Maybe he hadn’t realized that at the time either. I wondered if he knew he was doing it again.
I decided to give them a moment and slipped into the bathroom, getting ready for a shower while they bonded.
CHAPTER 34
EVAN
After our day off,and we’d said goodbye to our visiting friends, life hit fast forward. The two months we’d had to prepare for Milano Cortina evaporated.
The whole time, Perry was the one keeping things together, keeping everyone on point, making sure we ate regularly, slept as much as we should, showered, and talked to each other about things not related to curling. He did all the things I was used to him doing while Alan kept our game on track.
We were following them down a hallway towards our first Olympic game when Robbie leaned close and whispered, “Ever feel like you’re just floating along in their wake?”
I grinned. “Hell yes.”
“I’m still trying to get my head around the fact I’ve been out and proud my whole life and the first parade I’ve ever been in was the Opening Ceremonies for the fucking Olympics.”
“Right?”
“You guys ready?” Alan asked.
“As I’ll ever be.” I smiled at him and he quickly dropped a kiss on my lips before we were in sight of the crowds and cameras.
I don’t want to say we glided through the round robin, because the stress was just short of debilitating, and playing two games a day, gruelling.
We did end up in the semi-finals in top spot, playing Finland. We had played them in the round robin, but it had been our first game and I had been so nervous and stressed out I barely remembered it, never mind any of their names.
Two of their members looked to be in their forties, while the other two were closer to my, Perry’s, and Robbie’s age, in their early to mid-twenties. They were all, except their Skip, friendly and talkative, now that the initial nerves had calmed some for all of us.
As we waited outside the rink to be told to go in, there was an excited, nervous, but friendly vibe, which made me think it would be a good game.
I gave a thumbs up to one of their players, who grinned wide and returned the gesture. I’d never communicated through charades more in my life. Thank goodness for Carol, who could sort of speak to some of them in French, though his French and theirs wasn’t exactly the same language.
We were standing, both teams at one end of the rink, waiting to be introduced and for the game to start when one of the younger members started babbling at us in enthusiastic Finnish.
“We need Mikko,” I said to Robbie.
He nodded. “He actually taught me a phrase.” He turned to the younger man and said, “Kirjoita se muistiin. Näytän ystävälleni. Hän osaa kääntää.”
Which was when we discovered one of them could speak English, because he laughed and said, “Your accent is very bad.”
Robbie also laughed. “That’s what Mikko says too. That was the only thing I know how to say. I hope he taught me to tell someone to write it down so he could translate.”
The man nodded. “More or less. I’m Matti. Vice-skip.” He held out a hand. “Very good to meet you.”
“And you.” We both shook his hand and he proceeded to introduce everyone.
“This is Juhani. He’s our First.” He clapped a hand on the friendly young man’s shoulder. “And our Skip is Onni. He is very quiet.”
I nodded. “We have a friend who is Finnish. Our team manager. He mostly only talks to Robbie.” I pointed at Robbie who waved and nodded.
Matti waved back. “I looked you all up. Mikko Kivimaki. He has relatives in a small town about fifty kilometres from the city where I grew up.”
“That’s wild.”
“It happens more than you expect. Finnish families used to be very large, and names easy to track. His people probably already know they are his people.”
It was uncomfortably disconcerting how often that happened. People we hadn’t spoken to in years, and in some cases, never spoken to, came out of the woodwork to associate themselves with us because of our higher-than-normal profile. Being out gay athletes in the Olympics somehow made us noteworthy. Even Andre was suddenly happy to be part of our backstory, which to me was just creepy AF and it pissed Perry off.
