You are sixteen. Your mother is dead, and you miss her so much it hurts and you are not allowed to talk about her. You have started to think you might be sick in the way she was sick. You are not allowed to talk about that either.
You do stupid, terrible, dangerous things. The stupid, terrible, dangerous things might ruin your life but that doesn't matter; you can't imagine living to thirty anyway. Most days you can't imagine living to eighteen. You keep doing them.
Then there is hockey. Of the things you have that make you feel alive, hockey is maybe the only one that is not stupid or terrible, and is dangerous only in ways that everyone says is okay. And you are so so good at it and maybe just maybe it will be the thing that gets you out, gives you a chance at something new. And you are so so good at it, the best.
The best even when you don't try.
Hockey is starting to feel boring.
Then your coach shows you a tape of a boy your age, in a different country, who they say is better than you, maybe. Someone you have to beat.
You watch every piece of tape your coaches will find for you.
Then you go to Canada. You are facing this boy on the ice. You watch his team practise from the stands and it is even better than the tapes. You want to play him so badly. You want to win.
And then he introduces himself to you. He shakes your hand and he is so polite and you can't stop staring at his freckles. You have watched so much tape of him and you never knew he had freckles.
When he walks away you can't resist insulting him so he will turn around and look at you again.
Your team beats his and you insult him again in the handshake line just to watch him glare.
Then there is the draft. You beat him there, too. You have got what you wanted; you are getting out. You will be moving alone halfway across the world to a city you know nothing about where you will have to speak every day a language you have only been learning for two years.
When you are too excited and scared to sleep you go to the hotel gym and this boy is there. You sit on the stationary bike next to him and press the speed up higher than him and he presses his speed up higher still and so you do the same until at the end you are both sitting on the floor of the gym together after midnight.
He tells you Boston is a good city to live in.
You give him your water bottle and you can't not watch his mouth as he drinks.
You need to see him again. You see him at another juniors game and he beats you this time so you need to see him again, need to take it back. You are both booked for an advert, shooting on separate days; you need to see him. You suggest a joint shoot, and they agree.
In the shoot you're meant to glare at each other but you both keep laughing. Then you tell him he looks pretty for the shoot and he blushes while he calls you an asshole.
You ask him for his room number. He gives it.
He is scared about what this might mean, but he trusts you. For some reason, he trusts you.
You can only see him a few times a year. You learn that he is funny and awkward and a little mean sometimes and that he is so afraid of losing everything. You learn that hockey is like oxygen to him and that he does not know how to not push himself to his limits.
You can only see him a few times a year. You see him on the ice and every time you push yourself to win because if you can beat him it is the best feeling in the world. You are the only person who can win against him like this, and it makes him furious and it makes him obsessive and you love that you can make him crazy like he makes you crazy.
You can only see him a few times a year. If this ever gets out you could be killed and he could lose the thing that gives him oxygen, so you don’t have photos and you don’t have labels and you can’t stay the night. Sometimes you try to drive him away because you are stupid and terrible and he is perfect and you will ruin him and you are so so scared that one day he will realise this and leave. Sometimes you want to beg him to stay just a few minutes longer.
You can only see him a few times a year. Somehow, he keeps trusting you. Somehow, he doesn’t seem to think you are stupid or terrible.
You can only see him a few times a year. Everyone thinks you hate him. When you see him injured in front of you they won’t even tell you if he’s okay. If he isn’t, no one will tell you that either. Playing against him is the best you have ever felt and you wonder if it will ever happen again.
You have said that if it is true we have always been together, maybe it is just PR to call it a love story. Maybe we were just horny idiots who didn’t give a shit about anything else. Is not true.
You have said that if it is true that it is a love story, then there must be a time when the rivalry changed, when we stopped pushing to win. Is not true.
There was no point when it was casual.
There was no point where we stopped competing.
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