Zack could feel his brain catching up with her words and screeching to an abrupt halt before it slammed into the inside of his skull. “Oh,” he said foolishly.
“Yes. Oh.” Katie’s tone was mocking.
“I’m...sorry?” Zack knew this was a thing he needed to bring up with Aaron eventually. He just hadn’t thought he needed to, and admittedly hadn’t wanted to, last night.
“You’re not; he’s not; and neither of you have a responsibility to me regarding this in any case,” Katie said. “Believe me, I want to be having this conversation less than you do, so I’ll keep it to the point. I’m not telling you to not date him, or....” She trailed off with a wave of a hand and a pained look. “But I am telling you not to distract him. Whatever that means to you two. Which probably includes him not getting any more surprises via google.”
“Oh yeah. It’s not a thing you casually mention, you know?”
“You’re the one who put the pics with your name on the internet. It’s definitely the sort of thing you casually mention.”
Ashamed, Zack stared at his feet. All the time he’d been focusing on whether introducing Aaron to bondage was too much of a distraction, he never considered how his own projects—and his failure to talk about them—might be even more of an issue. “Yeah. That’s fair.”
“You owe him a conversation,” Katie said. “About three weeks ago, but I guess late will be better than never. And now, if you’re serious about hockey, go talk to Tasha, she’s the coordinator for the adult league. She can get you sorted. And really, don’t do hockey with those skates.”
THAT EVENING, BACK home—or rather, back at Marie’s in-law apartment—Zack sat on his coach and stared at his phone. Katie was right; he did owe Aaron a conversation. But he didn’t feel ready for it.
He did not, in fact, feel prepared for anything. Everything he’d done from the moment Sammy had called with the figure skating assignment up ’til now, he’d done at the spur of the moment. Moving to the Twin Cities. Getting folded into the TCI crew. Falling in—something, with Aaron. Deciding to stay, without a plan for who knew how long. Deciding to sleep with Aaron without considering what the long-term consequences might be for either of them.
And if he was honest with himself, that pattern went back much farther than his move to Minnesota. It had been there for the entire miserable process of the divorce when he could only cope by taking one day at a time. And when he got back from his last assignment in a conflict zone and hadn’t been able to sleep for weeks. The short term had been all he’d been able to manage, and that barely. With, he knew, good reason. He hadn’t been handed a PTSD diagnosis out of nowhere.
But now he was here. In a place where he felt, if not okay, then better. Where he’d been able to do work and interact with people and want to join a community again. People and a community, he realized, that specialized in long-term planning. Aaron knew what his life was going to look like from now until February—at least, what he wanted it to look like. Even if he didn't get there, he had a day-by-day plan to try.
I want my life to be more like that, Zack realized with a jolt. He’d never been one for thinking too much about the future. He often hadn’t had the luxury. But being here and seeing the stability that Aaron—and Katie and Brendan and the rest of their skaters—had, he wanted that stability too. Maybe, just maybe, he was finally in a place where that could be possible. At the very least, he could try.
So instead of texting Aaron with an awkward and belated apology, he made a list of the things he needed to deal with and that he wanted to achieve. Any lingering divorce paperwork. Sell the condo. Figure out what my next book project is. Make friends who aren’t skaters. Join hockey?
He didn’t write figure out what to do with Aaron. That went without saying.
It turned out Tasha’s contact info was in one of the flyers Cal had given him, so he emailed her about joining the adult rec league. She replied within minutes, and quicker than Zack would have thought it possible, he was signed up for one of the teams and had, at Tasha’s urging, scheduled an appointment at the TCI pro shop to get fitted for hockey skates of his own.
That business concluded for the present, Zack opened another email message to deal with another issue much less fun, but more important. His ex was the last person he wanted to contact right now, but the divorce being finalized hadn’t meant they were done with each other logistically. The apartment still needed to be dealt with.
I’m still in Minnesota for work and am going to be here for the foreseeable future. Since I’m not going to be in the condo, please take advantage of my absence and get the rest of your stuff out of it. It’s all in boxes already.
- Z
Zack was pretty sure he deserved a medal for getting through that email without any profanity.
Chapter 13
LATER THAT DAY
Aaron’s Apartment
BY THE END OF THE DAY Aaron’s brain was so worn out from everything that had happened—and all the information he’d acquired—that after he and Charlotte made dinner it was all he could do to lay on the floor in front of the TV and eat while watching a cooking show. He’d done a lot of processing already today, and while he wanted to talk to Zack at some
