The Inside Edge, page 20
His mother sucked in a breath. “So it’s serious.”
Aubrey bit his lip. He flexed a hand at his side to work out some of the tension. “It’s really new,” he said, which wasn’t a contradiction. “But yeah, it’s serious. And that’s the problem.”
“What’s the problem?” she asked. “That’s not a problem. That’s wonderful.”
“It’s a problem because I just got fired, Mom. I’m not staying in Chicago.”
“Why not?” she countered. “It’s not like you need the work. You could stay if you wanted to.”
“The problem is,” he said, realizing as he did so that this was the crux of it, “that I don’t know if I want to.”
“Aubrey! Why not?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Did I tell you I was helping Greg practice for Cirque? We choreographed a whole routine. Two executives came out to watch it, and I guess they saw us goofing off beforehand. They offered me a spot, maybe a choreography gig.” He swallowed. “I can’t just sit around, you know? I need to be involved. I’m not going to be able to skate forever, but choreography…. And there are so many other opportunities in Vegas….”
His mother hummed. “But Nate’s job is in Chicago.”
“Nate’s job is in Chicago,” Aubrey confirmed miserably. “And it’s only been a few weeks. Is that too soon to start something long distance? Asking him to move to Vegas is absurd, right?”
“Absurd is so relative.” He could almost see her shaking her head. “You’re sure this job is what you want?”
“No!” he exclaimed. “No, I’m not sure. But it’s an opportunity that’s not going to come around every day. Ever since Greg and I skated for his audition, I’ve been thinking about performing again. I’m not ready to give it up, I want… I have more to do, more to say, more to contribute. But how do I choose?”
“Darling, I love you very much. But if you think I am the person to ask about achieving balance between your career and your personal life, you might want to reconsider.”
Aubrey flopped back against the couch, wincing. “Point taken.”
“Since we’re on the subject.” His mother cleared her throat. “I want to tell you something. When you were little, your father and I desperately wanted to have another baby.”
Aubrey was glad he was already sitting down, because that would have about knocked him over. “What?”
“We were so determined, but we just—we couldn’t get pregnant. So we started traveling to see fertility specialists. We flew to Toronto, New York, Switzerland…. Anywhere with an experimental new treatment, we went. We’d be gone for weeks at a time, hoping for a miracle.”
He remembered being eight, ten, twelve years old, wondering why his parents kept leaving him. Remembered too the way his parents had latched on to Rachel, showering her with love, and how jealous he’d been as an eight-year-old to see a toddler getting that kind of attention.
It had hurt him. But now he understood that his parents had been hurting too.
“Mom.”
“Just let me get this out, all right?” He thought she might be trying to sound tough, but in truth, he could hear the edge of tears. “We loved you so much. It wasn’t that you weren’t enough. We wanted a bigger family to expand on the love you brought into our lives. But we were so focused on it that that we abandoned you when you needed us the most.”
Aubrey swallowed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t… I had no idea.” How different might he have been if he’d had a younger sibling to look after? Sure, it would have further divided his parents’ attention. But he’d have had someone to tease, someone to look up to him. He’d maybe have learned some of the balance his therapist had spent the past few months teaching him. He couldn’t help thinking he might have been better off.
“That’s the way your father and I wanted it. No one knew. We kept our grief very private. The process wrung us so dry that by the time we gave up, we were too burned out to consider adoption.”
He could certainly understand that. But… “Why tell me now?”
“Because, sweetheart, I want you to consider the lesson I learned twenty years too late.”
He waited.
“Just be careful while you’re chasing your dream that you don’t sacrifice the blessings you already have.”
Aubrey sat quietly with the weight of that advice for a few moments, wanting to give it the consideration it deserved. “I will,” he said at length. “Thanks, Mom.”
He knew what he had to do.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“DUDE,” CALEY said, jostling Nate’s shoulder at the top of the circle, where he’d just sent a puck blistering over the goaltender’s shoulder. “You’re angry tonight. No celly?”
Nate gave a weak attempt at a smile. It was his second goal this game; they were halfway through the second. But he didn’t feel much like celebrating.
“All right, all right.” She shook her head. “Just try not to run anyone else over, okay?”
He winced. They didn’t have a no-checking rule, but the unwritten code was you pulled your hits, since they didn’t have medical staff on site. Nate… could have pulled his hits a little more.
“Point,” he acknowledged.
She clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go, line change.”
By the time they took a break after the second period, he’d mostly managed to sublimate his work stress. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Paul. He just wasn’t Aubrey, and the new vision ESBN had for the show felt a lot more Barstool Sports than the show Jess had spent so much time creating. It didn’t make any sense.
“I just can’t help thinking, ‘You know who would really like this show? John Plum,’” Nate said gloomily.
Caley dropped her head to the half wall and bounced her helmet off it a few times. Nate realized he might be harping.
“Sorry.” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “It’ll get better. I just need to try harder and stop sulking.”
Caley patted him on the back, and he resolved to wait out the rest of their intermission in silence and let it go. Deep breaths. In, out. He was here to lose himself in physical activity, not bring the office to work with him.
“Hey.” This was from Jordan, a defenseman who’d played most of his career in Europe before returning home to his Chicago roots. “What ever happened with those figure skaters?” He was talking to Brigitte, who was sitting on his other side. “The ones who used to have the ice before us. Man, I miss watching them skate.”
“Greg?” Bridget squeezed her Gatorade bottle into her mouth. “Didn’t you hear? He was rehearsing or whatever for a Cirque show in Vegas. The audition was after Thanksgiving.”
“He get in?”
“How did you not hear about this? Yeah, he got in. Word is they both did.”
Wait, what?
The buzzer sounded. Caley tapped Nate’s helmet. “Let’s go. Think you got enough juice to finish that hat trick?”
Nate was so distracted in the third that he skated straight into an opposing player’s elbow with his head down and ended up flat on his ass with half of his own team laughing at him and the rest concerned. He stared up at the rafters and winced at the light in his eyes, but he knew concussions. This wasn’t that. Just a nasty headache and maybe a bruise on his cheekbone later.
“What is with you today?” Caley asked as she hauled him to his skates. Then her gaze got sharp. “Did something happen with Aubrey?”
He wanted to tell her. Maybe over their postgame drinks.
But his head hurt, and his face hurt, and his heart hurt, and he also wanted to sit in his dark apartment and eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and figure out how he’d done this to himself again.
“I think I’m gonna call it a night,” he said. “Obviously my head is not in the game.”
Caley frowned at him, but she didn’t try to stop him. “All right. You’re sure your head’s okay?”
“I’m sure.”
Back in his apartment, he dropped his keys in the bowl by the door and took off his shoes. The lights from the city shone in through his windows, casting more than enough glow to see by, so he didn’t bother with the overheads. Instead he went to the kitchen and pulled out the ice cream and a spoon, then returned to the living room. Before he could sit down, though, something sharp stabbed his foot, and he swore.
He sat down to have a look, left ankle propped on his right knee, holding his phone awkwardly.
It was a small piece of glass from the vase. It hadn’t gone deep—he was barely even bleeding. But as far as icing on the shit cake went, it seemed a little much.
When the bleeding stopped, Nate put the ice cream back in the freezer, unopened. Then he went to bed.
Saturday morning he got in the car to the airport by himself. He and Paul were filming this weekend’s episode in Vancouver, which just felt wrong. He’d been looking forward to seeing Aubrey’s hometown through his eyes. Instead he was stuck in a mental spiral of doubt about why Aubrey hadn’t told him about Cirque. Had Brigitte been mistaken? Maybe Aubrey had turned them down and simply hadn’t thought it was important enough to share.
When the plane touched down in Vancouver and Nate turned off airplane mode, he got a text from Aubrey: The downlow chicken shack on main has the best burgers in the city.
It wasn’t an admission of guilt, but it didn’t explain anything either.
Work with Paul was fine, but they were never going to connect as friends. Nate could deal with him on the set. As far as dinner companions went, he decided to reconnect with Kelly, who he realized now he’d ditched when he started sleeping with Aubrey.
“Hey.” He nudged her as they wheeled their suitcases toward the car that would take them to the arena since they were covering a matinee. “Lunch on me? I’ve got a line on a great burger, and I hear they deliver.”
Kelly slung her arm around his shoulders. “Finally, a man who understands me.”
Nate snorted and let his plans with Kelly distract him from everything else.
It worked out pretty well until the puck dropped.
Nate and Paul’s set for the game was basically a section of the bar. The majority of the screen time would show the ice, so they’d be audio only for that, but during stoppages and intermission, the cameras would cut to them as they sat on their stools, a green screen behind them to show any replays.
Nate hated it. It felt unprofessional. He didn’t think viewers should be able to see his socks. He definitely didn’t love that people not associated with the show could watch them tape live. He found it difficult to stay focused on the game.
Tonight, though, focusing was easy, mostly because game play was absolutely blistering. The away team scored to make it 2-2 only eleven minutes and change into the game.
At least, focusing was easy until someone went off after a dirty hit and Paul made a comment about how players weren’t “tough” anymore because they didn’t want to risk playing with a concussion when it could ruin the rest of their life. Then he mocked Nate for using the phrase performative masculinity.
Nate stewed all the way back to the airport for the redeye home, until Kelly nudged him with her shoe. “Hey. If you don’t stop clenching your jaw, you’re gonna grind your teeth into dust. You need a Snickers or something?”
“Or something.” Nate thought longingly of the Ben & Jerry’s in his freezer. Then he remembered the emergency chocolate bar he kept in the outside pouch of his carry-on bag and dragged it close to dig it out.
He ended up with a handful of paperback instead—the paperback he’d snagged off Aubrey on their last road trip together. He’d never finished it.
Well, now was as good a time as any. He dug out the chocolate bar too and let himself get lost for a few hours.
Coming home to an empty apartment well after midnight felt almost like a repeat of the night before. It was cold and blustery outside. Nate could hear the wind howling, and the light from the windows of his apartment was enough to illuminate the swirling snowflakes. It would have been a nice night to curl up in front of the gas fireplace with Aubrey, if he’d been home.
Between his agitation with work and his swirling emotions about Aubrey, Nate thought he’d have a hard time falling asleep. But he must have been exhausted, because he was out almost the moment his head hit the pillow.
He woke up to sounds in his apartment.
Aubrey must have let himself in. Nate rolled out of bed and pulled on a T-shirt and pajama pants over his boxers. He normally wouldn’t have bothered, but he felt naked enough knowing he was going to go out there and see Aubrey and inevitably ask what he was doing talking to people from Cirque.
Not that he couldn’t talk to whomever he wanted. Nate just would have liked if he mentioned the potential of moving across the country.
Time to face the music either way.
Aubrey stood at the stove, poking at a frittata that smelled fragrant with tomatoes and basil. When Nate came in, he lifted his head and smiled… but the smile didn’t last. “Hey,” he said. “Rough night?”
“Rough weekend.” Damn it, he’d missed Aubrey these last two nights. That just compounded the shittiness. Sometime in the past few months, Aubrey had become the person he talked to when he needed to work things out.
“Is this about the show?” he asked, prodding the frittata again. Then he experimentally jiggled the frying pan handle and, in one smooth movement, flipped the whole thing. It landed perfectly. “I watched last night.”
“Painful for you?” The Canucks had ended up losing 7-2.
“Not as bad as it was for you.”
“Yeah, well.” Nate grimaced. Where would he even start complaining? And could he even vent to Aubrey? That didn’t seem fair when Aubrey’d lost his job. Nate didn’t want to talk about his work anyway. He wanted to talk about Aubrey’s.
Aubrey turned back to the breakfast, and Nate helped himself to a seat. Aubrey had already poured orange juice, and the coffeepot was full, even though Aubrey only drank his coffee from a can like a heathen.
There were fresh strawberries in a bowl on the counter, and Nate popped one into his mouth—surprisingly tasty considering it was December. He’d have to ask about Aubrey’s fruit hookup before he moved to Vegas.
Aubrey cleared his throat and filled Nate’s coffee cup. Then he slid a plated half a frittata in front of him. “Have you thought about what you’ll do if the show doesn’t work out?”
Frowning, Nate reached for his fork as Aubrey sat opposite him with his own breakfast. “Why wouldn’t it work out?” Did Aubrey know something he didn’t?
“You don’t seem very happy with the direction the show is going,” Aubrey fished.
“It’s just growing pains,” Nate said. He knew, not even deep down, that it was a lie… but he couldn’t figure out why he said it. “I’ll adjust.”
“Right.” Aubrey cut a piece of frittata, but he didn’t eat it. It just sat there on his fork, getting cold.
Nate’s frittata would suffer no such indignity, he vowed, and shoved a large bite in his mouth, only to nearly burn himself.
God, he was a mess. He put his fork down. Time to face his problems head-on like a grown-up. “Were you ever going to tell me about the Cirque thing?”
Aubrey’s knife clattered against the plate. “What?”
“I know they made you an offer. The gossip is all over the rink. I felt pretty stupid that I was the last to know.”
Aubrey’s eyes were wild now. Clearly he had not expected Nate to take this line of conversation. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to find out like that.”
Ouch. “Obviously,” Nate said, not bothering to disguise the venom in his voice.
“That came out wrong.” Aubrey flushed. “I was going to tell you. I haven’t even decided if I’m going to go yet.”
I haven’t decided.
“Well, you let me know what you decide.” Fuck it, Nate should have known better than to expect more from Aubrey. He was so tired of the men he loved deciding his future for him without his input or—and he wasn’t sure if this was worse—seemingly not caring if Nate was part of their future at all. This was twice now he’d had his heart stomped on. What was he doing wrong?
“You could come with me,” Aubrey said. “You hate your job anyway.”
“Is there even ice in Las Vegas?” Nate snarked. “Other than the kind that comes in a highball glass.”
Aubrey set his coffee can down with enough force to send the orange juice sloshing up the sides of the glasses. “Wow. I guess your memory must be going in your old age, if you’ve forgotten that I’m a figure skater and Vegas has an NHL team you played against.”
Nate winced because he knew that had been too mean. A low blow, childish, needlessly hurtful. But damn it, Aubrey hurt him first. “I meant, what am I going to do? I don’t have a job lined up in Vegas.”
Aubrey spread his arms. “So what? It’s not like you need the money. You could come and live with me. See where it goes.”
He couldn’t just pick up and leave. He’d helped Jess build this show. He owed it to her to see it through. “And what?” he said before he could help himself. He hadn’t been truly unemployed since he was a kid. “Be your kept man?”
This was a disaster. This was exactly what had happened with Marty. He didn’t want to tag along in someone else’s dream. He had aspirations and plans of his own. He wanted a partner, not a sugar daddy.
He could see the moment Aubrey realized it too. His face went from cajoling and hopeful to resigned and hurt.
Fuck.
“No-go, isn’t it,” he said heavily.
Nate poked at his frittata, suddenly not very hungry. “I mean, it’s too soon to move across the country together anyway.” As if the real problem wasn’t that he didn’t want to.
Aubrey put down his fork. “If you say it is, probably. I wouldn’t really know.”
