He grows to almost like her, or at least not to dread going to see here, but that only lasts until he slips up and mentions Liam. It’s a totally innocuous reference, something she probably wouldn’t have even noticed except that he froze after like he’d been caught holding. She latches onto it after, worries it like a fucking bone between her teeth, saying Liam’s name like a talisman, and growing visibly frustrated when Mike retreats.
He doesn’t blame her frustration, considering some of the shit he’s found himself telling her against all reason. Fuck’s sakes, he told her about his fucking father. And then there’s suddenly one name that brings him right back to stone silent and contrary. He can’t blame the curiosity.
Him and Liam may not have been a secret, exactly, but Mike isn’t saying anything. He keeps it locked up inside him so he can hold it there, keep it safe. It’s not healthy, he doesn’t need a shrink to tell him that, but it’s his own fucking life, and he can dwell if he wants to: there’s no one who can tell him he can’t.
He keeps the kid locked up tight.
*
Mike hasn’t told many people he’s stayed in Edmonton beyond the necessary: his mom, who laments him not being closer every time she calls, his brother, who doesn’t say anything about it, at least to him. People tend to assume he’s back in Minnesota, and he lets them. It’s no one’s business, and he doesn’t have the energy or the desire to see his former teammates, not when they’re former, not when hockey isn’t a part of his life anymore. He can’t even watch a game on TV without feeling sick, let alone fuck around on the ice, and the last thing he needs right now is another reminder of what he lost.
Rogers figures it out somehow: maybe the team doctors, maybe management, who the fuck knows. He’s good at getting that kind of thing out of people, has that trustworthy face. He knocks on Mike’s door on a Sunday morning, catching him off-guard, and before Mike can protest he’s being dragged out to fucking brunch, of all things. Brunch is an idiotic concept, can’t decide what it wants to be, and in retaliation for being subjected to it, Mike orders just about everything on the menu that he knows Rogers can’t eat on a mid-season diet. Rogers doesn’t even blink, which takes some of the pleasure out of it.
Mike wishes he was one of the people immune to Rogers’ trustworthy face, but he isn’t, not really. It takes all of twenty minutes of Rogers being unassuming and boring him to death with anecdotes about his newborn before Mike cracks, gives him a rundown of the shit status of things, just so Rogers will quit looking at him like that. If therapists could figure out how to mimic Rogers’ face, they’d have success rates through the fucking roof.
Rogers doesn’t say much, just waits for Mike to run out of steam. Mike talks until his coffee’s down to the dregs and he’s mopping up yolk with his crusts, plate clear in front of him. When he’s run out of anything worth saying, Mike finally asks the question he’s been holding in since Rogers showed up at his door.
“How’s Liam?” he asks, keeps his eyes on his plate, pops the final bite of toast in his mouth, mostly for something to do.
When he looks up, Rogers is stone-faced, and Mike knows him just well enough to know he’s absolutely furious, that he’s brimming with it. He’s fucking furious with Mike, and he still dragged Mike out of the house to check up on him because he’s good down to his bones. Because he’s possibly the best person Mike knows.
“Good,” Rogers says, and Mike doesn’t know how he feels about that. “Likes his team. He’s playing well.”
Mike gathered that much, and he knows Rogers knows more than that. “Roge,” he finally says, when Rogers says nothing else.
“What do you want me to say, Mike?” Rogers asks. “He’s okay. He’s got a boyfriend. The guy’s not a hockey player, thank god.”
Rogers isn’t the type to take the lord’s name in vain, a good Christian boy. He’s probably thanking his god on his knees every night that Liam’s found himself someone better. If Mike believed in a higher power, if Mike was a better person, well, he’d probably be thanking god too.
As it is, the last bite sticks in his throat.
*
In April, the Oilers bow out of contention, the Red Wings lock up a playoff spot, and Mike finally has everything ready for him in Minnesota. Not Duluth, not with the specialists he needs, the specialists his doctors have finally gotten him referrals to. The Twin Cities aren’t home, but they’re closer to it than Edmonton is by over a thousand miles, and his mom did the house hunting for him, found him a good place in St. Paul.
Everyone’s busy figuring things out for him prior to the move, taking care of him like he’s an invalid. It’s insulting, but he couldn’t do it without them, he doesn’t think, couldn’t come back and just figure it out — who he needed to go to, what he needed to do — so he’s reluctantly grateful. More grateful when his mom tells him she shut his brother down on a welcome back party at his new place, because the last thing in the world Mike wants is to get off a plane and then humor a bunch of people who just traveled hours to see his sorry-ass mug out of pity or old times or whatever.
Rogers still has his name on the Rogers Family Update mailing list or whatever the fuck: Mike keeps getting pictures of Baby Rogers with Rogers and Lady Rogers like they think he cares. Rogers doesn’t let him bow out out of contact, practically hauls him out for dinner when the Oilers come to town to play the North Stars, switches to showing him pictures on his phone instead of via email, so Mike’s forced to make approving noises at pictures of his wife and kid.
Otherwise, Mike pretty successfully retreats. He’s just far enough away to be a pain in the ass for the Duluth gang to travel to, so he mostly just has to deal with his mom, his brother, sometimes his brother’s girlfriend. His mom uses her emergency key to harass him, and his brother isn’t much better, but other than that, Mike gets to stay pretty well removed. Going out isn’t really worth the effort. He can’t go out to bars, go get laid. He can’t drink, and it’s no fun to hang out with drunk people when you’re sober. He sure as shit couldn’t have sex with them and keep a clear conscience, feel like he was doing anything but taking advantage. Mike may not be a good person, but he isn’t that kind of guy.
His mom keeps urging him to go out and find someone, try dating again, but what the fuck is he supposed to do, hit on someone in the produce section of the grocery store? Waggle his fucking eyebrows in the neurologist’s waiting room? It isn’t worth the goddamn effort. He doesn’t care enough. He misses sex, but just about everything else about relationships is irrelevant to his life, and he prefers it that way.
No one taking up the bed, no one clinging to him in their sleep, no one playing Florence Nightingale when it gets to be too much, or getting spooked by it. It’s better the way it is.
*
Rogers calls him again just before Christmas. He sounds wrong on the phone. Even Mike picks up on that, and he’s no sage, so something’s up.
“Fitzy called me,” Rogers says, after they get through the pleasantries, asking about each other’s mothers, about the wife and kid. Wife’s pregnant again, kid’s adorable. Shit Mike could have gotten from the Rogers Family Update.
“Okay,” Mike says. He doubts that’s rare. Liam’s a bit of a clingy shit, and Mike knows Rogers is like a big brother to him. Unless something’s happened and Rogers needs Mike to kill someone on Liam’s behalf, Mike isn’t really sure what the fuck this has to do with him. Resents it; Rogers for bringing him up, himself for the fact that even hearing that godawful nickname puts salt in a wound that Mike ends up tugging open every time it starts to heal.
“He asked if I had your number,” Rogers says, flat, and Mike doesn’t know what to do with that. He’s not sure what he should do. What he wants to do. He’s blank.
“Mike?” Rogers asks, after a minute.
“I’m here,” Mike says.
“I have your number,” Rogers says.
“You just called me on it,” Mike says. “No shit you have my number.”
Rogers sighs audibly. “Do you want me to give him your number?”
He says it reluctantly, like he’s praying Mike says no, but he’s asking because Liam asked him to and he can’t say no to the kid. Mike understands that feeling.
Mike thinks about the glimpses he’s seen of Liam since he retired. He’s twenty-two now, baby face melted away, so much more put together. He’s young and talented and starting to learn how to control his temper on the ice, almost poised. He got the spark he needed in Detroit, is just as fucking good as Mike always knew he would be if he got the fuck out of dodge.
Mike knows this because he’s a masochist, or he because needs validation for his decision, he’s not sure which. He checks up on Liam sometimes, just to see how things are shaping up, and every time he does, he lives with the ache for days.
“Fuck,” Mike says, and Rogers’ silence is just about all the agreement with the sentiment he’ll get. “Give it to him.”
“Mike,” Rogers says.
“You goddamn asked,” Mike says. “Give it to him.”
He dreads it, dreads Liam having it and deciding not to use it, dreads the day he might pick up and hear Liam’s voice, but when it comes down to it, he isn’t any better than Rogers at telling the kid no.
Chapter 18
Mike hasn’t really been waiting for Liam to call. Mike doesn’t know him anymore, not really, and for all he knows Liam just asked for his number to know he could have it. Christmas passes, and he doesn’t hear from Liam. Doesn’t hear from Rogers either, except for the Rogers Family Update Plus Santa Hats. Mike rings in the goddamn new year sober and hanging out with his mom, which is probably the most pathetic thing he’s done in years, and he has a shit-ton to choose from.
But just under two weeks into January, when Detroit’s due in Minnesota in a week — not that Mike’s checked — he gets a text from a number he doesn’t recognize, can i c u next week?, and then, its liam, as if Mike has ever lowered himself to text anyone else who writes in text-speak. Well, his brother, but that’s family, so he doesn’t have a choice.
Mike can’t even tell if Liam was too lazy to put an apostrophe in the ‘its’ or genuinely didn’t know one was supposed to be there. It’s fucking depressing.
Fucking depressing, shit poor grammar, and enough to knock Mike flat, or near enough. Mike hasn’t seen the kid since he wouldn’t let him argue his way out of being dumped, hasn’t heard anything except a voicemail Liam left a month later, the only one he wasn’t strong enough to delete before listening to. Liam was drunk enough to slur, which takes a lot, his voice breaking right down the middle — wide open, because he’s never learned how to protect himself. Never puts his hands up until after the first blow lands.
It takes five hours before Mike can even settle on his response, a single word: Okay. He’s in his mid-fucking-thirties, he shouldn’t be fixating on a single word sent across state lines, it’s fucking pathetic.
For the next week, he’s distracted. Lets his mom clean his place, even though it drives him up the fucking wall that she insists on it, like he’s living in squalor. His therapist gets him talking about the hockey season, and he doesn’t even realize he’s exposed the fact he’s still tuned in until he’s arguing the North Stars’ playoff chances with her, because she couldn’t be more wrong if she was doing it on purpose.
She was probably doing it on purpose, now that he thinks about it. He hopes she was doing it on purpose. He doesn’t want to put his mental health in the hands of someone who doesn’t understand ROW.
Detroit wins its two games preceding the match-up, while the North Stars lose two in regulation and one in overtime. The game’s a matinee, something special for the children, or some shit. Mike doesn’t know what he’s expecting from Liam, but it’s not a text the night before the game, im in minnynapolis, which is almost excruciatingly painful to get, just for the butchery of Minneapolis alone. And then, almost immediately, can i c u tonite?.
Mike doesn’t wait more than three minutes to answer him this time, and that’s just because he gets a call from his mom and spends the following two minutes trying to get off the phone. The Yes he sends requires even less effort than the Okay from before, but his hands are fucking shaking with adrenaline after, and it’s pathetic.
Liam follows up with an address, a bar attached to the hotel visiting teams tend to stay at, and Mike almost turns around a half dozen times on the drive over, because this is fucking stupid. Mike’s never been the kind of guy to have civilized, masochistic dinners with exes, the kind where you pretend you’re both above the hurt, then proceed to spend the entire time picking at old wounds.
Except Liam isn’t that kind of guy either, will go straight for the jugular if he means to hurt you, so Mike wonders what this is for him: curiosity, maybe, or closure. Whatever it is, Mike isn’t going to fuck it up for the kid. He deserves better.
Liam’s already at the bar when Mike gets there, sitting at a table for two. The lighting’s low and romantic, softening his face into something that Mike’s used to, the razor sharp cut of his cheekbones giving way under the effect so that he’s as baby-faced as he was when he was trying to goad Mike into fucking him that first time. The thought sits hollow in him.
Mike slides into the seat across from him, and Liam looks up, startled, like he hadn’t been expecting Mike at all.
“Hey,” Mike says, when it’s clear Liam won’t say something first, all big blues and slightly parted lips, fucking long-lashed Bambi eyes.
“I didn’t really think you’d come,” Liam says.
“Sorry to disappoint,” Mike says, and Liam rolls his eyes at him, which is normal, if nothing else is.
When a waiter comes by Liam orders a beer, which feels wrong until Mike realizes Liam’s legal in America, has been for over a year now. Mike orders club soda and orange juice, and Liam frowns at him.
“Can’t drink anymore,” Mike says, flat, when Liam doesn’t quit looking at him. Liam’s cheeks flush, embarrassed, averting his eyes, which makes Mike feel like shit, because that’s the last thing he wants to do.
“I don’t have to—” Liam starts, when their drinks come.
“Drink your fucking beer, Liam,” Mike says, and Liam takes a slow sip. Mike can’t get over how different Liam looks, now that Mike’s across from him, the way all that baby fat has melted away, how much older he looks, so far from the kid Mike met. He fills out his clothes better, has put on muscle in the places he always struggled with bulking up.
Mike’s losing his own definition, still broad but filling out in worse ways. His hair’s starting to go gray at the temples, which must be from his father, since his mom’s yet to get a single gray hair despite the shit she’s been through, but other than that, he’s about the same. Liam’s practically transformed.
Liam puts his beer down. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Like Mike said: straight for the jugular.
Mike doesn’t bother to play stupid; it’s insulting to the both of them. “You didn’t need to know.”
“Bullshit,” Liam says, voice raising despite himself, clearly, because he’s quiet again when he continues. “Bullshit I didn’t need to know, we practically fucking lived together.”
Mike doesn’t say what comes to mind immediately, that he wasn’t the one insisting on playing house. It wasn’t like he complained at the time. Didn’t want to. Hell, he gave Liam a key, liked it more than he should have, really, until his health went south and Liam started playing nursemaid too. He takes a sip of his drink instead of saying anything at all.
“Did you know when you did it?” Liam asks.
Mike frowns. “Did I know what?” he asks.
“Did you know how bad things were?” Liam asks, even. There’s none of the hitch that’s usually in his voice when he’s upset, though it’s written plain as day on his face that he is. “When you ended things with me.”
“It doesn’t matter, Liam,” Mike says, suddenly tired.
“
It matters to me,” Liam says stubbornly.
“Yeah,” Mike says, because there’s no point lying. “I knew. And what would you have done if I told you? What were you going to do, hang around on a dead end team trying to play fucking nurse with a dead end player? You didn’t need to know.”
“It was my choice to make,” Liam says, and Mike hears the waver now, almost soft enough to miss.
“And you would have made a shitty choice,” Mike says.
Liam’s jaw sets, and he takes a sip of beer, slow, like he’s trying not to say the first thing that comes to mind. He’s grown up, at least a little, and Mike fucking hates it right now.
“This was a bad idea,” Mike says, because Liam’s hurting, it’s written all over him, and Mike doesn’t feel much better.
“Would you come to the game tomorrow?” Liam asks. “If I got you a ticket.”
“No,” Mike says, and Liam looks so crushed that he explains, even though he’d prefer not to. “I haven’t watched a game since — I don’t watch hockey.”
“Oh,” Liam says, then looks at a loss.
“I should go,” Mike says, reaching for his coat.
“No,” Liam blurts out, and when Mike pauses, “No. Stay. Please.”
Mike blows out a breath, puts his elbows back on the table.
“How’s Minnesota?” Liam asks.
Mike raises his eyebrows, a clear are we seriously doing fucking small talk?. They barely did that even when they were, well — whatever they were. Whatever they’re not now.
Liam raises his eyebrows back, you bet, with a hint of the brattiness Mike knew he couldn’t have shaken completely, so integral to his personality that he’d be someone else completely without it. Maybe a less annoying person, but not Liam anymore, and Mike likes Liam, along with the tangled fucking knot of whatever else it is he feels for him. He likes the kid, he’s always liked the kid, and he’s missed him.
Thrown Off the Ice Page 14