Page 106 of Crease Collision

Ozzy’s eyes go distant, seeing something I can’t. “Gunnar was my best friend. We grew up together, two houses apart on the same street. As soon as we could walk, we were on skates. Played hockey, got in trouble sometimes. We did everything together.” He lets out a sad laugh. “It was the kind of friendship you think only happens in books. We loved each other like brothers. We were brothers, just not by blood.”

“He must have been an amazing guy.” The words are so lame I wish I could take them back.

“We made a plan to come to America and play in the HFNA. It was a big dream, but we were convinced we could do it.” He looks at me, the pain in his eyes hard to see. “Now I am here, and he is not.”

My chest aches as I reach for his hand. “What happened? If you don’t mind talking about it.”

He takes a shaky breath, and his voice is rougher when he says, “It started with headaches. He didn’t feel well, wasn’t himself. One day at practice, he had a seizure. The doctors found a brain tumor.”

“Fuck, Ozzy.”

“They did surgery, chemo, all of it. For a while, he got better. We started having fun again. He was serious about this girl, Sofia, and they moved in together. We all thought he’d beaten it.”

“Shit,” I whisper, knowing what’s coming and not wanting to hear it.

“The tumor came back, and it was much worse. The treatments did not work. He was gone in only a couple of months. It’s been two years now, and I still catch myself thinking I should text him. Tell him something funny that’s happened.” Ozzy looks into my eyes. “Tell him about you.”

I would have been worth that?

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I wish there was something I could do.”

But I can’t, so I sit here holding his hand and wishing he hadn’t had to go through such an awful thing.

“I’m still sad about Gunnar, but what would it say about our friendship if I wasn’t? Life goes on.”

“It hurts to lose someone, though.”

He lets my hand go and stares out the window again. “Sadness is not limited to having people die. There are other kinds of losses. The romantic kind.”

A shiver runs through me. I’m barely breathing, afraid to move.

“There was someone,” he says. “Before I came here. Her name was Astrid.”

A woman?

He watches my face. “I’ve been attracted to men and women.”

My mind stumbles, not because him being bi matters, but because it never crossed my mind. “Okay,” I say. “Doesn’t make any difference to me. Want to tell me about her?”

“We were close. Not in love, but she was a wonderful girl. We had a lot in common and started talking about the future. Not ‘let’s get married,’ but more like, ‘What will happen if we make this work?’”

“That sounds good.” I mean it. Dreams of the future are…

Dreams? This is where I…

“Things were going well,” he says. “We saw each other when I wasn’t on the road, kept in touch when I was gone. Had a lot of fun.”

“What happened?”

“One night, she wanted to talk about us. When I told her we seemed great together, she said I had to rethink playing hockey.”

“Wait, what?”

“She couldn’t deal with it. Said I was gone too much, and hockey took the focus off our relationship.”

“God.” Hearing this is making me queasy. “What did she want you to do?”

“If we were going to have a future, she wanted a normal life. A husband who went to an office in the morning and came home every night. It was either that or she couldn’t go on.”