He nods back.
And that’s it.
I wait outside for a while, standing in the gray drizzle, but when the hour’s up, Darius slips out the side door and I miss my window.
I walk home in the rain, shoes soaked, wondering if it’s possible to be less visible after surviving a mass shooting than before.
The answer, apparently, is yes.
That night, I lie in bed staring at the ceiling, trying to remember the last time I felt anything that wasn't dread or static.
The apartment hums. The city hums. My brain hums the same three-second loop of gunfire and silence.
By five AM, I give up on sleep. I need to move, need to burn the poison out of my muscles before it eats through to the bone.
The team facility is still half crime scene, so I google "gyms near me open early" and pick the first result that isn't a CrossFit cult.
———
The gym in Ballard is the kind of place you go if you want to be ignored. Half the lights are busted, the mirrors are warped, and the front desk is manned by a guy who looks like he sells weed out of the vending machine.
The air is thick with the stink of old rubber and underachieving men, the kind of sweat that’s less about self-improvement and more about holding off the inevitable collapse of the body one week at a time.
I pick this place because it’s not the team facility, hell, the Steelhawk Center is still half cordoned off, which is what happens when your home rink gets national coverage for“senseless violence”, and I pick it because nobody here cares who I am, not even the sad regulars with barbed wire tattoos and ten-dollar hoodies.
I park three blocks away so I don’t have to walk past the news vans, and by the time I get inside, my hands are already shaking with the anticipation of the burn, the ache, the beautiful static of muscle fatigue that drowns out everything else.
For the first three minutes, I am a ghost, just a warm-up routine in search of a reason to exist.
Then I see him.
Darius is at the bench, plates loaded up like a dare, his back flat and arms out, moving the bar with the kind of controlled violence that only comes from years of fighting your own body for supremacy.
He’s wearing a gray t-shirt that’s so tight it looks painted on, the sleeves cut off because even here, in exile, he has to show he’s better than the room.
Our eyes meet for exactly one heartbeat.
There’s a nod, barely. The kind of recognition you give a guy whose dog you accidentally killed, not a teammate, not a survivor.
Then he racks the weight and sits up, towel over his face, hiding from me or from the world.
I almost turn around. Instead, I walk to the far end, the squat rack, and start my own routine.
I keep my head down, count every rep in a whisper. Six sets in, the lactic acid is singing and I can almost pretend I’m alone.
But I’m not. Every time I look up, Darius is still there, working through the circuit with the same ruthless precision, never resting more than thirty seconds, never missing a beat.
He doesn’t look at me again. He doesn’t have to. The whole room is saturated with the memory of what we saw, what we didn’t say.
The distance between us is the same as it was in the equipment room, a thousand miles or the width of a cheap gym towel.
After twenty minutes, my legs are rubber and my heart is rattling like an engine about to seize.
I move to the free weights, which is a mistake, because from here the only thing in my line of sight is Darius, now at the cable station, arms roped and glistening.
I try to focus on the dumbbell, the way the cold metal bites into my palm, but it’s no use.
I look away, but not fast enough.
