Back-to-Back

You let him in because the hallway is cold and he looks like he might bolt.

He sits on the edge of the armchair by your window like a guy in a waiting room. You sit on the bed. The lake is black outside, and the rain has stopped, and the house is so quiet you can hear the woodstove downstairs settling into embers.

"You don't have to answer," he says again.

"I know." You think about where to start. "My mom first. I was sixteen. She was making grilled cheese at like two in the afternoon because she'd just come off a night shift, and I said it to her back. Just, 'Mom, I'm gay.' She said, 'Okay, honey, do you want tomato soup with that?'"

He laughs, startled. "Seriously?"

"Then she turned off the stove and hugged me so hard she burned the sandwich." You smile. "She's a nurse. Nothing scares her. She's seen everything come through an ER door."

"And hockey?"

"My junior coach. I was nineteen. I thought I'd be cut." You shrug. "He said, 'Does it make you slower?' I said no. He said, 'Then get in the net.' That was it."

Joren's quiet, watching you with an intensity you can feel on your skin.

"And then the paper," he says.

You glance at him. "You read that?"

Color climbs his neck. "Somebody mentioned it."

The Northern Star, circulation maybe eleven thousand, ran a little piece when you got your first pro contract. Local kid makes good. At the end, the reporter asked if there was anything else people should know, and you said what you'd been practicing in the mirror for a week.

"'I'm gay, and I'm a goalie,'" Joren says softly. "'Only one of those matters when the puck drops.'"

Hearing it in his voice does something strange to your chest.

"Yeah," you say. "That one."

"What happened after, Ethan?"

"Honestly? Nothing." You lean back on your hands. "A couple of nasty messages. A couple of really nice ones from kids. And then nobody cared, because I was a backup. Nobody writes think pieces about the guy at the end of the bench. I've had five teams, and maybe two people have ever brought it up. I'm out because nobody's watching."

"Everybody's watching me," he says.

He says it to the window, not to you. It sits there between you.

You wait. You know what waiting looks like; you do it for a living, crouched in front of a net while the play builds at the other end.

He doesn't say anything else. After a while he stands up, says, "Thanks. Really. Goodnight," and he's gone, and you lie awake looking at the ceiling and the vent in the floor, which stays silent all night.

The next night is the second half of a back-to-back, and Ossi's knee is swollen, so Gaston taps your shoulder at the morning skate.

"You start, Ethan," he says. "Salt Lake. They shoot from everywhere, like children with a hose. Don't chase."

You don't chase.

Riverlight is loud in a way Anchorage never was, eighteen thousand people in teal and silver and a drumline in the upper deck. You tap the left post. Tap the right. Good evening, posts.

The Stingers come hard in the first period, and you stop eleven shots, then fourteen. Every save feels like a door locking. Late in the second, a Salt Lake winger walks in alone and you're down and across before you know you've moved, and the puck is in your glove, and the noise when you hold it up rolls over you like weather.

Joren scores in the third to make it 3-1. A ridiculous one: he takes a pass in his skates, kicks it to his stick and roofs it while falling. The arena goes off. His teammates pile on him.

He shakes them off.

He skates the whole length of the ice, past his bench, past the ref, all the way to your crease. He taps your pads with his stick, twice, and bumps his helmet gently against your mask.

"That's for the glove save, Ethan," he says through the noise. "Second period. I almost passed out."

Then he's gone, and you're standing there with your heart going like a drumline.

Salt Lake scores late to make it close. You hold on. Final, 3-2. Your first win in teal.

In the corridor outside the locker room, families and partners wait behind a rope. Obinna's mom is there in a Tidewater jersey with AFOLAYAN'S MOM on the back. And there's a woman you recognize from TV.

Avalon Westergaard. Platinum hair, long camel coat, a face built for close-ups. Former figure skater, now a sports host on a network you don't get. The internet has them engaged roughly once a month.

"Jory!" she calls, and Joren turns, and his whole face changes. It goes golden again. He hugs her. She stretches up and kisses his cheek, and a team photographer lifts his camera, and the moment is over almost before it happens.

Over Joren's shoulder, Avalon's eyes find yours. She looks at you for a long second with an expression you can't name. Curious. Almost kind.

Then she's laughing at something Joren said, and you're walking to the parking garage alone, and you tell yourself the thing in your chest is just the adrenaline wearing off.

You get back to the lake house first. You know because his truck isn't in the drive.

You shower. You lie in bed with your hair wet and the lamp on. You hear his truck come up the gravel a little after midnight. You hear the front door, his keys in the bowl, the fridge opening and closing.

You don't hear him come upstairs.

The house goes quiet around you. You're almost asleep, the lamp still on, the light from your window surely spilling down onto the porch where he'd be able to see it, when your phone buzzes on the nightstand.

An unknown number. A Minnesota area code.

you awake?

Then, a second later, before you can answer:

come downstairs?