“Put me down,” I say, smacking his shoulder.
“My brother. My brother got drafted.” He’s carrying on as if he was the one that got drafted, but I can’t help the smile attached to my face.
“You’ve announced it to everyone. You even told the neighbors.”
“They needed to know. It’s important civic information.”
“Tomáš.”
“In America.” He shakes his head. “You believe this?”
“I keep saying it and it keeps surprising me.”
He puts me down but keeps his hands on my shoulders. He looks at me the way he does when he’s being serious, which is rare and too much when it happens.
“Dad would have…” He stops. Swallows. “He would have loved this.”
“I know.”
He nods once, squeezes my shoulders, then lets go. Then Šíma is in front of me, pressing a fresh beer into my hand.
“Hájek. They actually draft hockey players?”
“There’s a whole league, Šíma.”
“The one on ice? With the sticks?”
“With the sticks.” He knows this. We go through this every time I see him, and he says it like it’s the first time he’s making this statement.
“And you can do, what…One pull-up?”
“He can only do one pull-up,” Tomáš says from behind me, as if he’s been waiting for this moment.
“One is enough.”
“Going to America on one pull-up.” Šíma shakes his head, grinning. He clinks his bottle against mine. “The ice will be very impressed.”
“I’ll tell the ice. It’s been waiting.”
The next hour is noise and light. People keep finding me, grabbing my shoulders, saying the word back to me like a gift they’re returning. Drafted. I hear it from people I haven’t spoken to since primary school. I hear it from neighbors. I hear it from Tomáš‘s football friends, who don’t know what a second round means but know it means something, and that’s enough.
Damián goes to the kitchen for another beer, and I follow. The kitchen is quieter with the door half-shut behind us.
He pulls a beer from the refrigerator and offers me one. I grab it and take a quick sip. He leans back against the counter and watches me.
“Are you nervous?”
“Yes,” I say, because it’s true and because I don’t know how to not tell him the truth.
“Good. The nervous ones last. The ones who walk in like they already own it burn out in two years.”
“Were you nervous? Going to Germany?”
“Terrified.” He says it simply, like it costs nothing now. “First week, I couldn’t eat. The food was wrong, the language was wrong. Everything was louder and faster and I kept thinking they’d made a mistake.”
“But they hadn’t.”
“No. I guess they hadn’t.”
