Page 61 of Game Misconduct

It was different fighting guys who weren’t Danny. He was furious, but he could focus in a way he couldn’t otherwise. Kovalenko wasn’t much taller than Mike, although he probably had forty pounds on him. That was nothing. The reach was the same.

They circled each other, Kovalenko trying to psych him out with a few test punches Mike didn’t fall for. When he came at him, Mike was ready, fist wrapping itself in Kovalenko’s jersey. Because their arms were around the same length, it worked out that he could use the good old push and pull: tugging Kovalenko in and slamming him in the face with his knuckles, pushing him back while he was off-balance. Kovalenko cursed in a language that sounded almost like Russian but wasn’t like the Russian Mike had picked up from Netty.

“Shut up, little bitch,” Mike said to him, in Russian, which depending on your point of view was either a success or complete failure. Kovalenko snapped another curse Mike couldn’t understand and lunged forward to try and grab him around the chest. There was a struggle and somehow, despite the fight strap, Kovalenko managed to get the jersey up over his head. That was fine. Better to lose the jersey and fight on in pads. Mike twisted out of it, and he could hear the crowd yelling, and as Kovalenko came back at him, Mike caught him in the face with a right hook and he dropped down.

The linesmen stepped in to separate them, and Mike shook out his aching right hand and wiped some blood away from his eyes with his left hand and skated toward the penalty box, listening to the crowd screaming,“ASSHOLE! ASSHOLE!”at him. It didn’t really bother him much anymore, although it had bothered the hell out of him when he was still playing in the amateurs and had had expectations about, like, not being called an asshole by thousands of people in one night. Before he’d accepted that was his role. As he sat in the box and waited for someone to hand him a spare jersey, he caught himself on the Jumbotron and waved at the camera, lifted two of his fingers in a salute.

The crowd seemed to take it as a personal insult and booed loudly.

Ringing in the new year the same way he’d started the old one.

They won the game in a resounding 5–1. Bee’s entire line had scored, and Mike had gotten two assists, which seemed like a better omen than getting booed by fucking Nashville.

Even though he’d said he wasn’t going to go out, and even though they had a game the next day, he had forgotten Netty’s intense love of going over the top for every American holiday. And in fact, generally, that Netty was implacable. “Misha, you can’t stay in hotel on New Year’s Eve. Youcannot.”

“I could, though,” Mike started.

“You cannot,” Reed cut him off. “The pathological fun-haver-in-chief has spoken.”

“Pathological?” Lindy asked. “You been doing crosswords or something, Reedsy?”

“Maybe,” Reed allowed, grinning. “You know I’m only half-fluent in English, after all; gotta shore up on the big words. But come on, Sato, you’re coming out with everyone.”

So Mike went out. He checked his phone before he did, but Danny hadn’t texted him after their initial brief conversation before the games, and he wasn’t really expecting it. It was just New Year’s Eve, and it didn’t matter if he wasn’t spending it with Danny, didn’t matter if he wasn’t talking to him. Whatever, not like he cared.

By the time he found Bee and Mäkelä in the midst of the crowd at the saloon—what kind of normal bar called itself a saloon heading into 2023?—he was pretty drunk, thanks to Netty shoving shot after shot into his hand. It wasn’t a particularly good kind of drunk, at least not for New Year’s. He wasn’t feeling like he wanted to fight someone, but he did feel like he felt two years after he’d gotten drafted and realized he wasn’t getting out of the minors anytime soon. It was that kind of night, it seemed. But he was out, so he was going to have to make the best of it.

He wound up on a bench in between Bee and Mäkelä, both of their arms slung over his shoulders, which was weird but comfortable. He was listing a little to the side, head tucked against Bee’s shoulder, while she stroked her hand through his hair, which he hadn’t cut recently. It was at the length where it started developing waves. It was the length Danny liked. Her hands were soothing, but it reminded him of Danny doing the same thing only a week before. And Mike was horrified to realize that tears were like, prickling at the corner of his eyes. What thefuck.

“Michael?” Bee asked. She was drunk too, but she only had to worry about herself. Mäkelä was a stable mountain of a man and had definitely never been healthy scratched from a game for missing morning skate. “Are you okay?”

He buried his face into her shoulder again and said, “Uhhh. No. Sorry. I mean—yes. No. I’m just—I got a lot of shit going on.”

“Hey,” Bee said, “let’s go outside. Sakari, we’ll be right back, mussukka.”

Mäkelä just patted her on the knee and said, “I’ll be here.”

Mike followed her outside. It was chilly in Nashville in the winter, especially this late, but he wasn’t feeling the cold. Under Bee’s judgmental gaze Mike bummed a cigarette from a guy smoking by the door, because he felt like he was going to need it. He inhaled, deeply, his hands shaking as they walked away from a place where the guy could easily hear them. Bee was rubbing warmth into her hands, and he looked up at her, his heart constricting in his chest.

“Bee, I want you to know I love you, okay? I really do.”

“I love you too, Michael,” she responded, confusion wrinkling her forehead. But she didn’t press him. There was a reason he did. Love her.

He was pacing now, even though he knew objectively it was going to be fine and that if anyone was going to react in a way that wouldn’t make him regret it, it was Bee. Even knowing that he felt like he was going to puke and he knew he probably looked just as bad. It wasn’t alcohol. Bee looked as calm and composed as she always did, although she was swaying gently in place, waiting for him to go on. In the distance, someone was screamingHappy New Yearover and over again even though midnight was still a little way off, and they could hear the crackle of home-grown fireworks a few blocks away.

“Michael, you know you can tell me anything, right? I trusted you when that connard was making my life miserable and trying to bully me off of the team. You were theonlyone I trusted, because I knew you wouldn’t do anything I wasn’t ready for you to do. I knew youunderstood. I hope you can trust me to do that now.”

Mike thought about their rookie year, about the way the Cons’ second-overall pick had spent most of the season sneaking into Bee’s hotel room to trash it, or breaking her equipment whenever he had a chance, whispering all kinds of vile, racist shit in her ear. Bee had taken it stoically, the same way she’d always taken it when a teammate decided he didn’t like being shown up by a woman, when he felt he had to put her in his place. Eventually, it had been too much to bear. And she’d trusted Mike first, confided in him, because he knew exactly how it felt, had faced it down exactly the same way. Together, they’d come up with a plan to handle him: with some hidden cameras and the assistance of Mäkelä and Reed, they’d pieced together a slideshow that made some very interesting viewing during a video review day.

And in the end, Hill had been the one shipped out of town, and Bee was still standing and so was Mike. Bee was still standing, watching him with her warm brown eyes. Mike took another deep breath.

“Okay, so, uh, I’m going to tell you like. Two or three things at once. Just let me finish, okay?”

Bee nodded.

“So first, um, I’m, I’m gay. And uh, second, I’m, uh, I guess I’m like...kind of...seeing someone?”

Whatever response he was expecting, Bee didn’t make it. Instead of words she barreled into him, threw her arms around his neck, and almost knocked him off his feet because neither of them had the best balance at that moment. He dropped the cigarette so she wouldn’t fucking light her own shirt on fire.