“Didn’t sleep while you were at that fancy hotel?” Noelle asks.
“I slept very well.” I say and quickly change the subject. “Now when are we going dress shopping?”
She waves a finger through the air, “We just did Halloween, the wedding isn’t for?—”
“Nine more games,” I say and yawn again.
“Any questions I had about your love of the game is now gone,” Sofie laughs and then looks at Noelle. “Nine games! This isn’t just an off the rack kind of dress. It’s your breakup with the twat dress.”
“You sure got a mouth on you, Sassy,” Paul grumbles from the recliner where we thought he was sleeping with Savannah on his chest.
“Hush up, Poppapumpkin.” Sofie says to needle him.
Paul winks at me.
Yes, Deacon Moretti also bought Paul a matching cardigan, on it is, Poppa Pumpkin and matching hats for the girls, which I handed out, and they all thanked me. It feels wrong to have lied to them, well, not lie exactly, but to take credit for such a sweet thing that I did not do.
The game? A shit show.
I wish Johnson had not canceled our session. Because I needed to see him. Not to talk at him, not to pull out some textbook strategy. I needed to look at his face while I said certain things and see how he reacted, because hisbody languagematters. His micro expressions matter.
The way he sits, the way he breathes, the way he avoids eye contact, the way he tries to move the conversation away from discomfort. You can learn more from a person’s posture than from thirty minutes of rehearsed answers. And now, watching him on the ice? I wish to God I had been in the room with him for just thirty minutes.
Something about the way he is playing tonight is not just bad like it has been. It’s not just sloppy or inconsistent. It feels intentional. It feels like someone doing thebare minimum to look like they are tryingwhile ensuring the outcome is failure.
On screen, Johnson lets a puck slide past him like he is waving a taxi through traffic. The entire living room groans.
Sofie throws her head back. “That is not even a save attempt!”
“No,” Paul grumbles from the recliner, “that’s sabotage.”
That word strikes something in me. Hard.
I cannot diagnose someone through a television screen. I cannot make professional calls from a couch with a pumpkin beer in my hand and a baby sleeping on Paul. But I can feel my instincts humming. Something is wrong with him. Not physically, mentally, emotionally, or behaviorally. And I wish I had been able to read him in person instead of rescheduling like he insisted. I hear my own voice in my head, the one I only use in clinical environments.
Withdrawal, avoidance, dissociation, intentional underperformance, possible burnout, possible resentment, possible external pressure.
Sofie stomps her foot. “He is looking the wrong way again! Who looks the wrong way! The puck is a bright little circle, Johnson, follow it!”
Noelle rubs her temples. “Can you fix him?”
I can’t tell them anything, so I just shrug.
“Maybe he knew he was going to play like this and did not want you to see his guilt.”
I swallow because that is exactly the part that is scaring me. The camera zooms in on Johnson’s face. Blank. Empty. Like someone unplugged him.
Paul whispers to me, “He does not want to be out there.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to calm the rising frustration. “I cannot tell if he is overwhelmed or….”Doing this on purpose.
Sofie jerks her head toward me. “Or what?”
Careful, Claudia,I remind myself, no professional lines crossed.
“Checking out,” Paul answers. “Emotionally. Athletically. You can feel it sometimes.”
Noelle leans forward. “You think he’s giving up.”
