In Every Universe

6. Cameron

SIX

CAMERON

The last time Cameron thought about getting married, he was a child. A faceless woman in a white dress had stood next to him at an altar, and Cameron couldn’t conjure up a single feeling about the situation, good or bad. Now, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

He’d never had a serious girlfriend. It had never made sense to him that he was supposed to like hanging out with some girl more than he liked hanging out with Zacky. When he dated, he and Zacky naturally saw less of each other, and Cameron hated it. He figured Zacky had similar feelings, since they dated about the same amount. Plus, if Cameron got married to a woman, he would probably have to have kids, and he didn’t want to fuck up some kids the way his parents had fucked him up.

Still, his foot bounced as he sat in the corner chair of his hotel room after morning skate, waiting for Millsy to call and update him on Zacky’s MRI, like he was Zacky’s life partner. He kind of was.

He answered his phone before the first buzz of the ringer was done. “How’d it go? How is he?”

“I’m fine.” Zacky laughed on the other end of the phone. He’d called from Millsy’s phone, which he hoped meant Millsy had dialed for him. “Not excited to have to be in an MRI tube ever again. I have a headache the size of Texas.”

“They say everything is bigger there.” He tried for a joke that was flat. He could hear the strain in his own voice as he spoke.

Zacky could probably hear it too. “I really am okay,” he said, his voice lowered, like he was shielding their conversation from anyone overhearing. “It went fine. I’ll get the results in a few days. Millsy FaceTimed in my folks, so they know what’s going on. My mom will probably call you later so you can coordinate your mother henning. She might come down the next time you’re on a roadie.”

“That would be great, honestly. She can fill up our freezer again.” Camilla Porter was a fantastic cook and never thought either of the two of them ate enough. He usually reaped the benefits of Camilla’s cooking in the summer when they were both up in the Greater Toronto Area, Zacky up in Newmarket, Cameron down in ’Sauga, far enough away to make summers hard on both of them but close enough to prioritize some home cooking.

“How’s Nashville?”

“Fine. Sunny. Boys went to the barbecue place you like for lunch. Wish I could have brought you some back.”

“What barbecue place?”

“Fuck. Have you ever been to Nashville?” The Zacky who Cameron was currently talking to hadn’t gotten further than the AHL—the farm league—and there wasn’t an AHL team in Nashville.

“Not yet, I guess.”

“I’ll take you to get some barbecue next time we come.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Cameron figured Zacky was thinking about his other life. About how, if he had his druthers, he wouldn’t have the chance to come play hockey in Nashville with Cameron.

“That sounds good” is what Zacky said instead. And Cameron wasn’t an asshole. It was unlikely that Zacky was from a different universe, instead of dealing with serious consequences from a head injury, but ultimately, whether it was real to Cameron didn’t change the fact that it was real to Zacky.

“Get Millsy to order you some pizza tonight. Square cut. And make him use his credit card, since he got that extension.” Zacky and Cameron were still on low-paying entry-level contracts, and Millsy signed a big deal over the offseason. He could afford to treat.

“Good idea.”

“I love you,” Cameron said, reflexively. He meant it in a you’re-my-best-friend kind of way. The way he always told Zacky he loved him.

“Love you too, Cam.”

When Cameron and Zacky were on the ice together, finding Zacky was easy. After playing together for so many years, Cameron knew his habits, his preferences, his faults. He barely had to look in order to know where to send the puck. As fourth liners, they weren’t lighting the lamp every night, but on goals they did score, they nearly always assisted on each other’s. During tonight’s game, though, Cameron was having a hard time finding Zacky’s replacement, Brian May, and getting him the puck.

You had to be good at hockey to make the NHL, and Brian deserved to be on the ice.

He was a natural center who kept getting called up from the A to be stuck in whatever open spot the team had in the bottom- six lineup, so Cameron had sympathy for him playing right wing. Tonight, however, he, Cameron, and Elliott were playing some sloppy fucking hockey. After four shifts of missing passes, turning the puck over, and a delay-of-game penalty when Brian hit the puck out of play, they got benched.

He knew Zacky was at home listening to the game. Cameron’s name was going to drop out of the play-by-play, and Zacky would know exactly what happened. Cameron burned with embarrassment that was supposed to motivate him for future games, but nothing mattered. He went through his normal routine during the first intermission as though he’d be going back out on the ice, but he may as well have stripped and put a suit on and headed up to the press box for the rest of the game.

“Sorry, man,” he said to Elliott after the game, when they were sitting next to each other on the bikes for a cooldown. Somehow, they had pulled out a 1–0 win, but it didn’t stop Coach Hoffman from a full and detailed dressing-down.

“No one has perfect chemistry off the bat. We’ll get there.”

Elliott was talking about upcoming games. All the games ahead that Cameron would play without Zacky.

“When we get back, you think he’ll be up for visitors?”

“I’ll ask. He hasn’t had a lot of energy.”

“We’re all here when he’s ready. And we know being without him is an adjustment for you.”

“You act like my husband has gone off to war or something.” It wasn’t the first time one of the two of them had joked about being husbands, but referring to Zacky as his husband felt different now. Charged. It buzzed down his spine, and he pumped the pedals harder, trying to expel the feeling.

Elliott shrugged, sitting back on the bike and letting go of the handlebars, which kept moving forward and backward as he pedaled. “The two of you are both miserable bastards without each other. You might as well put a ring on it.”

“You can help me pick it out.”

“Porter deserves a nice big rock. Don’t skimp on your true love.”

Finally, the tension in Cameron’s body loosened enough for him to laugh.

They cleaned up and made it onto the bus and back to their hotel. Cameron was just going through the motions. He turned his phone off at the beginning of every game and didn’t allow himself to turn it back on until he was alone in his hotel room, or back home. And every time, he had a voicemail from his dad. He knew it would be a list of critiques that his dad expected him to acknowledge and respond to. Even after his best games, he got critical voicemails. One time he scored a goal, got two assists, got in a fight, and blocked a shot that bruised his leg for nearly a month, and his dad didn’t bring up any of that. He brought up some poor positioning on a penalty kill that didn’t even result in the other team scoring.

And then the criticism would melt into the choices Cameron was making outside of hockey. How he wasn’t saving his money the way his parents wanted him to, or how at his age, he should have a steady girlfriend, if not a wife. Didn’t he want his career to be something he would be proud to tell his future children about? Had he seen what his older brother had been able to do with his life, by taking his job and relationship seriously?

Cameron twisted himself into knots over it after every game. The only person who knew about the voicemails was Zacky. Cameron still dealt with them alone after games, and Zacky would wait to hang out with him until the dreaded task was over. He always had that to look forward to. Sitting down next to Zacky on their couch and playing Mario Kart until their eyes dried up and fell out of their heads, or settling onto one hotel bed and picking a movie to talk through.

All he had to look forward to now was a night of hotel sleep.

He let himself take a moment to pause, delay the inevitable. He checked Instagram. Millsy had posted a photo of Zacky on his finsta, wrapped up in the blanket Cameron bought him, with only a pair of sunglasses peeking out.

He took a deep breath and opened his voicemail, letting it play on speaker in his hands so he wouldn’t have to hold his dad’s words any closer to him than necessary.

“I almost didn’t give you a call after the show you put on tonight,” his dad started, his voice as irritated with him as ever. “You barely had enough ice time tonight to have anything to talk about…”

Cameron tuned him out, the expected drone of his dad’s voice moving through him, the words licking at the edges of him like flames. When he was a kid, these words burnt him to a crisp. Now, the flames barely caught. He had his eyes on the carpet, fixated on a fuzzy that had escaped being vacuumed by housekeeping.

When silence took over the room, Cameron thumbed open his text messages and sent the customary “of course you’re right, Dad. Thank you” text that was expected from him. Cameron knew if he didn’t send some acknowledgement, he’d have to talk to his dad on the phone the next day, and answer both for the way he played and for ignoring the voicemail.

His shoulders dropped from where they had been tensed, nearly to his ears, and he slid down in the chair. He was more exhausted than he should be, considering he played less than three minutes that night.

He tossed his cell phone on the bed, changed out of his suit, and ordered a steak from room service. The more he tried not to think about Zacky, the more he thought about him. His best friend had a head injury so bad that he thought he legitimately was from an alternate universe . That was cause to worry. Anyone would worry about their friend if something that serious happened to their head. The way he couldn’t stop thinking about Zacky was normal.

While he waited for the steak to come, he peeled his sheets back, grabbed his phone, and got in bed.

“Hey, Ves, he’s fine,” Millsy answered, after Cameron reflexively dialed him. “He went to bed already and wanted me to tell you that the reason your phone wasn’t blowing up with texts for the last four hours was because I won’t let him use his phone.”

The first pinprick of warmth started spreading in his heart. He knew Zacky couldn’t be staring at his phone right now, but the feeling of disconnect in him wasn’t a cerebral feeling.

“Thanks for taking care of him. It means a lot.”

“It takes a village to raise a child.”