I sat on the bench, re-taping my stick, listening more than talking. It felt… normal.
“Hey, Jari,” Noah said, nudging my knee with his stick, late back to the room as usual, always the last off the ice with Cap. “What is jo-loo-turtle?”
“Huh?” I blinked up at him.
“On the sign-up shit for the Christmas thing at ours.”
“Joulutorttu,” I corrected him. “Puff pastry, folded into stars. You bake them and dust them with sugar. Proper ones. We’ve made them four times now, just to get them right.” I swallowed.We?Shit.
“‘We’?” Noah chuckled. “Does that mean you're bringing a plus-one?”
“I meant Google and me,” I blustered, and Noah stared down at me as if he’d clocked something I hadn’t meant to show. “I've never baked anything from Finland before.”
Mules leaned across from his stall, eyebrows waggling. “So, it's a no on the plus-one then, because Susie has this cousin and?—”
“I don’t need a plus-one,” I said, too quickly.
Becks snorted. “Yeah, yeah. Sure, you don’t.”
Mules grinned. “That’s what everyone says right before they show up with someone hot.”
I snorted. “Define ‘hot’,” I said. “Because if you’re talking about yourself, we have very different standards.”
“Hey,” Mules protested, clutching his chest in fake horror. “Rude.”
Becks laughed. “He’s got you there, buddy.”
For the first time in my career, I didn’t feel like I was standing on the outside of everything. I leaned back in my stall and watched them. My team. Not just in the PR sense. Not just in the “say the right thing to the media” way. I felt settled, and I certainly wasn’t bracing for impact.
The confidential conversation with Noah’s agent, Mike Wells, kept replaying in my head.
He’d said moving on from my current agent, connected way too much to Aarni, would be easy. Like untying myself from an agent I’d been with for years was the same as switching sticks. He’d laughed when I told him I wasn’t sure it was possible and that my dad had too much sway.
“Anything’s possible if you want it enough, Jari,” he’d said with so much confidence.
He’d been direct. Calm. No hard sell. Just facts. He’d talked numbers, leverage, and timing. Said he’d followed my stats for years. Said Noah spoke highly of me. That I was under-marketed. Under-protected.
“I want you,” he’d added at the end.
No one had ever put it that way before. Not about my career. Not without strings.
I’d almost said it then.
Almost told him I was gay.
The word had sat right there, and I was automatically calculating sponsor fallout, locker-room issues, headlines… the wrong kind of attention. I’d told myself it wasn’t relevant. That we were discussing contracts, not my personal life.
But it felt relevant.
Because listening to Mike about untying myself from one version of my career made me feel as if I should untie everything.
I hadn’t said it.
I’d swallowed it down and kept the conversation professional. Safe.
Across the room, Noah threw a roll of tape at me and told me to stop looking like I was writing poetry in my head.
I flipped him off automatically, and the guys laughed.
