Seattle
April 2017
Cole Avery was not a superstitious man.
Still, every hockey player had their own rituals for game day, the gestures and routines that, if followed, would hopefully ensure victory. Cole’s had always been simple: tape his sticks so that the grain ran a certain way, and pause in the doorway of the locker room on his way out, to bow his head and give thanks to the universe or the hockey gods or whatever, if anything, was out there listening before each game.
Only now, things had changed, and Cole could not go out on the ice until he heard Valeri’s voice.
“Fuck,” he muttered, hanging up after his third unsuccessful call attempt, Valeri’s phone sending him straight to voicemail. The last time they had spoken, several hours ago now, Valeri had been about to board a plane. Cole didn’t remember where to—some exhibition skate, he assumed—but his flight should have landed by now.
He tapped Valeri’s name one more time, frowning as he listened to the voicemail message a fourth time.
“Avery!” one of the coaching staff snapped. “You plan on just standing there all night?”
“No, sir,” Cole said, throwing the phone into his cubby and grabbing his helmet. He paused briefly under the arch of the door, but it was only a moment before he shook his head and kept walking.
What if something had happened? Cole banned himself from social media on game days, but surely if there had been some disaster like an international flight going down somewhere over western Europe, someone would have told him. Right?
Shit, he thought to himself, his mind conjuring up increasingly more gruesome images of twisted metal heaps and thick black smoke. Shit shit fuck—
“Privet, Kolya.”
Cole froze. Standing in front of him, leaned casually against the concrete block wall, his lithe body clad in all black and looking beautiful and whole and alive was—
“Val,” he said, and if every ounce of relief he was feeling poured out of him in that one word, and it broke a little passing his lips, well, no one had to know but him and Valeri.
Valeri pushed away from the wall, swaying on his feet like he wanted to throw himself into Cole’s arms, and had they been alone, he might have. But there were other people in the hall with them—coaching staff, Cole’s teammates, a couple of journalists from the local sports rag—and he caught himself. Not that their relationship wasn’t a somewhat open secret here in the States, but they were usually careful not to flaunt it all the same.
“I did not mean to worry you,” Valeri said as he drew closer. “I only wanted to wish you luck in person.”
Cole wished he wasn’t wearing all his gear, so he could pull Valeri into his arms and crush that familiar body to his; instead, he could only settle for a glove on Valeri’s shoulder, practically dwarfing his bony frame.
“I’m so fucking happy you’re here,” he said, and he carried Valeri’s answering smile with him out onto the ice.
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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash