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At 11:42 AM on July 1st, the Toronto Maple Leafs announce that they’ve acquired Cody Ceci, Ben Harpur, and Aaron Luchuk, in exchange for Nikita Zaitsev, Michael Carcone, and Connor Brown.
Freddie almost bashes his knee into the edge of the living room’s side table.
The bright red banner crawls underneath the commentary panel covering the start of free agency and buyouts. All of the panellists turn to the camera in sync once their earpieces inform them of what’s happened. Before his younger brother can shout out the announcement for the whole family to hear, Freddie kills the programming by slamming a finger down on the receiver’s off button. Freddie stares ahead at the black screen, too overwhelmed with his thoughts to answer his brother’s repeated pestering.
He’s only been with his family in Herning for less than a month at that point, but they’re understanding when they learn of the circumstances. They know enough about the status of his relationship with Connor to understand that this is more than a shake-up of the Leafs’ third line, and that the consequences are far-reaching. Thirty minutes after the trade became public knowledge and he’s already got a red-eye to Pearson Airport booked. He hasn’t even confirmed whether he has a place to stay when the plane’s wheels touch the tarmac in North America, but in a rare moment when his impulses defy proper reasoning, all he cares about is being at Connor’s side. He can picture his face: swollen and blotchy, with patches of red blooming in colour around his features.
Connor nearly smashes his face in when he throws his weight into Freddie’s arms, kicking the door down on his arrival. He’s shaking from head to toe. Had it not been for Freddie, he doubts Connor would be able to stand on his own two feet.
“Ottawa,” Connor whispers hoarsely. Freddie can already see the scenarios playing out in his head. Connor’s transparency was always something he liked about him. Now, it forces Freddie to bear witness to that inner turmoil that’s pressing the air out of his chest until he can’t breathe.
Ottawa would have been the team Connor cheered against growing up, the divisional rivals that were so easy to hurl insults at. To turn around and play for them is worse than an insult; it’s a physical blow. Connor has never been a physically large player, but in all their years of knowing each other, Freddie has never seen him look so small and unassuming, not even when he’s trying to escape blame.
Connor’s mother makes a bed for him, changing the linens in the guest bedroom while the rest of the family gathers around the dining room table. Canada Day decorations—banners, plastic maple leafs strung together by a thread—hang from the ceiling. No one is in a celebratory mood; Freddie imagines that none of them could enjoy the festivities yesterday evening with the news hanging over their heads. Connor looks like he hasn’t slept a wink, repeatedly tapping his pinkie finger beside the steaming mug he’s set to his right. It’s remained untouched throughout their roundabout of a conversation.
They carefully step around the topic of what will happen to Connor's mind. No one wants to think much about it, and despite having gone through the procedure himself, Freddie cannot draw from his own experience to reassure them. If he was put on the spot and asked to answer a question about where he lived in Anaheim—what his house looked like, who were his neighbours—he would not be able to do it. The league’s recall unit is very thorough in its removal of any memories that could interfere with their allegiance to a new organization. By the time Freddie stepped foot in Toronto, he couldn’t put a name to any face from the team that drafted him.
Some of his former teammates, people he would have called friends, try to make prolonged eye contact with him when they’re up against the Ducks. Even if he knows why they’re doing it, he never holds on for longer than a couple of seconds. Gibson always took it the hardest, smacking his stick down before the anthems played when Freddie would pointedly stare down at his crease to avoid acknowledging him. Those holes extend to any memory obtained during his time with the organization, including his fateful meeting with his current partner.
He knows Connor’s first goal was scored on him--he’s seen the footage to confirm that fact. However, if you asked him to talk about the experience from his point of view, it would take him a second too long to respond, and the smooth skin between his eyebrows would crease with wrinkles. Connor is observant enough to point out that it’s one of his tells. You wouldn’t see it behind the cage of his goalie mask or the careful disguise he wears when he’s out in public. So much of him is carefully guarded, which is why his relationship with Connor is so unlike anything he’s experienced with his previous partners. It’s good for him.
Or was. Past tense. This relationship has to end; there’s a mutual understanding there, as much as it pains them. If they want to be positive, at least they can say there was notice. They know what is coming, so how it ends is on their terms.
For Connor’s last few days in the city, they tour around the places that are meaningful to them: the deli that’s been passed through the hands of a single family for three generations, the backroads they’d take to not end up bumper-to-bumper in the traffic congestion after games, the National Art Gallery, where they’d gone for their first unofficial date, back when they didn’t know what to call their mutual interest in each other. They’d stumbled through artistic interpretations and attempts to sound smarter than they were, but the most important things they’d learned that day didn’t come from reading the gallery wall plaques. Freddie looks fondly at the moments of travel between exhibits, on the flight of stairs to the next floor where they spoke their minds. He learned about the summer camps Connor had attended as a child in the very same building, and shared his own experiences about his mother trying, and failing, to teach him piano chords when he was very young. She had about the same success as his father when it came to dissuading Freddie to be a goalie, a comment that prompted Connor to smile from ear to ear when he heard it muttered under his breath.
Toronto has been kind to them. Many players don’t last three years, particularly when they’re third or fourth-liners. Even franchise stars whose faces are printed on the annual trading cards live in fear of having it all taken away at a moment’s notice, unable to retire with the team that drafted them and the wingers they grew up alongside. Still, the concept of “being lucky” doesn’t sit right with Freddie, because it implies he’s supposed to be grateful for the time they had. Now the burden falls on him to remember. If he doesn’t, then it’s as if it never happened; the world will never know that Frederik Andersen and Connor Brown loved each other.
So as much as it rubs his skin the wrong way, he throws himself into their final day together. Connor runs him around from place to place, indulging in the storefront windows and the summer treats that drip down their hands and wrists. Freddie gets as much as he can on camera and the rest he commits to memory. He doesn’t want to constantly shove his phone between them for the time they have left, so he makes peace with the fact that some of it will be lost to time, even if every selfish urge in his body wants to hold onto any piece of Connor forever.
By dusk, they’ve exhausted themselves and their options for entertainment, opting to walk the length of Woodbine Beach before turning in. As the day grows shorter, so too does the extent of Connor’s enthusiasm; he withdraws into himself, contemplating his surroundings with greater scrutiny. At one point, he abruptly stops to inspect what appears to be the dead body of a sea creature that washed ashore. Freddie tries to move him along with a gentle tug on the elbow, but he resists.
“You okay?” he asks, not knowing what else to say.
Connor refuses to meet his eyes. “What do you think is going to happen?” The toe of his shoe prods at the unidentified creature, lifting one of its extremities. It’s far from a careful examination; if Freddie had to guess, Connor’s just looking for something to preoccupy himself with.
“In Ottawa?” He waits for Connor to nod before continuing. “I don’t see much changing. It’s hockey.”
“I don’t want to be juggled around until I’m knocked out of the league.”
“That won’t happen. Any team would be lucky to have you. Ottawa will probably want to keep you forever.”
Connor looks up at him, his face completely blank.
“But Toronto didn’t.”
Talking has never been his strong suit, and with a comment like that Freddie’s hands are tied. It takes him a few minutes to find his words, and even then they exist in a jumbled mess inside his brain, needing to be reordered.
“Toronto is…” The original thought goes nowhere, so he changes his direction to compensate. “I think people are too focused on Matts, Mitchy, and Willy. They don’t see players like you, and that’s wrong. I hope that Ottawa gives you what you deserve, because you deserve so much.”
Connor sucks in a deep breath. Freddie worries he’s offended him, grabbing at his shoulders in a gesture that’s intended to be comforting. He doesn’t want to restrain him, but Connor leans into his touch. He presses his head beneath the meeting of Freddie’s collarbones, close to the muscles that his heart hides behind.
“I know you don’t want to say it, and I don’t know if I’m ready to hear it, but I don’t want to forget you,” Connor says in a small voice, muffled by the fabric of the shirt he’s speaking against. “I’m not ready to say goodbye yet.”
Freddie holds on tighter, burying his nose in the head of hair. He inhales, burning his nostrils with the smell of Connor’s body wash. He holds it in his lungs for as long as he can, hoping some of it permeates, that some part of Connor will remain with him even when he’s gone.
They watch the waves gently lap at the shore of Woodbine Beach until it’s too dark to see far into the distance, the leisure boats returning to the docks to be secured by the ties looping through the centre of the dock’s cleats. Once, and just that once, they let themselves openly hold hands in public. Freddie squeezes it tightly, enough to cut off the circulation of blood to his fingers. Connor shares that strength while he still can.
He’s forbidden to reach out, and to be honest he doesn’t know what he’d say even if he could. The Connor Brown on the Senators’ roster, who shares the same face as his partner of two years, may as well be a stranger.
He sends a few words of encouragement early into August but receives no response, a repeat outcome happening when he tries before training camp. It feels too presumptive to call, so he procrastinates until their exhibition games during the preseason. Even then, he’s not in net for the games when Connor is in rotation. With so much happening in preparation for October, he gets swept up in new dietary regimens, media appearances, and sponsorships that all need to be taken care of before the official start of the season. He never does get the opportunity to approach Connor after one of their games, and once too much time has passed there’s no way he can broach the topic. That, and management makes it clear that there is to be no fraternization, flashing a legally-binding contract at him when he resists the deletion of his old Instagram photos.
The home opener is played against Ottawa, as is typical. People are packed into the stands, shoulder to shoulder. Beer sloshes over the rims of their bottles as they excitedly sing along to the fan-favourite songs, blasting throughout the seating area in deafening volume. Frederik tries to swallow back his nerves and crouch into another set of squats. There’s a resistance in his equipment that fights back, forcing him to exert more energy to manipulate it. The upholstered, new smell is layered beneath the budding sweat.
He fights the urge to look over at the bench at every chance he gets, even when the rolled carpets and dimmed lights signal a brief intermission in play. Both teams line up on either side of centre ice in time to hear the announcer welcome them all back to Scotiabank Arena, with special mention given to a couple of familiar faces.
Connor, now on the first line for the Senators, is unable to fathom that he’s the same player on the Jumbotron tribute. His new teammates have hooked their arms around him to ensure he’s grounded in their presence. They don’t want the memories of those days to come back and muddy his allegiances. Zaitsev receives similar treatment, though he doesn’t show much interest in the light show, swishing water around in his mouth as he waits out the spectacle. Freddie watches from afar, restricted to the immediate area of his crease. Even if he was in Connor’s line of sight, the eyes of the world are on them now. There’s not much he can do.
Not ten minutes into the first period and the Senators capitalize on the first scoring opportunity they get, catching Freddie by surprise. In the heat of the moment, the Senators players are all indistinguishable from each other. It is only after, when the referees have retrieved the puck, that he’s able to replay the moment in his mind, to interpret what the flash of colour in his periphery was.
His suspicions are confirmed when the announcer reads out the surnames of the playmakers and explicitly mentions Brown, to the audible disbelief of the crowd. Connor Brown, former Leaf, now one of the first players of the season to earn an assist. As if fate had personally intervened, his first goal as a Senator was almost scored on Freddie. If he was in a better state, then he might be able to appreciate the irony.
He tells himself to make it to intermission. He can compose himself in the locker room, away from prying eyes. The effect that the overstimulation is having on him appears in the number of rebounds that stack up, as he desperately tries to get a grip on his focus. Any time the puck is deflected, it slides right into the stick of an opponent. Where he normally would have felt anger for his defencemen’s abandonment of him, there’s nothing. He can’t manage anything more than grief.
The puck is sent around the boards behind the net, prompting him to slide into a defensive position at the corner, where it could be tucked in. He’s preoccupied with looking around the defencemen screening him from the view of the puck, his general surroundings blurring into white. It’s only at the last minute that he sees an incoming shape, uneven lines and maybe the number twenty-eight, before he’s slammed into.
Freddie’s skates slide out from underneath him. He loses his balance, sticking an arm out to steady himself before his whole body hits the hard surface of the ice. The shape—another player—grunts because of the physical exertion, his body draped over Freddie’s midsection before he’s hauled away. Muzz takes up two fistfuls of the opponent’s white jersey, using it to forcibly remove him from the blue paint.
Their sticks are hoisted high up in the air, the blades nearly wedging under their visors. Freddie has to keep his head low to avoid them, using the time to confirm that it is indeed Connor who interfered with him. The odds of them having two close interactions is slim to none, and maybe part of him hopes that it was deliberate, that Connor is conscious of what he’s doing.
The referees don’t determine it to be a penalty, and the deliberation over that verdict allows the networks the opportunity to run a commercial break. As the ice crew shovel the loose snow, Freddie uses the opportunity to remove his helmet, hoping that the reveal of his face might help his emotions translate. As luck would have it, Connor's head turns in his general direction then, searching for something invisible to the naked eye.
They share a glimpse from across ten metres of ice, and for a second, Freddie deludes himself into thinking that holding onto that connection, as weak as it may be, could procure something resembling familiarity for the Leafs’ starting goaltender. However, Connor breaks the line of sight almost immediately, returning to his team’s bench to heed the call of his coach. Once he’s seated, he disappears into the camouflage of red and black.
Ice sprays up as Muzzin makes a hard stop beside Freddie. “It’s not him, bud.” His mouthguard hangs from the corner of his mouth, pinched between his teeth.
Freddie doesn’t immediately respond, using the excuse of being thirsty to reach for his water bottle. The strength of his grip makes water burst out of the nozzle, misting his forehead, cheeks, and neck. What does reach his mouth is swallowed hungrily, as if it’s going to quench that uncharacteristic desperation of his. He only turns to Muzz once his mask has been pulled down, preventing anyone from seeing how personal the loss is.
“I know,” he says, not giving anything away in his voice. Since the rest of the world is content to be unsympathetic, he’s not going to accept their pity. He rips his eyes away from the opponent’s bench, an unspoken apology to the remains of what they were reverberating in his head as he adjusts his focus back to the game.
It’s business as usual for some time, which lets him adjust to the revolving door of faces and names that swap out as the team adjusts to growing pains. Their young forwards are not so young anymore, but their trophy cabinet is still as empty as it was forty years ago. It’s a vicious circle of finger-pointing and speculation that they try their best to survive, even when the stress has them picking the skin around their fingernails. However, as far as goal-keeping is concerned, Freddie was always on the chopping block. When they run out of other people to blame, the opinion pieces always find a way to make it about him, especially now that they have a back-up showing potential.
Too many injuries, too unpredictable. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before, and his skin is too thick for any of them to seriously wound him. That doesn’t mean the news of his trade to Carolina sits right in his stomach, especially when he’s given almost no forewarning ahead of the press. His agent’s courtesy call is lacking the apologetic tone, jumping straight into business about what the next month is going to look like. They want him in playing shape come October, which is only possible if they meet a strict schedule of deadlines and check-ins.
Apparently, he’s gone through this once before. He wonders if he ever had ever called Anaheim home, if the idea of moving to Toronto was a downgrade that had him questioning his whole career. He can’t spare more than a second thought about what he’d been to that team because they’re not his anymore, and there isn’t anything resembling camaraderie in mind when he sees their surnames vanish behind his net to get into a scrum. It’s hard to imagine the same happening to his friends on the Leafs, people whose families he’s visited, who he’s broken bread with. He thought he’d win the Stanley Cup with them.
They give him a date to show up on and an exhaustive list of instructions about what he can put into his body before the surgery. The post-treatment rules use the same wording as concussion protocol: no screens, no physical exertion, and no reading. With his agent at his side, he meticulously signs his way through legal jargon until his wrist hurts. For each signature, the tip of his pen is pressed too hard to the paper as his only means of expressing his frustration at the turn of events. It’s insulting that they go through the song and dance of him consenting to the medical procedure on paper, when any stakeholder in the business would know that someone else proposed and approved of the idea. Freddie’s words are as decorative as the staple adhering the stack together.
The days leading up to the operation are a blur of team get-togethers and online house shopping to replace the lease he just broke. He’s hardly got any downtime until hours before he’s supposed to go under the knife and realizes why shortly thereafter: because being alone with his thoughts is psychological torture. It gives him just enough time to regret every team outing he didn’t attend under the excuse of being too tired, every winter he let pass without visiting the Distillery Winter Village like he’d promised Mitch. He won’t ever have the chance to befriend Matty again, or hear the city rally behind him with chants that drown out the blood rushing through his ears. It paralyzes him; he can hardly move from his bed.
It could be worse, he tells himself. At least he’s not leaving anyone behind.
Although it breaches the terms of his legal agreement, he’s beyond caring when he brings up Connor’s name in his phone. It’s not the first time he’s navigated to their conversations just to see the picture of Connor’s face smiling at him, blurred from the motion of the phone when it was haphazardly taken. He was supposed to delete the contact a long time ago, but even the rejection on opening night wasn’t enough to make him go scorched-earth. On nights when his thoughts became too loud, he would scroll through the backlog of their conversations to have Connor’s reassurances with him, even if they’re dated to 2018. They were a lot more hopeful back then, naive enough to think they would last until retirement. Under much persistence, Connor had humoured the idea of moving to Denmark one day.
He tortures himself with that painful reminder one last time, reliving their relationship through out-of-context snapshots of their life. He never made a true attempt to contact Connor since the man’s operation, both because of the legal ramifications and his own cowardice. Now, as a man with nothing to lose, there’s nothing stopping him from saying one last thing as the certainty of what’s to come looms over him.
I still love you so much.
I wish we had more time.
His head’s acting up again that morning. It feels like his brain is pushing up against his forehead, desperate to remove the layers of cranial fluid, bone, and muscle to make more room for itself. He wedges a cold compress between his head and the pillow and makes himself comfortable on the bed, which is covered with a thin sheet patterned with palm trees.
Beside him, his phone vibrates on the end table, inching toward the edge. He doesn’t know why all these people are reaching out to him, draining his phone’s charge down to single digits. He resists the temptation for as long as it takes his boredom to overpower any logical decision-making. A brief reprieve, he tells himself, to self-medicate until the next teammate comes to visit and bring him a week’s worth of food with them. He gropes blindly in the air until his fingers wrap around the charging cord, which he tugs on until the phone parts through the wrinkles on his bedsheet, arriving beside his right shoulder.
The wall of messages on his lock screen compiles every platform he’s on. Some of the area codes come from other states. Some of them prompt his cell provider to automatically text him, reminding him that international text messaging costs an additional fee.
Amidst the well-wishes and one-sentence introductions, one of the messages simply says:
?
He studies it for a moment, trying to figure out what it means. The name of the sender is nothing that stands out as being particularly memorable, and he’d have to open the conversation to get more context.
Before he can investigate further, a message alert slides down from the banner, asking how the procedure went. It’s entered into his phone with the abbreviation CAR, which is an obvious tell that it’s from someone he should care about. He abandons the message he was on to pursue it, the red notification symbol disappearing from the previous name. He doesn't think about it again.