by Sophia Henry
Maybe that was a candid description of the city itself: a once-blazing fire that had long ago burned out. I hoped to see the day that the majority of the city was revitalized, not just certain downtown areas. But change has to start somewhere, and I appreciated the people using their own funds to revive my home.
“Are you with the hippie guy from the bar?” Aleksandr asked, breaking the silence and my train of thought.
“Um, no.” I tore my eyes away from the unmanaged weeds growing up from the jagged sidewalks that went on for miles.
“You and your friends sat at that table right up front near him.” His eyes found mine as if gauging my reaction. “Why did you talk to him so long?”
“He wants me to sing in his band.” A laugh escaped as I studied my French-manicured fingernails. “Which is ridiculous.”
“You have a great voice. You should do it.”
I ignored his compliment and unsolicited advice. “I’m not seeing anyone right now. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Just checking out the competition.”
“You have no competition because you aren’t in the running. We have to work together. We can’t be involved. Simple as that.”
It was true, but it wasn’t my only reason for rejecting him.
“Nothing is ever simple, Auden.”
Judging by the I-just-scored gleam in Aleksandr’s eyes, he thought he’d won the argument. Part of me expected to see the familiar flashes of red across his face from the light behind the goal at Robinson Arena that blinks and spins after someone scores in a hockey game.
Aleksandr didn’t realize who he was hitting on, because no matter how attracted we were to each other, I’d never give him a chance. An entirely different flashing red light ran through my mind when I looked at him. The kind that’s accompanied by a deafening buzz alerting people to evacuate in an emergency. And the way my stomach bubbled with excitement every time I was around him was reason enough for my emotions to make an emergency evacuation. Having been abandoned by both parents before age seven, the last person I needed to get involved with was a professional athlete whose job required him to leave.
Sad, but simple.
Chapter 4
I’ve had crushes on guys before. I obsessed over my best friend, Drew Bertucci, throughout high school. Since he was the first boy to pay me any attention, my warped mind assumed he liked me as well. When Drew made it clear that I was more like a sister to him, it crushed me (pun intended).
After my first real-life crush didn’t work out, I resumed my infatuation with fictional characters and unattainable men. It was easier knowing that I had zero chance from day one.
That’s how I was brushing off the tingles coursing under my skin that Aleksandr Varenkov had caused. A little crush. A silly infatuation with an untouchable man.
The only problem was that this wasn’t an untouchable man on a TV screen or over the radio waves. This was a man with whom I had to interact almost every day. A man who’d just flicked the puck into the opposing team’s goal and was being mobbed by his teammates against the glass in front of me. A man who, as he broke free from the group, pounded on the glass, pointed his thick glove at me, and flashed me a radiant, though semi-toothless, smile.
Aleksandr was an untouchable man I wanted to touch so badly.
I was convinced that Evgeny Orlenko could see my shaking hands and hear my racing heart, so I straightened in my seat and watched Aleksandr skate to the bench as I would any other player on the ice. Though I tried to keep an aloof appearance, I knew the flush of color spreading across my pale cheeks gave me away.
Call it paranoia, but every time Orlenko looked my way I squirmed in my seat, feeling scrutinized by his judging eyes. Of course I paid close attention to Aleksandr. As his translator, I had to be ready for the question-and-answer session with the media afterward. Technically, the job required me to translate Aleksandr’s words, and that’s it. But I was going the extra mile, digging into this assignment to get it right. At least that’s how I justified keeping my eyes on him.
Who wouldn’t want to watch Aleksandr Varenkov’s deft body sail across the ice and label it “research”?
“Do you go to all of Aleksandr’s games?” I asked Orlenko, diverting my eyes from Aleksandr’s limber leg stretching to climb over the boards.
“No. I need to talk to him about some community projects after he showers. Then I’m back on the road. I have a client in Vancouver to touch base with.” He patted his chest a few times before pulling his cell phone out of the inside pocket of his navy blue suit jacket.
Come on, Orlenko, don’t talk about him showering, I thought. As a lifelong hockey-player appreciator, my brief encounters with a semi-dressed Aleksandr already had my below-the-belly-button areas buzzing like bees on speed. Thinking about him showering could push me over the edge. Or into his arms.
I glanced at Aleksandr, who was sitting on the bench talking to the guy on his left. His shoulders rose and fell and sweat trickled down his nose. He leaned over and banged his gloved hand against the boards. Just watching him made my breathing increase and my stomach tighten.
I was in way over my head, if watching him sit on a bench and breathe made my heart rate soar.
Out of all the types of Russian men that Grandpa could have assigned me to, why did it have to be a hockey player? Must remember to keep the emphasis on the player part.
Despite my prayers to no one in particular, time flew by so fast that it felt like someone was tapping my personal hourglass. When the scoreboard clock glowed with orange zeros, the Pilots had won 5–2. Aleksandr had scored two more goals in the game, acknowledging me after each. I’d wanted to crawl under the stiff blue stadium seat and blow him kisses at the same time.
—
After the game, I headed down to the locker room, happy to have Orlenko there for moral support. Aleksandr wouldn’t flirt relentlessly if his agent was there.
When we reached Aleksandr, my knees almost buckled. He’d stripped off his jersey, pads, and the blue shirt he wore underneath all that. He’d also removed his hockey pants, socks and skates, and the pads from the lower half of his body. He sat at his locker in nothing but sweat-soaked, black compression shorts clinging to his thick thighs.
Was he trying to get a rise out of me? Gauging how much sex-charged flirtation I could take? When I stopped in front of him and caught his eyes, however, I saw exhaustion.
It wasn’t about me. He’d just finished a game. I had to stop the obsessive thoughts and do the job I was here to do: Translate for a hot Russian hockey god.
“Zhenya. Auden.” He nodded at each of us before wiping his face with a thin, white towel.
“Great game, Sasha. I need to talk to you about community service before I leave for the airport. I’ll check back in an hour.” Orlenko stopped to shake hands with the guy standing at the locker to Aleksandr’s right, whom I recognized as Landon Taylor, one of the Pilots defensemen, before leaving the locker room.
“You ready for this?” Aleksandr asked, nodding his head toward the reporters flooding the locker room.
“Yep.” I threw my shoulders back and took my place next to him.
When six reporters fired off questions at once, my eyes darted from face to face, unsure of whose question I should translate first. Aleksandr nudged my arm, then pointed to a short, stocky white-haired man with circular wire-framed glasses. I exhaled a breath of relief, thankful that my client was in a helpful, rather than a snarky, mood.
“You had three goals tonight. Did you feel like you had to take control to make something happen out there?”
I translated and waited for Aleksandr to respond.
“Those glasses should have gone to the grave with that guy from the Beatles,” he said in Russian, biceps flexing as he squeezed both ends of the towel hanging around his neck.
With my gaze locked on his arms, I started translating his words without thinking, then suddenly stopped, stunned into silence when I p
rocessed what he’d said.
How could he do that to me?
I pressed my lips together, racking my brain for something generic and cliché; aka, PR acceptable.
“Everyone is doing what they can to help the team win. You want to do well because you want the team to do well,” I said, recovering well. Very well.
Aleksandr moved a hand to his mouth and coughed into his fist. The bastard was hiding a laugh.
I wanted to kick him. In the junk.
Instead, I pointed to the next reporter myself, trying to establish some sort of control. I could identify people only by their heads, since I couldn’t see their bodies in the crowd. This guy had a brown comb-over and floppy ears. I focused on the question, preparing myself in case my jackass client didn’t know when to stop his little game.
“You seemed a bit frustrated with Penner’s goal in the second. Looked like you wanted the ref to make a call.”
“You have the nicest ass I have ever seen in my life,” Aleksandr responded to my translated question, his gaze on a body part much lower than my eyes.
I glared at him before responding to the reporter. “It was a nice goal. The ref was right there. If there was a call, he would’ve made it.”
I’d never been so relieved I’d paid attention to a hockey game and was well-versed in the sport.
An older blonde woman with way too many buttons undone on her blouse to be interviewing in a locker room full of men raised her hand, and I pointed to her.
“How did you feel about having Gribov switched to your line?” she asked.
Instead of translating, I said, “Answer the fucking question or I will kick you in the balls. Then you’ll have no way to fuck her or anyone else tonight.”
When I looked up, I caught his Russian line mate, Pavel Gribov, watching me. The scowl and shake of his sweaty head gave me all the validation I needed. But I’m sure he was in on these stupid shenanigans, so I ignored him.
Aleksandr chuckled. “We have a lot of chemistry. We played together in Russia, so it was just about getting that groove back. We get along great and have confidence in each other.”
I translated word for word.
The questions went on for another twenty minutes. Aleksandr didn’t pull another translation trick on me.
After the reporters had moved on to another player, he stood up, pulled the towel from around his neck, and threw it into a bin on his way toward the showers.
“Excuse me!” I called out in Russian. He wasn’t getting away that easily. I wouldn’t start this assignment letting him believe I was a pushover.
Aleksandr turned around and took a step toward me. Despite my anger, it took every ounce of willpower to not be derailed by his godly physique. Instead, I used the fact that I could never have that body to fuel my anger.
“That was ridiculous.” I took a step toward him, narrowing the space between our bodies to a few inches, and rose to my tippy-toes. He had me by almost a foot, but my extra height gave me a feeling of power.
“I was just giving you a hard time. It was a joke.” He rolled his eyes, which incensed me.
“Don’t you realize that I can make you look like a total ass? I could’ve told all those reporters that you felt you had to take control because this team couldn’t win in a beer league without you.”
“That would’ve been shitty.”
“What you just did to me was shitty. And it was sexual harassment. I know that you don’t care because you’re Mr.”—I had no clue how to say douche bag in Russian, so I switched to English—“Douche bag. King of all Douches.” Back to Russian. “You can’t treat me like that.” I jabbed his chest with my index finger. “You might be better off declining interviews until you have enough English skills to get by. I’m not sure I want this job anymore.”
The locker room, which had been buzzing when we’d started our conversation, was silent. Not because everyone had cleared out, either. On the contrary, more players had returned to listen to us go at it. I almost felt bad about calling Aleksandr out in front of his teammates, but we’d been arguing in Russian, so most of them had no idea what we’d been saying.
Aleksandr circled his hand around my wrist and lowered my arm to my side.
“See this?” He dropped my hand to grab a chunk of hair from the top of his head. “My first day here the veteran guys got me with clippers. Shaved off hair on both sides. It was a joke. A prank. Hockey players do that to rookies. I got this haircut to prove I can roll with it. You’re gonna quit over a stupid joke?” He shook his head, letting out a faint chuckle. “Go ahead.”
Aleksandr turned around and stomped to the showers like an oversized toddler.
I swung my messenger bag over my shoulder and stalked toward the locker-room door. Absolutely humiliated.
“Hey.” Landon, one of Aleksandr’s teammates, touched my arm to stop my beeline. “You okay?”
I nodded, but a ridiculous, revealing tear escaped. I let it roll rather than draw any more attention to myself by wiping my cheek.
“Dude can be a jerk at first, but he’s not a bad guy.”
I nodded. “Tell the jerk I’ll see him on Thursday after the game.”
—
After dinner the next night, I followed Gram upstairs to her bedroom, sprawling across her floral quilt while she flicked on the television.
“Why am I such a loser?” I asked, staring at the white tiles covering the ceiling of her attic room.
“What happened?” she asked, though her eyes didn’t leave the screen. She was used to my emotional melodrama.
“Aleksandr humiliated me on my first day. He played this stupid prank where he said nonsensical things in Russian and made me figure out answers on the fly. I’m not a professional hockey translator. I didn’t know what to say.”
“Did you come up with something?”
“Well, yeah. I didn’t want to be the idiot he was trying to make me out to be. So, of course I confronted him, because that was super shitty.” I paused to see if she had caught my curse.
Gram stopped flipping through the channels. “You’re twenty years old, I know you swear.”
“I blew up and he blew up. I don’t think he’s ever going to speak to me again.”
I kept staring at the ceiling as if it held hidden answers.
“Sounds like you’re making a mountain out of a molehill, Auden. He did something jerky. You told him you didn’t like it. Move on.”
Move on. Move on? Where was the protective I’m-going-to-sic-your-grandfather-on-that-jackass talk I wanted to hear right now?
“Do you think I can tell Mr. Orlenko I’m sick for Thursday’s game? Grandpa can handle it, right?” I asked, completely aware that Grandpa would never do it. I threw in a fake cough and rubbed my throat. “I think I feel a sore throat coming on.”
“Gargle with warm salt water and get into bed.” Gram continued zipping through channels, not even fazed. Evidently raising three kids before getting stuck with me had made her heartless.
“You know, Gram, it’s okay to allow me to skip work one time in my life to avoid extreme embarrassment.” I rolled onto my side and rested my head on the back of my hand.
“You know, Auden,” Gram mocked me, “it’s better to face your problems head-on. Avoiding the situation just causes more anxiety. I’ll bet you’re worrying about nothing.”
Like I had a choice. She was the one who passed on the anxiety trait. She worried about everything.
—
I didn’t attend the game on Thursday night. Instead, I listened to the radio broadcast in my car until there were only a few minutes left in the third period before I scrambled out of my car to enter the arena. I’d studied generic interview answers so I’d be prepared for anything the reporters asked, in case Aleksandr pulled another stupid translating prank.
Once inside the arena, I made the familiar trek to the dungeon, walking slowly so I arrived at the same time as the media. Making small talk with Aleksandr wasn’t high on
my list. Maybe my grandma was right. Maybe I should let it go. Maybe I was making too big of a deal. I just couldn’t believe he would embarrass me on my first night translating. I knew he was a cocky jerk, but hadn’t realized he was evil.
Peering through the crowd of bodies in front of the lockers, I noticed Aleksandr and Landon laughing with the beat writer from the Detroit Times. I slid my fingers through my meticulous, straightened hair, then smoothed the front of my black sheath dress. Though the sleek dress hugged the curves of my hips and backside, it was professional. I’d even thrown a hot pink cardigan over it because it was sleeveless. The bold color gave me the burst of confidence I needed before facing whatever Aleksandr had in store for me tonight.
Landon must’ve spotted me first because he swatted Aleksandr’s shoulder and nodded my way. Aleksandr followed Landon’s prompt. Though his smile vanished, his eyes widened and his mouth fell open. He shifted in his seat as I approached.
Excusing myself as I slid past the group of reporters, I set my messenger bag on the floor and stood next to Aleksandr’s locker, suddenly self-conscious of the view I’d just given him after the comment about my rear end he’d made the other night.
Get over it and get home.
The media session went smoothly, with Aleksandr answering every question, and even joking around with the reporters. When we finished, I snatched my bag off the floor and followed the mob of reporters toward the doors.