Chapter 4
Mattias
Birthdays make my skin crawl, at least when it’s my own.
But these days I actually have the finances to spoil my little brother, Micke, so I do—not that the Lefebvre jersey was much of an expense.
Two hundred dollars for the jersey, plus the shipping cost and a guarantee I’d get the Pioneers’ goaltender a reservation at Birds of Paradise next time he’s in Los Angeles was an easy price for an autograph.
I don’t give a shit about private members clubs, but as a professional athlete my name apparently carries weight with guest lists, and Birds of Paradise is the place to be these days—or so I’m told. I wouldn’t know. I don’t go out.
Charles Lefebvre is my brother’s favorite player, which I find offensive since the Pioneers are our biggest rival, but Micke is a former goaltender and there’s no denying Lefebvre is damn near impossible to get past. Still, it’s a stupid team name with ugly-as-shit colors and you’d never catch me dead in one of their jerseys.
I always tell Micke he’s taken too many pucks to the head.
Takes a brain injury to know a brain injury, he always says back, referring to the TBI I received when I was seven.
He’s proud of me, but I know he hates that I still play hockey.
It stresses him out, especially since it goes against my doctor’s recommendation.
The injury is long-healed now, but there’s always the risk that a bad hit could aggravate or compound its effects.
Quitting isn’t an option for me, though.
Quitting without a championship means our father’s dreams died with him.
I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, knowing how much he wanted this for me, only for it to amount to nothing.
Micke doesn’t look at it that way, but we’ve never seen eye to eye about the accident, and we usually just end up arguing when it comes up.
At some point, we just stopped talking about it.
I still maintain Micke could have played in the NHL if he’d wanted to, but he landed an electrician job at eighteen and never looked back.
Sometimes I wonder if the pressure our mother put on me to succeed scared him away from it, but he prefers a simple, small-town life anyway.
It’s probably for the best, because our mother needs someone in our small village of Rimbo to look after her, and that person was never going to be me.
It's not that I don't miss Sweden. I do. There just isn't a life for me there anymore. Not while I'm playing hockey, at least.
Driving in LA is the stuff of nightmares. I preemptively think I’ve made it to the post office in one piece when a red convertible coup cuts me off, making me slam on the brakes. Coffee splashes into my lap, burning me through my trousers, and I suck in a sharp breath.
“Helvete,” I swear, barely refraining from laying on the horn. I have told myself I will never become an LA horn-laying madman, but I can feel my resolve eroding.
The coup douche has the nerve to pull into the parking area ahead of me, taking the last available space in the too-small lot.
I have to sit and queue another five minutes until a space for my Volvo 240 becomes available, and in that time the asshole doesn’t even get out of their car—which I’m not surprised to see is generously dinged up with dents and scratches.
The vindictive part of me wants to sit and wait, just to see who it is, maybe even stick a passive aggressive note on their window—I keep sticky notes in my glovebox for this exact reason—but I glance at my watch and realize it’s already almost nine.
Poirier is meeting me for training at half ten.
I snatch up my carefully packaged box and head inside.
There is another queue waiting for me, of course.
Someone far too old to be applying for their first passport is yelling at a clerk, and a woman two spaces ahead of me is keeping an overly energetic dog in a chokehold to keep it from jumping on the man ahead of her.
At least I don’t have to worry about being assaulted for autographs in LA.
Nobody gives a shit about hockey here. I've worn a hat anyway, just in case.
“Hey, could you grab me that roll of tape?”
The man near the dog looks at me, and I’m silently relieved to find no recognition in his eyes.
“Yeah, just that blue one, there.” He points at the wall of packing accessories to our right. I suppose he doesn’t want to walk past the dog to retrieve it himself, but he doesn’t even offer a please or thank you.
I step out of queue anyway, because I was raised in a society with manners.
“This one?” I say.
“No, the smaller one next to it.”
It’s high on the wall, but that’s not a problem for me at 189 centimeters.
I grab it and hand it to him, stretching an arm out over the panting dog.
Its owner mouths a sorry to me, which I ignore.
I resent the way people here bring dogs that aren’t service animals into businesses, something the general populous of LA would readily disagree with me about.
I find I have a lot of disagreements with this place.
“Thanks, man,” the guy says, and with a nod I return to my place in the queue.
Only to find it taken.
A woman is standing where I just was, haphazardly stuffing a sheet of paper into an envelope. She clearly lacks self-awareness, as she doesn’t register me standing here, staring at her. I open my mouth, hesitant, then check my watch again. Quarter over nine. Something must be said.
“Excuse me, I was in queue here.”
She finally looks up. Her large, brown, scrutinizing eyes circle over my body in a way that makes my skin prickle, lingering briefly on my chest and arms like she’s sizing me up for a fight, before returning to my face.
She looks unkempt, dressed in light denim and a faded, cropped black shirt that says Scream Queen, which reveals a sliver of creamy skin.
Dark, windblown hair frames her face, like she’s been driving with the windows down, stopping just above her shoulders.
“You what?”
“I was in queue,” I repeat.
She still looks confused. I let my gaze flicker over her, taking note of the thin-line tattoos on her arms: a hunting knife on her forearm, one of those carved American pumpkins, and a ghost holding a bag that says trick-or-treat. None of it looks professional.
“I was already in line here.” I spell it out for her.
“Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that. You wouldn’t happen to have a pen on you, would you?”
I blink, disbelieving. The queue shuffles forward, and I cut back into my spot.
“No.” I turn my back to her.
A warm hand lands on my arm, making me recoil. I hate being touched—especially by strangers.
“Sorry!” she exclaims as I jerk away from her. “I don’t mean to be annoying, but I’m late for an appointment. Is it cool if I go ahead of you?”
Her eyes go large, her tone sweet and doll-like as though she’s trying to charm me into doing her a favor.
Unfortunately for her, those sorts of tricks don’t work on me.
We don’t coddle women where I’m from. Even if they would theoretically be pretty, were they not disordered and strange and annoying-as-shit.
“Sorry, I can’t help you.” I shove my hands in my trouser pockets for good measure and turn back around. Hopefully she fucks off.
“Seriously?”
“I have somewhere to be as well,” I snap over my shoulder as the queue shuffles forward again. I would have never been so rude back home, but after seven years here, my edges are frayed.
“Don’t have to be such a dick,” I hear her mutter.
As if I’ve invited this little altercation. I turn, giving her a withering look. She holds her ground, even having the nerve to scoff at me. Whoever spoiled her didn’t spare a sense of etiquette. Or a sense of dress, judging by the padlock chain around her neck.
“You should consider better time management,” I say. My blood is rushing because I’m already going to be late—and I’m never late. It drives my teammates mad, but I’ll walk several laps around a parking lot just to arrive somewhere perfectly on time, as is the Swedish custom.
Another desk opens, and the clerk summons me forward before the little queue-jumper has a chance to say anything else.
I cross to the counter in three long strides, eager to be away from her.
Still, I see her fumbling for a pen out of the corner of my eye when she’s called to the next desk.
From this angle, I can see the way her denims hang from the dip of her waist, the rise of her crop top as she leans over the countertop to reveal a smooth, inkless stomach.
Insufferable and sloppy. I don’t know why I’m still looking.
“Thank you,” I say to the clerk when they finish processing my order, dragging my eyes away.
I pay and leave, satisfied that I’ve timed the shipment so that it will arrive exactly on Mikael’s birthday. He’ll be ecstatic, and I’ll be forced to make a phone call to Birds of Paradise, but that’s alright. Anything for him.
He’s all I really have.