Chapter 2. Chris #4
There’s another silence, and this time I know exactly what’s sitting inside it.
“Listen,” I say. “About what you said. About tonight—”
“It’s fine,” Mads says, shaking his head. “We can talk about it another time.”
“No,” I say, suddenly feeling like I’ve been an unreasonable asshole this whole time. “You’re right. We should talk about it now. We’re stuck here anyway, and I’m feeling better.”
Mads just sits there, looking at me from his bunk, bare-chested, with snow drifting in through the broken vent and settling on the floor in tiny white specks that melt almost instantly. He said he’s not cold, but his skin is pale, goosebumps raised along his arms.
“Okay,” he says, his voice quiet. “So?”
I swallow.
The problem is, I don’t know how to start.
I can’t tell him the truth. I can’t say, I have a crush on you, and that’s why I can’t read your calls half the time, because you make me nervous, and then I get stuck trying to figure out why the fuck you’re always so pissed at me, and I’m pretty sure I’d rather have you pissed at me than ignoring me completely, because at least that’s some kind of attention, which is insane, and also, now that you know all of this, please treat me like a normal person.
So I do what I always do.
I beat around the bush.
“You distract me,” I say, which is kind of true.
Mads blinks once.
“Tonight especially,” I add quickly, before he can say anything.
“I couldn’t tell what you wanted from me.
Not really. You kept looking at me from the crease like I was supposed to already know, and the angrier you got, the more I started listening for the anger instead of the call.
So when you shouted something, I’d miss the first half, or hear it too late, or start trying to figure it out after the play had already moved on.
Then I missed the read, you got more pissed off, and I made the next one worse because I was trying to make the pressure stop instead of just playing hockey. ”
Mads watches me. His eyes are that pale blue-gray, almost silver in this light, and they don’t leave my face.
“Right,” he says slowly. “That’s kind of what I was saying.”
My face heats, and I cross my arms over my chest. “Well, you didn’t exactly acknowledge the part where you were glaring at me like you wanted to kill me.”
Mads blinks, like he’s processing that. “Okay,” he says. “But otherwise, you agree with me?”
“I agree that it was miscommunication,” I say, trying not to sound as defensive as I feel. “I don’t agree that it was just me deciding to fuck up for fun.”
His mouth tightens, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“You were angry before the game even got bad,” I say.
“Every time I turned to you, you looked like you wanted to tear my head off. And maybe that shouldn’t matter, but it did.
I started second-guessing everything. Whether you wanted me to leave it, move it, reverse it, hold the lane, step up.
And once that started, I kept making the wrong read because I was trying to guess what you wanted instead of just playing hockey. ”
Mads lets out a short breath, almost a laugh but not quite. “So we were both trying to read each other instead of the play.”
“Pretty much,” I say, dragging a hand over my face.
“Which is so stupid, because it’s supposed to be natural.
But with us, it’s like overthinking how to breathe or swallow.
The second you notice it, it gets impossible.
So yeah, fine, I agree. The problem is that we don’t talk.
We don’t talk in practice, we don’t talk after games, we don’t talk anywhere unless one of us is already pissed off.
Then on the ice, it turns into you glaring and shouting at me, and me getting in my own head and not listening to you, and tonight that fucked both of us. ”
For a second, Mads says nothing.
Then his lips twitch a little. “Do you even want to talk?”
I stare at him.
“Because I’m pretty sure you’re the one who avoids me, Rodriguez.”
My cheeks burn, which is deeply unfair, considering I’m trying to have a serious adult conversation while wearing his hoodie and pretending I’m not extremely aware of that.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
Mads lifts an eyebrow. “You know?”
“I’m not saying I’m handling it well,” I add, waving a hand between us and hoping he doesn’t latch onto what I’ve just admitted. “I’m saying this clearly isn’t working. And I’m pretty sure I’ve never had this kind of issue with anyone else.”
“I’ve never had this kind of issue with anyone else either,” he says.
We both fall quiet, just looking at each other.
Then Mads says, “So why are you avoiding me?”
Fuck me. I knew he would grab onto that.
“I’m not,” I say stupidly, trying to backtrack, even though I know it’s too late.
“You just admitted that you are,” Mads says, frustration slipping back into his voice. “So why?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
Okay, that’s a lie. I do know. I just don’t have an answer I can say out loud.
I cough, mostly to buy myself a second. “I’m… It’s just—”
You scare the shit out of me, and not in the way you think.
Mads waits. The longer I don’t finish, the more his expression shifts, like he’s taking my silence and fitting it into the only explanation that makes sense to him.
“Alright,” he says slowly. “I get it.”
I blink. “You do?”
“You came from the Wraiths. You’ve got more experience than I do. Maybe you’re used to playing with guys who’ve been around longer. Maybe you think I don’t know what I’m doing.” His mouth tightens. “Fine. But if you think I’m making bad calls, just say it. I’d rather hear it than keep guessing.”
The suggestion is so off-base it makes me want to scream.
“It’s not that,” I say too quickly. “That’s not it at all.”
Mads frowns. “Then what is it?”
I open my mouth, because I’m supposed to answer. That’s the whole point of this conversation. We’re supposed to be fixing whatever is broken between us so we can play better together.
But the only answer I have is the one I can’t give him.
The longer I sit there saying nothing, the deeper his frown gets.
I can see the frustration coming back, and I hate it.
I hate that we just made some progress, that we managed to talk like normal people for about two minutes, and now I’m about to crawl right back into my shell because I can’t tell him how I feel.
The cold air moves through the compartment, and I pull the sleeves over my hands because I need something to do with them.
“Can I ask you something first?” I say.