The Swap(7)

maxime beausoleil


I didn’t know the tall, gangly teen drinking wine in our living room, but I didn’t want her there. Freya shouldn’t have been serving alcohol to a kid. And she shouldn’t have been smoking pot with one, either. (I could smell it, even from the second floor.) We’d had enough trouble and controversy. We couldn’t handle any more without coming apart. But Freya had always liked to be adored, craved it even.

When I first met her, I didn’t know she was famous. She was beautiful and effervescent, like expensive champagne. Back when I drank, I was a beer guy, but no one can turn down really good bubbly. She was a social media celebrity, an influencer. I wasn’t on social media, didn’t even know that you could make money that way. But Freya had turned posting about nightclubs and clothes, workouts and makeup into a lucrative career.

We met at a charity fundraiser in Beverly Hills. I was with the LA Kings then, and the whole team was there. I believed in giving back, in using my celebrity to raise money and awareness for important causes, but I was never comfortable at these events. I grew up in a small town in the Yukon with a population under fifteen hundred; LA was like another planet. And people acted weird around me. Grown men turned into excited little boys. Women fawned and flirted. That fundraiser was for a children’s hospice, so I pushed my unease aside. I like kids, and the thought of them getting sick, even dying, hurt my heart. So I was standing on the lawn of this mansion, soaking my lips in a sickly signature cocktail, when she approached me.

“You’re obviously one of the Kings,” she said. “You any good?”

This was early in my career, before I was written off as the team enforcer, the muscle, the vigilante. I was a physical player, but also a strong face-off man with a powerful slap shot, so I said, “Yep.”

“I’d better get a photo with you then.”

I obliged, letting her nestle under my arm, holding her phone out as instructed. She curled herself into me, smiling coyly at the camera. She was transformed on the screen; polished and pouty and perfect. I thought she was more beautiful in real life, when she was animated and real. After I snapped a couple of photos, she took back her phone.

She looked at the images. “We look good together.” She didn’t seem to require a response, so I didn’t give her one. Her eyes were on the screen, her fingers tapping on the keyboard. “What’s your name?”

“Maxime Beausoleil. My friends call me Max.”

“Are you on Insta, Max?

“No.”

She looked up then. “Are you a caveman or something?”

She was condescending, borderline rude. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I found it attractive.

“I get enough attention,” I said.

Her eyes roved over me. “I’ll bet you do.”

She tapped away at the device again and then proffered it to me. I looked at the photo of the two of us. I was smiling, ever so slightly. I hadn’t even realized it. And then I read the caption:

Just met my future husband.

And that was it. We were together.

Women have always been attracted to me. I’m tall and fit. My face is handsome, except for the long scar that now slices across my upper lip, a constant reminder of the stick to the face that changed everything. Freya used to say it was sexy, it made me look like a warrior. But it’s been a long time since she’s said that. And, of course, I have money. Not as much as I used to, but still . . . a lot. When I first started playing, I gave in to the attention. I thought it was harmless. But I learned the hard way, how much trouble a one-night stand can cause.

So I was ready for a relationship, tired of flings and hookups. Freya and I were good together. We looked the part. We had physical chemistry and common interests (like fitness and nutrition). And we complemented each other. I was quiet; Freya was talkative. I was big; she was tiny. I was organized; she was flighty.

But there was a darkness inside of me, a violence that I’d always struggled to contain. The steroids made it worse, but there were plenty of guys in the league who took them and didn’t maim anyone. During that fateful game, Ryan Klassen hit me in the mouth with an intentional high stick, and I saw red. I wanted to hurt him. Maybe I even wanted to kill him, just for a moment. When I went back on the ice, I slammed him headfirst into the boards. I thought I’d get a penalty, maybe a game misconduct. I didn’t know I’d ruin his life. And my life. And Freya’s.

She would never forgive me, and rightly so. I didn’t deserve it. But that didn’t mean I’d stop trying to make it up to her.

Freya knew that. And she used it.





6


low


I woke up sometime during the night. Or maybe it was early morning. It was dark outside the window, a crescent sliver of moon and an abundance of stars visible from where I lay. My mouth was dry and cottony and tasted liked I’d eaten a bale of that pink fiberglass insulation that people use in their attics. (Not that I’ve ever done such a gross thing, but I can assume that’s how it would taste.) It took a few seconds for the evening’s events to come back to me: Freya inviting me into her house; pouring me many glasses of red wine; introducing me to her big, hot, surly husband. I’d gotten drunk. And then I’d gotten stoned. I probably was still drunk and stoned, judging by my clouded brain and my queasy stomach.