I suspected it was both.
COLE
The photo was grainy. Taken from across the street through what looked like a car window. Two men leaving a restaurant in Decatur, walking close but not touching. One blond, one dark-haired. Both tall. Both recognizable if you knew what you were looking for, and the person who posted it to a gossip blog called AtlantaBuzz apparently knew exactly what they were looking for.
The headline read: Reapers' Dynamic Duo: Teammates or Something More?
Jonah showed it to me at 8 AM, sitting in his car in the facility parking lot. He'd texted me "don't go inside yet" and I'd found him in the passenger lot with his phone in his hand and a look on his face that I'd never seen before. Not judgment. Not pity. Something closer to concern.
"How bad is it?" I said.
"It's a blog. Not ESPN. The photo is blurry. You can't really tell it's you unless you already know. But it's making rounds on hockey Twitter."
I looked at the photo. It was from Saturday night. We'd gone to dinner at a small Ethiopian restaurant in Decatur that Mik had read about somewhere, because Mik's approach to food inAtlanta was to systematically work through every cuisine the city offered, and he was currently in the East African phase. It had been a good night. We'd sat across from each other and argued about whether injera counted as bread (I said yes, Mik said it was a category unto itself, which was such a Mik answer that I'd laughed until my eyes watered). We'd walked to the car. We hadn't touched. We hadn't even stood that close. But the angle of the photo made it look intimate, the way two people leaning toward each other in conversation will always look intimate to someone who's looking for it.
"Have you told anyone?" I asked Jonah.
"Told anyone what?"
"Don't do that. You know."
Jonah was quiet for a moment. "I know there's something going on with you and Volkov. I've known for a while. I haven't told anyone because it's none of my business and also because I'm not a monster."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. Just tell me what you need."
"I need to find Mik before he sees this."
I was too late. By the time I got to the locker room, Mik was already at his stall, dressed and ready for morning skate, and the temperature around him had dropped approximately forty degrees. He was not reading. He was not studying film. He was sitting with his hands on his knees, staring at the wall with an expression that I recognized from the Miami flight. The shutdown. The full Russian retreat behind walls so high you couldn't see the top.
I couldn't talk to him there. Rule one. Nothing at the facility. So I went to my stall and got dressed and laced my skates and went to practice and played hockey next to a man who felt a thousand miles away.
Practice was terrible. We were off. The connection that had been so fluid, so instinctive, was stuttering like a signal with interference. Coach noticed. He didn't say anything this time, which was worse than if he had, because it meant he was watching and waiting to see if we'd fix it ourselves.
After practice, I caught Mik in the parking lot. He was walking fast, keys already in his hand, headed for his car with the determined stride of a man trying to outrun a conversation.
"Mik. Stop."
He stopped. He did not turn around.
"Have you seen it?" I said.
"Yes."
"It's nothing. A blurry photo on a blog nobody reads. My agent already called. He's not worried."
"Your agent is not the one in the photo."
"You're both in the photo. So am I."
He turned around. His face was composed in a way that I had learned to read as panic. When Mik was truly calm, his face had movement in it. Micro-expressions. The almost-smile. The flicker of dry humor behind his eyes. When his face went perfectly still, it meant everything underneath was in chaos and he was using every ounce of control to keep the surface flat.
"This is what happens," he said. "This is how it starts. A photo. Then questions. Then someone with a longer lens and better timing, and then it is not a blurry picture from across the street. It is clear. It is undeniable. And everything I have built falls apart."
"Mik, it's a gossip blog. They post rumors about every athlete in the city. Last week they said the Braves' shortstop was dating a reality TV star because they were at the same restaurant on the same night. It means nothing."
"It means someone is watching."