My guts squirmed as Alexio’s voice erupted in my head, calling me a good boy, and I had to breathe through it. “Um…anyway. So. Your parents met in England?”
“Ah, yes.” He began to unbag everything, and it sounded like he was pulling all the ingredients out of plastic containers, which made sense considering I knew curry took longer than a single evening to throw together. “They live there for a little while, then move to Moscow, then St. Petersburg, where I was born. My ammi died after I turn one.”
“Oh god, Vanny. I’m sorry.”
“No, no. Is okay. My grandparents help take care of me while my dad working. Very good people—teach me all about her so I never forget.” He let out a small sigh. “My dad get remarried to very nice woman and have six more kids. Growing up was…” He stopped again like he was searching for the word. “A lot of…noise. Sound?”
“Chaos?” I tried.
He smacked the counter, making me jump. “Yes! Chaos. Very chaos. But I love my brothers and one little sister. They come to visit here when they can. My dad getting a job in London last year, so they all living there, going to English school, having lots of fish and chips.”
I burst into laughter. “Sounds nice.”
“Mm. Maybe you meet them. They try to come if we make playoffs.”
He poured something into a saucepan, and the aroma was as intense as when Alexio had been cooking. My mouth watered. God, I was being so spoiled right now.
“Do you miss St. Petersburg?”
He hummed in thought. “Mm…not so much, no. I live there most of my life. My parents take a lot of…” He trailed off with a hum. “I forget the word in English. A lot of…of shit? People saying a lot of shit about them. About my mother before she died, because she not Russian, you know? Have very different culture.”
I bowed my head. “Yeah. That sucks.”
“I come here for hockey, and people saying a lot of shit about me here too. But I don’t care. I like it here. I also have house in Canada. In Montreal. You know Gaggie? Gagnon. Rene,” he added rapid-fire.
My brows furrowed, and I shook my head.
“Backup goalie. Good friend. Good guy. He’s free agent next year and maybe sign with a new team so he can play. But he’s teaching me French. Maybe I move there when season is over instead of go back to Russia. I like Canadians. Like you, Jonah. So small, so cute.”
“Fuck off,” I said with a grin.
He laughed. “Have cute cat, have party trick eyes. I like them.” The room went quiet apart from a wooden spoon in the pan, and then he asked, “Your brother having the same eyes? Like you?”
“No. My mom took him in to get the surgery. You have to have implants for prosthetics,” I explained. I’d done this a thousand times too, but it felt less heavy with Vanya. He was so genuine. “He went into cardiac arrest when they put him under.”
“Cardiac…is…?”
“Kind of like a heart attack?” I shrugged. I didn’t remember it. I was still a baby. “He had a bad reaction to the drugs, so they decided not to do the eye thing with him.”
“Is okay,” Vanya said, a smile in his voice. “Not needing cool party trick eyes to be good goalie. He’s good guy, yeah?”
It was true, Micah didn’t need eyes to be a good goalie, and he was a good guy. He was just kind of an ass right now, and the moment all the shit in my life died down, I was going to talk to him about it.
“Okay,” Vanya said, clapping his hands. “Now we eat. I teach you real way to eat. No forks!”
In spite of missing Alexio so fiercely I wanted to cry, Vanya was a calming, easy person to be around, and I had no regrets.
Eating with my hands with Vanya was a lot like how I’d learned how to feed myself when I was a toddler. My mom didn’t bother teaching us about utensils until we’d mastered getting food from the plate and into our mouths instead of all over the table and floor.
So it was a small trip down memory lane, except Vanya wasn’t recording it and doing commentary about how blind toddlers fed themselves. It was a lot more relaxing, and once again, the food was delicious enough to spark my hunger.
We ate at the kitchen table, and after, Vanya wanted to play with Athena, so we moved to the living room so he could throw her jingly ball around for her to chase.
It was nice. It was soothing in a way I wasn’t expecting it to be.
“When was Alexio here?” Vanya asked once Athena had settled down.
My whole body jolted. “Uh…what?”
