Instead I was sitting here thinking about a guy who wouldn't look at me.
That should've been my first warning sign.
MIK
Iwoke at 4:47 a.m. without an alarm. I had not needed an alarm in eleven years.
The apartment was dark and quiet in the way that only American apartments are quiet. No radiator clanking. No neighbors arguing through the walls. No city noise bleeding in from the street. Just air conditioning humming at a temperature I still found too cold, which was ironic for a man from Chelyabinsk.
I lay there for exactly two minutes. This was part of the routine. Two minutes to exist between sleep and the day, to let the body settle into being awake before asking anything of it. My old coach in the KHL taught me this. "The body is a tool," he used to say. "You don't pick up a hammer and start swinging. You hold it first. Get the weight of it."
I held the weight of it.
Then I got up.
The apartment was furnished the way the relocation company had arranged it. Leather couch, glass coffee table, two barstools at the kitchen island. I had added nothing. No photographs, no books on the shelves, no personal items except my clothes in the closet and a single icon of Saint Nicholas thatmy mother had pressed into my hand at the airport in Moscow. It sat on the nightstand. I did not pray to it. But I did not move it either.
I made coffee. Black, no sugar. The American coffee was weak compared to what I was used to, but I had learned to make it strong enough by using twice the grounds. A small rebellion.
By 5:30 I was at the training facility. The parking lot was empty except for one truck that belonged to the security guard, an older Black man named Gerald who called me "Big Man" and always asked about the weather in Russia. I liked Gerald. He did not require much conversation.
"Morning, Big Man."
"Good morning, Gerald."
"Cold enough for you?"
It was sixty-two degrees. In Chelyabinsk this would be considered beach weather. "Perfect," I said, and Gerald laughed like I had told a very good joke. I had not. But Americans laughed at things that were not jokes and did not laugh at things that were, and I had stopped trying to understand the pattern.
The weight room was mine at this hour. I liked it this way. The clank of plates, the rhythm of sets, the simple math of weight and repetitions. This was a language I understood completely. Forty-five minutes. Back, shoulders, core. No music. I did not need music. The silence was enough.
After weights, I went to the film room. I had pulled footage of our next three opponents and built a spreadsheet of their breakout tendencies, their power play formations, their defensive zone coverage. This was what I did. I studied. I prepared. I left nothing to chance because chance was the thing that destroyed you.
My phone buzzed. A text from my mother.
How was the game last night? Did you win?
I typed back in Russian. Yes. 4-2. I played well.
Three dots. Then: Are you eating enough? You look thin on the television.
I had not looked thin on the television. I weighed two hundred and twenty pounds. But my mother would worry about my weight until one of us died, and probably after.
I am eating fine, Mama. How is Katya?
Your sister is driving me insane. She wants to study in London. London! As if Moscow is not good enough.
I smiled. Katya was twenty-one and fearless in a way that I had never been. She wanted to see the world. I wanted to help her see it. That was part of why I was here, playing in the best league on earth, sending money home every month. So that Katya could study wherever she wanted and my mother could stop working double shifts at the hospital.
Tell Katya I said London is a good idea.
You are no help.
I love you, Mama.
I love you too, Misha. Eat something.
I put the phone down and stared at the film. The second period footage from last night was loaded but I was not watching it. I was thinking about the hit.