I came off and sat on the bench.
"Stay in it, Donnelly." That was Coach Markel from behind the bench. Observational.
"Yes, Coach."
Kieran sat four spots down. He didn't look at me. He was watching the next group cycle through the same drill, his water bottle resting on his thigh.
I watched his hands. The left one gripped the bottle with the same steady pressure he used for everything. No tremor. No tell.
Five months ago, I'd sat on this bench and studied how he moved through the world without wasted motion, every gesture calibrated.
Now I watched those same hands and thought:He knew.While he was handing me the puck, sitting on this bench, and sleeping in my bed. He knew, and he decided, without me.
The whistle blew. My group was up.
I vaulted over the boards. Found my lane. Ran the rep clean.
The drill didn't require me. Only my edges, my stick, and the part of me that had been doing this since Rhinelander, since Thunder Bay, since the first time I'd driven the net and refused to leave.
Practice ended. Markel collected pucks. The Zamboni emerged.
Varga said something about lunch. I said something back. I don't remember what.
The parking garage was cold. My car sat where it always sat: third level, near the stairwell. I dropped my bag in the trunk and climbed behind the wheel.
Three teams. Cap space. Extension fixed it.
I turned the key.
The drive from the practice facility to my apartment took eleven minutes on surface streets. I drove past the taqueria where Kieran had once ordered in surprisingly passable Spanish and then refused to explain where he'd learned it. Past the laundromat with the hand-lettered sign that had been promising GRAND OPENING since November. The city scrolled past the windows.
I needed to think about the truth in a room with walls. My walls. The apartment I paid for with money I earned on ice I'd fought to keep. The kitchen where we'd eaten on the floor. The couch where he'd fallen asleep with his hand on my chest.
If this was going to break, it was going to break where we'd been real.
My apartment was exactly as I'd left it that morning. Coffee mug in the sink. The rock from California next to the pipe cleaner figure on the side table. Dishes from last night stacked on the counter because I'd been too tired to wash them, and Kieran had offered. I'd saidleave them, I'll get it tomorrow.
It was tomorrow.
I picked up my phone.
Heath:Come over. Now.
The dots appeared almost immediately.
Kieran:Everything okay?
Heath:Now.
I set the phone on the counter and waited.
I didn't sit. I stood at the kitchen counter with my palms flat on the surface.
The dishes from last night were still stacked beside the sink. Two plates. Two forks. A pot with dried sauce at the rim. Evidence of a meal we'd shared eighteen hours ago, when I'd made pasta and Kieran had leaned against the refrigerator and told me about a paper he'd read on nitrogen cycling in brackish environments and I'd saidyou know I don't know what brackish meansand he'd saidit means the water can't decide what it isand I'd laughed.
Two knuckles. Twice.
I opened the door.
