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If anybody had asked before the call, Howard would have said he was still thinking about what to do. Hell, he sometimes told himself that too. But he knew that for any practical purpose, the choice had been made. He was just terrified to accept the consequences.
Howard knew his current life was a precarious balance that cannot hold, yet he was afraid to think about the inevitable upsetting of that balance all the same. He hadn’t been this happy for many years, if he ever had. Living two and a half hours apart by train isn’t ideal for two married 30-year-olds, but it still means he and Mogens can see each other once or twice every month, and between those visits and the twice-daily calls the loneliness is almost manageable.
More than anybody else, Howard knows it could be much worse, because for him, it has been worse. He thinks it’s enough that he spent four lonely years in southern California, three of which under the shadow and torment of the unspeakable incident when he couldn’t do anything but call Mogens at 3 a.m. and sob into the phone line, and Mogens couldn’t do anything but text Radulovic, the only person they knew and thought they could trust in the area, praying that Radulovic was awake to pick Howard up and take care of him for the night. The vast North American continent stretched between him and Mogens, rendering them nearly helpless and alone amongst strangers.
He is thankful for his time in Philadelphia, and management have occasionally brought up the prospect of him sticking around, but frankly now that he’s married he can’t imagine himself keeping up the energy for the game much longer. As unbelievable as it sounds, he is now even less enthusiastic about a contract renewal than he was when he signed his current contract in 2019, when he would remind his agent almost every other day to emphasise that he is not interested in staying beyond 2023. He (and soon, Mogens too) needs normal working hours. They need to start building a foundation for a home that they can raise children in.
Back in September, he and Mogens asked their friends Karl and George for this call about what he should do after next summer – move in with Mogens in Newark, or go home to Mostravia. Inexplicably, he thought about convincing Mogens to do the talking for once (Howard almost called his therapist the week after to ask if this was a sign that he wanted Mogens to prove that he loved Howard, but eventually he just explained it away as an intrusive thought and told Mogens about it), and Mogens, unsurprisingly, pulled out a Word document in which he had typed up all the arguments for and against.
Karl and George were a little hesitant at first, but once they got over it they were characteristically straightforward, the engineers that they are, (correctly) pointing out that Howard and Mogens could clearly see from Mogens’s document that they’ve already implicitly made their choice. Both of them know that Howard coming home first would be beneficial for their long-term future, because they would avoid having to navigate two career transitions and, most likely, the surrogacy process all in parallel after Mogens’s time in hockey is over in 2025. And the further into Howard’s 30s, the harder it will be for him, and just because Mogens has to stay for another two years doesn’t mean Howard lounging around for two no-good years isn’t an unnecessary complication to their career problems.
In the opposing column, they only had one line in favour of Howard moving in to Newark. And though Mogens and Howard love each other dearly, and Howard cries (and knows that Mogens cries sometimes too, but only after he gets back inside his flat) every time they part ways after a visit, it doesn’t outweigh the potential nightmare scenario of dealing with everything all at once.
So it will be. Two years living a continent and half an ocean apart.
He waited an hour. Then a day. Then three days.
Mogens texted him about contacting his former boss and professors to start discussing his next career.
A week. Two weeks. A month.
He put in applications. He got rejections. He got interviews. The process started feeling repetitive.
Two months. Three months.
Howard thinks Mogens is the only person who isn’t surprised that he hasn’t broken down by now. But turns out he isn’t afraid of two years apart, because he knows a much better future awaits them, and by heading for home now he is doing their future selves a favour.
And really, he’s willing to admit, it’s because he trusts Mogens. And because no matter the geographic distance between them, he knows he and Mogens will always be as close as any two people can be, not just because they now share a surname or because they made their vows before God and had spent months to make sure that both of their churches were involved.
Unlike Mogens, Howard had had previous relationships – although not since he left university, six years before they got together. There weren’t any geographic impediment in those relationships, but they never felt as close as what he and Mogens have now. In truth, Howard probably wasn’t even as close to Thomas, the guy he dated in the last year of university, as he was to Mogens while Howard and Thomas were dating.
Perhaps Mogens has always been special, even if Howard would never try to convince Mogens of that. Howard doesn’t think anybody else understands that even if Howard is outwardly sociable and friendly, few of the hundreds of interactions he has every day actually leaves him feeling better. In many ways, Howard is where he is in life now because he can plaster a happy face onto a carefully flattened exterior.
Howard knows most people find him easy to befriend, unlike Mogens, and that gives him certain advantages in life. It does become a problem when it’s also easy for people to be convinced that they know him well, and he doesn’t feel comfortable extricating himself if it involves upsetting other people. It took his high school girlfriend over nine months to realise that he was uncomfortable with the pace they were taking, and she promptly broke it off within two days. And in perhaps the most silly incident of his entire life, Thomas broke up with Howard because he was annoyed that Howard would start tidying up every time he visited, and Thomas said if he wanted somebody that fussy he would have dated a girl instead of a male hockey player.
Mogens made the effort to understand Howard in a way that he doesn’t think anybody else does, not even his parents, and Mogens made Howard want to understand Mogens, made Howard want to show Mogens he cared about every part of Mogens.
A lot of people would be surprised if Howard told them he wasn’t physically affectionate. He does tend to hug, tap, or pat a lot when he thinks it would comfort people, both before and after The Incident, but he himself never felt anything in particular about these acts. But he learnt in college, just a few months after they became friends, that Mogens did feel a need for physical affection but didn’t trust most people with it, and so Howard made it his personal project to gain Mogens’s trust enough that he could help Mogens with that want in particular.
Only a few months after that, Howard realised that he had started wanting to stay around Mogens for hugs too, although for him only Mogens’s touch had any effect on his mood. Even then, Howard knows that it will never affect him with the same intensity as it does Mogens. In this particular aspect, Howard knows the four years they spent on opposing North American coasts was much harder on Mogens than on him, and the next two years probably will be the same, especially now that Mogens has known what it’s like for them to spend a day or two every other week just being together, going about their mundane daily tasks in each others’ comforting presence. Howard himself just needs Mogens’s voice and an opportunity for them both to share their daily thoughts and encounters, and that’s a much easier problem to solve.
But Howard also knows it’s a bit foolish for him to worry too much about Mogens. Because while Mogens’s system and process for keeping his life in control and balance may be perplexing to many, Howard understands and trusts Mogens to handle himself.
Both of them know what they want in the long term. They came into this relationship with expectations that were shared as many as six years before it started. Whatever the feelings, they both know they would hardly forgive themselves if Howard gave up two years of work and settling in back home for Mogens’s short-term comfort.
Nine years of friendship, two years of relationship, and one and hopefully many more years of marriage. No matter what happens next, they’ll be fine. Because they have each other. Because they are a family.
Howard rolls into bed and sends Mogens a selfie and a last good night text. The almost instantaneous heart react and replying photo brings a smile to his face, and he curls up to sleep. Morning will come, soon.