Chapter 22 #2
He looks at me properly. He’s seeing the woman in front of him rather than the memory he’s been carrying.
“You’ve changed.”
“No. I stopped pretending.”
I don’t wait for a response.
I walk past him.
My heels click on the marble floor. My dress swishes. My heart is beating too fast but I feel ok. I don’t look back.
I round the corner into the ballroom.
Mateo is standing near the entrance, two glasses of wine in his hands, scanning the room. When he sees me, his whole face lights up.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
I take one of the glasses.
“Everything’s fine.”
He looks at me for a moment longer than necessary. Then he nods and puts his free hand on the small of my back. We go back to the table.
I don’t tell him what happened in the corridor.
It feels like something I handled. Something I closed.
I pick up my wine.
Three tables over, Erik’s chair is empty.
I don’t look at it again.
MATEO
The heating in the taxi is on way too high. Elida is sitting with her award on her lap and she’s already slipped her shoes off. I didn’t win my category but even being named was beyond my wildest dreams.
“Good night,” she says.
“Good night,” I agree.
We sit in comfortable silence for a moment, the city moving past the windows. I’ve started to view it as home. It happened so gradually I’m not even sure when I started to feel like that here.
“Iris cried,” I say.
“Iris always cries,” she says. “She’d cry at a supermarket opening if it was sufficiently well presented.”
“She told me something in Swedish when she got in the taxi.”
Elida keeps her eyes on the window. “I heard.”
“You’re not going to tell me what it means.”
“I’m really not.”
I think about the first time I saw her in Minnesota. How far that is from here.
“Sports couple of the year,” I say.
“What?”
“There’s a category. I saw it in the program. Sports couple of the year. It would suit us, don’t you think?”
“I hope we never win that.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s tacky.”
“It’s not tacky.”
“Matching outfits, Mateo. They always do matching outfits.”
“We’d look good in matching outfits.” I say it solemnly, teasing her.
“We definitely would not. I have standards.”
“I think Iris would back me up with this. She’d love the challenge.”
“Iris has taste!” she exclaims, laughing. “Matching outfits at a sports awards ceremony is not tasteful. That’s a cry for help.”
I consider this. “What if they were very good matching outfits?”
“Define very good.”
“Well dressed,” I say. “But like - thrown together. Like we just happened to coordinate.”
She smiles. “You’ve thought about this.”
“I’ve thought about it a little,” I admit. “Well, since I saw the category in the program.”
“That was three hours ago.”
“I’ve been thinking about it for three hours,” I say. “The aesthetic. Well dressed, slightly chaotic, clearly very busy and important, always rushing into taxis.”
She’s trying not to laugh and failing.
“You’ve lost your mind,” she says.
“I’ve been in Stockholm for eighteen months,” I say. “The Swedes are very stylish. It’s affected me.”
“Your Swedish is still terrible.”
“My Swedish is functional.”
“Last week you told Anders you needed a kyssa.”
“One vowel.”
“Mateo, kissa means pee. Kyssa means kiss.”
“He understood from context.”
“He was confused. And then handed you mints!”
“Which was actually very supportive of him.”
She laughs and leans her head against my shoulder.
“We’d need a couple name,” she says, into my shoulder.
“We would,” I agree.
“In Swedish.”
“Yes, of course. It would have to be incomprehensible to everyone outside this country.”
We sit like that for a moment.
“You okay?” I ask. “Tonight. With him being there.”
She thinks about it honestly before answering. That’s an Elida-thing. I love it about her.
“Yes. He was just there. In the room. But he doesn’t have the space he used to have. In my head. I don’t know when that happened. Or how.”
“Brita,” I suggest.
“Brita,” she agrees. “And you. Maybe a little.”
“Only a little.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late. It’s already lodged in there.”
She smiles.
The taxi pulls up outside her building. We get out and she puts her shoes back on on the pavement, one hand on my arm for balance, the award tucked under her other arm.
I love her apartment. I feel almost at home here as I do in my own place. I love the way her apartment and my apartment have started to bleed into each other in small domestic ways that neither of us has mentioned directly.
Her favorite coffee in my cupboard. My jackets by her door.
Even the book I left on her bedside table a few weeks ago that I keep meaning to take back but haven’t.
She sets the award on the kitchen counter and looks at it for a moment.
“Regional champion,” I intone again.
She turns around and leans against the counter. Her eyes are full of that expression - the one that’s been mine since she showed up out of breath and said come to Stockholm. I think about how right it was to get on that plane.
“You’re going to be insufferable about this forever.”
“I’m only reading what it says. But yes. I am.”
“There are bigger titles.”
“There are,” I agree. “And you’ll get them. I’m already drafting my speech for when you win Worlds.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“So says the rising star.”
“Ugh.”
“I’m only reading what it says,” she says in a terrible imitation of my voice.
“That is a deeply offensive impression.”
I cross the kitchen to where she’s leaning against the counter. I stop in front of her and she looks up at me with her face full of laughter, but underneath the laughter something else, something genuine and more serious.
“Thank you. For tonight. Helping me with the SHL.”
“You came to Stockholm and did all the work. I only suggested it.”
“That’s coaching. You yell instructions and then take credit afterwards.”
I put my hand on her face and I kiss her.
Not like the pavement outside Tierney’s, not like the hotel, not like on the rink - like this. Like us, here, now, in her kitchen in Stockholm with her award on the counter.
She puts her arms around my neck.
I pull her in.
Later I lie in the dark and listen to her breathing even out beside me and I stare at the ceiling and I think about all of it.
My rookie season and all the versions of success I couldn’t have imagined at seventeen when success had one path and anything else was failure.
It doesn’t have one path.
That’s the thing I know now that I didn’t know then.
And this path is a city I’ve learned to love slowly. A league that pushed me harder than I knew I needed. The NHL is more possible than it ever has. Maybe.
And this.
Her, beside me, breathing.
I close my eyes.
Outside, everything is frozen silver and light.
Inside, everything finally feels quiet.