Page 8 of Home Ice

“Tragic.”

“Survivable,” he said, and the smile that charmed millions came back. “Okay. Back to the thing. There’s a part of the hockey deal I haven’t shown you. Sit.” He pulled out his phone.

I didn’t sit. I stood at the bench while Max propped the phone against my coffee and pulled up a clip.

“This is from yesterday,” he said. “After practice. First scrum since he came out, so understand, this is probably the hardest room Rafe has had to deal with. I want you to watch what he does.”

The clip opened on a wall of microphones and a hockey player in a backwards team cap who looked—there was no other way to describe him—enormous and about twelve at the same time. He was farm-sized through the shoulders and fair, pink to the hairline under the lights, with a blocky haircut.

The questions came in fast, and he took each one.

I watched Rafe Mikkelsen. He was good. His responses weren’t slick. They were pleasant in a way I’d never encountered outside of TV shows. Every answer was warm, complete, and exactly the right length.

“Rookie year, small town in Saskatchewan,” said a reporter. “This is a big-city moment for a farm kid. Fans are already—“ The reporter flipped his phone around briefly. “There’s a whole thing forming out there. The polite prairie kid. You’ve seen it?”

There was a hook buried in the question, and Rafe stepped around it, saying, “My mom sends me most of it.” It got a laugh.

“You see it?” Max asked. “He’s completely likable. It’s almost a medical condition.”

There was confidence, too. He showed no fear.

“He’s like this constantly, apparently,” Max said. “Everyone who’s dealt with him says he’s the easiest guy in the league. Never a problem. Never a demand. The PR people love him so much.”

“Mm,” I said.

“So,” Max said, pocketing the phone. “Assuming he says yes today, you’re fine with it?”

“It’s not mine to be fine with.”

It wasn’t. Max had been managing arrangements like this since before he graduated from high school, and he was better at it than anyone I knew. Still, I’d watched the online celebrity world take pieces of his life: weekends and attention. It was always with his full agreement, but now it had a boyfriend picked out for him—more time, more energy, more emotion.

“Is that a no?”

“It’s a ‘it’s not mine to be fine with.’”

Max picked up his coffee off the bench and checked the time, wincing. “Okay. I have a call. I have one more thing, and I’m gone.”

The last thing took eleven minutes, because with Max the last thing was always three actual things.

Thing one: the cedar chest. Max’s lease was up in the spring, and he was looking at bigger places. When that happened, he would finally take our grandmother’s chest off my hands. I told him it was fine where it was. It had been fine in the corner by the finishing bench for four years.

Thing two: Sunday dinner at Mom and Dad’s. Was I coming? Because if I were coming, he would make the case for Mexican. If not, he didn’t have the votes.

I said I was coming.

“Then it’s Taco Sunday,” he said.

Third was a favor disguised as a statement. “Oh, there’s a box of mine coming here Thursday. My neighbor had something mysteriously disappear in my building’s lobby. I’ll swing by and grab it Thursday or Friday.”

“Fine.”

“Might bring Rafe. Depending on how the rest of my day goes.”

I didn’t bite. “The box’ll be here,” I said.

At the door, Max turned one more time. “I bet we’ll like him.”

“You will,” I said.