His arm has not moved.
“Why hockey, though?” Lighter than the banter was. “Tomáš played football. Everyone in Brno played football. Why the one sport nobody cared about?”
“Tomáš played football.”
“Yes. That’s been established.”
“Tomáš was good at football. Really good.”
“He was.”
“Dad watched him. Mom watched him. The coaches watched him. The scouts watched him.”
“And?”
“There wasn’t any room on the pitch that wasn’t already his.”
I say it the way I would say something about the weather. Plain. The way I would say it to a teammate on the bench. Damián’s arm goes still on my shoulder.
“So you went somewhere else.”
“My grandfather had a rink behind his house. Outdoor. The ice was bad. Nobody cared about it.”
“So you went.” He pauses for a beat. “But it was yours.”
“It was mine.”
He walks beside me and his arm does not lift. He does not say I’m sorry in any of the three available languages. He just walks. After a moment he says, “He didn’t mean it.”
“I know. Tomáš didn’t mean to take up all the space. He was good and the space went where he went.”
The heat is doing what Atlanta heat does after noon. The linen on my back is sticking. I reach behind me with the gesture I have made a hundred times this summer, pulling the fabric away from the skin.
The hem rides up.
I feel the air find the band of skin between my hip and my rib, and I feel Damián’s attention shift. Not his eyes. His attention. His entire body going still beside me.
His arm comes off my shoulders. Not in retreat. In the way you put your hand down when you need to look at something properly.
“You have a tattoo.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You’ve known me since I was twelve. There are some things about me from after I was twelve.”
“Tobík.”
I turn slightly so the light catches it. The continuous line climbing from hip to ribs. The house at the bottom, the chimney in a single stroke. Then Brno. Then Kladno. Then Atlanta at the top, the skyline I added in March, the ink still darker because it is still new.
“Each city where I’ve lived. The house at the bottom, that’s where I grew up, the chimney is just one stroke, you can see it. Then Brno above that. Then Kladno when I went to the Extraliga. Then Atlanta. I added the skyline in March, that’s why the ink is darker there. It’s still new.”
“Atlanta is at the top.”
“Atlanta is where I am now. The line goes up. Each new city goes up. I didn’t plan it that way at eighteen, I just got the first one. But each time I move I keep going. It’s a continuous line. That part was on purpose.”
His eyes trace the line from hip to rib, following the cities. His hand raises and he traces a finger along the part with the Atlanta skyline, causing goosebumps to rise even in the heavy heat of the afternoon. I have read twenty-seven romance novels and I know what it means when someone reads a story on your skin with their eyes. I have written notes in the margins of three of them about this exact look. The fictional people did not mention that the real version makes your hands forget what they are for.