Five more months. We could do this for five more months, right?
25
NILS
The game footage flickered on my laptop screen, but I wasn’t watching the plays anymore. I was watching him.
Adan, flying down the ice with that combination of speed and grace that was pure poetry in motion. Adan, celebrating with his teammates after another perfect shot. Adan, glancing toward the bench where I stood, that split-second connection we allowed ourselves before looking away.
Four months since we’d agreed to be friends. Four months and a week since that night in the cabin, where everything had gone to hell. Four long, torturous months that seemed to last like a lifetime. And yet somehow, impossibly, I loved him more now than I had then.
The rational part of my brain had expected the feelings to fade with distance. That forced separation would act like a cold shower on an inappropriate attraction. Instead, watching Adan from afar, seeing him grow and succeed without being able to touch him, had crystallized my feelings into something permanent and undeniable.
I closed the laptop and walked to my window, staring out at the March snow still clinging to Buffalo’s streets. Tomorrow, we’d play Syracuse for the conference championship. Win, and we’d advance to the title game. Win that, and it was on to the Frozen Four. Everything the team had worked for within reach.
My phone buzzed with a text.
Floris
How are you holding up?
I’d been getting variations of that question from all three of my friends for months now. They knew about Adan, knew about our forced distance, knew I was slowly going insane from want.
Me
I’m fine.
Floris
Liar. When do you see him next?
Me
Two hours. Practice.
Floris
And when do you get to actually BE with him?
Me
Three more months.
Floris
You’re both idiots.
Maybe we were. But we were idiots who were protecting Adan’s future, and that made it worth it.
The past months had been filled with moments that nearly broke my resolve. Valentine’s Day had been particularly brutal. Adan had shown up to practice with a box of chocolates “for the team,” making a big show of distributing them in the locker room. But there’d been one left on my desk when I’d returned to the coaches’ office: a single piece of dark chocolate with a note that just said:
Still counting days. – A
I’d eaten it alone in my office and then sat there for twenty minutes trying to compose myself.
Then there was the away game in Detroit where Adan had gotten food poisoning. He’d been violently ill on the bus, and I’d had to physically restrain myself from going to him. Tank had handled it, held his head while he was sick, but every instinct in me had screamed to comfort him myself. Instead, I’d sat three rows away, hands clenched, listening to him suffer.
The worst moment had come during a film review session. We’d been alone in the video room, going over power play formations, when he’d leaned close to point something out on the screen. For a moment, I’d felt his breath on my neck, smelled that familiar combination of his shampoo and something uniquely him.
