Grant was pulling on his jacket when West appeared at the end of the row.
He had that look—the one where he was trying to be casual about something that wasn't casual. West was impenetrable on the field, but Grant had been reading him since they were twelve.
"Hey." West leaned against the locker frame. "You coming tomorrow?"
Tomorrow. Christmas dinner. Serle's roast, John's turmeric lattes, the whole noisy, overstuffed, medically anxious production that had been Grant's second home for half his life.
"I don't think so this year." Grant kept his voice even. "Gonna stay in. Watch some film."
"On Christmas Day."
"Philly's zone coverage is top of the league right now. And it looks like Wilkins and Diamino are coming off IR."
West was quiet for a beat. Grant could feel him calculating.
"Mom's doing her stuffing," West said. "The one with the sausage and the apples."
"Tell her I said thanks."
Another pause. Longer this time.
Three weeks. Three weeks of away games and film sessions and the grinding machinery of a playoff push, and every single one of them had included a moment—usually late, usually alone, usually in a hotel room in a city he didn't care about—where he'd picked up his phone and stared at her name and put it back down.
He'd heard she'd left Elite Connections. West had mentioned it in passing, careful and clipped, the way he mentioned anything Emmy-adjacent these days. Grant hadn't asked for details. Didn't trust himself to ask for details, because asking led to thinking and thinking led to the brownstone and the brownstone led to his car keys and his car keys led to her apartment and he'd already driven halfway there twice before pulling over and turning around.
She didn't want to hear from him. He'd sent the termination contract without a word—just his signature, clean and final—because the contract needed to end and the words he actually wanted to say would have been a different kind of detonation. And then the silence had calcified into something load-bearing, and he'd told himself it was the right call.
"How's Emmy?"
The question came out raw, unshaped—a toss-off, a footnote. Instead it landed in the quiet locker room with the weight of something he'd been carrying for weeks.
West's expression shifted. Not anger—something more complicated.
"She's fine." West rubbed the back of his neck. "I think. I haven't really seen her, honestly."
Grant absorbed that. Emmy, alone in that apartment with the sage green armchair and the unlit candle, and neither of them had been to see her.
"She hasn't been bothering you again, has she?" West said it quickly, like he'd been holding it. "Because if she's been calling or showing up or—I can talk to her."
"What?" Grant frowned. "No."
"I just know how she gets. She fixates, and she doesn't always know when to?—"
"Dude. She can bother me all she wants."
The words sat between them. Grant heard what they sounded like a half-second after they left his mouth.
West heard it too. His eyes narrowed. Not hostile. Searching.
"You two aren't..."
Grant exhaled. A long, slow breath through his nose.
"No," he said. The word came out flatter than he'd meant it to.
West nodded. Held his gaze a beat longer than necessary. Then pushed off the locker frame.
"Well. Offer stands. Mom will keep a plate."
