“For me, not for anyone else.” She closes her eyes and sighs. “You know everything about me in detail. I know what you want me to know.”
“You know me.” I corrected her a little bit gruffly than I’d intended. “Ask me anything.”
She sits up and turns to face me, “You have played in the league for five years, and fans know you as the guy who swears too much in post-game interviews and bulldozes through anything in front of you. But you have never talked about where it all started. Would you share a little about your childhood in Russia?
I roll my neck, “Yeah. Sure. A little. Just, uh, you know, do not expect some Disney origin story.”
“I just want you raw.”
“I grew up in St. Petersburg. Not the pretty postcard part. The other part, with the cracked concrete and the grocery store that always smelled like pickles and cigarettes. My father drank. A lot. The kind of drinking that turns people into a version of themselves you do not want to meet in the dark.” I tap my chest. “Head here, I can’t talk about ugly when I’m looking at something so beautiful,” she does as asked. “My brother, he is older. Four years. He was the shield. He would pull me into the closet when my father got loud. He would block the doorway. He took more hits than I ever did. He thought that was his job. Protect the stupid little brother who cried too easily.”
“What about your mother?”
Fuck…
“She left. I was eight. That is all I know. One day, she was there. Next, she was not. Adults love silence when it is convenient. That was the first time I realized you can love someone and still walk away from them.”
She hugs me tighter. “How did you cope with that?”
“You do not cope. You grow up fast, or you get swallowed whole. Russia teaches you that pretty early. My brother enlisted in the military when he was old enough. He did not want to. He did it because he thought it would give us a way out.”
“He’s still enlisted.” She states.
“He is, you’re not allowed out when there is a war.”
“How did you get into hockey?” she asks.
“There was this arena near our apartment. I used to walk there after school every day because the alternative was sitting at home listening to silence that felt too loud. I could not afford ice time. So, I cleaned. Swept floors. Scrubbed lockers. Wiped down benches. In exchange, the manager let me skate during the last open session. That ice was the first place in my life that felt calm. No shouting. No fists. No doors slamming. Just cold air and the sound of blades. I fell in love with it the way some people fall in love with people. Completely. Stupidly. With no chance of turning back.”
She looks up at me, “When did you realize you were talented?”
“I did not. Someone else did. A private-school assistant coach spotted me during a public skate. Told me to try out for their scholarship program. I laughed at him. I did not even have gear. He found some. I got the scholarship. I played angry for the first year. Then I played smart the next couple of times, knowing it was the only opportunity I’d ever have.”
She smiles up at me, “And Yale?
“Yeah. That was wild. Scouts came to Moscow to watch somebody else. Some golden boy kid who had been training since he was three. He’d,” I pause. “He called me pauper, and I called him princess. He was my first real friend, Mikhail Volkov. He was pulled from school by his father and sent to another to train him to be an officer. They saw me instead. Sweaty, pissed off, wearing gear held together by tape. They talked to me after the game, asked about school, and my coach showed him my transcript. I thought they were joking when they said Yale. I applied. Got in. Scholarship. My brother basically pushed me out the door, because he knew this was a golden opportunity and the only one I’d get.”
“What was it like coming to the United States?”
“Weird. Loud. Too friendly. Americans ask how you are doing, and they expect an answer. Russians only ask if you are dying. Maybe. I did not understand brunch. I did not understand small talk. I cursed in Russian a lot. I got into two fights in my first month because I didn’t yet know how to let things go. But hockey made sense. And I found another friend, a real one. Faulker and I clicked. He is German, which means he is emotionally unavailable in a different flavor than me. When I got the text that Mikhail died in a training accident. He didn’t push me to talk about my feelings. He just… stayed. It worked. It’s still working.”
“Then you were drafted by the Bears at twenty-one.” She smiles.
“Yeah. That was the first time I let myself believe I could build a life that did not look like the one I came from. People like to say sports save kids. Hockey did not save me. It just gave me somewhere to put the parts of myself that had nowhere else to go.”
“Next, an interviewer would ask, This is more than you have ever shared publicly. Why now?”
I quirk an eyebrow, “Because you asked.”
“Pretend it’s not me.”
“Because people think they know me. They see the interviews where I swear too much or lose my temper or chirp at reporters. They think it is a personality. It is not. It is survival. Habit. Armor. And because someone knocked me on my ass, in a rare moment when she let her armor down and I wanted to, for her. I have not let anyone do that in a long time. And to that degree, not ever.”
“Do you regret any of the past?”
I shake my head. “The past made me. So, no. But I carry the ghosts. You do not outrun childhood. You just get faster on the ice.”
“And what would Mikhail think if he saw you now?”
