"A few weeks ago."
He sat up, the sheet pooling around his waist, his back to me.
"Cool,” he said coldly. "Good for you."
"Red—"
"No, seriously. The Olympic Center. That's a big deal." He swung his legs over the side of the bed and grabbed his boxers from the floor. "You could have just kept it in the truck. You didn't have to—" He gestured at the room, at the bed, at me. "All of this."
"I know."
"So why did you?"
I didn't have an answer. Or I had one, but it was stuck somewhere in my chest, tangled up with the training schedule on the fridge and my favorite color and the way his hand had fit in mine.
"That's what I thought." He pulled on his jeans without looking at me. "Look, it's fine. We fucked around for a while; you're leaving. I get it."
"Red."
"What?" He turned to face me.
"I'm not good at this," I said.
"No shit."
He pulled his shirt over his head, and when his face emerged he looked different, his expression smoothed out, his jaw tight. He grabbed his jacket from the living room floor and shrugged into it like he was putting on armor.
"I'll call you an Uber," I said.
"Don't bother." He was at the door now, his hand on the knob. "I've got it."
"It's cold. Let me—"
"I said I've got it." He opened the door and stood there for a second, not looking at me. "Good luck at Nationals. I mean that."
The door closed behind him. His footsteps faded down the hall.
I sat there in the dark with the sheets still warm where he'd been, the smell of him still on my skin, the ghost of his fingers still pressed against my palm.
Wonton jumped onto the bed and walked across my lap. He settled against my hip and started purring, oblivious to everything except his own comfort.
After a while, I picked up my phone and stared at the screen. His number was there. I could text him. Tell him to come back. Tell him the real reason I'd invited him here instead of meeting in his truck, the reason I'd let him hold my hand.
I put the phone face-down on the nightstand.
In three weeks I'd be in Colorado and this would be something that had happened, a body in a city I used to live in. That was easier. That was what I knew how to do.
Wonton purred against my hip. The sheets still smelled like Red, like sweat and sex and that cheap soap he used, the kind that came in bulk packs at the grocery store.
I should strip the bed. Wash everything. Put the room back the way it was before he'd seen it.
I pulled the covers up to my chest instead and turned my face into the pillow where his head had been and breathed in the scent of him.
JANUARY
The call came on a Tuesday morning while I was making my father's oatmeal.
"Red. It's Andy." Andy Allemen, my agent, the guy who'd signed me out of juniors when nobody else would take a flier on an undersized center with a bad hip and no connections. He'd believed in me when believing didn't make financial sense. "You sitting down?"
