Page 46 of Filthy Goalie
And that was going to change everything.
I went back to my stick-handling drills at 11:47 p.m. I executed the same patterns over and over. Cross-ice. Recovery. Stop turn. Stop turn. Stop turn. The repetition was meditative. The repetition was the only way to not think about the fact that every moment I spent moving my feet on the ice was a moment I was not spending figuring out how to tell her. The repetition was a kind of prayer. A kind of penance. A kind of way to mark time while waiting for the moment when the secret became public and I had to face what I had done.
I did not stop until 1:33 a.m.
I did not go home. I could not. If I went home, I would have to lie in bed next to her and pretend that everything was fine. I could not do that. I was not a man who was good at pretending.
I sat in the empty rink on the bench in the dark and I counted the days left before she knew and the seconds between that moment and the moment when she would understand that I had known and had not told her. I understood that I was building a timer inside my own chest. I understood that I was measuring the time between now and disaster. Counting: one day. Two days. Three. Seven. Fourteen. Counting until there were no days left.
The rink was so quiet. The hum of the refrigeration system was the only sound. It was the sound of preservation. The sound of something being kept cold and intact even though the world around it was warm and falling apart. The sound of machines doing what they were made to do. The sound of systems working. The sound of nothing changing.
I sat and I waited for the sun to come up. It did not come up for six more hours. I counted all of them. I counted in heartbeats and breaths and the spaces between thoughts. I counted the way I had learned to count at nineteen, when counting was the onlything that stood between me and falling apart. When counting was the way you measured time as it passed, one moment at a time, one breath at a time, until enough moments had passed that the sharp edge of grief had worn smooth.
When the sun finally came up—cold and gray and weak, the way Minnesota sun came up in February—I got up and I turned off the rink lights and I locked the rink up and I drove back to the apartment above Maple’s garage. I parked in the driveway. I went upstairs.
Maple was still asleep. She was wearing one of my shirts. Her hair was down. She looked younger when she slept, less like she was carrying the weight of the world and more like she was just a woman who had decided that resting for a few hours was a reasonable thing to do. The light coming through the window was gray. It made her skin look pale. It made her look fragile.
I did not wake her.
I sat on the edge of the bed and I watched her sleep and I counted the time they had left before the secret became a problem instead of a solution. I counted until she woke up. I counted until I could tell her. I counted until I had no other choice. I sat there for an hour, just watching, just counting, just understanding that some moments in your life were going to change the trajectory of everything that came after, and this was one of them.
12
MAPLE
Mira came into the diner at 9:47 a.m. with the particular look of a woman who had been holding something in for long enough that it had started to make noise inside her chest. It was Thursday. The diner was mid-morning busy—not breakfast rush, not lunch rush, but the in-between time when people came in for coffee and conversation and a piece of pie that they probably did not need but had decided they deserved anyway. Two booths had customers. The counter had three regulars reading newspapers, being quiet, existing in the particular way that morning people exist. The bell above the door chimed when Mira pushed it open.
I was behind the counter refilling coffee cups when Mira walked in without ordering anything. She just sat at the counter next to one of the regulars. She put her purse on the stool next to her. She was not here for the food. She was here for a conversation. I could read it in the set of her shoulders. I could read it in the way she did not smile. I could read it in the particular energy that she brought in with her, the energy ofsomeone who was about to push you toward something whether you wanted to go or not.
I said, “What’s wrong.”
She said, “You’re wearing his flannel.”
I looked down. I was wearing a shirt that did not belong to me, a men’s flannel in forest green that smelled like Knox’s laundry detergent and the cold air of his apartment and specifically like him. The tag said medium, which was funny because he was anything but medium. The sleeves were long on me. The body was loose. I had not thought about it this morning when I grabbed it from the back of my chair. I had just grabbed it because it was comfortable and it was warm and it smelled like the one thing in my life that was making sense. The thing that was making me not-cold. The thing that was making me not-alone. The thing that was maybe making me happy, which was terrifying because happy things could go away.
I said, “It’s cold.”
Mira said, “You’re sleeping with him.”
I said, “Define sleeping.”
She said, “Maple.”
I said, “Fine. Yes. I’m sleeping with him. Yes. We’ve been sleeping together for—I don’t know, a week and a half. More. Since the storm. It’s complicated.”
Mira sat back on the stool. She ordered a coffee. She waited until I had poured it before she continued. The regular next to her moved to a booth, giving us the space for whatever was about to happen. This was the thing about Mira. She understood that some conversations needed private space. She understood that some moments were too big for an audience.
She said, “How complicated.”
“He’s the goalie coach. He’s living in my apartment. He’s… I don’t know. He’s smart and he’s quiet and he has not asked me for anything except to keep showing up. He brought me agenerator during the blizzard and he fixed my bike—not my bike, Theo Jr.’s bike—and he sits at my counter and he eats pie and he doesn’t look at me like I’m falling apart, he just looks at me like I’m happening. Like I’m the thing that is happening in his life right now. And I think I might be falling in love with him, which is insane because I’ve known him for three weeks, and I cannot afford to fall in love with someone who is probably going to leave, and?—”
“Maple.”
“Yes?”
“He’s not going to leave.”
“You don’t know that. He came here to disappear. He told me that himself. He didn’t come here because he wanted to stay. He came here because it was the least bad option. And eventually the least bad option is going to feel boring or suffocating or both, and he’s going to remember that he came here to be alone and he’s going to figure out that I’m not compatible with alone. He’s going to realize that he made a mistake. He’s going to pack his truck and he’s going to drive somewhere else, somewhere where nobody knows his name or his history or anything about him.”
