Chapter Text
In the end, they didn’t make a moment. Instead, they just stopped hiding.
For years, Korogyi had been the only player at Drillers team dinners without a plus-one. In August, Vincent filled that empty roster spot. Korogyi draped his arm across the back of Vincent’s chair, daring the guys to comment.
Jalo jumped in first. “Forechecking, right,” he said, and then, before anyone could open their mouths, actually roped them into a conversation about the Washington Woodcock’s 2-1-2.
Korogyi suspected it was a controlled breakout: get the conversation safely up the ice before somebody had the chance to say something cruel. But Vincent had never needed much encouragement to become an ideologue about forechecking. He set down his menu. The 2-1-2, he informed Jalo, was the coward’s system, and Washington’s ran the worst in the league.
“Let me explain,” he said, reaching for the salt shakers.
By the time the appetizers came, half the table was arguing about gap control and no one had said a word about Korogyi and Vincent. Korogyi couldn’t tell if that was thanks to Jalo’s intervention or because everyone had looked at them, understood, and gone on with dinner. But, as he watched Vincent demonstrate poor puck retrieval with a bread roll, Korogyi found he could live without an answer.
After the Nomad’s first game of the season, Vincent mentioned his boyfriend in the media scrum, casual as anything. A reporter asked what he was doing with the bye week and Vincent said, “Flying to Houston. My boyfriend bakes now and promised me focaccia.” The reporter blinked before writing it down, then moved onto the penalty kill.
When the Drillers’ equipment manager found out that fall he asked, as prophesied, whether Korogyi wanted pride tape on his stick. It was exactly the sort of small gesture he’d spent years trying to transcend, and he said yes anyway. Somewhere in the crowd there was always a kid holding a drink he wasn’t drinking.
They posted photos. The first was nothing: Korogyi from behind on a trail at Minnehaha Falls, shared to Vincent’s story without a tag. Then a few more, each harder to explain away than the last. A tin of mustache wax with a French label on the edge of Korogyi’s bathroom sink. Vincent’s feet in the lap of someone wearing Drillers sweatpants, a hand curled over his ankle. Jean-Claude in his tiny jersey, posed beside a pumpkin Korogyi had attempted to carve in his image. The same stack of sourdough pancakes uploaded across both profiles.
Then, in December, Korogyi posted a photo of Vincent in his childhood home, seated beside Korogyi’s mother at the head of the table, halfway through a helping of Christmas carp. The two were deep in conversation. Korogyi’s mother’s hand rested on Vincent’s arm as Vincent beamed at her, his fork stalled halfway between his plate and his mouth as they talked. Most of the comments congratulated Korogyi’s mother on her new boyfriend. Vincent replied to a handful of of them with 🥸.
Not all of it was easy. There was a winger Korogyi had been friendly with since his rookie season. They weren’t close, but after nearly a decade of dressing a few stalls down from each other they’d built a rapport.
That winter, something shifted, although the winger didn’t say anything outright. He still tapped Korogyi’s pads before games, same as everyone else’s, and still went into the corners for him. What disappeared was everything the camaraderie was actually made of. The jokes during warm-ups went first, then the tendency to drop into the empty seat beside Korogyi on the road followed. Before long, they only talked when hockey gave them a reason. The winger had, in effect, reviewed the tape of his association with Korogyi, identified which shifts were mandatory, and scratched himself from the rest.
There was no real way to ask him about it. Korogyi tried anyway, in his head, on the plane back from a game against the Utah Shaftmen. Is it just me or has there been a decline in our small talk? Insane. This homophobia, right? Or am I being rejected on my own merits? Worse. You used to sit here. True, but pathetic, and unanswerable besides.
Korogyi told Vincent about him late one night in bed, trying to play it off as a funny story from work. He got most of the way through before it became clear to both of them that it wasn’t that funny at all. Vincent rubbed Korogyi’s arm while he listened, and when Korogyi was finished, he moved down the bed until they were on the same pillow and put a hand on his cheek.
“His loss is bigger than yours,” Vincent said, softly.
“That’s not actually helpful,” Korogyi said, kissing his shoulder. It was, though. A little.
In the spring, a few sports radio shows spent weeks fixating on Korogyi and Vincent, demanding hockey stay out of politics–by which they meant the reverse–until an enforcer overdosed and their attention shifted to fentanyl and the border and the ongoing conspiracy to destroy America. During the playoffs, one of the Edmonton Pumpjacks’ centers said something at the dot that the refs didn’t hear. Korogyi won the draw and let it go, hating how reflexive staying quiet still was. And that June, Dallas Kent accepted the Hart Trophy at the MLH Awards with a speech that got a standing ovation from the commissioner.
The league, a bloated institution, was lagging. The people inside it were changing, though, one dinner, one press question, one strip of tape at a time. And eventually the change would be consensus. And eventually consensus would be culture. And no one person got credit for a culture. Everyone made it together, including two hockey players, in Houston, in late July, splitting a bottle of wine on a patio, holding hands above the table as the city went by around them.
At the end of the summer, Outsports wrote about Korogyi and Vincent. It was a short piece, just a few hundred words in the lull of the off-season, but in the comments, people said things like:
I didn’t know Korogyi was gay
And The mustache guy’s not European?
And Wait, they’ve been together for how long
And This gives me hope, actually
Vincent screenshotted the last one and sent it to Korogyi, who set it as his wallpaper. It wasn’t The Moment, but whenever Korogyi picked up his phone throughout the day he saw it and he was seen.
LE MOMENT (MARCH 2021)
For the first time in Korogyi and Vincent’s careers, their teams’ bye weeks matched up. Eight days in the beginning of spring was fresh ice on both their calendars, gleaming and wide open. They kept staring at dates, trying to decide where to skate first.
“I could come to Minneapolis,” Korogyi suggested on FaceTime, phone propped against the spice rack as he made dinner. “We can sleep in as late as we want, it’ll probably be warm enough to–”
“Baby,” Vincent interrupted. “Protect your fingers.”
Korogyi looked down at his hold on the onion he was cutting. “They’re fine.”
“They’re splayed out like you’re trying to cut one off.”
They’d had this conversation hundreds of times. Vincent maintained that Korogyi cooked like he’d never been told knives were sharp and Korogyi maintained that he’d been feeding himself since he was eighteen without incident, so clearly the system worked.
“Until it doesn’t,” Vincent said. “And then it’s stitches and a doctor telling us two months of no gripping. And during the bye week, I’ll be requiring your full grip strength.”
“Vincent,” Korogyi said, half-warning, half-fond.
“Fingertips tucked, knuckles forward.” He paused. “Humor me? I’m too far away to kiss it better if you cut yourself.”
Korogyi glanced at the onion then back at the screen where Vincent was waiting. Korogyi wasn’t going to win the argument, but winning had never been the point of it. He rolled his eyes, mostly for the record, and, as he adjusted his grip, he felt himself smiling.
“Happy?” Korogyi asked.
“Very,” Vincent said. “But not about a staycation. The off-season’s for staying in bed. Eight days in March? We should go somewhere. You, me, and all ten of your fingers.”
So they started planning. Gatineau came up first, a lowkey week with Vincent’s parents, but somehow the idea took a detour and within days Vincent was reading aloud from the website of a spa in the Laurentians whose “Lovebirds’ Getaway” promised couples’ massages and Bib Gourmand salmon. Soon, Canada was abandoned entirely in favor of a road trip through Sonoma. Korogyi liked the image: Vincent in sunglasses, hair wrecked at highway speeds, mustache riding the breeze, bitching about every pour. Then Sonoma was upgraded to Napa, and Vincent was calling from the Nomad’s gym as Korogyi left practice in Houston.
“If we’re doing a wine trip,” Vincent said, slightly out of breath, “we should do a wine trip.”
“Isn’t that why we’re going to California?”
“Napa’s fine for trying five year old Zins with tech executives. I want to drink a sixty year old Pauillac in a stone farmhouse, then do things to you that France hasn’t seen since the Revolution.” Vincent paused, and Korogyi could hear the clank of a weight being racked. “Let’s go to Bordeaux.”
They booked their flights that night, before either of them could dream up something even bigger. Over the following weeks, Korogyi realized Vincent had an ambition for France adjacent to the wine and whatever eighteenth century debauchery was promised: he wanted to be taken for a local. After more than a decade of Americans calling him European, Vincent was convinced that Europe, when given the chance, would claim him.
Vincent announced early that neither of them were allowed to pack fleeces for the trip. He also began trying not to apologize when strangers bumped into him, a project that, for a Canadian, meant overriding the central nervous system. Korogyi received progress reports. With a month to go, Vincent had the reflex down to a two-second delay, which he considered playable, and by March he hoped to have it out of his game entirely.
“I’m going to be invisible,” Vincent said on the phone, already pleased with himself.
“You’re an MLH center with a Magnum P.I. mustache.”
“European invisible. People will look at me and think that man has never stepped foot inside a Target.”
Ultimately, Vincent’s campaign made it as far as their first winery, where Vincent requested a tasting in his native French. Korogyi couldn’t follow the language, but understood Vincent leaning his elbow on the bar, all charm, and woman pouring lighting up before Vincent got through his second sentence.
“Ah! Vous venez du Québec?” she said. “J’adore votre accent.”
The compliment caught Vincent with his head down. He stayed on his skates and finished the play, smiling through his merci as the woman set a glass in front of him. None of it would have shown on the broadcast angle, but Korogyi had the bench view, and he’d seen Vincent take a puck to the ankle with the same expression then limp for a week. Vincent swirled, nosed, and tasted the wine before telling the woman it was great. Then he drank the rest like it was made in Gatineau.
Korogyi had a private ambition for the trip, too, which he hoped would have more legs than Vincent’s. He’d flown the ring he’d been hiding in his sock drawer across the Atlantic one way. Its return was Vincent’s responsibility. The first day was a wash–nobody proposes to the fuming, freshly repatriated–but the week was long and Korogyi was, at this point in his life, an expert at identifying the perfect moment. Finding one that actually cooperated was a different skill. But France felt lucky.
They ate moules frites the second night at a bistro so small their knees touched under the table. Vincent clicked an empty shell like a castanet while arguing for the Anaheim Swallows’ playoff chances, and Korogyi thought now? before he looked at Vincent’s fingers, slick with broth, and chipped the proposal into the neutral zone. He’d waited months to give Vincent a ring, and he wasn’t about to watch it slip off into the dregs of dinner.
There was almost a moment the day Korogyi and Vincent rented bikes and got lost among the vines. They ended up at the top of a hill, where Vincent insisted they’d been headed all along. With vineyards on the horizon and Vincent standing in front of him windblown, Korogyi moved to pull the ring from his pocket. Then a tour group, twenty strong, crested the path behind them. Korogyi took out his phone instead and made Vincent pose against the view.
He kept the ring close and his eyes open, but the trip kept filling the minutes before he could get ahead of them. There was always another cellar, another morning Vincent pulled him back to bed by the wrist. Then it was their last afternoon in Bordeaux, and they were on a blanket in the Jardin Public, Vincent flat on his back with his jacket bunched up under his head and his feet in Korogyi’s lap.
“Tuscany this summer,” Vincent said, eyes closed against the light. “And Mendoza next winter, if the byes line up again. You’d love the Malbec. Bordeaux only ever plants it after the Cabernet and the Merlot are in, but it’s the main grape in Argentina.”
“You’re saying I’ve got a palette for a third-rate red?” Korygi said, laughing.
“Third planted, not third-rate. And, anyway, I love it. It’s bold and warm, makes everything around it better.”
Korogyi squeezed Vincent’s ankle. Vincent pressed his foot back into the hold and smiled up at the sky, mustache lifting at the corners.
“I’ve always wanted to see Thailand and Cambodia,” he continued. “Maybe we could do a month there when you finally retire and I’m still playing hockey.”
“We’re the same age.”
“My ACL’s newer.”
“Because you destroyed the original one.”
“And replaced it with something better. I’m upgraded, you’re vintage.” He waved a hand at the park without opening his eyes. “We’re in Bordeaux, baby. Do you know what a full-bodied vintage goes for here?”
Korogyi didn’t argue. Across the lawn a man struggled with a corkscrew while his date demolished their picnic while he wasn’t looking. He almost pointed it out, but Vincent stretched out in the sun on his back was the best view in the park, and Korogyi wasn’t about to ruin it by prompting him to move.
“When we’re old, though, we should come back to French wine country,” Vincent said. “We didn’t even make it to the ocean. Arcachon’s less than an hour away. Think about it: oysters fresh from the bay, a sand dune bigger than a hockey stadium. And I never got my Pauillac. There’s too much left. We’ll have to do it next time, or the time after that.”
Korogyi listened to Vincent lay out the years, Tuscany, Mendoza, Thailand, two old men on this same grass, easy as a line change. He’d been agonizing over the perfect moment while Vincent had just scheduled decades of them, in order, eyes shut. The no-look pass landed on Korogyi’s tape and there was nothing left to wait through. He let go of one ankle, keeping hold of the other, and took the ring out of his pocket. Vincent’s freed foot went looking for the palm that had been there. When he didn’t find it, he opened his eyes and lifted his head.
“This time,” Korogyi said. “Marry me?”
Vincent looked at the ring and blanched. “Tabarnak,” he said, recoiling so fast his heel drove into Korogyi’s stomach on the way up.
For a second, Korogyi was eighteen again, listening to somebody else’s name get called. He was still holding the ring out, but his other hand, empty of the ankle it’d been cradling, had nothing to do now. Vincent had turned away from him. He was on his knees, pawing at the jacket he’d been sleeping on and swearing at the lining. Eventually, he got the inside pocket open and pulled a velvet box out of it. He turned back around to face Korogyi and set it on the blanket between them.
“I’ve been sitting on it since Christmas,” Vincent said, sheepishly. “When’d you get yours?”
“New Year’s.” Korogyi placed his box beside Vincent’s. It took him two tries. The third-best hands in the Western Conference wouldn’t hold still.
“Wow,” Vincent said. “We should’ve found a jeweler with a BOGO.”
Korogyi hadn’t finished laughing when he crashed into Vincent. It wasn’t a good kiss. They were both smiling too hard, teeth knocking, the mustache going straight up Korogyi’s nose. But then, suddenly, it was. Vincent’s hand slid down Korogyi’s jaw to fist at his shirt. Korogyi palmed the scratchy hairs at the back of Vincent’s neck and dragged him closer, the two of them sinking onto the blanket with no plan for where they’d land. Vincent pressed a thigh between Korogyi’s. His mouth found the skin just under Korogyi’s ear then moved down his throat, the mustache dragging behind it. Korogyi forgot the park, the woman scarfing the picnic, the moment he was meant to be having, and everything else, until Vincent rolled them over, landing hard on something with corners.
He winced into Korogyi’s mouth and pulled back, reaching under his hip for whatever had dug into him. He came up with Korogyi’s box. Vincent opened it, mouth wet and mustache askew, devastating, and looked at Korogyi over the ring inside.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s been a yes since Toronto.”
The other box had ended up under the jacket. Vincent found it by feel and presented it to Korogyi.
“It’ll fit,” Vincent said, opening it. “I talked to your equipment manager. He has your size for everything.” Then he asked in French. Two words that Korogyi didn’t need translated.
“Bien sûr,” Korogyi said.
“J’adore ton accent,” Vincent said. “But no, baby. English.”
“Yes,” Korogyi said, reaching out to run a thumb along Vincent’s upper lip.
They put the rings on each other’s fingers, and when they were finished neither let go for a moment. In time, Vincent lay back down with his head on the jacket and his feet in Korogyi’s lap. He raised his hand toward the sun and turned it, the ring catching and recatching the light as the angle changed. Korogyi took hold of Vincent’s ankles and watched the sun find his own ring, inches from Vincent’s shin.
“Next time we’re here,” Vincent said, “We’ll have to come back to this spot.”
“Next time,” Korogyi agreed, and meant all of them.
They were barely in the air on the flight home when Vincent began planning their arrival.
“When we land, we have to tell my parents first,” Vincent said. “If my mother isn’t the first call we’ll hear about it every holiday until she dies. Maybe even again at the will reading.”
“What about my mom?”
“She can be second.”
“Can I at least be the one to tell her?”
“You can be on the call,” Vincent said, magnanimously. He turned his hand over on the armrest to stare at the ring, which he’d done about once a minute since takeoff. “She probably already thinks something happened on the trip. I asked for her blessing at Thanksgiving.”
“Wait, when? We were together the whole time.”
“Before dinner, when you were fussing over the rolls, which were excellent, by the way. She said she already thinks of me as her son-in-law.” Vincent shrugged. “There might’ve been some crying.”
Korogyi grinned, dopey, and put his head on Vincent’s shoulder. Vincent dropped his cheek to rest in his hair. They stayed pressed together until a flight attendant came around with steamed towels and Korogyi’s brain caught up.
“I didn’t ask for your dad’s permission.”
“I don’t really think it matters–”
“Should I have asked your dad? Fuck. I didn’t ask your dad.”
“Baby, he would’ve said yes before you finished the question and reminded you to install your winter tires. In Houston. My parents love you. You’re fine.“ Vincent turned his hand over again. “Marie’s the one you should have consulted, though. She’ll be pissed.”
Korogyi tipped his head back to find Vincent smiling at him, mostly mustache, and kissed him before answering.
“Okay, we’ll call Marie third. I can take the hit.”
“Sure. And then our agents before we start telling everyone else. They can help us put out a joint statement. The commissioner will probably ask to see it before the league drafts its own.”
“Since when does the MLH comment on engagements?”
“I have a feeling it’ll start around the time two players decide to marry each other.” Vincent raised his left arm in a ref’s delayed penalty, ring out. “This hasn’t happened in any league before. It’s going to be huge.”
Korogyi had known that distantly, but had held it at bay. He turned it over now, though, and found he liked its weight. “Everyone in hockey’s going to be watching.”
“And then some. I’m calling it now: TSN’s going to want us on their couch by Thursday.”
“Our names will be on Sportsnet’s homepage for weeks.”
“ESPN will make a 30 For 30 about us. I bet it’ll win a Peabody. They’ll run it every June instead of the Peabody-less Scott Hunter one.”
“We’ll be on the cover of Sports Illustrated,“ Korogyi said. “Together, looking incredible.”
“It’ll be the poster on a bedroom wall.” Vincent smiled softly at Korogyi instead of the ring.
For a while, neither of them added anything. Vincent dug the latest New Yorker out of his bag and flipped to an Adam Gopnik piece about, as far as Korogyi could tell, radishes. When the flight attendant returned for the towels, Korogyi handed his over, taking a water in exchange. The glass clinked against his ring, and the small, new sound delighted him. Korogyi was gay, it was great, and the whole sport would have to look, including, hopefully, a kid on a juniors bus who needed to see him or at least something better than the highway.
Vincent reached for his hand as soon as he put the glass down. Korogyi settled against him again, reading a few lines about the philosophy of radishes before deciding he’d learned enough. He closed his eyes as Vincent’s thumb moved over his knuckles. By the time it’d stopped, he was nearly asleep himself.
When the plane arrived at the gate, Korogyi and Vincent stepped into the aisle, both reaching for the overhead bin.
“I can get your bag, fiancé,” Korogyi said, making a meal of the word.
“Absolutely not. I’ll get yours, fiancé,” Vincent said, matching his delivery syllable for syllable.
“Let me be romantic. I just got engaged.”
“So did I. And I’d like to do something nice for my fiancé, if he’d let me.”
“I’m trying to be a good fiancé.”
“You can barely say fiancé.”
Somebody a few rows back cleared their throat.
“We’re holding up the plane, Vincent,” Korogyi said. “Just let me carry it.”
“Compromise?” Vincent offered. “I’m told it’s the backbone of a good marriage, anyway.” He got both bags down, kept Korogyi’s, and handed over his own, a one-for-one no GM would’ve cosigned. With his free hand he took Korogyi’s, holding it as they walked onto the jet bridge.
Korogyi got recognized every once in a while, often in airports, mostly by hardcore fans with detailed breakout systems they wanted to pitch him, as though Korogyi ran the team and not just a stick. So when a guy in a Drillers cap glanced up from his phone halfway through the tunnel and, grinning incredulously, clocked him, Korogyi felt the ring on his hand become a beacon. He straightened up, ready to accept the first public reaction to the news that would shake professional sports.
“Hell of a day for hockey, huh,” the man said, shaking his head.
“Yeah,” Korogyi agreed. He turned to Vincent with a smile straining his cheeks. The news was out, spreading on American soil. They were getting married. From now on, whatever else hockey was, it would also be a space where that could happen. Every rink would be permanently changed for the better. It was a banner no one could pull from the rafters, their names in bold across it. Vincent smiled back and squeezed Korogyi’s hand. Both thrilled and ready to yell from the rooftops, they took their phones off airplane mode.
Korogyi’s first thought was that whoever had booked a throat singer for international arrivals at IAH had not considered how jet-lagged the audience would be. His second was that Vincent’s phone, which was vibrating without stopping, was going to explode.
“Nine hundred texts,” Vincent said, scrolling. “Marie. My cousins. Our union rep. Literally every chat I’ve ever had with teammates.”
Korogyi’s phone was buzzing with the same flood. His mother. His billet brother. Multiple Drillers text threads, one of which had been dormant since 2016. A string of emojis from Baldwin, who usually never texted first. Someone saved as “Evan Bad Music” asking for privacy, for some reason. Marie, of course. And Jalo, who had sent hey and hours later hey again. Jalo, despite his stature, didn’t push. Two messages during the span of the return flight was his version of banging down Korogyi’s door. Texts, emails, and missed calls from everyone Korogyi had ever met, plus a handful from people he was fairly sure he hadn’t, continued stacking up in an ever-growing wall.
“Do you think we were recognized in Bordeaux?” Korogyi said. “Or maybe on the plane? The guy in 3B kept looking over. And the flight attendant brought you a second pillow. Who gets a second pillow without asking.”
“The mustache has that effect on flight attendants,” Vincent said, absently, before frowning at his screen. “A TSN booker reached out to our agents. They want to know if we’re free this Wednesday to discuss, and I’m quoting here, this historic development, as, still quoting, two of the league’s romantically involved players.”
“Two of?” Korogyi said. And then they walked into the terminal.
The footage was on the television over their gate. Before Korogyi could process what he was watching, he found it again on the next gate’s television and the one after that. The same video was echoing down every screen in the concourse as far as he could see. It started innocuously enough: Hayden Pike in his trophy room, wishing someone named Brad a happy birthday. Behind him, the mirrored case caught the window, which caught the side yard, which held Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, kissing like they had just returned from war.
“This might be the biggest moment in sports history,” Laurent Cox was saying on CNN, seated beside Malala, who was nodding enthusiastically as the anchor asked a follow-up question. Distantly, Korogyi noted that he could actually hear Cox. He’d flown in and out of Houston thousands of times without ever hearing a word from an airport television. Today, apparently, someone had traversed the concourse cranking the volume on every one so no passenger would be deprived of a single second of Hollander and Rozanov coverage.
A gate agent called for boarding, gave everyone a moment to ignore her, then went back to watching the television herself. Hockey’s twice-in-a-generation stars had been caught going at it and the world had dropped everything to watch. No one would be looking anywhere else for a long, long time.
Korogyi stood at the gate with Vincent’s bag in one hand and his phone in the other. It buzzed again. BBC, this time, making sure he heard about the heated rivalry. He looked at his ring then back at the television before turning helplessly to Vincent, whose nose had crinkled like he’d smelled a bottle of Tide.
“Ben voyons donc,” Vincent said to the airport, the sport at large.
Korogyi didn’t know what to say, but he had to say something, so he settled on the least pressing matter. “Hayden Pike doesn’t have enough trophies for a trophy room.”
“It’s ninety percent mirror.” Vincent gestured at the television, where the video was replaying for the umpteenth time. “That is literally how this happened.”
Korogyi waited for the fist in his chest to close. It was the least foreseeable, most predictable upset, and, surely, it warranted a meltdown. Vincent would have to let him have one. Maybe he’d even join in. Vincent swearing a blue streak in French, mustache pistoning, would be a welcomed OTL point. Korogyi had already picked out the Hudson News where he’d start throwing gum when his eyes snagged on Hollander’s hand.
Hollander and Rozanov had come apart for air and Hollander ran his thumb across his upper lip before leaning in again. Korogyi thought about Vincent smoothing his mustache in the Bellagio ballroom. I see you. About all the years of finding him in a crowd, feeling absurdly happy that his now-fiancé had touched his own mouth. Granted, Hollander was probably just wiping away spit, but as Rozanov smiled into the kiss, thrilled to have Hollander back after a breath’s grueling separation, Korogyi couldn’t look away. He related to Rozanov. Korogyi had kissed Vincent across a continent’s worth of hotel rooms, through highs and lows, furious and half-asleep, hungry and intent or laughing too hard to do it properly. After so long, kissing Vincent was a worn-in play, every cut and pivot learned by heart. There were thousands of kisses between them, yet Korogyi was still an eager, sappy idiot about the next one. Hollander said something against Rozanov’s lips, which made him duck his head bashfully, and Korogyi forced himself to turn from the replay. Wherever Hollander and Rozanov were right now, he hoped they were there together.
Korogyi glanced at Vincent, the ring catching his eye when he adjusted his grip on the bag. He and Vincent had a Google Doc. It was filled with red headers, but at least they got to write them.
“I think I want to send them a message,” Korogyi said, dropping onto the nearest bench and gesturing for Vincent to join him.
It turned out neither Korogyi nor Vincent knew their numbers. Hockey was a small world, but they were both a few Hart Trophies short of the right group chat. So he opted for Instagram. Korogyi pulled up Shane Hollander’s profile, which didn’t follow him back, and started writing. The message, ultimately, was short:
Sorry you didn’t get to pick the moment. Hope the rest makes up for it. If you ever want to talk, I’m here. –Korogyi (third pick, 2009 draft)
“The draft?” Vincent said, reading over his shoulder. “You’ve been taking draws against him for a decade. He knows who you are.”
“Honestly, I’m not sure he does,” Korogyi said, laughing, and hit send. He copied the message and shot the same thing off to Rozanov. Hundreds of thousands of people were inevitably trying to reach them, and his messages would disappear into their requests or wherever notes from third picks went to wait. He doubted either would ever scroll far enough to see them, but still, the offer was there if they did.
With a few hours until Vincent’s connection, they called their mothers, sent Marie photographs of the rings, emailed their agents, and found a bar two gates over with CNN on the television and, more promisingly, a blender behind the counter. They took the two stools at the end and listened as Laurent Cox explained hockey camps to Malala.
“Two piña coladas,” Vincents said, flagging down the bartender. “We just got engaged.”
“Oh, congratulations,” he responded, already looking past him at the television.
Above the bar, Hayden Pike wished Brad another happy birthday, and everyone settled in to be astonished again. Soon, their drinks came with paper umbrellas. Vincent took the umbrella out of his glass and planted it beside Korogyi’s, then adjusted both so they had adequate room. Korogyi watched his ministrations, finding them much more interesting than anything happening in the side yard onscreen.
Eventually, Vincent took a sip of his own drink. “It’s bad,” he said. He turned on the stool to face Korogyi, mustache emerging from behind the pineapple wedge on his rim. “But drink up, fiancé.”
Korogyi reached for his glass, careful of the umbrellas. Vincent was watching him now, smiling around his straw, and Korogyi smiled back before he’d even tried it. Oh, he thought. This is going to be good.