The Northern Crown

I watch as the air gets sucked from his lungs, his face—which had acquired a healthy tan over the summer—paling as he presses a button on his phone and shoves it back in his pocket. To his credit, he’d tried not to have the conversation in front of me. Or in my apartment in general. It isn’t until he trains his eyes on me and I see the pure devastation behind them that I feel guilty for supplying an audience. I don’t know what to say. Clichés aren’t good enough for him, never have been, and in that moment I almost understand how he feels. He’s lost, now a broken shell of his former self—the one he was only a few minutes ago, before he answered the phone—and he’s looking to me for guidance, only these are waters I’ve never navigated and I’m too scared to point him in the wrong direction.

What he does next happens in slow motion: everything taking up temporary residence on my dining room table gets sent toppling to the floor in one easy motion. He doesn’t look sorry for having done it; he’s angry. Everything that has been eating away at him for the last few months finally erupts in a volcano of emotion and I sit by and watch helplessly. This isn’t your battle to suit up for, I remind myself, though it rattles off the parts of my brain that comprehend thoughts and ideas and dissipates, never to be heard from again. Gone. Its absence says more about me than I’m comfortable exposing.

We were never supposed to be anything substantial, him and I. Substantial isn’t what you get when you pick up a stranger at a bar. Substantial isn’t what you get when you don’t know his name but you know kissing that spot under his left ear makes him shiver. But substantial is now screaming in my face that I should’ve known better. I’ve never been able to control my emotions very well and now my shortcomings are a clear and present danger. Somehow, Claude has shifted from someone I was fucking when we were both bored or lonely or not busy to someone I was now willing to go to war for.

He looks at me again, eyes softer this time, and mutters the two words I hoped I wouldn’t have to hear: “It’s official.”

Sometimes he speaks so softly I have to remind him I don’t speak French, especially not the brand of mangled French he does, but now isn’t one of those times. He speaks in perfect English—clear and bold and convincing—that I don’t need to ask him to repeat himself. Maybe I should, I tell myself. Anything to postpone his inevitable falling apart.

Claude is stubborn. If you tell him not to do something he always does the opposite, which is why I don’t bother telling him that everything will be okay or that it’ll all work out. I’d be asking him to believe me when I know he won’t. Now I’m not sure if he’s ever believed anything I’ve told him—that he could trust me, that I’d always be there for him when he needed me, that I was his shoulder to cry on—because my silence is letting him down. I’m failing him.

I decide not to lie. “I’m sorry,” I say, and I know he believes that because it’s what anyone in my position would say. It’s not good enough coming from me, but for the first time I find myself unsure of what it is he truly wants.

Whatever the ‘something more’ is that he’s yearning for, I don’t give it to him. I watch as he traipses all over my apartment, collecting his things. There’s no out-of-left-field proclamation of love from either of us, just the mutual understanding that he’s hurting and I don’t know how to fix him. The part of me that’s unwilling and reluctant to blame myself is angry. What does he want me to do, restructure the entire NHL on my own? The lockout isn’t my fault, I’m not the cause, and yet I find myself the current focus of his anger.

I’m selfish, always have been, which my friends say is a by-product of growing up an only child. I’ve never had to share, never had to worry about anyone else’s feelings, and I cite that as the reason I don’t protest when Claude moves to leave. I’m still sitting on the couch when he slips on his shoes, and I know, though I try to ignore it, this is a defining moment for us.

“I guess I’ll see you later,” he says. There’s anticipation in his voice. He wants me to stop him, probably by undressing him and promising to help him forget, but I don’t.

“Yeah.” He looks at me, disappointed, and my heart breaks.


I look at Danny. His age shows his anxiety rather than his wisdom and perpetual optimism. This makes me nervous. I want to ask him something, anything to prompt the conversation that’s lingering between us, but I don’t know what. For the first time since I’ve known him, Danny looks scared to death.

I don’t know that feeling. There’s nothing for me to miss—no family, no children, no friends—so all I feel is anger. I’m angry it’s come to this. I’m angry it’s making one of my closest friends feel such fear, making him leave behind three children and a girlfriend. Danny looks at me like I’m being absurd, and it’s only because it’s a look he’s perfected over the years that I consider what it means: he’s wondering how, in this moment, I’m empty.

I know what he means without him having to say it: Malin. Another body brought in by the front office, I wasn’t supposed to know she was there. No one was, except for the few guys on the team that couldn’t speak English very well and needed a translator. I wasn’t supposed to pick her up in a bar, nor was I supposed to engage in a friends-with-benefits type of relationship with her. But I did; I broke all the rules and this was my punishment, or maybe it was my first glimpse of the real world. Not everything was going to be handed to me, and maybe Malin was meant to make sure of that.

“You’re not seeing her anymore, then?” Danny’s voice is soft but stern, the same voice he uses when any of his boys misbehave at school or start goofing around when they’re meant to be doing their homework. Until now, it’s never been directed at me.

“What?”

The corners of his lips turn upward. “Malin.”

He’s too French to pronounce her name correctly and I grimace. “Oh, right.” I busy myself with the phone in my hands, trying to do anything but remember that early morning in her apartment. “No, we’re not seeing each other anymore.”

Danny is in the midst of cooking dinner while I sit at the island. His boys are in the game room upstairs. Occasionally, snippets of excited laughter or the padding of their footsteps can be heard—both sounds I’ve missed since I moved into a place of my own in the city.

“And I’m supposed to believe that?”

I roll my eyes. “Believe what you want.”

A wooden spoon bangs against a boiling pot of spaghetti three times before my teammate sets it on the counter. He looks at me after he drains the noodles and I look away, out the window above the sink, but by now it’s already dark and there’s nothing to see. “I’ve been there, you know.” My eyes roll again. “You may think it’s nothing, but you should at least tell her you’re leaving.”

“We haven’t spoken in almost a month,” I point out.

“It’ll be never again if you don’t try to salvage—”

I cut him off. “Don’t. Please, just don’t.”

Danny has always been able to read me like a book. He doesn’t need me to explain things to him like I do with other people because he already knows what I’m going to say. He knows how I feel before I feel it most of the time, and I should’ve known that my relationship with Malin wouldn’t slip by him. I know this is because, like he said, he’s been there—after his divorce, when things were really bad for a while.

“Call her,” he says as he slides a bowl of spaghetti in front of me.

I don’t listen.


I board a flight to Berlin. I haven’t called her, haven’t sent a lengthy text message or even an e-mail. I collapse into my seat, letting my cowardice body absorb the guilt. I stare out the window knowing I don’t deserve her. It’s a realization that makes me sick to my stomach, makes me wish I would’ve done more. There’s no guarantee she’ll be there whenever I return.

Danny doesn’t part with his sympathy. I know I don’t deserve that, either.


I’m insane, I tell myself. She’s going to slam the door in my face and tell me to get lost, but it’s only now that I know it’s worth it. Rejection is foreign to me, but I’m willing to take it in stride if Malin’s the one dishing it out. Malin, who I’ve thought about every night since I walked out of her apartment.

I’ve grown up, but Danny told me that’s what happens after you break your own heart. Soul searching. I tried to ignore him, tried to write him off as a life coach whose lessons I never signed up for, but when the pain hit me so hard it knocked the wind right out of me, I knew he was right. You only have to experience one night of crying yourself to sleep to promise yourself you’ll never go against your heart again.

All those days I spent in Berlin, every one was occupied with thoughts of her. The nights I spent alone, I wished for her there. The times Danny would call his family after a game, all I wanted was to hear her voice. Seeing my new teammates with their wives and girlfriends, I promised myself that’d be me and her once I got back to Philadelphia, once this mess was sorted and I had someplace to go back to. There was a knife in my heart that twisted whenever I pictured her in my mind, when I remembered the way her hair tickled the crook of my neck and the way her blue eyes were always so full of life.

Except the night you left, my conscience says.

I ring the doorbell, steeling myself in anticipation of what’s to come. A million scenarios play themselves out in my mind, only I’m torn between what to expect. Dreams are never as good as reality, and I’ve never understood what that meant until this moment.

The lock comes undone and the door swings open, revealing a woman I know that wishes she didn’t know me. It takes her a moment to comprehend what’s happening, who’s on the other side of her front door, and in the same amount of time I realize what an awful person I am. As her eyes takes me in, I realize something else: I’m in love with her.


Before I can stop myself, I slap him. The sound of skin on skin pours into the empty streets and I feel no remorse, though I know I will if he decides to stay.


I’m even more in love with her.


Looking at Claude is like staring into the eye of a storm. He’s beautiful and entirely capable of breaking my heart. I want to scream at him that he doesn’t deserve to be here, to be standing in front of me expecting things I can’t give him because I’m broken, but I don’t. I take him in and something shifts, changes, and all at once I feel like I was reset, put back on the right path after traveling for so long down the wrong one. I can’t feel it physically but I know my heart swells, begging me not to do anything stupid to send Claude away again.

I take a deep breath. “Why are you here?” I ask, trying to channel four months of heartbreak into four words, though I know I fail.

“Malin…” He’s angry with himself, I can tell. I don’t know for how long, but he’s beaten himself up over something and, still scarred, I hope it’s me. “I’m sorry,” he breathes.

It should take more than an apology to put someone back together. The heartbreaker should have to undergo a series of Herculean trials to earn back the trust and good graces of the person whose heart they were so careless with. The heartbreaker should be forced to endure the same pain they inflict, and only then should they be able to look into the eyes of their victim. But, looking at Claude, I know I haven’t been waiting for anything more than what he’s just given me.

In Greek mythology, Ariadne, princess of Crete, falls deeply in love with a doomed Athenian named Theseus. She promises him safe passage out of the Labyrinth if he agrees to marry her, which he does, only after they escape to Naxos, he abandons her while she sleeps. Ariadne awakes and, realizing she’s been abandoned, cries out that no woman should ever trust the word of a man because he will always betray his promises. Responding to her outcry, the gods make sure Theseus has a troubled mind and troubled passage on his journey home.

Hearing her cries, Bacchus puts his arms around her and brings her to his aid. Taking the crown from her forehead, Bacchus sets it as a constellation in the sky, bringing her eternal glory. The Northern Crown can be seen midway between Hercules and Ophiuchus.

For four months I played the role of Ariadne, cursing Claude for being my Theseus, only now I realize I’ve got it all wrong. He’s both Theseus and Bacchus.

Claude and I are stars. We’re two in many, a countless number, and we’re on fire. When he leaves, my helium core runs out and sends me into my final stages. I’m broken and torn apart, on the brink of extinction, only I survive the explosion. He returns and sucks me into his Black Hole, and this time I don’t protest.

My brain is thinking in astronomical terms when I kiss him. I’m making comparisons to celestial bodies as he forms his own constellations in my heart, wordlessly stitching me back together like Ariadne’s thread. I know then that I’m in love with him. If not ever before, I’m in love with him in this moment.


Twisted in Malin’s sheets, her hair spilling over my naked chest, I wake up feeling new. I feel light, stripped bare of everything except her, and I remember something Danny told me: “You’ll know.” I do. I knew last night and I still know now, and it’s all I can do not to wake her and detail to her everything I’m feeling. There’s no need to rush anymore; we’ve got all the time in the world.

She stirs, her soft lips accidentally brushing the skin of my neck, and I’m overcome with things I never thought I’d feel. All at once I want to ravish her, protect her, love her, grow old with her—and my head spins. I can’t see straight and I feel dizzy, but I know this is how I’m supposed to feel.

This is how love feels.