“Nope.” I don’t blink. He nods, drops an ice bag on the bench anyway, and keeps walking. Good man. Persistent. Has a nose for bullshit.
I shower hot enough to steam the tiles and run a thumb into the adductor just inside the pelvis. Tight. Not ugly. I can feel the fibers complaining when my knee drifts past neutral. That late glove? Maybe it wasn’t just the screen. I don’t love that.
I love it even less that I let a face in row six mess with my head for two beats I didn’t have to spare.
I went ten summers without her voice. When she cut me off, I phoned until even voicemail felt useless. Then I stopped. Every few months I fed her name to a search bar. Her socials were spotless. Clinic posts, conferences, nothing personal. She was guarding the doors, and I wasn’t on the list.
I towel off, pull on my game day suit, wrap the ice baghigh on my left thigh. The room is warm, wet, loud. Coach Novak does a tight drive-by with a clap on my shoulder that says,You were good enough to win. We weren’t.I nod. He keeps moving.
I should be rolling now. Banded adductor. Hip internal rotation. I’ll do it at home. Alone. No audience. No questions.
Rowan pops her head in. She’s our new PR director, since Jessica left and started her own firm. “Liam, press in ten. Dmitri, you too. Nate…” Her eyes flick to my wrapped leg. She clocks everything. “You’re good?”
“Great,” I lie.
She arches a brow. “Media wants a quote.”
“I’ve got one—I picked it up late through traffic.”
She holds out her phone. “Say it so they don’t say I paraphrased.”
I speak into it. “We’ll be better Friday. Traffic in front; I was late on it.” Even. Boring. Dead end for questions. Rowan nods and vanishes.
The event level is a maze. Training room, interview room, then a corridor skirting a VIP club behind glass. Postgame lingers there: coat check, last drinks, a few diehards delaying Eighth Avenue.
I’m iced high on the left thigh and walking fine. Finn falls in beside me, quiet.
Through the glass, there she is. Black coat, blonde waves, the camel coat from row six hovering. She slips on a heel, hand to his shoulder. He hands her a water; she hooks the lemon out and parks it on the napkin. My jaw tightens. I let it go.
The last time I saw her was at Finn and Jessica’s wedding. Green dress, hair down, eyes I could pick out in a blackout. I took her hand and pulled her onto the dancefloor, permission be damned. For one song, I held the past in the present. Her brother, Leo, clocked us from the dunes, same as every summer, guarding the lines he drew in permanent marker.
We moved for three minutes. Her shoulder brushed my chest, and everything else went quiet. It wasn’t enough to breach the wall she built, but enough to wake the obsession I’d buried for ten years. Since then I’ve hovered over her name more times than I’ll admit and never hit dial. I know exactly how many disasters start withwhat if.
Before that? There’d been the time at Leo’s place a couple years ago. She came by to drop off something—leftover birthday cake, I think—and froze the second she saw me. She hadn’t expected me to be there. I stood, stupidly happy just to finally see her, ready to say hi, to ask how she’d been, maybe even figure out if she’d changed her number. But she barely mumbled a hello before bolting out the door with some excuse about being late, leaving me standing there surprised, confused and—yeah, hurt.
And before that…the summer I left for training camp. She was sixteen, I’d just turned eighteen, and everyone was at the ferry dock to see me off—Leo, Ryan, our parents clapping me on the back, making weekend plans. But Eden wasn’t there.
I kept expecting her to come running down the dock at the last second. I wanted to hug her, hear her promise to write, to come to my games. When the ferry pulled away and the dock stayed empty, my chest cracked in two.
Mom must’ve noticed me searching because she leaned in, her voice low and gentle. “Baby, Eden’s over at Cassie’s house. She asked me late last night if she could stay there, and she told me to say goodbye for her.”
I nodded, pretending it didn’t matter, pretending the girlI had complicated feelings for hadn’t just pulled the floor out from under me. I told myself we only spent those summers together because she was my best friend’s sister. But the whole boat ride, I stared at the receding shore, wondering what I’d done wrong.
After that, I wrote to her a few times. Sent a couple of texts. Radio silence. Eventually, I stopped.
“Hey, Russo,” Finn drawls, tracking my stare. He gives a low whistle.
“Don’t.”
“Ain’t said a word.”
“You made a sound.”
“Just thinkin’, is all.” He tips his chin toward the window. “You gonna go say hey?”
“I’m not gonna interrupt her date.”
“That ain’t interruptin’. That’s a polite hello.” He studies my face. “Also, you look about two seconds from combustin’.”
