"And Pickle modeled that."
"Pickle modeled something I didn't have a name for until I got to Chicago and lost it." Heath looked at the pipe cleaner figure. "He takes up space. Not by being loud, even though he's the loudest person in any room he's ever entered. By beingthere. Fully. Without apologizing for any of it. He fucks up constantly. Spills things, breaks things, says the wrong thing at the wrong volume. He also recovers constantly. Gets back up. Every time."
Heath was quiet for a moment.
"When I got called up, Pickle said, 'You're going to want to disappear up there. Don't.'"
The radiator ticked, and I heard the clatter of the L three blocks away.
"I didn't listen. I spent a lot of time making myself as small as I could." He looked at me. "You saw it."
I had. His drawn shoulders. The permission-seeking in every shift. How he flinched after good plays, like he couldn't afford visibility.
"Now, this shows up in the mail. Priority. Bubble-wrapped inside a shoebox, which was inside another shoebox, because Pickle doesn't trust the postal system and also doesn't understand proportional packaging."
Heath picked up the pipe cleaner hockey player.
"Takes up space. Hard to knock over." He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. "He's telling me what's already there when I get out of my way."
I looked at the Post-it. The pipe cleaner figure leaning forward. The grinning photograph.
"He sounds like a lot," I said.
"He's a disaster." Heath said it the way other people saidhe's family."He got his hand stuck in a Pringles can twice in one month." Heath paused for a beat. "He is the best person I know."
Heath gathered the empty food containers and stood. He put some leftovers in the fridge and tossed the rest in the trash.
When he came back, he sat next to me, shoulder to shoulder, backs against the couch. His knee settled against mine, and I forgot to breathe for a second.
"Your turn," he said.
"My turn what?"
"I just gave you the whole Thunder Bay origin story. Your turn. Tell me something."
I could have offered anything. The contract meeting and Shedd would be safe territory.
But Heath was still holding the pipe cleaner figure, turning it absently in his fingers, and his shoulder was warm against mine. For a half-second, the distance between safe and honest felt small enough to step across.
"In juniors—"
I stopped.
Heath, of all people, would understand. He wouldn't flinch. He'd listen the way he listened to everything, directly, without requiring me to manage his reaction.
Still, if I said it, if I told Heath about the kiss that counted, it would become part of the record.
Evidence.
"In juniors, what?" Heath asked.
"Nothing. Lost the thread."
He didn't push.
"Okay."
His shoulder was warm against mine. The pipe cleaner Heath, now on the coffee table, leaned forward into a stride he would never complete, frozen mid-motion, permanently committed, hard to knock over.
