Thrown Off the Ice

by Taylor Fitzpatrick

  His phone’s ringing, and Mike could put fucking money on the fact that it’s Liam calling. He shouldn’t answer, as angry as he is, should let it go to voicemail, get himself under control, but it’s Liam’s own fucking fault Mike’s hearing this on TV instead of from him. Liam’s own fucking fault Mike’s hearing this at all.

  “What the fuck,” Mike snaps the second he hits answer.

  “Guess you heard about the deal?” Liam says. He sounds cheerful, like he doesn’t even notice Mike’s anger, or he does but it doesn’t much bother him, and Mike’s even angrier now, hearing that blase fucking tone.

  “What the fuck, Fitzgerald?” he repeats.

  “North Stars made me a good offer,” Liam says. “And I like it in Minny. So I signed.”

  “You didn’t goddamn ask me!” Mike yells.

  “Because you would have done the exact same shit you did in Edmonton,” Liam snaps. “You don’t get to decide what’s best for me, Mike. I get to choose where I want to play.”

  “And that’s just coincidentally in the same city I live in,” Mike says. “Nothing to do with me at all.”

  “It obviously has to do with you, don’t be a dick,” Liam says. “Is it so fucking ridiculous that I want to live in the same city as my boyfriend?”

  “That’s a lot of assumptions you’re making there,” Mike snaps. “What if I don’t fucking want you here?”

  “Don’t say stupid shit you don’t mean just because you’re pissed at me,” Liam says.

  “You should have fucking asked,” Mike says.

  “And you would have said no, even if you wanted me to come, so I didn’t,” Liam says. “You want to keep on seeing me every few months, we can still do that if I’m living in St. Paul.”

  That’s fucking bullshit and Liam knows it. Mike can’t think of anything more laughable than Liam being in the same city as him and staying away.

  “You know, for someone who supposedly doesn’t give a shit what I do,” Liam says. “You really don’t seem to want to let me to make decisions about my own career.”

  “It affects me this time,” Mike says.

  “So did whether I stayed with the Oilers, until you made sure it didn’t,” Liam says.

  “We’re not talking about that,” Mike says.

  “No, we’re talking about you yelling at me for making my own damn choices,” Liam says. “My mom’s calling, I have to go.”

  “Liam, we are not done—” Mike says.

  “I’ll see you in a few days,” Liam interrupts, and fucking hangs up on him.

  Mike seethes. This would be the moment to go find a punching bag, or a sparring partner, or buy himself a six-pack, or — it doesn’t matter. None of it is shit he can do anymore.

  He viciously cleans his kitchen until everything fucking sparkles.

  *

  Liam flies down for the Fourth of July. They planned it before Liam decided to move to Minnesota — or maybe just before he deigned to tell Mike about it — and Mike would tell him not to bother coming, but his mom’s been going on and on about needing to meet Liam properly. She’s met him before, but only briefly, and she’s been harping on it since Mike got back from Detroit. Once Mike told her Liam was coming, that was it. No fucking take backs now.

  Liam’s in high spirits when Mike picks him up at the airport on the third, enough that it’s almost contagious, going on about his ‘first Independence Day’. On the ride to Mike’s he rambles about sparklers (he’d probably burn his eyebrows off, knowing him), and potato salad (Mike’s potato salad is admittedly very good), and buying a shit-ton of fireworks (not actually legal, and even if it was Mike would never fucking let him, but nice try).

  Liam keeps on such a steady stream of chatter that Mike can’t get a word in edgewise, and Mike’s pretty sure he’s doing it on purpose, not leaving Mike any space to start up the fight about his incipient move to Minnesota.

  He chatters while unpacking his shit, chatters while Mike’s making the beloved potato salad to bring to his mom’s, chatters all the way through dinner. The only time he quits is when they hit the bedroom, and honestly, he’s still noisy then, though Mike doesn’t much mind that.

  “Are we going to talk about this?” Mike says after they’ve cleaned up, gotten back into bed. Liam looks like he’s already half-asleep. Mike’s a little surprised he didn’t chatter his way to sleep to avoid this.

  “I think this is literally the first time you’ve ever wanted to talk,” Liam says, not opening his eyes.

  Mike snorts. “I don’t want to,” he says. “I just—”

  “You don’t want to, I don’t want to,” Liam says. “So let’s not.”

  “We need to talk about this,” Mike says.

  “Don’t wanna,” Liam mumbles.

  “Liam,” Mike says.

  “Us talking about this is just going to be you saying shit you don’t mean,” Liam says. “And since I’m moving here anyway, it’s not going to do anything but make us both feel shitty, which is stupid, because I want to be here, and you want me to be here. I don’t want to fight just because you don’t want to admit we’re in a serious relationship. I traveled all day, I’m too tired for this.”

  Mike glowers at Liam, though it feels empty, since Liam still hasn’t opened his eyes.

  “Bed,” Liam says. “Sleep.”

  “Fine,” Mike says, because honestly, it’d probably go exactly like Liam said, and Mike doesn’t feel like proving him right.

  *

  Liam’s the one behind the wheel when they leave for Duluth the next morning. His driving hurts Mike’s soul in general, and even more when it’s his truck, but Mike drives as little as possible now, and only short distances. Two hours is shitty, and with Liam in the car, Mike’s not comfortable stopping every half hour like he usually does, because it’ll just get the kid worrying about him.

  It isn’t too bad a drive, even though Liam picks the music. Liam’s tan, at least compared to usual, hair gone lighter with the sun, freckles on his cheeks and arms, popping up the way Mike’s learned they always do in the summer. Mike watches the flex of his forearms as he shimmies in his seat, singing along to some pop song on the radio that sounds exactly like the one before it, and the one before that. Mike’s getting old, hell, Mike’s been old, and here’s Liam singing at the top of his lungs, seat dancing, wearing a backwards cap without an ounce of irony and somehow fucking pulling it off. Mike’s not sure how this happened to him, but then, it’s been happening for a long time. You’d think he’d be used to it by now.

  They get in around noon, and Mike’s mom meets them at the door.

  “We brought potato salad,” Liam tells her.

  “He was zero help,” Mike says, lest she believes the ‘we’.

  “I supervised,” Liam argues.

  If you consider supervising to be talking a mile a minute and making a game of how goddamn much you can get underfoot before potato salad doesn’t happen, then yes, Liam supervised.

  “Liam, you want a beer?” his mom asks. She looks over at Mike, blink and you’d miss it, and Mike’s jaw clenches as Liam does the same thing.

  “If you’re having one, Lori,” Liam says finally. He called her ‘Mrs. Brouwer’ when he met her the first time, and Mike winced so hard on his behalf he thought he pulled something, set him straight the second they left.

  She gets herself and Liam beers and makes Mike dish them out some potato salad, assemble some sandwiches. Better him in the kitchen than her, even if it’s just sandwiches. She’d screw them up somehow. Her and Liam are alike in that way, along with stubborn streaks a mile wide and a tendency to stick their nose in Mike’s business.

  “Where’s Tom?” Mike asks around one, after they’ve gravitated outside and Mike’s tried mostly successfully not to drowse in the heat while his mom pries Liam’s life story out of him. Tom’s often late, but considering he lives ten minutes away instead of two hours, this is a little pathetic, and Mike wants a buffer between Liam and his mom
. Tom and Mike can roll their eyes at each other while Tom’s girlfriend Amber and Liam try to see who can get more words in edgewise, and Mike can steer his mom to her one and only grandkid if she starts getting nosy. Definitely safer.

  “They went to the lake house,” his mother says. “Have you been, Liam?”

  Mike narrows his eyes at her. Considering the cabin is Mike’s, he suspects she has something to do with this, because generally the only time Tom heads there is when him and Mike go together.

  “Nope,” Liam says. “Mike says it’s a ‘guy thing’.”

  It is a guy thing, and Liam would fucking hate it. Mike knows him. He’d last maybe half an hour fishing before he got bored. There’s no wifi or cable and the reception’s for shit. He’d go out of his mind, and he’d take Mike with him.

  Mike’s mother still frowns at him. Mike looks back unapologetically.

  “Made too much potato salad then,” Mike says. “Could have told me.”

  “I’ll eat it,” Liam volunteers unhelpfully.

  Liam does end up eating a second serving of potato salad, and Liam and his mom have moved on to Liam’s Juniors years by the time the sun and heat get to Mike and he takes a nap on the lounge chair. The sun hasn’t moved much when he comes up, so they should still be on Juniors, knowing Liam’s verbosity.

  “I’m a little surprised you didn’t stay with the Red Wings,” his mother says, which is not fucking Juniors.

  “They basically offered me nothing,” Liam says. “I don’t blame them or anything, they don’t have the money to keep me. I wanted to make a bit of a change anyway, play somewhere I’ll stay in the top six, and the North Stars offered me that.”

  “Mike had nothing to do with it?” his mom asks, and Mike should shut this the fuck down because that is none of her business, but he doesn’t.

  Liam’s quiet. “Of course he did,” he says finally. “I mean, he’s pissed at me for not asking him about it, but he would have said no, and — yeah. I wanted to be here. Wanted to be with him properly.”

  “He’s happy about it,” his mom says. “I know he’d rather get his teeth pulled than say it, but he loves the hell out of you.”

  Mike thinks it’s about goddamn time he wakes up.

  *

  Mike makes dinner so Liam doesn’t end up eating potato salad for every meal while his mom and Liam go back and forth on going to see the fireworks, but by the time dusk rolls around Liam’s half asleep on the couch and his mom doesn’t look much more awake. They watch the news, Liam slumped against him, head on Mike’s shoulder, and Mike steadfastly ignores the look his mom sends him.

  “Want me to make up the couch now?” she asks.

  “I got it,” Mike says, and nudges Liam until he goes to sit at the kitchen table, eyes still half shut.

  “You boys sleep well then,” Mike’s mom says, pats Mike’s shoulder as she walks by.

  Mike makes up the couch, steering Liam over to it. Liam obediently gets onto the sofa bed, and Mike follows, shutting the lights off.

  “I just realized something,” Liam says after a minute, sounding wide awake. Of course the second you turn out the light he’s got his energy back, because he is apparently a toddler. “Mike, hey.”

  Mike grunts.

  “You didn’t swear once today,” Liam says, sounding awed.

  “Who the fuck swears in front of their mother?” Mike asks.

  “Not once,” Liam says, then, “I like your mom.”

  “She likes you,” Mike says, and then to a doubtful noise from Liam, “Seriously, if she didn’t like you, you’d know it.”

  “Good,” Liam says, then shifts closer. Mike thinks it was supposed to be subtle, but the springs creak with every move he makes. “Guess we’re not having sex on this bed,” Liam says.

  “Not a fucking chance,” Mike agrees.

  *

  Liam heads out a few days after Independence Day, but this time it’s with the understanding he’s coming back, and not just to visit, but to stay. Mike’s still getting used to that. Trying to figure out how he feels about it.

  Liam goes to Detroit, not Halifax, starts to arrange for his shit to get packed up and sent to St. Paul, and it’s barely a week before he’s right back at Mike’s, getting things arranged, far more organized about it than when he was nineteen and whining because Mike refused to let him move in with him.

  Liam hires a realtor, starts looking at places in the same neighborhood as Mike’s, even though he could afford a much better one. Mike’s neighborhood isn’t shitty or anything, but he bought all the house he needed, didn’t bother with anything fancy. He made good money in his career, but he’s got medical bills to pay, is going to have to keep paying them until the day he dies.

  Mike imagines the realtor thinks it’s odd too, a dude who just inked a deal for almost five million dollars a year looking in a neighborhood where half the houses are a hundred years old, and not in the attractive way. After years of renovations by him and Tom, his place doesn’t show it on the inside, but Mike got it for a song for a reason. Guy’s probably annoyed Liam’s being stubborn about it, because the kind of commission he’s getting on a place like this isn’t anywhere near what he’d get if Liam would get something in his actual price range.

  This is all guesswork, though. Mike doesn’t go with Liam. He has no interest in meeting the guy, just knows his name’s Greg and he’s a North Stars fan, asked Liam for an autograph when they met, which Mike finds fucking tacky.

  It’s pissing Mike off, those jaunts Liam keeps going on with Greg, and he examines that feeling for a second. He’s not pissed that Liam’s looking close, since he’ll be around all the time anyway, probably spend more time at Mike’s place than his own. May as well save himself a drive, and Mike lives close to the arena, so it’s not like it’s inconvenient.

  Liam settling for less than he can afford doesn’t bother Mike either. Honestly, the sooner Liam learns good money management the better. He may be making more in a year than Mike did in almost a decade, but he won’t be playing forever, and Mike knows better than anyone that you can get sidelined long before you were expecting your career to end.

  The thing is, it makes zero sense for Liam to get his own place when Mike has no doubt he’ll be spending all his time underfoot at Mike’s. Mike’s got the room. He thought, years back, that living with Liam would drive him nuts, but it’s been surprisingly easy when he’s visited during the summers. Mike would think that was a guest effect, but Liam’s never bothered to act like a guest, makes himself at home the second he sets his bags down.

  Logically, purely logically, it makes the most sense for Mike to ask Liam to move in with him. It saves Liam money, saves him from shuttling back and forth from Mike’s and a place he’ll barely spend time at, makes things less complicated.

  Mike dreads asking. It’s not that he thinks Liam’s going to say no: he knows he won’t. He also knows Liam’s going to make a giant fucking thing out of it. Still, it’s easier to bite the bullet and ask than to let Liam slowly move all his shit in and pretend he doesn’t notice Liam doing it, which is what he’s pretty sure would happen otherwise. Subtle, thy name is not Fitzgerald.

  Mike drags his feet on it for a couple days before Liam makes the choice for him, mentioning over breakfast that he’s going to meet up with Greg in the afternoon.

  “Cancel that,” Mike says.

  Liam frowns. “He’s lined up like three places, I can’t just—”

  “You don’t need a house,” Mike says.

  “Actually, I kind of—” Liam says, then stops all at once. He’s not stupid, for all he pretends to be when it suits him. “Really?”

  Mike shrugs. “Doesn’t seem all that necessary considering you’re just going to be hanging around here anyway,” he says.

  “Let me get this straight,” Liam says.

  “Jesus Christ,” Mike sighs.

  “You’re asking me to move in with you,” Liam says.

  “It just makes t
he most sense,” Mike says, then, “Quit looking at me like that.”

  Liam continues to grin like a fucking lunatic.

  “That’s honestly fucking creepy,” Mike says, and if anything, Liam’s grin widens.

  “Ask me again,” Liam says, shamelessly basking in the situation. “Properly this time.”

  “One time only offer,” Mike says. “Take it or leave it before I take it off the table entirely.”

  “You’re no fun,” Liam complains.

  “You taking it or leaving it?” Mike asks.

  “Oh come on,” Liam says, like they both know the answer to that, and yeah. They do.

  Liam’s shit is already sitting in Mike’s spare room, since he had no other address to ship it to, so moving him in doesn’t take all that long. Liam’s clothes overtake Mike’s in his drawers, Liam’s cheap silverware — probably IKEA shit — goes into the garage along with basically everything from his pathetic kitchen box, waiting for a trip to Goodwill. Liam’s stupid Playstation gets plugged into Mike’s TV; a Fitzgerald family picture ends up on his mantel. Liam’s shoes take up most of Mike’s hall closet: he’s clearly got a problem Mike didn’t know about until now.

  At the end of the day, Mike’s place doesn’t feel like his. Or maybe it doesn’t feel like just his. Either way, it’s a weird feeling, grabbing pajama bottoms from a newly stuffed drawer. Some things are the same: Liam’s shampoo, conditioner, body wash were already in the shower, his razor beside Mike’s, his toothbrush sharing the same cup. It’s like any other time Liam’s visited for more than a day or two, except this time there’s no real end date in mind.

  “You’re okay with this, right?” Liam asks after they’ve exchanged lazy, tired handjobs, turned off the light. His voice is quiet, like he’s not sure he wants the answer.

  “Wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t,” Mike says, which is true enough.

  *

  Mike dreads telling his mom Liam moved in almost as much as he dreaded asking Liam, but he knows exactly how much shit she’s going to give him if she finds out firsthand. It’s a legitimate concern, because she’s been visiting more frequently in the last year or two. She’s quit with the ‘I just happened to be in the neighborhood two fucking hours away from where I live’ excuse she used to use, just says it’s the only way she can see him, and they both pretend it’s a just a visit and not her checking in. The last thing Mike needs is Liam opening the door to one of those surprise visits and his mom never letting him live it down.