Chapter 32
OCTOBER
Ukko had gotten fat.
Ro came through Derek's front door with the pug tucked under his arm like a football. The dog was wheezing with the particular indignation of having been subjected to air travel. His belly hung lower than before. His eyes bulged with even more dramatic despair.
"He's enormous," I said.
"He is perfect," Ro said, setting Ukko down on the tile. The dog stood there for a moment, disoriented, then waddled toward the kitchen like he owned the place. "Finnish air is good for him."
"Finnish treats, more like." Chase came in behind Ro, dropping their bags by the door. "He gets table scraps every meal. Ro can't say no to him."
"I can say no."
"You've never said no to that dog in your life."
Ro shrugged, unbothered, and pulled me into a hug that lifted my feet off the ground. He still had the arms of an NHL defenseman. When he set me down, he held me at arm's length and studied my face.
"You look tired," he said.
"It's my birthday. I'm allowed to look tired."
"You look old."
"Fuck off."
He grinned, and it was the same grin from the locker room, easy and warm and impossible to stay mad at. But the tension he'd carried in Vegas was gone.
Chase was already in the kitchen, greeting Sarah and admiring Thomas on her hip.
He moved through my brother's house like it was the most natural thing in the world, pausing to shake Derek's hand and comment on something about the backyard.
He laughed at something Sarah said, his whole body loose in a way it had never been at the arena, back when he'd been team staff and Ro had been a secret he couldn't afford to have.
Ro's eyes followed Chase across the room. His face went soft and stupid with it, the kind of expression that would have gotten him chirped relentlessly in the locker room. He didn't seem to care.
They'd lost everything. Ro's career, his team, the life he'd built in Vegas.
Chase had lost his job. They'd been exiled to Finland, traded and dismissed and publicly humiliated.
And now they moved through the world like none of it mattered, like finding each other had been worth every single thing they'd given up.
Owen came barreling down the stairs with Lily trailing behind him, and the moment broke. Ro crouched down to accept Owen's tackle while Lily hung back, too old now for that kind of greeting but still watching Ro with something like awe she was trying to hide.
"Where's Ukko?" Owen demanded.
"Kitchen," Ro said. "Being a menace."
Owen took off. Lily rolled her eyes and followed, probably to make sure her brother didn't feed the dog anything that would kill him.
The house filled up the way houses do when people are trying to celebrate something.
Sarah had made a cake, three layers with buttercream frosting, she'd been fussing over since yesterday.
Derek had picked up beer from the craft brewery Owen kept calling "the place with the weird goat on the sign.
" The kids orbited around the adults like small, chaotic planets, and through all of it, Ro's hand kept finding the small of Chase's back.
He did it at the kitchen counter while Chase was talking to Sarah. He did it again in the doorway to the living room when they paused to watch Owen demonstrate Ukko's newest trick, which was mostly just sitting and looking pathetic until someone gave him food.
Chase handed Ro a beer without being asked, their fingers brushing on the bottle. Ro took it and leaned into Chase's space, said something low that made Chase's mouth curve. Chase leaned back into him without looking.
Joel was in Colorado. It’d been four months since the storm, four months of phone calls and texts and the occasional stolen weekend when our schedules aligned.
We were back together, technically. We were trying.
But I still introduced him as my friend.
I still checked the room before I touched him. I still did the math every single time.
Ro caught me staring and raised an eyebrow. My phone buzzed, and I looked away.
Joel: happy birthday old man
The text had a timestamp from twenty minutes ago. He was probably at the rink, phone balanced on his knee between sessions, thumbs moving fast. He had Skate America in six days. He shouldn't be thinking about me at all.
Red: fuck off
Joel: that's no way to talk to someone who got you a present
Red: you got me a present?
Joel: maybe
Red: what is it
Joel: you'll have to wait and see
I grinned.
"How's Joel?" Sarah appeared at my elbow, Thomas on her hip.
"He's good. Busy. Skate America's next week."
She bounced Thomas, who was chewing on his own fist, completely absorbed in the task. "Does he ever ask about us? Owen still talks about him. The guy who let him win at hockey."
"He remembers. He asks about the kids."
"That's sweet." She paused, her brow creasing slightly, a question she wasn't quite asking. "You should invite him sometime. When things are less busy. Owen would lose his mind."
"Yeah," I said. "Maybe."
She drifted back toward the kitchen before I could say anything else. My phone was heavy in my pocket. When no one was looking, I checked it again.
Joel: wish I was there
Four words. I read them three times.
Red: no you don't. owen would make you play hockey in the backyard
Joel: I like owen
The cursor blinked. I typed I miss you, stared at it, deleted it letter by letter.
Joel: have fun at your party
Joel: talk later?
Red: yeah. later.
I put the phone away and went to find my brother.
We had cake. Sarah made me blow out candles while Owen counted them loudly and Lily told him to stop because it was rude to announce someone's age. Thomas clapped along without understanding why. Ro sang happy birthday in Finnish, which Chase said was a threat, not a song.
Gifts came after, spread across the coffee table.
Derek and Sarah gave me a new watch, silver with a leather band, the kind of thing Dad would have picked out.
Ro handed me a bottle of Finnish vodka that he claimed was medicinal.
Chase gave me a book about the history of hockey in the Southwest, thick with photographs of teams from the 1970s in mustaches and short shorts.
Owen had made a card with a drawing of what he insisted was me scoring a goal, but looked more like a stick figure being attacked by a large orange triangle.
The party wound down in stages after that.
Thomas fell asleep on Sarah's shoulder. Owen crashed from his sugar high and had to be carried upstairs, protesting weakly that he wasn't tired.
Lily said goodnight with the careful formality of a thirteen-year-old who wanted to seem mature, then ruined it by hugging Ro so hard he staggered.
"You'll visit again?" she asked into his chest.
"Of course. Maybe summer."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
She went upstairs. The noise settled into something softer.
Derek walked Ro and Chase to their rental car while I helped Sarah clear plates. Through the kitchen window, three shapes stood in the porch light. Ro's arm was around Chase's waist, his hand resting on Chase's hip like it belonged there. Because it did.
"You okay?" Sarah asked. She was loading the dishwasher, her back to me.
"Yeah. Just tired."
She nodded and didn't push. That was one of the things I appreciated about Sarah. She knew when to leave things alone.
The front door opened and Derek came back in, bringing cold air with him. October in Albuquerque had teeth after dark, a reminder that summer was over even when the days still held heat.
"They heading out?" Sarah asked.
"Yeah. Ro says the hotel's only ten minutes away. They'll come by tomorrow before their flight."
Sarah dried her hands on a dish towel and kissed Derek on the cheek. "I'm going to check on Thomas. You two good?"
"We're good," Derek said.
She disappeared down the hall. The stairs creaked under her footsteps, and then a door closed.
Derek grabbed two beers from the fridge and handed me one. We moved to the couch without discussing it, the way we'd done a hundred times before. The refrigerator hummed. The heater kicked on with a low rumble.
Derek took a long pull of his beer and stared at the blank TV screen.
"Good party," he said.
"Yeah. Thanks for doing this."
"Sarah did most of it."
"Still."
We sat in silence for a moment. The beer was cold in my hand, condensation dripping down the glass. Somewhere outside, a car passed on the street, headlights sweeping briefly across the ceiling.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"Sure."
"Ro and Chase tonight. What did you think?"
Derek shrugged. "They seem happy. Relaxed."
"Yeah." I picked at the label on my beer, working a corner loose with my thumbnail. "I kept watching them. The way they touched each other without checking to see who was looking."
Derek was quiet, waiting.
"Ro didn't choose to come out," I said. "Someone else made that decision for him. He lost everything. His career, his team, his reputation. They traded him like he was damaged goods."
"But?"
"But he seems different now. Lighter. Like he finally put something down."
The label tore. I rolled the wet paper between my fingers.
"I've been thinking about it," I said. "Coming out. Publicly."
Derek nodded slowly, like he'd been expecting this for a while.
"Okay," he said. "What's making you think about it now?"
"I don't know. A lot of things." The beer label was in shreds now, scattered on my knee. "Watching them tonight. Thinking about Joel. Being tired of missing him and not being able to say that to anyone except you and Sarah and him." I exhaled. "Being tired in general."
"Have you talked to Joel about it?"
"Not yet. Wanted to figure out what I was actually circling first."
Derek was quiet for a moment. He turned his beer bottle in his hands, considering.
"You know Sarah and I will support you," he said. "Whatever you decide. If you want to stay private, that's your business. Nobody gets to tell you when or how or if."
"It scares me," I said. "I'd be lying if I said it didn't."
"That makes sense."
I stared at the beer in my hands, the torn label, the ring of condensation it left on my knee.
"I don't know what I'm going to do," I said. "But I think I'm getting closer to knowing."
Derek raised his beer and tapped it against mine.
"Okay, then," he said. He stood, stretched, and squeezed my shoulder on his way past. "Don't stay up too late."
"Yeah."
"And Red?" He paused at the bottom of the stairs. "I'm glad you told me."
"Me too."
He went upstairs. The landing creaked once, then a door closed, and the room was still.
My phone buzzed.
Joel: you still awake?
I stared at the screen for a long moment. Then typed back.
Red: yeah. video call?
The phone rang thirty seconds later.
Joel's face filled the screen, half-lit by the lamp on his nightstand.
He was in bed, propped against the headboard, and Wonton was curled in his lap like a fat orange loaf.
His hair was messy and his eyes were tired, but his mouth curved when he saw me, the corners lifting before he caught himself and tried to flatten it into something less obvious. He failed.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey."
"Happy birthday." He scratched behind Wonton's ears. The cat's eyes narrowed into slits of pure contentment. "How was the party?"
"Good. Ro and Chase came."
"Yeah? How are they?"
"Happy. Disgustingly happy." I stretched out on my side on the couch and propped my phone against a beer bottle on the coffee table. "Ukko's fat."
"Ukko was always fat."
"Fatter."
Joel's mouth twitched, and the tired lines around his eyes softened. "I have your present."
"You actually got me something?"
"I said I did." He shifted, disturbing Wonton, who gave him a look of profound betrayal. Joel reached off-screen and came back with a black box. "It's not wrapped. I didn't have time."
"I don't care about wrapping."
He opened the box and held it up to the camera. Inside was a grooming kit in dark Italian leather. Razor, brush, small scissors, everything fitted into its own slot.
"So you stop stealing mine," Joel said.
I laughed. "I didn't steal it. I borrowed it."
"You left hair in my sink."
"I cleaned it up."
"You missed a spot." Joel set the box down and picked Wonton back up, settling him against his chest. The cat went boneless, purring loud enough for the phone to pick it up. "Now you have your own. No excuses."
Even through the screen, the leather looked soft and expensive. The kind of thing Joel would pick out without thinking about the price, the kind of thing I would never buy for myself.
"Thank you," I said. "I mean it."
"You're welcome."
We were quiet for a moment. Wonton's purring filled the silence, a low, steady rumble. Joel's fingers moved through his fur in slow strokes, and his eyes stayed on the screen, on me.
"What's going on?" Joel asked. "You seem different tonight."
"Good different or bad different?"
"I don't know yet."
I watched him through the screen, soft in the lamplight, the cat rumbling against his chest. Four hundred miles away, and I could still see the small crease between his eyebrows, the way he was studying me like I was a pattern he was trying to learn.
I wanted to tell him everything. About Derek, about what I was circling, about how tired I was of missing him in a way I couldn't say out loud to anyone else.
"Can you just stay on?" I said instead. "You don't have to talk. I just want to hear you."
Joel's eyes went soft, but his jaw tightened, like he was holding something back. "You want me to stay on while you fall asleep?"
"Yeah. Is that weird?"
"No." His voice was low, barely above the sound of Wonton's purring. "That's not weird."
I pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over myself. Joel was a small, bright rectangle on the coffee table, the only light left in the room.
"Okay," I said. "I'm just gonna close my eyes."
"Okay."
His breathing was soft through the speaker. The rustle of sheets when he shifted against his pillows. Wonton's purring was steady as a heartbeat.
"Red?" he said after a while.
"Mm."
"I miss you too."
I hadn't said it. I'd typed it and deleted it hours ago. But he knew anyway. He always knew.
"Soon," I said. The word was heavy in my mouth, thick with sleep. "I'll see you soon."
"Yeah," Joel said. "Soon."
I fell asleep with his voice in my ear and the shape of him glowing on the screen, four hundred miles away and closer than he'd ever been.