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It’s the first game of the pre-season, and Roman’s in Nashville. Juuse is in Tampa, with Lanky and some rookies, maybe a vet or two – he was too distracted to check the roster. Roman’s in Nashville, soaking up his last two days with his family, and Juuse is in Tampa, and Juuse is pregnant.
Lanky’s starting, which is good. It’s better than good, or even ideal; it’s perfect. Juuse didn’t think to tell anyone when he arrived at the arena that afternoon, because an hour or two before, he had just found out himself. He pulled his gear on, more carefully than he usually would, and skated onto the ice for warmups. He neglected throwing pucks to anyone standing on the ice, and as he stood in the net, he fought against his natural instincts to move. Even with his heavy chest padding, he knew that blocking pucks at ninety miles per hour wasn’t the safest activity, especially with child.
So, he went to the locker room, ignoring calls for him to sit on the bench. He traded his helmet for a ballcap, and for the first moment of peace that he’d had all day, he put his head in his hands.
Juuse hadn’t intended for anything to come from his summer-long one-night stand. Of course, he had spent time at home, flying back and forth between Nashville and Forssa to train and to see his family. But, he’d also done the one thing he told himself to never indulge in – extracurricular fun with a teammate. He didn’t think it was a secret that he had a crush on Roman, and Roman didn’t treat that revelation to any surprise when Juuse finally admitted it. He spent his summer with Roman, hours shared in secret when they could both get time away. And it was only going to be a summer thing; in fact, they had already called it off. Training camp was the tail-end of their summer, and they had both come to the end of their agreement.
There were no dates over coffee, or walks in parks, or fancy restaurants. Only sneaking away to push blankets off of beds, to accidentally tear sheets from mattress corners.
They’d always been safe. That had been Juuse’s main concern going into it – he wasn’t getting any younger, and the NHL was unpredictable. He planned to finish his career in Nashville, but he could get traded, or injured, or told to retire far before he wanted to. And Tennessee wasn’t the best state for an abortion, and neither was the rest of the country, and Juuse was stoic on the ice, but off the ice, he was paranoid; too paranoid to fly to New York or to another country, even if he were only a few weeks pregnant.
They’d always been safe, except for that one night, right before they both flew back to Nashville, two weeks before training camp. Juuse was down in Helsinki at a new training facility, and Roman was in Bern, visiting his parents. Roman was able to slip away for a weekend, flying to Juuse for forty-eight hours, with the better half of those hours spent on top of each other. There was really nothing romantic about it, however much that Juuse wished there was. The term ‘friends with benefits’ made him shiver in disgust, but, that was the only word for what they were doing.
Roman was married. Roman already had two children, a boy, and a girl, both his spitting image, and from Juuse had seen in the few times he had seen them in the stands, both sweet, both very keen of their father. And Roman was in love with his wife. Juuse was married, to his childhood best friend, who he’d helped sponsor her work visa for the U.S., and which she helped cover up who Juuse really was. Her name and her face beside him in pictures were enough to hide scrutiny from Juuse’s ventures to gay clubs with other players.
Juuse’s yearly physical was on Wednesday. Two days away. He swallowed and found his phone at his stall, sighing, wondering if he’d be breaking up a party. Asky loved Nashville, and so did his wife, and so did all of their friends. It was barely seven at night there, but maybe Asky’d be getting started early.
“Hello?”
“They haven’t told you yet, but you’re going to play this season. I’m out.”
So, there’d be the Lankinen – Askarov tandem. Juuse said a silent prayer for every Predators fan.
“What?” As if on cue, Juuse heard Asky shush someone beside him, and ambient music in the background of his phone call was turned down.
“I said, I’m out,” Juuse was going to imply it was an injury, that he was going to be out for half the season; that could alleviate some of the stress he was about to put onto Asky. But, he knew that he’d be off the ice until summer, and that he would likely never play professionally again. “I’m out, Yaro,” then, almost silently, he said, “I’m pregnant.”
He could hear Asky grind his teeth. “Mhm,” it was clear that he didn’t know what to say in response. “Good luck, you’ll need it, mate.”
And that was an understatement.
There was some loophole in HIPAA that let Roman know if anyone was injured before each member of the team could consent to an announcement. After all, he was the Captain, and if there was anyone else other than the coaches who controlled the play, it was Roman.
Juuse walked out of the office for his physical and back into the locker room. He tried his best to act as if nothing was out of the ordinary. His nurse motioned for Roman to come back, but Roman had already completed his physical earlier that morning. Juuse took a deep breath and began to clean out his stall, though he had just restocked for the new season the week before.
It was safe to say that Juuse was terrified, and that fear was heightened even more so as Roman returned quickly. He could feel Roman’s hand on his shoulder, asking him to turn to face him. “I don’t know what to tell you,” Juuse said. “Other than that I haven’t been seeing anyone else. I wish I had been.”
“Before you ask, yes. Yes, I am.” It was in reference to whether or not he’d have the baby. “I hope you can respect that.”
When he turns around to face Roman, his breath smells like coffee. That’s oddly comforting. Even though Roman looks like a deer in headlights. His lips are pursed, as if he just wants to say, “Okay,” as if he just wants to repeat it over and over until all of this goes away. Instead, Roman says, “I can’t do this.”
There’s the question of What is it that you can’t do? But he already knows the answer. Because he already has two kids, he already has a life outside of a rink. He’s got aspirations and hobbies and goals that have nothing to do with work. And Juuse’s entire life revolves around strength and conditioning, when he’ll be back out there again. He thinks that he should find some hobbies as soon as he can, because he’s never going out there again.
He starts crying, and it’s partially from Roman’s insult, but comes more from knowing he’ll never do the one thing that he loves ever again. That’s a lie. He loves the ice, but he also loves the man who averages 26 minutes a night. Can you love someone who was nothing more than a summer fling? A fling where you can count on one hand how many times you kissed, but lost track of how many times you fucked? Juuse was smart enough to know that he’d been played, or at least to wonder if he’d been. Maybe Roman never meant to hurt him, maybe Roman was telling the truth when he’d always said it was just for fun. He’d put his marriage in jeopardy by fucking his goalie, but Roman probably didn’t think about that. Juuse realized for the first time that he was wondering if Roman was even gay.
And he can’t stop crying. Roman’s freaking out now, he’s shaking and putting his hands all over Juuse to calm him down. He’s asking him what’s wrong as if it isn’t obvious and Juuse can’t talk. So, he doesn’t even try. He forces out a shrug, he tries to act unbothered, he tries to get a laugh out of Roman, because maybe if he sees him smile, this memory won’t sting as bad.
Roman doesn’t smile. Of course, he doesn’t. He asks, “What do you need?” And it feels so fake, it feels like a lie, that Roman even cares, because he’s already said that he can’t get involved.
Juuse thinks he’s going crazy, but, he almost asks for one more night. He’ll miss that, too; he already does. “Have a good season,” he says instead.
They never really tried talking to each other in the first place. Juuse thinks they’ve had two good conversations outside of the arena. They’d talked about golf a few times, how bad that Juuse was in comparison to Roman, and when Roman came to see him in Finland over the summer, they’d laid together and watched a movie, where they both put aside their terms to call it quits in September. For three hours, they spoke to each other as if their connection were real — it was, it always had been, there had always been a spark, just never vocalized — they both played pretend, laughing about what it would be like to have a house together, how Andrew Burnette would call them to his office to tell them to stop “fraternizing” and they’d buckle over at the suggestion, crying laughing at the idea of splitting apart. Juuse thought Roman was indulging him, Juuse thought that in some other lifetime these silly jokes could come true.
That night, after physicals, the entire team went to the movies, renting out a theatre. Juuse didn’t remember much, other than Vange winning three times at a claw machine, and how he stared at Roman through the entire film and Roman never once looked at him. Asky tried to stop Juuse from leaving, wanting him to stay behind to talk about this season’s schedule. Juuse kept walking past him. That next morning would be a hard one, sitting with the rest of the team, everyone getting briefed that he’d be out for the season. He already wanted to hang his head in shame.
Roman knew that Juuse was a man who could get pregnant. That was communicated explicitly before they started hooking up. No one else knew, though, and Juuse wasn’t looking forward to their reactions.
Asky’d been more than fine, but any shock that came from finding out that Juuse was pregnant was blocked out by the fact that he would play an entire season in the NHL. Asky didn’t belong in Milwaukee, he belonged in Nashville.
Before Juuse could unlock his car door, though, Asky walked up to him, starting to chat about the game. Juuse held up his palm to stop him from talking any longer, but Asky ignored the gesture, only changing his tone to say, “And I was a little busy Monday night when you called, but, congratulations. I’m happy for you.”
That made one person, at least. Juuse couldn’t figure out if he was happy himself. He didn’t think he had any sort of maternal instincts. Until he finally did sit in his car, turning the air on full blast, ignoring how it fogged the window, then turning up his music to try to drown out all of his thoughts. He stopped at a red light, and before he saw that it had already turned green, he had his hand beneath the hem of his t-shirt, flat against his belly. He hadn’t realized he’d done that. But, it didn’t feel bad, it felt a bit comforting, and it felt like this was real. He turned up his music even louder and prayed there were no cops nearby, speeding down the shortcut home. He didn’t necessarily want to be elated, and he wasn’t, but it did feel good. To recognize it. To know. To know that he was going to be a parent, that it was okay, that this was something happening to him and maybe he would be able to get through it alone — no, he knew he could get through it alone. That didn’t mean that he wanted to. That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t start crying again that night when he thought of how he’d never stand in the net again.
How unfair that it was that Roman could pretend he didn’t even exist, how he would complete the season and make the playoffs with new leadership.
After the team meeting, Roman asked him to lunch. They’d never done that before.
Juuse imagined that they’d sit in silence, and that this was some sort of peace offering before Roman left him alone forever. Juuse didn’t blame him, neither of them asked for this.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about it,” Roman started to speak, but he was cut off by a waiter.
“Water,” Juuse said in response to a drink order.
“I’m,” Roman paused to swallow. “Uhm, I’m just… very afraid.”
If Roman was scared, what was Juuse? Mortified?
It was hard to offer Roman any sympathy. He had the choice to leave, and was already halfway out the door. Juuse had to stay put, he had to accept that this was his life now. He’d ordered water because he’d already had coffee that morning, which hadn’t helped his nerves, causing him to shake and worry that one shot of espresso would kill his child.
“Can I still come to practice?” It was easier to stress over the loss of his career as a hockey player than the start of his career as a father. “’Get a few laps in?”
“I’ve never seen you skating,” Roman played with his cuticles. Juuse was reminded Pekka’s first practice as their goalie coach, how Roman couldn’t help but chuckle at him maneuvering pucks across the ice and assuming the opposite side of the net. “Sure, yeah. Yeah. We’ll… we’ll tell the boys to avoid shooting at you.”
He felt like a wounded animal. Not that he was particularly fond of getting hit in the stomach with a hockey puck, anyway. But the sentiment was still there.
“Do you think that they’ll be alright with it?”
“Yes.”
Half the team had kids. They understood. Not as much as Juuse would, because they got to travel the country playing hockey while their wives were stuck at home pregnant. He’d assume the role of becoming a homebody, streaming games through Bally Sports; if he could get the courage to watch them.
“Do you-“
“I think that-“
They both spoke at the same time. Roman shook his head, letting Juuse finish his sentence.
“Do you think I’ll ever play again?” Juuse already knew the answer. Nine months off the ice was the nail in the coffin. He couldn’t do much of a workout off the ice either, especially not in comparison to how strenuous his summer training had been. He’d be gone for the entire season, and if they made the playoffs, he might could sit in the stands, if he could find someone to watch a newborn. He’d be due in June, and three months of recovery afterward would mean he couldn’t train that summer either. It’d be a miracle if he even remembered how to tie his skates next September.
He already knew the answer, but it still stung when Roman said it.
“No.”
When Juuse felt confident in flying home, he’d go back to Finland, with his child he’d refuse to acknowledge was Roman’s, and he’d hide out in the forest until he had the courage to join a beer league, their team losing by 10 goals each game.
“They’ll put your number in the rafters, too, y’know,” Roman tried his best to offset Juuse’s frown. “We love our goalies in Nashville.”
Juuse wasn’t planning on saying why he’d be retiring, especially so young. He told the front office that he’d like a press release about an upper-body injury, one that was career-ending. The announcement he was injured would be released any day now, and his retirement would be announced during bye-week. Going out with a fractured collarbone would be better than saying he was pregnant.
He didn’t want his number in the rafters. Roman would be the next to go, probably within the next four years, and his number would hang beside him. That was the curse of being an elite player, you’ve got to get along with the rest of them.
Juuse would specifically ask not to retire his jersey. Because the outrage from his early retirement would be too much not to retire it immediately, and he was not in the mood to stand in front of all of Nashville, six months pregnant and pretending to be fine, as Roman would likely be the one to raise the banner.
“I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself.” Roman spoke again, and Juuse wished that their waiter would return. “I don’t know what to do.”
Juuse didn’t know what to do either, but he was going to do whatever it took. To acclimate to a normal life, to acclimate to life with a child, to acclimate to life away from the ice. He still knew it to be unfair, that Roman wouldn’t have to step away for this.
He almost asks Roman, what about when your wife was pregnant? But that would be a cop-out. They’d been together a decade now, they’d had to have planned their kids around hockey season, her family was Tennessee native. There wouldn’t have been any elements of worry, surprise, or doubt there.
Juuse had no family in America. Roman’s parents were back in Switzerland. As far as Juuse was concerned, his family in the States was his teammates. That would be taken away from him soon. He couldn’t call upon Yakov to babysit.
Juuse could do it alone. Or, he could remember his original plan, to hide back in Finland. Perhaps Nashville would be better, though. Roman was going to live there for the rest of his life. Maybe in the distant future, he could meet their child. Could take him to a hockey clinic. Could take him to the park.
He imagined they’d be having a son, a child to look identical to Roman, with a mess of curly brown hair and bright green eyes.
Juuse blinked a few times – he shouldn’t have thought of that. He was thinking too far ahead. He was giving Roman too much time out of his day.
“What do you want from me?” Roman asks.
Juuse says nothing. Quite literally, he responds, “I don’t want anything from you.” And then he stands up from the booth at Milk & Honey.
He caved and asked Roman to come with him to his primary physician, to learn more about their baby and less about his athleticism from the team’s doctor. Roman couldn’t make it, his first-born son got hurt at Little League.
So, Juuse called up Asky again, distracting himself by answering all of Asky’s questions. “You saw they put out the news today? That you’re out for the season, that I’m in?”
Juuse flips through a magazine and hums in response to him.
He went to McKay’s Books in Bellevue to reward himself for having to sit through an ultrasound, ignoring the technician’s consistent asks as to why he was crying so hard, if anything was wrong, even if he needed counseling. He stumbled upon Lucy Dacus’s sophomore album and a handful of Funko action figures. Juuse stumbled into a teenage Preds fan, and while they shared their condolences about this season’s absence, they also handed him a beaded bracelet, similar to a friendship bracelet that he’d received during warmup.
The day wasn’t all bad.
And that night, the regular season started. Juuse sat on the glass, but he didn’t rise to cheer as Roman scored a goal against the Red Wings. He kept his eyes on the risers, where Roman said they’d hang his number. That 35 seemed to glare at him. He could tell Pekka what was wrong, if he was still in the States. Juuse assumed that the ‘European Goalie Coach’ title had taken him back to Finland after training camp.
Instead of ringing Pekka, Juuse realized the time, how it would be dawn when he answered the phone. He listened to his new vinyl record and lay alone in bed, feeling as his back sank into the mattress, a new kink at his coccyx that had never been there before. Being an athlete had many perks, but Juuse hated how well he knew his body. He wanted to be as oblivious as anyone else. His back had moved a hair, and before June, would curve and contort forward so much that he could barely walk.
He found out that morning that he was six weeks pregnant. Which lined up perfectly with when Roman saw him in Helsinki. Juuse thought back to their conversation after they had sex, wondering if anything that Roman said was true, if any of the feelings that he’d communicated were real. A house together. Telling the team and Burnette telling them off. How Juuse had just then recalled Roman saying that he wanted Juuse to meet his children – not in passing, but to truly see them. Roman had also said that, maybe, if this season wasn’t as stressful as the last, they could move beyond just fucking. Clearly, from their lunch at the end of preseason, that would have never worked.
Juuse reached his hand to his record player and was able to turn up its volume as he still lay flat. He closed his eyes, feeling that the heavy music sank into his bones. He took a few breaths before he put both hands on his belly. He could feel the hair on his arms begin to stand. It was pathetic, but he didn’t care anymore. Juuse took another deep breath and held it, so that his hands weren’t flat anymore, but that his palms could curve, and he kept his eyes closed. He pictured that he was back home like he’d been that summer, and that Roman was there, that it was his hands on his belly rather than his own, and that he was the only person in Roman’s life.
“You took too many shots on Lanky,” Pekka said, pointing the end of his hockey stick in Roman’s direction. Usually, Pekka’s new role was a welcome distraction at practice. But that morning, Roman’d had enough of him. “Move to Askarov.”
Roman was about to refuse to move, but Tyson pushed him forward.
Roman’s guilt was swallowing him whole. Juuse hadn’t been coming to practice like he had asked to. Pekka’d asked Roman where Juuse had been, what happened to make him step off the ice this season. “He’s not been answering,” Pekka showed Roman his call list, where he had 32 unreturned calls outward to Juuse.
Roman couldn’t tell him. Nope. Never. Not a chance in hell that he’d tell Pekka what had happened. Pekka was protective over Juuse, he took care of him like he was his little brother, he housed Juuse when he was just a rookie, and his face still hung on the walls of Juuse’s childhood bedroom. If Juuse hadn’t told Pekka yet himself, that meant he was embarrassed, which Roman had already gathered. And that made Roman feel even worse.
He was never the type of guy to get angry, but Roman missed three shots in a row on Asky, then broke his stick against his knee.
Pekka would find out eventually, though. Roman knew he would. Juuse was quiet and could keep a good secret, but five years from now, Pekka would probably run into Juuse back home and ask why there was a small child holding his arm.
Roman couldn’t tell Pekka, but he could imply it. He could make Pekka guess. That may soften the blow on him, maybe it would lessen whatever wrath that Pekka would rain onto Roman, he’d feel better because he’d been able to guess such an unlikely possibility.
“What did you do?” Pekka was quick to sit next to Roman in the locker room.
“’Less of what did I do, more of what I’m supposed to do moving forward,” Roman groaned, an audible eughhh. He hung back his head. “Fuck!”
Pekka came to Juuse’s house unannounced with a basket of bread. “I didn’t know what to get for you,” he shrugged then extended his hand. It was a literal basket, a wooden, tanned, woven basket, filled with specialty breads, express shipped over from home.
Juuse curled his lips toward his teeth and smiled, replying a short “Thank you.”
Pekka had started to believe in the expression that someone could look green. Juuse looked worse for wear. It was more than obvious that he’d spent the majority of the day with his head hung over a toilet bowl, wrapped in a blanket on the bathroom floor, trying to stop himself from vomiting more.
Juuse wore a t-shirt two sizes too large for him, branded with the 2017 Stanley Cup Finals logo and a shiny, saber-toothed Gnash. Pekka already knew it was Roman’s with how it hung from his shoulders, but he didn’t say anything to Juuse. He didn’t mention what Roman had said to him, rather he sat with Juuse on the couch, turning on one of his favorite movies and handing him a throw pillow to put beneath his head. “When will you start to feel better?”
Juuse was silent to Pekka’s question, closing his eyes and drawing his brows together as he began to feel sick. “Umm,” he rubbed his temple. “Mid-November. ‘Should be back on the ice soon after.”
Pekka decided to say that he knew, because Juuse couldn’t think of him to be so stupid.
When Pekka explained to Juuse that Roman told him, Juuse sat up on the couch and physically turned himself away from Pekka. He held his head in his hands and put his head between his knees. “I wish he cared a little more.” Juuse looked up from his hands and Pekka could see his fear.
“He’s scared, Juuse.”
He was reminded of that lunch after physicals. “And what do you think I am?”
Juuse returned to practice in mid-November, keeping his promise. He didn’t skate, though, just observing from the bench. Pekka cracked a few jokes with him, and Glasser always made sure he wasn’t too cold. “They treat me like I’m fragile, like I’m about to break.”
“If you and Roman keep ignoring each other, then you will,” Filip skated over and took a sip from his water bottle.
Pekka whispered a sorry to Juuse. Pekka had evidently told someone. And now, everyone else knew. Juuse had been blushing in shame the entire meeting where it’d been announced that he was pregnant, but this feeling was far worse.
Roman could see them chatting from across the ice. He could see Juuse’s warm cheeks and his avoidant stare toward Filip.
There was nothing that Roman knew to do. All summer long, he thought that Juuse was only with him for sex, that nothing more should have come from that. And Juuse’s crush on Roman was obvious, but Roman didn’t know its depth. He tried holding back from being too tender with him, tried holding back from spurning deep conversations, tried not to let his hands hug Juuse at his hips and to say that he loved him. Roman had succeeded, though he shouldn’t have. The end of the summer, those two nights in Helsinki, were when Roman should have said more than his jokes. Roman should have proposed to take things seriously. Would Juuse have even said yes?
And now, here they were. Roman was skating absentmindedly through what had been the best season of his career thus far. He was getting into arguments with his wife over simple things, he was welling with tears when he took care of his children, and he was nodding off on the bench and dismissing coaches during practice. Because Juuse was all he ever thought about anymore. Lovely, beautiful, shy, charming Juuse. Who he’d taken advantage of and left pregnant and alone, whose career he’d effectively ended, whose heart had broken his own.
Juuse wouldn’t want to talk to Roman. Roman already knew. So, he stayed away from the bench, exiting the ice on the opposing side. He chewed on his mouthguard, then he turned around as the glass door closed. Juuse’s figure was shrinking as Roman walked further away, but Roman wondered, if in some other life, he could blow Juuse a kiss and he’d catch it.
Roman often thought of he and Juuse’s son – he only thought of a son, because then a son would be identical to Juuse, with dirty blond hair, cute and crooked teeth, a kindness that could only be replicated genetically.
Roman reminded himself that, next time, if Juuse did decide to come back to another practice, he’d skate past him and stare at his tattoos. Juuse wore a t-shirt on the bench – because screw Finland, screw his adaptedness to freezing temperatures – and his full sleeve was on display. One day, Roman would come across a photo of Juuse and their mutual friends, how many years into the future, and he could bet he’d see a portrait on Juuse’s left arm, of the child that he should have helped raise.
Juuse stands behind the bench during a highly anticipated Canes game in December. A puck flies past him, barely missing his waist. That’s the end of it. His paranoia takes over, and he starts to wonder if the stands are even safe for him to stand in. Juuse decides to stop going to games and practices in that instant. Before he can walk back to the locker room, he watches Roman climb over the bench, ignoring the whistle for an upcoming penalty of too many men, and Roman knocks Jesperi Kotkaniemi’s helmet off of his head.
December 23rd is a game against the Stars. Beforehand, the team decides to head to the gym for some volleyball and a potluck. Juuse is invited, and he brings the fifth basket of bread that Pekka’s delivered to him.
“’You’ve been eating a lot of that bread, haven’t you?” Vange stands next to Juuse as he arranges his basket on the banquet table, placing it beside three buckets of fried chicken that were provided by Luke Schenn. Vange pokes at Juuse’s stomach, accidentally getting him straight in the belly button, and he laughs out of shock.
He woke up that morning to his usual routine. A warm shower, some television, and brushing his teeth before breakfast. But, as Juuse brushed his teeth in the mirror, still shirtless and with a towel wrapped around his waist, he could feel his heart begin to skip a beat. He turned to his side. Shit.
His son’s the size of an apple, apparently, and Juuse can see that clearly.
And he should stop thinking it’s a boy. Because, on his dresser, sits a manila folder that holds some test results. Juuse could open the folder to know if he would have a boy or a girl, but part of him doesn’t want to. He thinks that it would hit him like a train, that he’d have a panic attack.
He still lays in bed each night with his hand against his belly, growing taut and poking outward. Juuse plays the same record that he bought after that first ultrasound, and sometimes, when he’s really lonely, he turns its volume down and turns on a game. He explains to the apple (or the plum, or sashimi, or whatever food that the baby’s the size of at that given moment) who each of his teammates is. “Vangey,” Juuse says with a smile. “He’s really funny… And Kiefer, oh, I miss him.” Juuse also points to his television screen and yells at him when the opposite team gets too close to the net. Sometimes he yells at Roman’s picture, when he scores a goal, then he lowers his voice, “I hope you’ll get to know him.”
That’s as far as Juuse will take things, though, because when Novy handed him a nursery catalog a couple of weeks ago, Juuse had to walk away to swallow the lump in his throat.
He wonders when he’ll feel the baby move – it’s any day now. And he wonders how long he’d go to jail for an abortion in the state of Tennessee, because he knows that every time he feels his child kick that it will destroy him.
Roman sits next to Juuse at the long table, and when Juuse asks for the pepper shaker, Roman’s hand is the first to reach it. Most of the food will be waste, because they decided to eat before they played volleyball instead of after, but Juuse decides he’ll scarf some down. He takes two plates, because he can, and Roman continues to offer him more pepper, even though Juuse playfully declines.
Juuse loses his appetite quickly, though, and barely finishes three bites. Asky makes a joke that Juuse doesn’t hear, but apparently, it is about him, and maybe it’s also about Roman. Roman grabs Juuse’s thigh beneath the table and Juuse can see a threatening look in Roman’s eyes. “C’mon, it’s never that serious, Jos,” someone else chimes in, Juuse thinks it’s Kiefer. Roman takes a deep breath, rolls his eyes, then picks up his fork again. He keeps his hand on Juuse for a second too long, and perhaps Juuse is only imagining it, but he swears that Roman’s pinky finds its way beneath the hem of his sweater.
Roman’s the first to spike the ball, and as he does, his feet slip – Tyson chastised him for deciding to wear Adidas slides earlier – and he lands on his side. His right arm reaches for his chest, then to his left ribs. It’s evident that there’s something worse wrong than having the wind knocked out of him.
Juuse has gotten quite used to hospitals, visiting an obstetrician every three weeks, so he volunteers to drive Roman to the ER at Vandy. “It’s nothing, I swear,” Roman groans as he lays horizontally in the backseat of Juuse’s car, curled into his good side.
“Sure. It sounds like a lot of nothing,” Juuse smirks, a bit, because he and Roman are alone for the first time in months, and they’re having a conversation. Not necessarily a good conversation, because Roman’s fighting for his life, it seems, but a conversation, nevertheless.
He broke three ribs, is all that the doctor says. That, and then he walks out of the room, thanking Juuse for driving his boyfriend to the hospital.
It’s earlier in the night than it seems, as they leave the ER at seven-thirty and Juuse is reminded that their game is starting. “Do you want me to drive you home?” Juuse went to Roman’s house many times that summer and can still remember the address. Somewhere in Brentwood, in the back of some rich neighborhood.
“I’m in the process of moving out, Juuse,” Roman’s in the passenger seat now and he’s playing with a compression belt on his torso. “I’m getting a divorce.”
Oh. How pleasant. And right before Christmas. Juuse wonders what must have happened.
(Juuse isn’t the brightest.)
“Okay,” Juuse says, and he turns off his GPS, exiting Nashville’s center and starting on I-24. “We can go back to my place, then.”
Roman starts laughing until he has to hold his side again, wincing at the stress on his ribs, when he walks into Juuse’s kitchen and sees about fifty licorice wrappers. They’re all empty, and he thinks that if Juuse starts sweating, then Roman will smell them on him. “It’s all that I could eat for a few weeks – don’t make fun of me!”
Juuse’s dogs jump onto Roman and they lick his arms. Juuse fights them off, but Roman doesn’t seem to mind. He ruffles their fur and rubs their ears. He stops, though, as the husky walks away, remembering that was the only family Juuse had here. If he hadn’t cracked his ribs, he’d pick up one of them and carry it around, sneaking up behind Juuse to watch him smile, leaning down to kiss one of the dogs on the forehead.
“I’ve got a month or two free,” Roman tilts his head back and forth, trying to think of what he’ll occupy the next couple of months off the ice with, knowing that the team is likely heading for the playoffs and that his injury will keep him away until he’s 100% healthy. He watches Juuse tidy his kitchen and walk in circles, hoping Juuse will turn around and their eyes can meet. He could spend those months with him. No. No, he can’t. Roman stops that thought before he can finish it.
Juuse is careful as he forces Roman to lie in his bed. “I’ll take the couch, it’s better on my back, anyway,” Juuse continues to fluff pillows and put them beneath Roman’s neck.
Roman looks around his bedroom and finds that it’s awfully sterile. Stark, white bedding, white furniture, white walls. Then, there’s a small record player on the nightstand, the only pop of color, and a black and red vinyl perched behind it. Roman turns it on. Juuse shakes his head, almost sending him a look of shame.
That’s Juuse’s way of coping. Listening to the same album over and over, crying to ‘Historians,’ knowing that he and Roman’s song is ‘Night Shift.’ He tries to drown out the music, but he can’t, and he starts to feel as if he could jump out of his skin if he tried hard enough. He feels sick, like he did those first few weeks that he was pregnant, where being ill distracted him from his shitty situation. Now, those things had combined, Roman’s smile right behind him.
Juuse reached into his chest of drawers and took out fuzzy, flannel pajama pants. He tugged them on, then stripped from his sweater, dropping it to the floor. He wiped snot from his nose – maybe he was sad, but he was really hoping he had a sinus infection instead – and he rubbed his eyes with his palms. Then Juuse looked down, swallowing hard as he saw the curve of his belly. Juuse put both of his hands on himself, slow as he moved them up, creating swirls with his fingertips, massaging his skin. He bent down and pulled his sweater back on. He wanted to put on a second.
He hadn’t noticed how Roman had uncovered himself from the layers of blankets Juuse had piled on top of him. He hadn’t noticed how Roman stood a foot away from him, how he was going to reach out his own hand. “I think the dogs are keeping the couch warm for me,” Juuse tries to crack a smile, but he can’t. “I need to get some rest.”
Roman is fast to take Juuse’s sweater by its collar, tossing it to the hardwood. “Roman, I can’t,” Juuse doesn’t know exactly what it is that he can’t do, but he says that anyway. “Roman-“
Roman cuts him off as he bends his knees. He reaches Juuse’s stature and puts his lips on his neck. He’s humming. He’s humming along to the music. Juuse feels his knees buckle, too. He snakes his hands to Juuse’s hips, and it’s a familiar feeling, of Roman’s hands against his bare skin, but this time, his intentions are different. He’s not going to guide him to (or throw him onto) the bed. He’s not going to play with the elastic of his waistband. Roman has his hands at Juuse’s hips, then he moves them into his new curves, then he’s careful, he’s so, so careful, as he extends his fingers to stretch across his entire belly. Juuse can feel Roman’s nose pressed hard into his back, he can feel Roman’s eyelashes against his skin. He wishes he were numb to the feeling of his warm hands against him, but he isn’t.
And, maybe, this is the realest that it’s ever been. He’s pregnant, and he knows that from his appearance, not just two lines on a test or something that his doctor said. Roman’s there, finally. He’s been there the whole time, it seems, like a ghost, like a scar, like something that Juuse couldn’t shake. But this feels better than that nagging feeling did. “Please, please,” Juuse shakes his head. “Please, Roman. Get away from me.”
He’s ruined so much of his own life already. Most of that is Roman’s fault, actually. But he doesn’t want to pull Roman into this. Even though Roman already did that himself.
“Please,” he says it one last time, before he feels a chill roll up his spine. He sinks. He sinks into Roman standing behind him. He had wished for one more night. This could be it. “I-, I-, I-I-I-I-,” Juuse is about to give up speaking. “We-“
“Whatever you need,” Roman’s voice is low. “Whatever you need,” now he whispers it
Roman’s shaking, a little. Presumably out of fear. This odd afraid-ness that everyone’s told Juuse that Roman’s been feeling.
Juuse always thought Roman was afraid of taking responsibility. Not that he was afraid of what Juuse must have been feeling. Not that he wanted to protect him and let Juuse have the choice to take matters into his own hands.
Juuse was a goalie for a reason. He could do nothing by himself. He relied on at least one other person to succeed. He could handle it alone – pregnancy, a baby, life. He could handle it alone, but he didn’t want to.
All those nights alone, listening to this same music, wishing that Roman had been there, that it was his hands instead of Juuse’s own.
He continued to sink into Roman, then he pursed his lips to kiss him. Juuse could no longer count how many times they had kissed on one hand.
Christmas came and went. Roman left Christmas morning, driving down to his mother-in-law’s house, handing gifts out to his kids. Juuse took a drive of his own, to Novy’s apartment, knocking on his door and asking for the catalog he’d previously tried to hand him.
Juuse and Roman drive to Target together on New Year’s Eve. They buy bottles of sparkling grape juice and discounted tins of popcorn. Juuse falls asleep before midnight, leaning his head on Roman’s shoulder absentmindedly. He’s slumped into Roman’s side, the side where he’s got four broken ribs (their team physician confirmed he’d broken another, but that the ER doctor couldn’t see from the swelling.) Roman doesn’t mind the pain. Juuse nuzzles his face into Roman’s chest and seems to curl into a ball, fitting perfectly into his lap. The ball drops on the television screen and Juuse’s shoulders twitch from the music that begins to play. Roman shushes him, he pulls him closer to his side. This action knocks a glass of grape juice onto Roman’s white sweatpants. He’s fine with that purple stain, if it means Juuse will sleep on him until morning.
They’ve yet to have a real conversation yet. A real conversation means that they’ve spoken about the baby. Not about what movie to watch, not about whether or not Roman should take off his shoes when he enters the house, not about hockey. Roman hasn’t tried to bring it up yet, but he knows that he should. He knows Juuse cannot stop thinking about it, the fact that he’s pregnant, the fact that the believes his entire life is fucked. Roman also knows that Juuse has no way of knowing that he can’t stop thinking about the baby, either, and that he can’t stop thinking about Juuse.
Juuse is half-asleep, really. He’s got his eyes closed, he’s pretending, and he hopes that Roman doesn’t move to go to sleep in the bed. He’s holding both of Roman’s hands, sitting with Roman’s palms on his thighs. For as much as he enjoys Roman’s attention, his hands on his belly, his fingertips dancing on top of his skin, he remembers that Roman’s done this before. He’s dotted on his pregnant wife, twice. Juuse is jealous and his heart breaks a little. He’ll always feel like he has to share Roman. No divorce could change that, nothing could change the fact that he’s been head over heels in love before, that he has two beloved children that he planned.
Juuse thinks that he will always take second place.
He pretends to snore. He pretends to grab Roman in his sleep. He’s leaving tomorrow morning to head to New York, to travel alongside the team for their game against the Rangers.
He’d give anything to fly there with him.
When Roman goes to New York, Juuse finds himself distracted by thoughts of him. He’s so out of his head that he thinks he’s grabbed a book from his dresser, but it’s really that manila folder.
A girl.
Juuse sends Roman a quick text, after checking flights from JFK to BNA, seeing that there are four before the night ends. Whatever I need, correct? He instantly regrets sending it. But, Juuse can’t give up now. He sends a second message. Right now, I need you.
His stomach’s in his throat. He’s not upset that they’re having a girl, why would he be? He’s upset that Roman’s not there to share that moment. That Roman’s not been there for anything. That he was too embarrassed to look beyond Roman’s first impression, that exasperated “I can’t do this,” and that he didn’t let Roman into his life until it was too late. Into this life, the life of their child, of their daughter. He was past the halfway point of his pregnancy, and the only time he’d spent with Roman was the past seven days.
Roman texts back: 4-4. OT!!
Fuck hockey.
Then the baby starts kicking. And Juuse falls to his knees.
“So,” Roman’s leaned against his elbow, sitting up in bed. “Do you think you could make it to the Carolina game?”
Juuse is still smiling and he has his hands in his hair. It’s the first time they’ve had sex since September. “You won’t even be on the ice,” he laughs. Juuse reaches to Roman’s chin and rubs his stubble. Roman’s nimble with his own hands as he slots one into the small of Juuse’s back, pushing his body against his again.
“What was wrong last night?” Roman is referring to the text that Juuse sent him during the Rangers game. Roman came home on the next flight, and then they both went to sleep, waking up and rolling around in bed. “Is everything alright?”
Juuse sucks on his teeth. “I was just anxious, that’s all.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Juuse lied to him. How was he to know if Roman was all in? If this was what he truly wanted? If Roman was enjoying shacking up with him again, or if Juuse’s bedroom was just a place to stay while his divorce played out?
“You’re completely sure?”
Juuse pulls his body so close to Roman’s that their chests are touching, that their thighs are squished together, that his belly is tight and pressed into Roman’s skin. He breathes in Roman’s sweat, he comments on how he smells different than he does on the ice. He whispers to himself against Roman’s chest hair. He winces as he feels his belly churning, whining as Roman can feel her moving, too.
“It’s a girl,” Juuse wants to roll over, to never feel Roman’s touch ever again, but instead, he only grips Roman’s shoulders harder, pushing himself into Roman’s body, so hard that he begins to shake with tears, and that Roman’s skin shakes as well. “I found out yesterday, when you weren’t here. And she was moving for the first time, yesterday, when you weren’t here. And you’ve not been here for anything, and that is all my fault. You’ve not made it to any appointments – you couldn’t make that first one and then I never invited you to another. I avoid you at practices, I never ask anyone how you’re doing. I don’t know anything about you other than that you’re afraid of me, but, I don’t even know if that much is true. You should’ve been here for everything, and I’ve screwed it all up. Even if you didn’t want to, I should’ve forced you. I should have at least forced you to be my friend, instead of a summer-long one-night stand.”
Roman has a night practice. Juuse knows that he needs to get up and out of bed. He knows how far away the Sportsplex is. He knows that Roman has to get there first, to practice with everyone else that is injured. He knows that Roman will have to stay the whole night, motivating them as Captain.
He feels their daughter move again and it causes him to let out a small scream. And that scream turns into wallowing, into intense crying, into being unable to breathe, almost throwing up from the mucus in his throat and the tears rolling down his cheeks.
It’s the antithesis of that summer. While they’re both lying there naked, failing at a conversation after mind-blowing sex, they’re also still touching. Juuse is actually talking, even if Roman’s not responding. He’s showing Roman that he cares about him, and that he wants something more. He doesn’t know what that something is, but he needs it.
“Please, don’t go to Raleigh. Please stay here. Stay here, and we can talk. We can talk about the baby. We can talk about our daughter. We can listen to music together. We can watch the game on my TV. Please, Roman. Don’t get on that bus to Carolina. Show me that you care about me. Make me believe that you love me back, even if it isn’t true.”
It’s Juuse’s first time admitting it to himself. That he loves Roman. That he loved their summer spent together. That he loves the way that Roman’s body loves his own. That he loves Roman because he feels like he has to, carrying his child. That he loves Roman without even trying, because Roman’s the only person that has ever shown up for him before, even if Roman can’t communicate those actions. He’s reminded of what he texted Pekka, back in November, when Pekka found out that his child was Roman’s. He’d said: Don’t worry, then, because he was too ashamed to think about it for too long, continued his text by saying, luulen, että hän rakastaa minua.
(Translation: I think he loves me.)
Juuse had no reason to believe it. Juuse believed it, anyway. He didn’t know why he did. It was a thought he had that he would constantly bury, trying to never find the root of it.
Roman had spent the majority of his summer tracing hearts onto Juuse’s back and blowing off his family to see him. And when he wasn’t with Juuse, he was with their team counselor, lamenting about how he never once thought that he liked men, and then Juuse came into his life, and so did their agreement of friends-with-benefits. “I’m afraid to disappoint him,” Roman said in his last session, a few hours before the official start of preseason. “I can’t do this. I can’t give him what he needs. I constantly let him down. I need to be better, I have to be. So, I can’t do this. I can’t stay with Juuse. He deserves better than me.”
Juuse doesn’t go to Carolina.
Then, the Preds head on a road trip to the West Coast. He’s too embarrassed to call Roman the entire time that he is gone.
Roman returns to Juuse’s house with dark bags below his eyes and a solemn look on his face. “We have to do this,” Roman sits his luggage down at the front door. “We have to work through this, whatever shit we’re going through. This has to work. For me, for you… for her.”
He points to the swell underneath Juuse’s orange t-shirt, how his growing belly stretches out the branded lettering of the Tennessee Volunteers. Roman puts his hand beneath the t-shirt, smiling at how warm Juuse’s skin is. It looks as if Roman hasn’t felt any joy, that he hasn’t smiled a single smile, since the road trip started. Thankfully, he smiles now, and keeps his hand at Juuse’s middle, then places his opposite hand on the back of Juuse’s neck, pulling him close to kiss him.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” the X and the S whistle through Juuse’s teeth. He wants to speak again, but he can’t. He listens to himself breathing, he feels how his stomach rises and falls against Roman’s hand. He tries to take deep breaths, but they’ve gradually become shallow, his lungs compressing from the weight in his belly. “I need to work on myself before I can work on us.”
If there’s one thing that Juuse has learned, now that his mind isn’t occupied by hockey, it’s that he’s incredibly insecure. He doesn’t believe in himself. He thinks that’s his detriment, why he wouldn’t let Roman come around, why Roman didn’t push himself in.
“I’ve been an asshole, too, y’know,” Roman lifts up Juuse’s chin. “I need to work on myself, too. Who says we need to do this alone?”
I’m not alone, Juuse almost spits it out. He’s not alone, because he’s pregnant, but that’s a cop-out. He knows it. And he knows that he’s developing depression based on the fact that he believed for months he’d have to do this all by himself.
“Bye-week is next week,” Juuse swallows. “Let’s meet again then. You need to see your kids. You need to rest your ribs. I need more time to myself.”
Juuse thinks he will die of loneliness before bye-week begins. He has his Lucy Dacus vinyl, though, and he thinks he may return to McKay’s and purchase some puzzles to occupy himself with. He thinks he’ll die of loneliness, but he knows deep down that he won’t. Roman’s been on the road for two weeks. He’s been shacked up at Juuse’s for four. He needs to see his son and daughter, he needs to piece himself back together. He needs to return to Juuse stronger, he needs to formulate some answers to Juuse’s questions.
“Okay,” Roman nods. “I just wish you knew how much I missed you.”
He exits from the front door, but he leaves one of his bags. Juuse waits for Roman to drive away before he unzips its main pocket. There are baby-sized jerseys from each of the teams that Nashville played against. There’s a postcard from every city that Roman went to, with a small message on the back, chronicling the games to Juuse. Tempe was a disaster…, the postcard from Arizona reads. Vangey lost a bet – we had to shave his head between periods, says the postcard from Los Angeles. There are other baby clothes in there as well, including a blue and mustard yellow onesie that says, My team won the Stanley Cup, and all I got was this t-shirt. It’s easy for Juuse to forget how great the Predators have been this season, that they’re first in their division for the first time in years.
He’s a blubbering mess when he recognizes the amount of care that Roman put into purchasing all of this. There’s even a business card from an interior designer in Seattle, with handwriting on the back mentioning that she’d fly to Nashville to assemble a nursery.
Juuse is careful as he picks up the backpack and places it in the center of his empty guestroom. That’s where the nursery will go, when Juuse can finally face it.
Bye-week is horrible.
Bye-week is the worst week of Juuse’s life, he thinks.
Bye-week lines up with the Super Bowl. The Bills are playing the Hawks down in Atlanta, so he and Roman make the drive. They meet up with some former Predators in a private suite. There’s the greatest line-up that Nashville ever knew inside the box – Juuse, Roman, Pekka, Filip, Ryan Johansen, and Matt Duchene.
“Oh my God!”
“Who did this to you?
“What?” Juuse pulls his eyebrows together. Then he realizes that the 2XL Bills jersey he wears may not be enough to hide that he’s six months pregnant. He pretends that he didn’t see their faces, their looks of surprise, and decides to walk over to the table in the suite, stabbing a block of cheese with a toothpick and running it under fondue, more melted cheese coating the cube of cheese.
It's redundant. Just like everything else in Juuse’s life.
“Oh, yeah,” Roman doesn’t look up from his phone, playing Candy Crush (Juuse got him hooked). “There was a team meeting back in September, a couple of you weren’t there,” he does look up then, smiling at Joey and Matt. “Because some of you wanted a buy-out on your contracts.”
Juuse still stands beside the fondue fountain. He feels warm, maybe it’s the heat radiating from the metal, but it’s likely just his own embarrassment. He pretends that he isn’t listening, asking for a Bud Light draft to hand to Roman.
Everyone’s silent for a bit, which is normal, the game hasn’t started yet and they don’t know who to root for. Roman says the Bills should win, and that 2023 should’ve been their year, but this year works, too. Pekka doesn’t watch American football. No one else agrees with Roman. Everyone’s silent, but like Roman, everyone gets out their phones, and unlike Roman, Juuse can see blue text bubbles on Matt and Joey’s screens. They both type quickly, but not to each other. Juuse struggles to put two and two together, until he receives a text from Sebastian Aho, seconds after Matt puts his phone away.
Since when??? Is what the text reads.
Juuse sits down next to Roman and hands Roman his beer. An interviewer for CBS Sports comes into the suite and asks them questions. Like, “Are you upset that it wasn’t the Titans this year? Y’know, Nashville…”
They’d likely leave the suite after one soundbite from Roman, if their team wasn’t doing so well this season. Juuse hasn’t kept up with the points. Roman says they can clinch the playoffs as early as March 1st. The reporter keeps talking, going on, and on, and on, and their cameraman pans to Juuse. Somehow, and it’s just his luck, he’s got his arms crossed as his chest and it’s doing no favors for his jersey that can conceal nothing at all.
He remembers that in two days, after the first day of sports coverage post-Superbowl, articles about his retirement will be released. It couldn’t possibly have been worse timing.
Juuse avoids the camera and walks away, even though he gets a question shouted at him while he enters the private bathroom. His phone starts ringing – Seth Jarvis. Then, he gets a long text message, from someone that he’s never spoken to, it’s a big name but he can’t picture their face. He wants to shoot Roman a text himself, similar to what he sent when Roman was in Manhattan. Whatever I need? But he doesn’t.
The Bills win the Super Bowl. Roman tries his best not to get absolutely plastered and manages to secure them a hotel room. Juuse is still staring at his phone, and he sees that now that the celebrations are dying down that it’s three in the morning. It’s almost noon at home. His mom is calling him. He hasn’t told her yet. He cannot answer this.
Roman gets up to take a drunken shower, then comes back to Juuse soaking wet. His hair is dripping and there are droplets of water covering his skin. He crawls into bed beside Juuse, still naked, and wraps himself around him. It should feel so good, but it doesn’t. Because there it is again, Juuse’s fear of talking about anything of importance.
He has Roman stand up to dry off and he changes the bedsheets with a spare set in the closet. He’s exhausted from the game, but he’s also exhausted in general. Making the bed has become much harder, being six months pregnant, and also from not working out at all. He never makes the bed when Roman’s home, because he doesn’t want Roman to begin to worry about him.
Roman does worry, and they end up sleeping in a bed without bedding. Juuse sighs loudly, and he’s always been a crier, but he’s crying much more easily than he used to. He starts to sob and doesn’t say anything, but he takes his phone off the charger and lets Roman read all of his text messages. An angry text shows up at the top of the screen from his mom. Roman reads it and dismisses it before it catches Juuse’s eye.
“None of these are horrible, Juuse,” Roman turns off Juuse’s phone entirely and puts it on his own nightstand. He’s still a little inebriated, but the shower opened his head. He lays on his bad side again – and, sometimes, Juuse thinks Roman is lying that he still can’t play because of the pain in his ribs… sometimes Juuse thinks that Roman wants some more time alone with him – and Roman grabs Juuse tightly and gently, pulling his back toward his chest. “Juice, listen. I will do your interviews. I will do the press. I will give everyone every answer. You don’t have to do anything. I can do anything you need.”
It’s a far cry from September’s I can’t do this.
Juuse still feels uneasy. He feels uneasy, but Roman’s calloused hands at his waist make him feel loved. He doesn’t understand how those two feelings can coexist.
Anyone else would have given up on Roman in an instant. Juuse thinks it's laughable, how they’ve made things work. He’s sat in their home locker room when the Predators clinch a playoffs spot. It’s the first game that Roman has played since December.
Filip holds the lucky helmet in his hands. He walks around the room, aiming it for Roman’s head, for three assists and a goal just a few minutes before. Juuse is looking down and doesn’t expect the metal to touch his hair.
“You’re what’s held this team together,” Filip shrugs with a smile. “You motivate a special someone, who motivates everybody else.”
Juuse hides when his picture is taken for the team’s Twitter account. Not because he’s pregnant – because everyone knows now – but because he’d got on a Ruby Falls t-shirt from a day trip that he and Roman went on. He thinks romance is so embarrassing. Filip letting him know that Roman’s been bragging about him to everyone makes Juuse want to disappear.
Roman has Juuse meet his kids during a two-day break in the season. It goes better than Juuse thought it would, though, he doesn’t know why he expected a two-year-old and a one-year-old to judge him. They look like Roman, his genes are strong, it seems.
Juuse pictures their daughter again, and for the first time, he doesn’t cry out of sadness.
That doesn’t mean that the tension that lies between Juuse and Roman no longer exists. Juuse understands that it’ll take years to work through everything; Roman being married, playing hockey together for over half a decade before they got together, playing hockey together and realizing they’re attracted to men, Juuse falling pregnant at the start of their best season, a summer of sex without feeling turning into a season of feelings with almost no sex. They’ll always have a wedge between them, but it will continue to grow smaller. They’re getting better at telling each other what they need, even if they beat around the bush.
The days left of the regular season are dwindling. The Predator’s first playoff game is against the Panthers, four days away.
Juuse stays home, not because he wants to, but because he should. Because he’s in the early weeks of being thirty-something weeks pregnant. He couldn’t stand behind the bench if it meant his life depended on it. He’s back to watching games in his bedroom, turning down the volume of the television to let his record album be their backing tracks.
He’s shocked when he returns to McKay’s Books and finds a photo of this Lucy Dacus person on the back of a vinyl marked ‘boygenius.’ He thought she’d been dead for sixty years now, that she was a crooner, that she’d been lost to decades of shitty pop music. She’s still making music, and so is her supergroup of friends.
Juuse lays in bed while Roman’s leading the Power Play and he listens to Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers. And then he crawls slowly out of bed and changes the record, beginning to play Elvis’s Suspicious Minds (no relation to the Baker – Bridgers – Dacus line of music, just a scratched record that he found for 69 cents). He’s happy to have more music to remind him of Roman, and he hopes to find happier songs soon.
The Preds lose, but, it’s fine. That means Roman will be home for an extra day for practice. And that’s an extra day to use Roman’s presence to his advantage – tying his shoes for him, grabbing cups of water that are an inch too far away.
He and Roman have reached the stage where they can talk about the tiny jerseys Juuse found in his backpack. There’s a team of interior decorators coming to paint and decorate the nursery room in Juuse’s house while the Predators are in the Stanley Cup Finals. (Hockey’s unpredictable – but, going off their regular season, they’ll make it to the finals, even if they lose 0 – 4.) They’re talking about names. Kaarina. That one gets vetoed immediately, though, Juuse thought it was great. Valentina, Roman says. You know, like, we can call her Tina. Juuse doesn’t know what kind of torture is normal for parents in Switzerland to put their children through, but he thinks that the name Valentina is up there. Aimee is one that they can agree on. So is Maeve. None of them feel right, though, so there’s no solid decision yet.
Juuse doesn’t have time to worry about a name for their daughter. Or to worry about a middle name, which Roman’s been obsessing over, or whose last name she’ll have, which all of their teammates won’t stop debating. He worries that Roman will be away from home during the Conference Finals when he has the baby. Of course, that would happen if she came early. What is worse is that her due date is June 11th. The night of the game that would make the Predators the winner of the Stanley Cup.
Vange tells Juuse not to worry about it, that everything will work out fine. Juuse is reminded that Novy shaved Vange’s head after he’d lost a bet during the Kings game. He’s not the best litmus test for judgment.
Roman’s ribs are bothering him again. There’s a pain from an unhealed fracture that comes back to sting the night before the Finals.
They’re facing off against the Avs for the Stanley Cup. Roman tells Juuse, multiple times, that Joey’s girlfriend of the week can come and stay with him. Juuse refuses.
Roman almost doesn’t play, he’s so concerned about his pain.
(There’s not a fracture. He’s healed just fine. It’s Juuse that scares him.)
Roman contemplates sitting out again, before the second game of the Finals. And again, before the third. Juuse doesn’t let Roman even say it aloud before their fourth game, because they’re on a winning streak and Juuse wants to see Roman score the winning goal for the trophy.
Juuse has déjà vu from that godforsaken Canes game last playoffs season. They go into OT once, but Juuse doesn’t know if they go into OT again.
He’s in a hospital bed, contemplating whether or not to call one of their coaches behind the bench, to yell at Roman to cut his ice time in half.
Their daughter is born during 5OT. And Roman left the ice during 2OT, not because Juuse told anyone what was happening, but because he tripped on his skates, and one of his weak ribs broke again.
Juuse likes Roman’s hoodie that he wears. He compliments him once, or twice, or a million times, out of nervousness.
And Juuse lied to himself the entire time. He locked away the one, great memory from last summer. The two nights that Roman spent with him in Helsinki, they did go out for dinner, and they did have a conversation, at an Italian restaurant, owned by a woman who gave them free wine and wished them a lifetime of happiness together.
He wins the argument over their daughter’s name, after all. Roman searches the reservations on his phone and learns their chef was named Carina.
That, and that Carina means a little, beloved one.
Juuse is able to crack a joke for the first time in months. “You’re sure you can do this?” It comes out a bit late; he planned the joke while he was still at the hotel, freaking out at the tightness of his back and scrambling to call Joey’s girlfriend of the week. He asks Roman the question, trying to remember Roman’s look of shock and fear when they were finishing up physicals in September. For the first time, he can’t remember it. He can’t remember any of the hardships that he and Roman have been through, any unsavory act that they’ve committed against each other’s peace.
Roman’s taken off his hoodie and has their daughter on his chest. They’re both asleep.
Juuse looks down to his phone and sees that his Spotify’s been open for hours, but that his speakers have been silent. It’s the last time that he’ll ever need to listen to Night Shift. He can’t relate any longer.
(The Predators win their first Stanley Cup at five in the morning, in the NHL’s first-ever 7OT. The team is far more overwhelmed by the news that they have their first team baby.)
The 2025-2026 NHL Global Series takes place in Helsinki.
It’s between the Anaheim Ducks and the Nashville Predators.
And Juuse is back in the net.