34: Three Flags

ROCKET

"So, why exactly did we get three?" Jilly is leaning over my shoulder as I set the box on my counter.

"I need to give someone the third, you'll get to know soon enough." I slip a kitchen knife in the folds of the cardboard and cut cleanly through the tape.

Her jaw drops at me, arms crossed. "Hoooold on."

"Uh huh?" I play stupid, opening up the top of the box. Inside there's three smaller packages and a couple of stickers.

"Did you get a boyfriend? Is that what I'm hearing?"

I pinch two fingers. "Almost. We're almost there."

"Holy shit, okay, clearly I haven't been hanging out with you as much as I should be." She laughs. "So, am I allowed to know anything?"

"Not yet." I toss her the tissue paper covered flag, one where I can clearly see purple and blue. "Happy fifteenth, yeah?"

She grins. "Yeah."

I root through the bottom of the box. "Aw, sick, color coordinated push pins."

"Huh?" She leans over and I hand her one of the boxes.

"Blue and pink pins so you can hang it up without messing with the full color." I shrug. "I've got red and purple ones, two sets."

"They really think of everything, huh." She laughs, looking down at the pins. "So, boyfriend?"

"Can't tell you right now."

"C'mon, Rocks, it's my birthday."

I shake my head. "Can't yet, but what I can do, considering you get to start learning to drive soon, is tell you that I'm not letting you off as easy as your brother. I will be taking you out of city limits and letting you learn how to drive a stick shift the fun way."

She unfolds the flag and in one swoop, wraps it around her shoulders like a cape. "Fine, fine, but when I start driving like you, be prepared to hear it from Steph."

"Oh, I've always known you were going to end up driving like me." I grin, unwrapping my own full-sized completely rainbow pride flag. "We should get Steph one of those black and white flags for being hetero and boring."

"I feel like that's a little too shady," she says. "Maybe it could say 'ally' really big."

"Or we could just put the pride stickers all over his stuff, I'm sure the media wouldn't have a field day with that at all."

"I love you two dearly, but for fucks sake, don't do that to me." Steph is standing in the door. "Nice flags."

"We could've gotten you a flag too, but you decided to be boring." Jilly sticks out her tongue at her brother.

"I didn't decide a single thing. Alright, Jilly, you've got friends coming over and you've got to get home, Rocket, you can drop by later for extra cake."

"And drop by I will." I grin. "Cake garbage disposal, right here."

We talk for another minute or so, then the second they're out the door I jog upstairs to where I push-pin the flag I got for myself onto my wall. Proud of myself in a couple of ways.

But my work here is far from done.

From there, I grab the second one and book it across town. HÃ¥kon stayed after at the rink for a captains meeting and I've got a little time before he comes back.

He keeps a spare key in the light outside his house. With that, I break in.

I creep through the kitchen and up the thin staircase, finding his room quickly.

The whole townhouse has a rustic antique vibe around it, the doors are dark and heavy and most of them don't fit all the way right in their casings. The trim is ornate and looks somewhat hand-crafted. However, the ceilings seem to be modern plaster, which is good, aesthetically and for what I'm planning.

His bedsprings creak a little when I hop up onto his comforter, pins in-mouth, flag in-hand.

One corner down.

Two.

Three.

I hear a creak downstairs and accidentally drop the fourth pin.

"Rocket? Why are your shoes here?" He calls into the house.

"No reason!" I yell back, scrambling to find the fourth pin from where its definitely lost in his sheets.

Unfortunately, I find it with my hand. "Ow, fuck!"

"Any reason you're standing on my bed with a pride flag?" HÃ¥kon is leaning against the door, arms crossed, looking at me with a slight smile.

"Nope." I push the fourth pin into the ceiling. "Thought you needed better decor. It contrasts beautifully against your incredibly drab room." I gesture around at the hardwood floor and other, dark themed wooden furnishings and white walls. "Your room is boring. I need more posters."

"I'm slightly offended you find my room boring, I think it's alright." He's watching me as I look around.

"No, no, what are you into?"

"Hockey, uh, mostly hockey and you."

"Yeah, yeah, but if I'm going to date you, you need more spice in here." I frown. "Maybe I should frame a huge photo of myself and stick it in here somewhere."

"You really want to spend the night looking at a photo of yourself?"

"Not really, good point." I hop down off the mattress, glancing around. "Maybe we could hang up a jersey or two here and there."

"Eh, maybe I should just find a plant." He drums his fingers against the doorframe, waiting for me to say something else. Apparently he's restless with it. "So, do we... have anything else to do? When do you think we can start dating? It's been bugging me all week."

Oh, I was not prepared for this conversation. "Frankly, I don't know. I feel like the decision should be up to you since you're the one learning with it, but then again I feel like you might get ahead of yourself and say now."

He puffs out his cheeks. "Maybe now is a good choice."

"No," I respond, probably too quickly. "I want you to do another thing."

"What is it?"

I clear my throat, suddenly nervous. "I want you to call Svea, that haunts you, I know it does, I want it off your head."

"Oh, I," he pauses. "I haven't talked to Svea in four years, how am I supposed to just call her out of the blue like that?"

"I don't know, Yets, I don't, but it's been on my list for a while and it makes sense."

"I'll send her a text or something, see if she's around for a call in the first place." He lets out a long sigh followed by a groan. "What am I supposed to say? Hey I'm sorry I treated you badly when we dated, I wasn't actually into girls?"

I'm not making any eye contact with him, I can't, this just feels awful and weird and I'm requesting something that he really doesn't want to do.

My phone goes off in my pocket and I've never been faster to pull it out. Although it's a notification that my storage is full, I wince at it. "My mom clogged the sink again, I need to go, sorry."

"Oh, uh, do you need help with it?"

"Nope, it's just carrots again, I'll see you at practice tomorrow?"

He frowns. "Sure?"

"Great, awesome, bye!" I practically fall down the stairs trying to get out.

Then I actually end up at my mother's. It was autopilot, honestly. I would've ended up at Steph's but he's in the middle of a birthday thing and I didn't want to drag him away from his parenting duty.

"Hey, mom." I mumble, untying my shoes and hanging up my jacket.

"What are you doing here-" she pauses. "Oh, honey, you look miserable."

"Mhmm." I mumble, trudging over to the couch and wrapping myself up in one of her blankets. "It's HÃ¥kon."

"Oh dear god what did that boy do-" She picks up a wooden spoon and her car keys. "I swear I'll-"

"He's okay, it's my fault, don't go beat him up, please." Because I have zero doubts that my angry slavic mother could get the complete upper hand over one of the biggest grinders in the league and that he wouldn't have a symmetrical face after she's done. I pity his nose if he gets on her bad side.

"Fine, fine." She grumps, setting the keys back down again. "What happened?"

"I don't know." I mumble. "I'm scared."

"Of what?" She sits down next to me, patting my knee.

"I don't know. I called off the relationship so early because he seemed so distraught by even being attracted to me and now I'm terrified of actually being with him."

"Is he ready for it?"

I nod. "Yeah, I think he's okay. I just, it was a weird and bad idea in the first place, we probably could've done all of this without the 'not dating' part and now I'm overwhelmed by the idea of it and I kind of just want to call it all off."

"Mhmm," she opens up her arms and I scooch closer, letting her hug me. "Sounds like you stuck your stuck your foot into warm water on a cold day, the second you took it out it was freezing cold and now you're scared to get in."

"Why was that so specific?" I mumble.

"I don't know, but the point is that you just need to talk to him about it. This isn't a conversation for you and I, it's a conversation for you and him."

"I know, but I'm scared to talk to him about it, I don't know what he expects, he's done all this before, well, not the dating, but he's older and I'm not sure what he's expecting."

"Hon," she smooths back my hair. "I'm not the person that you need to discuss your sexual boundaries with, that's him too." I blush at this.

"I just don't know what to do."

"It's your boyfriend, you have to get to know him enough to be able to have those hard talks, okay? This is just practice for the talk you're going to have in five years about adopting me some grandkids." she puts a kiss on top of my head.

"What."

"Nothing, nothing." She smiles down at me, running her fingers through my hair. "You just need to set up a day and get some take out and talk. About a lot of things, boundaries, limits, expectations, what you're going to do about the league, what you're going to do if one of you gets traded without the other. What you're expecting for dating in the next few months and what you're expecting in any long term arrangements. You and him are going to have to adapt to what's expected of you a lot more than your teammates."

"I don't think I'm ready." I mumble, toying with the corner of the blanket.

"Miloš, you big wimp, I was getting married at 23. You're not 'not ready' you just don't know what to expect and the unexpected has always been scary for you."

I huddle down further into the blanket, feeling a little irritated that she pinpointed that so quickly. "What should I expect?"

"Well, with me and your father, he asked me out and we went on dates and the such, had sleepovers, went on a little road trip, hung out together an insane amount and then he asked me to marry him."

I frown. "But what should I expect? Like, what's going to happen? What's dating like?"

"Like friends but more kissing. It's just the same as what you and him are doing now except you'll get to kiss him."

"Is that it?"

"Well, you'll get to know him better than anyone, you'll understand what he's feeling at any moment and you'll know what to do if he's upset and what he wants if he's acting funny and he'll know all that about you as well, he'll know when you're mad and sad and stressed out and he'll know what you need in those cases. He'll never know you better than I do, but he'll get really close." She pokes my nose. "Now, suck it up and talk to him."

I frown, rolling to my side and looking out at the room. "I'm going to like women in my next life aren't I."

"What was that?"

I shake my head. "Nothing."

She sits and runs her hands through my hair for about ten more minutes before I come up with another question, well, a question I've been meaning to ask for a while.

"Mom?"

"Mhmm?"

"What happens when a kid is raised by parents who don't love them?" I'm relying on her Czech psychology degree that doesn't translate over into a Canadian certificate.

"They start to develop attachment and repression issues." She says. "Forming a relationship with anyone, friendship or romantic, becomes incredibly difficult due to their first experiences with a close relationship were futile and shut down. They develop self-esteem issues, everything from not thinking they're worth anyone paying attention to, all the way over to physical esteem issues, eating disorders, picking at their skin, working out too much. When left unchecked they tend to trend anti-social and often don't know how to make friends or start connections. They often end up emotionally repressed, that stems from neglect to take a young child's emotions seriously and the parents passing them off as unimportant. That leads to feeling numb most of the time, like they can't feel anything."

My heart is crushing into itself in my chest. "Just from that one thing?"

"Mhmm," she says. "It's because your relationship with your parents is one of the very first things you experience, if it's a bad and toxic relationship, the child is taught to expect that, they're taught that their experiences and feelings are unimportant and that they shouldn't bother adults with their problems. Shortly put, they're taught from a very young age that they simply don't matter."

I feel my heart shatter.

"Why are you crying?" She says softly, leaning over to rub her thumb across my cheek. "Milo what's wrong?"

"That's what he said," my voice cracks. "After, after that day, the day we came and unclogged your sink, the day we were dating."

"What did he say?"

"That it was the only time he's ever felt like he mattered." I press the heels of my hands into my eyes, forcing in a shaky breath.

"For some kids raised like that, they go their whole lives hunting for that feeling, it's good he found someone that gives him that feeling."

"I just want him to be okay. I hate that he doesn't know what it feels like." I mumble into my hands. Mom runs her fingers through my hair, calming me down.

***

when my time comes around,

lay me gently in the cold dark earth,

no grave can hold my body down,

i'll crawl home to her.

work song - hozier

***

not this being two hours late

also Hozier's hair in this video is what Rocket is trying to get to but he's just a little on the short side