Page 31 of Rookie Mistake
Are you here. Are you seeing me.
I drive home. Nikolai's apartment. Our apartment, increasingly, though neither of us has used that word. I park. I sit in the car for three minutes.
Sort of.
The words are still in my chest. The words are the smallest possible truth, the tiniest opening in the performance, and the opening was received by a nine-year-old with a shrug and a quesadilla story and the absolute, devastating indifference of a child who does not understand why an adult would find this difficult.
The indifference is the permission. The indifference says: the difficulty is yours, not the world's. The world moved on. The world is making quesadillas. You are the one standing at the boards with cold hands and a rearranged chest.
I go inside. Nikolai is on the couch reading Bulgakov. The reading glasses are on. The soft ones. He looks up when I come in. The look is the Nikolai look: comprehensive, brief, reading.
"How was the rink?" he asks.
"Good. Marcus says your stopping technique is really good."
"Marcus is nine. His standards are low."
"Marcus is the most perceptive person I've met under four feet tall."
I sit next to him on the couch. His arm goes around me. The gesture is automatic now, the muscle memory of three weeks of couch-sitting, and the automatic is the thing. The automatic means the arm doesn't require a decision. The arm goes because the arm goes. The going is the ordinary.
I lean into him. The book is in his other hand. The reading glasses catch the lamp light.
"A kid asked if I had a boyfriend," I say.
His hand stills on my shoulder. The stilling lasts one second. Then the hand resumes.
"What did you say?"
"Sort of."
The pause is two seconds. Nikolai's two-second pause is not Mars's two-second pause (which contains an entire assessment) or Mik's two-second pause (which contains a career of controlled emotion). Nikolai's two-second pause is the pause of a man processing the word "sort of" and deciding whether to address the "sort" or the "of."
"Sort of," he repeats.
"I'm working on the full sentence."
His arm tightens. Not much. A fraction. The fraction says: take your time.
I close my eyes. His heartbeat is under my ear. The book is in his hand. The reading glasses are on. The apartment is warm.
Sort of is not the full sentence. Sort of is the first draft. The final draft is coming. The final draft includes the word "bisexual" and the word "boyfriend" and the word "yours" and the words are mine and the words are ready and the words are waiting for the morning that is strong enough to hold them.
But tonight, sort of is enough. Tonight, his arm around me and the reading glasses and the Bulgakov and the automatic holding is enough.
Marcus's mom was right. Some people smile with their eyes.
Nikolai is smiling with his eyes right now. I can feel it without looking.
NIKOLAI
Mars Santos does not ambush. Mars Santos positions.
He is at the smoothie bar in the facility cafeteria at 2:14 PM, which is the time I make my post-practice protein shake, which is a time Mars knows because Mars knows every player's routine the way he knows every shooter's release: through sustained observation and the compulsive categorization of data.
I do not believe Mars can turn the categorization off. I believe the categorization is the cost of being Mars Santos, the way the discipline is the cost of being my mother's son. Some people pay for their gifts in sleep. Some people pay in solitude. Mars pays in the inability to stop seeing.
He is making a shake. I am making a shake. The proximity is not accidental.
