Kieran:The film is never wrong. You're getting better.
The bus paused in thick traffic.
Kieran:It scares me how much I like watching you play.
Chapter ten
Kieran
The building didn't know what to do with itself.
Christmas week stripped the practice facility down to hum and echo. There were no equipment dryers cycling and no Varga's voice carrying through two closed doors and a concrete wall. It was a taped and tarped locker room, stalls sealed.
Most of the team had scattered. Varga posted a photo from Minnesota, a golden retriever in reindeer antlers, captioned with something about "the only teammate who doesn't judge my shot selection." Cross flew to Vancouver. Pratt went home to a mysterious goalie getaway.
I told Thompson's office I was staying to focus. The word sat comfortably inside organizational expectations. I didn't specify what I was focusing on. I hit the perfect balance: language vague enough that no one asked and specific enough that no one suspected.
I ran through my weight room routine. Halfway through my third set of pull-ups, I stopped. My body still had reps in it. The problem was the silence. In a full facility, noise was cover. Here,alone, every exertion echoed back to me off the cinderblock walls.
Heath was staying in Chicago too. He'd mentioned it three days earlier on a bus to the airport in Toronto, sandwiched between a Varga conspiracy theory about arena hot dogs and Rook's monosyllabic agreement. Nobody asked Heath why. I assumed. Travel home to Rhinelander would be expensive.
I sat in my car in the empty parking garage, hands on the wheel. Heath's apartment was fourteen minutes away. I hadn't told him I was coming. I hadn't decided I was going until I stopped lifting.
The front door stuck as it always did in cold weather. Heath opened it on the second pull.
"Door's worse," I said.
"Door's the same. You notice it because you're here more."
I walked in carrying a duffel packed with four days of clothes, a book on pelagic ecosystems, and nothing with a team logo. I set it next to his shoes by the wall—sneakers and the boots he wore when sidewalks iced over.
"You can put your stuff wherever," Heath said, already moving toward the kitchen. "Closet's got room. Bathroom shelf on the right is empty."
I'd been there often enough that tours were no longer necessary.
The kitchen counter held a short stack of bills, sorted by due date. Next to it, a handwritten grocery list on the back of a receipt.Chicken thighs. Rice. Frozen broccoli. Hot sauce.The handwriting was small and even.
I hung my jacket on the hook behind the door, next to Heath's. The hooks were adhesive, and one was already pulling away from the wall. My condo had a cedar-lined coat closet with brass hardware. I'd hung nothing in it I cared about.
I'd pushed the coffee table against the wall. It left more space between the couch and the bedroom.
I sat on the couch and opened the pelagic ecosystems book. Read the same paragraph three times.
"You're not reading," Heath said from the kitchen without looking up.
"I'm reading."
"You've been on the same page since you sat down."
I closed the book. "How's the onion?"
"Caramelized. Which means you've been pretending for about twelve minutes." He glanced over his shoulder. "You're allowed to just sit there. You don't have to be doing something."
I let my head fall against the back of the couch. The radiator ticked. Heath moved through his kitchen the way he moved through the crease, knowing precisely how much space he had and making sure he wouldn't waste a square foot of it.
Temporary,I told myself. Four days. A break in the schedule.
The couch immediately argued with me. I settled into a dip in one cushion that fit perfectly, like I'd been sitting there every day forever.
