ve only known Ellie a little while, I remind myself again. No need to get carried away, right?
But I do know her, my subconscious screams. Length of time be damned. It wasn’t that long ago that I was talking to Ellie about it, actually.
I sigh and focus back on Niko and his questions. “Yeah, it’s just…do you remember when I showed up late to the team meeting and then left morning skate quickly afterward? It was a few weeks ago,” I tell him.
Niko studies my face with narrowed eyes. “Sure,” he says slowly with a shrug.
“Well, this girl I’ve been seeing recently, I had just hung out with her for the first time the night before and I kind of didn’t share that I played hockey.
It was just nice being normal, you know.
When she found out the next morning it was…
a bit of a shit show, honestly. I messed it up.
” I wince at the memory. “But I hurried over after the skate to explain and I think that went okay. Anyway, I convinced her to give me a shot. But I promised we could keep it secret so she wouldn’t have to deal with… everything that comes with me.”
I look around at my minimal memorabilia I have hung up around the room, the pictures with trophies and awards. A framed article. I used to love the idea of articles being written about me—about my job. But lately they just worry me. I look back at Niko, who’s watching me with a careful expression.
“It’s been good though. Great, actually. She’s… You’ll love her. She’s so smart and funny,” I tell him with a reflexive smile.
Niko grins back at me at that.
“I just know it eventually has to come out to the public if we keep seeing each other. And I really want to keep seeing her, obviously,” I say as I look at the tree corner.
“I don’t know if she wants all of that though.
We haven’t talked about it since the beginning, but she basically turned me down until I offered up the idea of dating in secret. She referred to us as fuck buddies.”
I laugh at that last part. Confidential fuck buddies.
“It was cute, but man, I hope that’s not how she’ll always think of us,” I lament.
“So you don’t know if you’re on the same page? Or why she wants to keep things under wraps?” Niko asks, surprising me with his easy read on the situation.
“It feels like we are when we’re together, but yeah I guess I don’t know. And I’m worried she’s going to call it quits if anything comes out. Or if I ask if we can be public.”
Niko grimaces and nods before looking thoughtfully around the living room.
“So you get on the same page and convince her it’s not so bad, before some story breaks.
It’s not like we’re fucking A-listers. Hockey fame is pretty tame.
And you can teach her how to block it out, literally and mentally, like you’ve been trained to.
How to stay private,” he says, looking to me.
He makes it sound like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Maybe it is. This fucker doesn’t even do relationships and he’s spewing decent advice. “You already do a good job of that.”
I sigh and nod.
“You probably have time before anything comes out if you’re being careful,” he continues.
I wince again at that. I hope so. I am being super careful, and like Niko said, our level of fame is pretty tame. And we live in fucking Minnesota, not exactly a celeb hotspot.
“I’m sure it’ll be all right, man.”
I nod again even though I’m really not sure. I look over at the takeout bags on the counter and notice their logo for the first time. “So you did want Geno’s, huh?”
I hear him mutter “Obviously” as he stands up and walks to the kitchen.
Fucker. I follow and take the sandwich he offers before sitting on one of my barstools.
We both eat in silence for a few minutes before Niko starts up with more questions. “So when can I meet her? What’s her name? Is she old like you?” He snickers and I want to throat-punch him just a little. Apparently a three-year gap is grounds for a lifetime of “old” jokes.
“I’m not—whatever. Ellie’s twenty-six. And I don’t know when. She doesn’t want to come to any games and I know she won’t want to be seen with both of us in public,” I say with a mouthful. “You never cared about meeting anyone before.”
“And you never cared about fucking Christmas trees before,” he grunts out between his own bites.
Fair enough.
“She got a last name?”
“Uh, Ford, I think? Why?”
Niko just hums as he picks up his sandwich again.
We continue to eat quietly for a few minutes while I consider how Ellie would feel about meeting him.
I’m not sure where it could happen other than her apartment if we are trying to stay low-key.
Maybe I could have him come over with me after practice one day?
I could bribe Ellie with takeout and ice cream…
“This her?”
I whip my head to Niko and see he’s holding his phone out to me with a picture of a smiling Ellie on it.
“Where’d you get that?” I demand as I reach for it.
Niko raises his eyebrows at my tone and releases his phone to me. “Chill, man. I looked up her socials. God, you act so old sometimes,” Niko says as he rolls his eyes and then picks up his sub again.
I study the picture up close. She looks a little younger, her freckles even more prominent than normal on her lightly sun-kissed face.
The picture is dated July from two years ago.
She’s smiling and holding up a lobster roll.
Always so fucking cute. I almost smile until I realize that fucker Josh probably took it.
I remember feeling so irrationally angry at someone I didn’t even know when Ellie told me about him.
Now I almost understand what he did, crazy as it sounds.
I still hate the guy, obviously, but I’m guessing he was so into Ellie he didn’t want to risk losing her over a decision he made before he met her.
Was lying wrong? Absolutely. Would I do almost anything to avoid losing Ellie though? Hell fucking yes. He just went about it all wrong.
I swipe out of the picture on Niko’s phone and scroll through the rest of the images on her profile.
There aren’t many, but I enjoy seeing the ones of her with friends and family.
I wonder if she’s made more friends here.
I know she hangs out with Dev and still talks to Zoey all the time, but I don’t think I know of anyone else here yet.
I make a mental note to ask her. I wish I could introduce her to some of the WAGs, but I guess that’s out of the question for now.
I stop at a picture of Ellie with a middle-aged woman who looks remarkably like her. She’s got the same freckles and eyes.
Her mom looks oddly familiar, but I can’t really place it. Must be because I’m so accustomed to Ellie’s features now.
Seeing her puts a pit in my stomach and halts my appetite. I push Niko’s phone over to him and wrap up the remainder of my sandwich.
“She’s pretty,” Niko says, looking at the screen in front of him.
“Yeah.”
They both were.